July 25, 2002. My great friend Meredith has started a blog! Go see! She's hilarious! I was going to tempt you with quotes, but you should just go read it yourself. I did learn that Meredith is apparently a bit more of a curser than she lets on around me. I don't curse much (or really, ever), and I think it makes cursers uncomfortable. I've known Meredith a while now, but I had no idea about her sailor mouth. Doesn't matter; she's still hilarious. Go Mere!

I went to the bookstore at lunch today to look at magazines, and I was happy to see that Eating Well magazine is being published again. I really liked this magazine, but it inexplicably folded about four years ago. It looks like they've done some really nice things with the magazine's revamping: a nice mix of interesting articles and recipes, and no ads. Hurrah! Mom, you need to go find this magazine because it's got you written all over it. There are some great-looking salad dressing recipes, and a whole section of "recipes in season" which looked really good. And something called "Veggie Burgers with Attitude" that actually made my mouth water. Oh, and they also have difficulty ratings for each recipe, which I think is a brilliant idea. So you can look at it and see if it's a rainy Saturday afternoon recipe, or a quick Tuesday dinner recipe.

There was a street musician outside of the bookstore, which is pretty rare for these parts. Especially because it was in South Portland at the mall, not in downtown Portland or anything. Also, he was playing an accordian. I kept looking around for a carousel, when I realized it was the itinerant accordian player. I couldn't figure out what he was playing. I think he was just riffing, if that's possible on an accordian. It sounded like a bizarre medley of "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."

July 24, 2002. I tried this Tofu Parmigiana recipe as recommended by Heather, and I highly recommed it. Super yummy, and really easy. I bet it will be even tastier next time when I use regular tomato sauce instead of the pizza sauce I happened to have in my cupboard.

July 22, 2002. Warning: today's post has details of illegal activity. Though it is, in my mind, justified illegality.

As many of you know, Dave and I have been trying to buy a house for several months. We were under contract on one, but it fell through because the entire foundation needed to be replaced. Mostly we are discouraged by the outrageous prices for horrible houses. With that in mind, we have been looking to methods other than the usual Realtor-route.

A few weeks ago, Dave saw an ad in the paper for a house that had been foreclosed upon and was going to be sold at a public auction. Usually these houses are in the middle of nowhere, but this one happened to be about a mile from where we live now, but in a cuter neighborhood. We walked to the house, and saw that it is completely adorable.

Since then we have pretty much stalked this house on a regular basis. There's no one living there (since they were kicked out during the foreclosure), so we felt free to perch on windowsills and peer into the windows. The garage door was open, so we've poked around a bit in there. Mostly we just go into the little open mudroom and peek into what we can see of the dining room, living room, and kitchen.

The great thing about buying a house at public auction is that you can get a house for a great price. The bad thing is that you often aren't allowed to see the inside of the house before you actually buy it, and this was the case with the house we're stalking.

Our friends Ian and Ellen were visiting us this weekend, so yesterday morning we took them to see the house. Dave and I were looking into the basement windows, when Dave said, "Let's see if we can open this window." We pushed on it -- it had been painted shut a bit -- but it did open. I lowered myself into the basement, unlocked the door, and let everyone in.

I'm really glad we were able to break in, because the upstairs is not what we expected at all. There were only two bedrooms on the second floor (we thought there were three), and then a spiral staircase leading up to the attic. They had dormered the attic, so you can walk around a bit more than in a regular attic, but it was a really strange shape, and had all these crazy little nooks and crannies, that would be good for storage, though you might lose things back in the corners.

The previous owners had also done some bizarre renovations, like putting up dark wood ornate (but cheap) trim everywhere in the attic, so it looks like you're in a ship's galley or something. They also built little narrow cubbies into the walls in many places, like maybe they had a lot of decorative statuary. They also must have gotten a bulk case of decorative wooden curlicues, which they painted hideous colors and nailed everywhere possible, like on every stair, on the bathroom cabinet, and in the doorway leading from the living room to the dining room. They also painted the trim in the dining room an eye-hurting combo of raspberry and cotton-candy pink.

But all the changes we'd have to make would be cosmetic. The house is fine, structurally. So I think we're still going to go for it. The auction's on July 30.

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Shannon was going to come up for our barbecue this weekend, but she ended up having to be on call at her new job securing our homeland. Dave and I took a walk on Saturday morning, and then were taking petit post-walk naps in the living room (around 10:30), when I heard voices outside. There was a woman, who looked a lot like what I think Shannon looks like, outside, petting Peatie. I said, "Hi!" in my happy welcome-guest voice (I figured Shannon somehow got out of being on call, and came up early). The woman said, "I'm just saying hi to your cat!" I bounded outside to see the woman had no bags, and did not have a Czechoslovakian wiener dog, but instead had brought another, older, fairly dumpy woman. I was still thinking that maybe this is Shannon. I realized maybe I shouldn't hug her hello, though. The woman said, "Hi, I'm Sarah, and we're just going around the neighborhood asking people if they think there will ever be a time when there's a feeling of peace and harmony in the world." They were Jehovah's Witnesses. Glad I didn't hug them.

Though it would be funny if it actually had been Shannon, and all this time, whenever she talked about "Anezka" she'd actually been talking about a woman in a billowy housedress she brings with her everywhere.

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Friday night Dave and I went to rent a movie (The Royal Tenenbaums, which I really liked), and the video store had this huge wall of $1.99 movies. Most of them were titles we'd never even remotely heard of, like Desert Kickboxer and Double Vengeance. Or they were movies we'd heard of but had no interest in owning, like Krippendorf's Tribe. We were about to give up when I peeked behind a copy of Exit to Eden and found Pretty in Pink. I snatched it right up. Why wouldn't I want to own Pretty in Pink? Then Dave found Soylent Green and we figured that would be fun to have. We went to pay and the cashier said, "You know these are buy two get one free?" So of course we had to go look for our free one. We couldn't find anything at all. Most of these movies were really bad. We had just about given up, when I saw a movie I've actually been dying to own and see again, Desperately Seeking Susan. Very psyched. I remember seeing it and just wanting to be Madonna. I can't wait to watch it again!