Toyota Apparently Has No Interest In Our Money
So we decided on the 2011 Toyota Sienna. Check out this link for an idea of how it is to drive.
We opened up an equity line of credit with our credit union in order to buy the van. This gives us price negotiation flexibility, and the rate was actually lower than the car loan rates we had available to us. Plus, we can write off the interest!
On Wednesday I e-mailed a few dealers in the area to ask a few questions and let them know we were interested, thus opening up the negotiation process. I e-mailed three different internet sales reps at three different dealerships. I have received zero replies. I guess they don't want to make the sale?
Chicken Every Night
I was reading this post on a food blog - this gal bought a seven pound chicken roasted it, and stretched the leftovers for seventeen meals.
The meal total included leftovers for lunch, which is neat to consider. Leftovers are very important in our house. Twenty-six dollars for a work week's worth of food is not too shabby, and makes my ... thrifty ... heart grow three sizes.
But, we could never do that, other than for the express purpose of saving cash - and even then, it wouldn't be very fun. I love me some lean-protein chicken, but I don't think I could eat chicken five days in a row. It wouldn't be enjoyable, especially because around day four I'd start actively wondering if I was going to die if I ate the chicken. I know I probably wouldn't die? But I would think that I could die, and that seems to be enough to give my intestines the go-ahead to speed up the process of expelling used food.
What I have been trying to do lately is to eat more vegetables, and we have been going vegetarian once or thrice a week. It's a bit less expensive, and honestly, a lot more healthy so long as we get some sort of protein, giggity.
Tofu gets a bad rap, but if you prepare it correctly, it's great. Owen loves it!
Doesn't that look delicious? There are two reasons I like tofu, and Anna tolerates it. On normal weekday evenings, quickly put together dinners are the best. A tofu stir fry takes approximately ten minutes to prepare, if you don't count the arduous process of cooking rice in the active preparation, and the pre-prep time of pressing the tofu. Bonus - it is flavorful, healthy, and inexpensive! One pound of extra-firm tofu costs us a single George Washington.
Normally we use a store bought stir-fry sauce. We used to use the Iron Chef sauces for ironic and tastiness purposes, but apparently those are difficult to find at our local grocer these days.
The only thing you would need to know is that, ahead of time, you need to press the tofu. After that, it's a simple stir fry. Cut up a veggie or two, heat up some oil, and stir fry everything. Then, add some sauce. Add to rice. Win.
On tofu nights, we're happily fed and on to watching Lost or Chuck. Or more correctly, Anna is watching it, and I'm bitching about it. Or, even more correctly, Anna is watching it, and I'm half watching it while playing Final Fantasy (again) on my iPod Touch, yet still bitching about it.
Phone Update
We went to our local Verizon Wireless store yesterday to check out the phones I previously mentioned here.
I guess they do this new thing now where you kind of... sign in when you get to the store, and then when your name is called - well, we actually don't know because we didn't stick around for our name to be called. Maybe when it's your turn, you have a personal salesperson to harass you?
The Droid isn't as bad as I had perceived it. Plus, it has a keyboard, which I think I like better than the touchscreen keyboard. The iPod touch I have is, as you're aware, a phone-less iPhone. I've used the touchscreen keyboard on it quite a bit, and it isn't horrible. I think that Anna and I agree that we like keyboards better than the touchscreen. The Eris was also nice, however neither of us had any clue how to actually operate the dang things, so they look nice and great, but we weren't able to accomplish anything of value.
It turns out that Android 2.0 will be available on almost all Android phones, so getting two free Eris's isn't sounding like that bad of a deal. Waiting doesn't sound like that bad of a deal. Buying a Droid doesn't seem that bad anymore.
So what did I do? I put it up to Anna. She can't decide if she wants a smartphone or not, but doesn't want to miss the upgrade opportunity. She's also very concerned about the touchscreen and gloves, since as you know, it's always below freezing here in Colorado. Luckily there are stylish offering like these, or as Joe tells me, Marvie knows great gloves that will work with her iPhone.
I could get by with either, but I'd lean towards the Droid simply because it has more power. I could also stand to wait for the N1, or any other myriad of phones that will likely be released between today and "the spring".
Weekend Mornings
Well, some of them, anyway.
I woke up this morning to play with Owen while mama slept a bit more. He's crawling and climbing everywhere and anything. This includes dad, his personal jungle gym and obstacle course. He can pull himself up on my pants, and also pull my pants down.
My current favorite is that when I lay on the ground, he's crawling and climbing on me whenever he can. Sometimes I'm not wearing a shirt.
Did you know chest hair is a really good handle for pulling yourself up? Because Owen has learned that already.
The Final Season
Anna still makes me watch Lost.
I keep finding things like this article, which you'd think would allow me to stop watching Lost, but nope.
At least this year, it will end. And it will be horribly unsatisfying, which would fit the show's lifespan just fine.
I Can’t… it’s a Geoooooo
This link is for my minivan coveting wife.
The CRV is twelve and showing no major signs of death. Let it ride!
Forest for the Trees
On 5 December, we went with our friends the Adams's to get our first family Christmas tree.
For the first few years we lived here, Anna and I went to a tree farm to get our tree. It was a small farm, and they usually had coupons that came in those mailer things that you can't stop getting even if you opt out. You know, the one with all the pictures of babies on vent and HVAC cleaning ads? Because everybody knows if you don't get your vents cleaned every day, your child could possibly inhale something.
Last year, we went to our tree farm to find out that it was no longer there, and instead there was a shiny new shopping center. We did what any normal American would do in this situation - shopped in the new shopping center. Then, afterwards, we went to one of those parking-lot tree sales places and got a pretty good tree for not too much money. And it was alive, too!
This year, we did something really cool: on a tip from the Adams's, we purchased a permit to go into Pike National Forest and cut down a tree. We got a baby carrier from Craigslist, strapped the boy to my back, and hiked into the forest about twenty feet and a climb in elevation of about twenty feet before starting to pant heavily. Not only am I horribly out of shape, but Owen is also quite heavy.
The tree we got - not really sure what it is. It's pine of some flavor, with pinecones as a natural ornamentation, and no squirrels or birds in it. It's a little less thick than some of our other trees we've had, but it's cool because the whole family hiked into the forest to get it. Would do again - pictures here.
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Picture Pages Picture Pages
Have some more pictures for you to look through. Mostly Owen, as is to be expected nowadays.
I did manage to sneak some non Owen pictures in there. Anna took some pictures of the various berries growing in our yard, and I'm making pickles. I'm following Anna's family's recipe for dill pickles. Pickles are weird, as they are fermented, and I'm getting to watch them ferment. Lots of scum and gases from the bacteria that do the pickling. They smell great, but they look... like rotting cucumbers. And that's what they are!
Some of the pictures weren't taken by us, they were taken by Lindy's little sister, who has Fashion Photography degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Basically, she took the good ones, and the other ones either Anna or I took.