Home, home on the range (or not)

Yesterday after work, pierceheart and I went to see the three-bedroom with OMG A YARD in Malden, which already had an offer on it. I don't feel so bad anymore that it's now under agreement. Two of the three bedrooms are unheated, and you have to walk through one of those to get to the other. The kitchen is tiny and has no counter space, and only one cabinet. Seriously, the kitchen in my senior year dorm room was worlds better. You can pull up shitty carpet and refinish the wood floors underneath. You can tear down ugly wallpaper and paint. You can get new windows, and pull up the ugly chain link fence in the yard. You can only do so much to the layout of the house, though, without major expensive renovations, though, and it wouldn't even be acceptably livable until such time as those things could be afforded.

So, we went back to my place and I made high-fiber pasta with sweet Italian chicken sausage and Swiss chard in tomato sauce. Nom nom nom.

Today, I sent a message via LJ to surrealestate. I don't know her personally, so I don't feel weird about possibly engaging her as a buyer broker, but I HAVE heard lots of praise for her in that role from some folks in the area. We'll see how well her area of knowledge matches up with our needs. We also need to contact a few more brokers.

Consumerism

Not a rant about it or a defense of it, just my adventures in it today.

On my break, I went to Borders and got a copy of the Hungry Girl cookbook. I also picked up a copy of the nepenthe01-recommended The Bastard of Istanbul.

Then, just a few minutes ago, I upgraded my cell phone from this to this. The old one still works well, but the charger is failing, and the phone is old enough that it's hard to get a charger for it on short notice if it breaks completely, unless I want to pay for overnight shipping with an online order. No, I don't. Anyway, I've had it for quite a long time and am ready for a new one. I don't usually go for flashy, but this phone seems to be of solid quality and got very good reviews even from people who care more about performance than number of wacky features or shininess of the design. Plus, the refurb was cheap! And it's red! (They didn't have the plum available in refurb, alas).