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Since we have fresh basil in our garden now, we’re trying to use it up! Nom.

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Today I was at the beach, practising volleyball for the HOPE volleyball thing. We had just finished a 2 hour practice and I was minding my own business, drinking a delicious grape slush-puppie in the car. I whipped out my blackberry to check my email and whatnot while I was sipping on my beverage. I decided to call my dad to let him know I was going to drop by to pick up some stuff from their house. Suddenly while I was on the phone a police officer tapped on my window.

Officer: Sir, could you turn off the car and hang up your phone

Me: Sure (A little confused as to what is going on)

Officer: Sir, we had a report that you doing some crack in here

Me: No (WTF!)

Officer: Please step out of the car sir

Then I spent the next 10 minutes talking to police and having my car searched extensively for cocaine. Hooray!

Apparantly some bystander had seen me drinking out of a straw a jumped to the conclusion that I was doing cocaine in a crowded beach parking lot in the middle of the day. Maybe using my crackberry had me looking like a spaced out junkie.

This recipe is very versatile - next time we’re going to try adding some potatoes and peas. If it looks delicious it’s because it is (was, for about the 2 minutes it lasted).

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It’s sinking in, but slowly.

The cat loves it.

For our wedding last year in June, Dave and I started taking ballroom dancing lessons so we would have something to do other than the hug-and-sway for our First Dance. Since then, we haven’t really stopped and last week went to a ballroom dancing competition held at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario.

That’s weird, isn’t it?

We did really well, which is even weirder.

I am an organization junkie. After 2 years of fumbling to perfect my GTD system, I have finally found The time-management system which allows me to feed my weird moleskine addiction at the SAME TIME: Autofocus.

Here are the quickstart instructions from the website:

The system consists of one long list of everything that you have to do, written in a ruled notebook (25-35 lines to a page ideal). As you think of new items, add them to the end of the list. You work through the list one page at a time in the following manner:

1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.
2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.
3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so.
4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it.
5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out
6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process.
7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items.
8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.

That’s it. I’ve used it for both my personal and work tasks in the past week and it’s amazing how much I’ve gotten done since then. It’s the first system I’ve tried where I actually spend more time DOING tasks than organizing them. You really have to try it to believe it.

I would say we love each other just as much now as we did back then,

but it’s actually way more now.

… then comes the house! For the first time in our lives we will be in debt. It feels a little weird. In the whirlwind that was last week: the offer we put on the first house we wanted to buy fell through, we went to look at more houses the next day, put in an offer on another that we liked, and finalized that deal on Tuesday night.

The house is very close to my mom’s house where I grew up; the neighbourhood has changed a lot in the past 8 years that I haven’t been living there though (for the better). The location is conveniently close to both my jobs (and Dave’s job), and there’s a major bus route about 2 blocks away. Location was pretty important to us since it’s the one big thing about the house you can’t really change.

The only thing left to do is the home inspection this coming Tuesday, and unless there is a major issue neither party knows about, we are officially home owners (pending many paper work and signatures). Closing date is April 30th. We’re debating hiring movers since it will be a weekday and anyone who wants to help us out would have to take a day off work. It’s going to be a hectic few days, since right after the move we’re off to the dance competition in Deerhurst for the weekend (which is a whole other blog post in itself)!

Well, the house ended up going to the people who made an offer in the first place - they decided to buy the house right away even though they have no offers on their own house yet. So it’s back to house hunting for the next great house; it can’t possibly be more drawn out and annoying as this one was.

At least we have a much better idea of the location and kind of house we like and can afford, and now we have a list of house inspectors, mortgage brokers, etc etc on hand.