Meg, I'm so sorry about your cat!
Lily, your vacation sounds like it was pretty exhausting! At least you made it home in one piece. Happy belated birthday!
Carolyn, sounds like your vacation was exhausting too!
Lisa, sometimes I'm jealous of pregnant women because they have so many adorable clothes to wear! There is a local store that carries all sorts of cute pregnancy T-shirts with cute little sayings (of course I can't remember any of them right now though).
The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous. We had a record high yesterday (80 or 81, I forget). My fiance and I had a picnic in the park and took a short walk around, which was really nice. We opened up all our windows and stuck the coats back in the closet where they belong!
Hopefully it will last a while -- it's supposed to be in the 70's all week at least.
Last week I actually made it to the gym ALL FIVE DAYS.
I haven't gone five days in a week in over a year. PLUS I jogged some (slowly, 4mph) and my knees didn't complain much. Woohoo!
House hunting this weekend left us kind of stressed out. We've seen a few nice places but nothing is perfect. I know we won't find a perfect house but it is still disappointing. Some of the houses need cosmetic repairs (carpeting, paint, etc), some need more significant work (siding, conversion to gas furnace), and some don't need repairs but are lacking in space, or are constructed out of not great materials. We'd love to find an all-brick house but the ones in our price range all have other major issues -- one we found looked cute but the crawlspace was totally flooded from the rain, and the yard was a big mud puddle. Plus it was on well and septic instead of municipal water and sewer.
We saw one hilarious house -- it was built in 1978, and not a single update had been made since then except maybe some paint. The kitchen had the oldest microwave I have ever seen -- it wasn't even digital! I had no idea how to even use a microwave and oven that old. All the decor (light fixtures, hardware, cabinets) was totally outdated. A great opportunity for someone who is looking for a fixer-upper, but that's not us!
Anyway next weekend we're going to go revisit our favorites with Ben's parents and see what they think. After that we might make a decision or we might broaden our search area.
In other news I'm considering keeping Passover this year for the first time, in, like, ever. (I like to say "I'm not really Jewish, I'm Jew-ish," meaning we are really very unobservant.) I think it might be a good shake-up for my diet since I rely so much on breads and grains. Also it would be good for my fiance to go a week without consuming a whole loaf of bread (last week's loaf I only had two slices of). OTOH I am really not used to eating that way and I don't really know what to cook. I do have three Jewish cookbooks so I know I have Passover-approved recipes but they tend to contain lots of fat. And in a religious sense it would somewhat make up for us forgetting Yom Kippur last year (oops). Are there any other Jewish maintainers out there? I guess we can just eat lots of salad. I still haven't talked my fiance into it.