Long Lost Friend

I had a beloved friend growing up. I would see her often. She could be described as a tender soul but always full of juicy tidbits. We had a brief period in 7th grade where we thought about parting ways, but we figured it out. When I went to college and got married we lost touch. When we bought our house I thought about trying to get reacquainted but the timing never worked out. Finally Matt said we just needed to do it and stop thinking about it. So last week we had her over almost every night for dinner. We had a glorious time. It was better than I remembered. I started to really look forward to dinner time. I think it's going to be a long beautiful friendship. Here is a picture of our re-acquaintance dinner...

Yep- my friend is a steak... or any grilled meat in general. We FINALLY bought a grill and I.AM.IN.LOVE!! Sorry to all you vegetarians out there, but I come from a huntin', fishin', barbecuin' kind of family. And man oh man have I missed meat! We would have roast and stew, baked chicken etc. But nothing compared to grilled meat. In the last couple of weeks we've had steaks, grilled salmon, BBQ ribs, pork chops, chicken, hamburgers, turkey burgers, grilled bell peppers, pineapple and kabobs. I'm turning into a carnivore. There are some other pluses as well. Matt cooks all BBQ entrees including vegetables so I have a lot less dinner prep and clean up (no pans!!!! can I say how much I don't miss washing pans?!)

In 7th grade while I was reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclare everyday before lunch I couldn't eat meat. I still don't like hot dogs, salami, or pastrami because of that book. I like to know what kind and part of an animal I'm eating. Other than that I obviously got over my meat aversion.

Grilled salmon with lemon and lemon pepper. I realize this doesn't look nearly as appetizing as it actually is- just trust me, it is delicious.

The quality of our dinners just went way up! While we won't be eating steak and salmon every week, even just chicken or hamburgers are so much better grilled. I think I just discovered how I'm going to gain that 40 lbs for the twins! Welcome back dear friend. I've missed you!

Excuse the junk behind it- we still haven't finished post-painting clean-up.

What's your favorite thing to cook on the grill? Or good side dishes to go with grilled meat since that's what I'm in charge of cooking? Any seasoning/marinating tips? Matt read the whole BBQ manual and he's done a great job but we're excited to see how many things we can cook on there.

A Tale of Two Apartments

** Idea for this post was completely stolen/inspired from my blog stock-ee (meaning the person I blog stalk) Janae. I have to include the quote too because I love it...

"The rent here may be low, but I believe we have it on very hard terms."-Marianne Dashwood, Sense & Sensibility (the movie, not the book)

May-August of 2005

Tucson

"It was the best of times..."

Our first little home was a nice apartment in not-so-nice Tucson. Sorry all you Tucson fans but I have to call it like I saw it. We had a dishwasher, and a washer/dryer in the apartment, 2 bedrooms, HUGE walk-in closet, a community pool, racquetball court, and exercise room.

Tucson apt. (all borrowed furniture/TV)

This was living.

We actually got it really cheap thanks to my friend Macey. The couple who lived in the apartment had an internship in Vegas for the summer. So they gave us cheap rent and we let them keep all their stuff in the extra bedroom. Plus we used all their furniture, TV, and nice digital piano. Sweet! Less moving of heavy objects all around. After 3 months of marriage Matt's IBM Tucson internship was up and we needed to find an apartment in the Valley before school started.

Mesa

August 2005-May 2007

"it was the worst of times."
Our Mesa apartment had an awesome L.D.S. (Latter Day Saint- it's the abbreviation for our religion) landlord who let us have the place for $400 because he wanted good tenants.

-2 bedroom

-1 bathroom

-Good sized kitchen with tile and tons of cupboard space

-Carport with storage room and washer/dryer hook-ups
-NO Dishwasher- first and hopefully the last time that happens. Matt and I would take turns NOT doing the dishes for a week and then do all of them when we ran out!
-Smack dab in a rundown old Mesa neighborhood.

Oh how we hated that carpet!

We never parked in the carport because it was a pain to drive around. One day Matt caught some guys smoking pot back there.

Then the day after we got home from Hawaii I unpacked and put all our luggage away in the storage closet. These would be the two sets of nice luggage from Matt's mission and my high school graduation present. They were stolen the next day along with a bunch of my teaching stuff! Someone is out there with tons of nice luggage and some very cute bulletin board borders!

Lesson learned... procrastinate unpacking so all your luggage doesn't get stolen when they break into your storage closet.

I was hurt and now I was downright scared to go back there to move our laundry. I tried to get Matt to write a sign in English and Spanish that said they should be ashamed of themselves for stealing our stuff. He said that was silly.

Why would the sign need to be in Spanish you say? Because 90% of our neighbors were probably illegal immigrants from Mexico. Complete with their Mariachi music blaring all night. One of our neighbors had so many people living in the apartment there was never any parking on the street because of all their cars.

The other 10% of our neighbors were the only other people willing to live there. Poor newlywed Mormons. We called it the Mormon/Mexican neighborhood.

Then there was the other neighbor who told us everything about her sad, crime-ridden life. Not that we needed her to tell us. Because we heard her prayers. She would sit outside and very loudly tell God (using many four letter words) what exactly she wanted to happen to the people who had ruined her life including her children. Nice, real nice. I now know the true meaning of blasphemy.

Matt starting our first little, I mean really little, garden.

Despite all this I realize our apartment was a blessing. We had a lot of good memories there as a newlywed couple. Graduating college and starting our first real jobs.

We were also able to save money more quickly for a house. We were so excited to buy our first house 1.5 years after Matt finished college and 1 year after I finished at the ages of 25 and 22 respectively. Too bad we couldn't hold out a little longer until after the house market plunged; but that's another story. We miss the young couples that lived on the street and the cheap rent but that's about all we miss. I now know why location is the biggest rule of real estate.

Anyone have any good stories about the worst (or best) places you've lived?