Accord

We went to Carmax to look at an Accord we liked online, and maybe other stuff if they had it. We test drove the Accord and a Hyundai Sonata, and I liked both and Joe liked the Accord best, so we got it. It's a 2006, dark grey with black interior. It was so easy! It helped that we brought our own financing (thanks Navy Federal!). We were there less than three hours and left with a car, plates, and registration. I have to say, Carmax was awesome, esp because we could look ahead online and get a sense of which one to go to for the best chance of finding a good match.

I'm almost done finalizing my course syllabus, which is good since the class is only 2 weeks away!

We're getting a car!

Despite enjoying living without a functioning car, we came to the conclusion over the weekend that one was desirable. Neither of us was super eager to up and move to Rockville, and transit options were pretty awful for Joe staying where we are (90 minutes each way if all the connections worked out). Plus, it kind of sucks not to have a car. ZipCar has been useful, and Amtrak for NJ trips, but late night trips to the store and grabbing weekend dinner at Afghan Restaurant and lots of other little things we couldn't do made it not so fun.

I had a panic attack Sunday about the costs, but once we sat down and actually looked at the numbers, it became clear just how much better two paychecks are than one, at least in the short term. We can have our not-very-old Camry or Accord or the like, pay down debts, and build savings. We probably can't quickly build a huge house downpayment in the near term, but I hope we'll have one before the market turns back up.

Mostly, though, sitting down and talking about our money was only partly about feeling better about the money and turned out to be much more an exercise about feeling really secure about our relationship and that we were going to do things together in this life.

Yay birthday

I had a really great birthday.  Monday night Joe cooked manicotti and cupcakes, and we had prosecco and bummed around.  Yesterday I got up at the luxurious hour of 9:30 (instead of my usual weekday 7am), and Joe went off to his appointment while I had an additional hour to drink my coffee and lounge before I went to meet him at Friendship Heights.  He usually takes the Metro there, but that is such an error because THE BUS IS BEST.  Those of you who remember my packet-o-schedules from my Union Sq, Somerville days know that I am a big fan of buses, and yesterday I got to ride a whole new bus, the Montgomery County Ride On #1, which is similar in direction to the J1 Metrobus I ride to work, except that it makes many thrilling diversions into the adjacent neighborhoods instead of sticking to the boring main road.  It was the best ever, and then I met Joe for lunch at Mei Wah, which was super tasty.

After lunch we went down to Union Station and walked over to the new Capitol Visitors Center, where we had a tour of the Capitol (fun, but I need to get on a staff tour because only on those is there the possibility of riding the Capitol Subway), followed by a quick browse of the little museum.  Joe was pretty worn out after all that being out of the house, so we went home and vegged for the rest of the evening.  It was fun to have the day off work; sadly, I only won $2 in last night's Mega Millions drawing instead of the $212 million someone in Ocean County, NJ won, so I can't play hooky for the rest of my life and will have to continue working.

A great day for Metro

I was very bummed about having to trek out to use the bus, but I became less bummed as I realized that the little bit of deck and walk I had to shovel to get to the street was far less work than shoveling the whole driveway and cleaning off my car, as I'd have to do if I were driving.  It was also not that bad a walk, whereas it would have been a very stressful drive, since the streets were pretty slushy.  The bus I caught was on schedule (later than the bus I would normally catch, but just fine for today).

Sadly, we care a lot more as a society about clearing roads than sidewalks.  We leave it up to businesses and residences to clear sidewalks (where they exist... there aren't any sidewalks on my street), but we expect that our government will clear the roads.  I kinda want to boycott work whenever it snows as a protest.  Despite the University being open today, most of the sidewalks were not cleared when I arrived around 10, which is lame.

I wish I had been able to stay home today (I had to come in for something that we ended up cancelling and rescheduling anyway), but tomorrow I'm off for my birthday, which I will spend with my sweetie.

Waves tiny US flag

Metaphorically, since I don't have one here on my warm couch.

With the crowd practically up to my porch in Silver Spring, I opted to stay at home where Joe made me waffles and there was heat and no wind chill and only two people were using the bathroom the last four days. It was a good call.

We got our taste of Inaugural fever by braving the Metro Sunday for football first before heading to Dupont Circle for dinner. It was busy for a Sunday, and people from all over were being cute and asking everyone else where they were from.

I overheard someone talking about seeing Barack Obama, and it reminded me of the DNC in Boston in 2004 when a couple of friends and I went celebrity-hunting all day. We ended up in front of the Fleet Center where people were getting dropped off to go in. Barack Obama walked right by and waved to us, and we were probably just as excited to see him them as we would be today because we knew what was what.

Time for work -- watching whitehouse.gov for executive orders and proclamations while editing Joe's dissertation.

Gnocchi

In the past, Joe and I have purchased frozen or dried potato gnocchi from Italian food stores, and they've been tasty enough (they cook very fast too once the water is boiling).  Joe ordered some at Roman Hall over break, however, and it was clear they were in a completely different league -- soft, and not gummy or tough like the packaged kinds.

I procured Lidia Bastianich's big cookbook (we've been making her vodka sauce recipe from the web forever), and we decided that since we had all the ingredients, we'd make gnocchi.  I did the majority of it, grating the potatoes, mixing the dough, rolling and cutting and shaping.  And they turned out.  So. Damn.  Good.  Very similar to Roman Hall's.  It was kind of time consuming, but there's no way we're eating packaged gnocchi ever again.

Joe made a tomato sauce to go with it (the classic gravy), but as per Lidia'a suggestion, he added some cabernet, and it made the gravy ever so much richer.  I just had the leftovers, and they were delicious.

