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Houses in the Heat WaveWhat, another Indian Summer? Yes, folks, it got up well over 80 degrees here this weekend, clearing 90 in some locales. (The Bay Area has "microclimates"; drive 10 miles in one direction and the temperature, cloudiness and atmosphere can change considerably.) Humidity was low, so it wasn't too bad, though. (Humidity here is usually low, but at 90 degrees there's a noticible difference between 0% humidity and 20% humidity.) Happily, I've learned quite a bit in the last three years about keeping my apartment cool (its good insulation helps), and Debbi and I spent the weekend either here, or driving around in my car, which has air conditioning. And at night things cool off pretty quickly. So it wasn't bad, really. Where did we go? Well... After taking a couple of weeks off from house-hunting (due to, first, few places coming on the market, and then general busy-ness on my part), I went out to see six places with my agent on Friday. It's still the case that the majority of the places on the market in the area I want to live and in my price range are pretty nice. But I haven't really found the place that's right for me. There have been few places I've seen where I thought, "I couldn't live here", and not really any where it didn't seem that the place would make a nice home for someone, just not me. Usually I see a place and I think, "Oh, this is very nice. If only..." where I follow the thought up with lines like "...it were closer to certain locations" or "...it didn't need a so much work to be ready to move into" or "...the association fees weren't so high" or "...the neighborhood/view/whatever were a little more interesting". But, that's the way it goes. I was writing to my friend Tracy back in Wisconsin last week and she wished me luck finding a place, saying she knew that I'd be a hard guy to please. Which I guess is kind of the case, for all that my needs seem basic. Wanting to pamper my cats is perhaps a major factor here! Anyway, having seen a number of places Friday morning, Debbi and I went to some open houses over the weekend, hence all the driving around. There were two places in my price range I wanted to see, two a little above my price range (but which I might be able to make bids for in my range), and one from Friday which I wanted to visit again to show Debbi. And, well, the place I visited for the second time has definite possibilities. It seems like a place I can live, where I can arrange my life in a way which would feel comfortable. It has a couple of minor drawbacks, but they seem like things I can work around, and also small enough that it's far from certain that any place I see wouldn't have drawbacks like that. Lucy told me that she thinks when I find the right place for me, I'll just know. I think I'm reticent enough that I do need to take a second look and mull it over to decide that it really is the right place for me. But after seeing over 15 homes, and thought harder about what it is I want, I think this place has possibilities. And so I'm thinking about making a bid on it. Committing to making a bid takes a bit of a leap of faith, I think. So we'll see how it goes. If I get it, then I'll just have to trust my judgment that it's the right place. And if I don't get it, then at least I feel like there are possibilities out there, and I can keep looking without feeling discouraged. Plus, I'm finding that looking at homes is rather enjoyable! Stay tuned...
 We also watched football and baseball on Sunday ($%^&* Yankees, beating the A's in Oakland two games over the weekend; I don't even wanna talk about it), and I was moved to do a bunch of baking. I baked my not-really-famous peanut butter bread (which is in fact a recipe from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook), and found that the Whole Foods natural peanut butter gives it a much stronger, less crumbly consistency. And I made some good old Nestle Toll House Cookies. I usually use about half the baking soda in cookies, since I find the instructed amount tends to make the cookies a little too bitter for my taste, but I used 3/4 of the amount this time and they fluffed up more nicely without having that acrid taste. So I'll remember that for next time! I felt really jumpy and on-edge the first half of the weekend. Doing all these even-tempered things helped calm me down and I feel much better today. Thank goodness!
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