Settling In

I've been doing a lot of unpacking, dusting, cleaning and buying. I haven't cooked anything yet, but I will do that as soon as I have something to cook in. Actually, I have some corningware that I inherited from my grandmother, but I need something in which I can cook an omelet, since I have leftover Korean food from the other day.

I bought some patio furniture from CostCo made out of cumaru wood. It's supposedly very comfortable and fairly nice looking. I got six chairs and a table, which will take up most of my deck. Hopefully without the leaves and tucking a couple chairs in a corner, I will still be able to get around find. The wood is kind of pinkish in the sunlight, but the brochure assured me that it will be gray eventually. The pink actually goes pretty well with the brick. Cumaru wood is supposedly farmed so I don't feel as if I am personally responsible for the destruction of the rain forest. ...although only 71% of the wood is supposed to come from responsibly maintained forests, so I should feel 29% guilty. It seemed like a good deal.
The amazing thing is that all seven boxes fit in my van, even though the table is huge.

Lowe's has been out of little GE microwaves since Monday. I like them because that's what we have at my parents' house and at work. The Express Cook feature is so handy. They were supposed to come in yesterday and last night and my dad and I dropped by after dinner at Nantucket. They had one box there under the display model. Unfortunately, it had a large dent. The scary thing is that they probably would have sold it to me anyway, but at least they said they wouldn't put it back out for sale. Hopefully more will come in soon.
Today I brought leftover pizza with me to my parents' house to microwave it there.

I've been having fun with a new AT&T cordless phone/corded phone with answering machine that I got from Sam's Club. So far I'm pretty pleased with it. Most of the phones from Sam's and CostCo were brands I'd never heard of, so I was reluctant to get them. This one has a speaker phone, too, which seems to be very good. My minimum criteria for a cordless phone is that one can adjust the volume. My parents have a Radio Shack one and you can't hear half the conversations on it, in part because you can't adjust it. One important thing here is that I now have a phone line! They haven't buried the cable yet and it's just lying on the ground, but it does work.

One of the acquisitions that I'm most pleased about is a Swiffer duster with a telescoping handle. (It's not hard to make me happy.) It's the coolest thing and I can think of all kinds of other uses for the handle. For example, I think I can just attach a sponge or a damp paper towel with a rubber band. I could attach a paint brush for a large painting. I could whack people with it.

The PSNC Energy crew is back cleaning up the mess from Saturday. I was on a temporary gas line and they switched it to the new main line. They needed to bleed the line at my house a guy with a large dump truck came over to my parents' house to tell us while I was over here. Much to my mom's horror, some of her plants got run over by the truck. I drove back home and watched them bleed the line at my meter and my hot water heater and went back. Apparently, I have a nice new load of gravel on my driveway now.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to Nantucket with my dad last night. They had a delicious special, grilled halibut over herbed rice with lemon butter, served with roasted corn.