We also made stuffed mushrooms from the book last night... we could have made double, they were so tasty.

Going out to dinner is fun, but cooking together is romantic and hot.

2008 in review

2008 was awesome because:

1) I finished my PhD.
2) I got a job.
3) I moved away from Baltimore and in with the bestest boy ever!
4) The election season was majorly entertaining, particularly with our addition of tomato pie to all events.
5) I managed to see almost all my family and friends at least once.

2008 was lame because:

1) The lousy economy, although that will probably end up being a net plus for me going forward as I try to build retirement savings (unless the stock market just crashes entirely for the next 40 years) and think about buying a house (moving a lot more real estate into the affordable range).
2) My car got to be too expensive to fix and is thus dead, and the resulting exercise has done nothing for my waistline. And I've been missing out on social time with the TV Night crew.
3) I didn't make it to any football games this fall.
4) My bestest boy didn't immediately get a ton of job interviews, and the market sucks.
5) I didn't go home for Christmas for the first time ever, which made me sad, even though I have had fun here in NJ with my Joey.

2009 will be awesome as Joe finishes his PhD and gets a job (he'll get something, it's just a matter of time and probably more agony), and we can start making even more tangible plans about the future.

Validation

I like it when what I think is true about the world is corroborated by a much more systematic view of the literature. I always have this fear I'm missing some major article, and it appears I'm not when it comes to HIV-related stigma.

I took a break from data analysis (which I'm redoing in a different way) because I just hit total frustration with the way some of this data works out... there's a question on the survey about whether the respondent used a condom the last time they had sex followed very shortly by a question asking how often the person uses condoms. You would not believe the number of people who say they used a condom last time but then say they never use condoms and, worse, the number who say they didn't use a condom last time followed by saying they always use condoms. OMG, are you not listening to your own answers! Never mind the big hunk of missing data I can't account for at all, other than people didn't want to answer the question.

So instead I'm reading, because that is way less frustrating and I have a huge pile.

Vacation has been good so far. We've mostly been bumming around, eating and shopping. We've re-devoted ourselves to making our way through the Sopranos (I already watched it all, but Joey has not). We're not doing anything fancy for New Year's Eve, just going to a tasty local Italian joint and then partying at home.

The New Year will bring attempts at: 1) real weight loss; 2) getting these manuscripts out the door because they are actually going to fill some gaps in the literature; 3) writing up a real research plan for my next study instead of having some vague notions of what might be nice.

Buttons!

One of the buttons popped off my coat late last winter season, and I just ignored it (despite how dumb it looked) until another button popped off last week (with a third button looking pretty shady). Now, it would help immensely if I hadn't gotten so, well, immense since I purchased the coat. It's now a snug fit. This morning I saw that Amazon had coats on sale, and nearly decided just to buy a new coat.

But in these internetting times there's really no excuse for not making such an easy repair -- I figured out everything I needed to know online in about 10 minutes, I dug up some sewing floss (threads wound together for things like cross-stitch so you can actually see it) and got those three buttons back on there good. Success! So now my coat works again, even though it's still a little snug, but that's a different problem.

Last night we went to Baltimore for a number of social activities. We met up at Maggie's with Joe's soc friends, and then we went to dinner for my friend's birthday (which was actually Monday, but she had horrible grant writing to do all that day). Then Joe and I went back to Maggie's before going back home. Baltimore is great when you spend 2/3 of your time there at Maggie's. Today we went grocery shopping, thus getting maximum utility out of the ZipCar. I'm kinda missing having my own car, though, and I'm pondering whether to get it fix now that it's been a few months since the last repairs, instead of an insulting three weeks. I still wouldn't drive it to work, since that commute is very hard on a car and the bus is easy enough (when it comes predictably) and gives me exercise. But it'd be nice to have it for errands and such. I dunno, we'll see.

This week is the last actually at work, and then I'm going to NJ for 2 weeks! I have to "work at home" three days in there somewhere, which should be easy enough with Joe hacking away at his dissertation. It should be otherwise relaxing.

Saturday already?

Thursday was pretty much the usual family craziness. A lot of eating and drinking! We were all at Joe's parents' house for Thanksgiving, and for Christmas we'll go to the shore.

Yesterday Joe and I went out around 2:30, and it was still pretty nuts at the centers of shopping. I feel like when we went out last year to the outlets, it was dead because everyone went super early. I got some presents for the boy (which he pretty much saw/brought to my attention in the first place), but the deals weren't good enough yet for personal shopping. We came home and then went out to dinner at Villa Mannino, where we ordered our usual vodka rigatoni and eggplant parm. So delicious.

I don't know what we're up to yet today, but I'm sad we have to leave so early tomorrow morning. I checked the trains last night to see if we could switch to other options, but the entire middle of the day is booked, and everything is much more expensive than what I paid for the tickets. It's okay, I have to finish up a lecture for the proposal/project class for Monday, and it'll be easier to do it at home than on vacay.

I can't work when it feels like vacation, whereas the boy can poke at his dissertation whenever he has five minutes (which he usually stretches to ten or more, as I wait around). That's either healthy or tenure-killing.

In da Jerz for turkey day

The train was pretty awful last night... we took the last one out, and it was 2 hours late into the station, but they switched engines fast so we were only ("only") an hour late out, so we got to Trenton by 2 am. We pretty much instantly collapsed upon reaching home.

Today we went to Mastoris and then did very little. I even took a nap.

This stuff in India is very bad.

I think tomato pie is on the roster for tonight.