use real butter

After feeling like complete crap just a few hours ago, I took a nap, ate some dinner, and just finished baking two batches of chocolate chip hazelnut cookies:

I am feeling better…

Distribution list for this batch: Jason at OSU for agreeing to re-write almost a terabyte of satellite data for us after some geniuses here ERASED it the first time (OMG!), S&A for taking the black dog this weekend, Jeremy, and my brother-in-law and the kids. That eats up 5 dozen pretty quickly.

I try to avoid soda, especially the kind with caffeine. Since we don’t have a TV, I get to miss a lot of commercial advertising, which is good. But last weekend I saw a billboard in LA (or maybe it was in Denver?) with this on it:

And those bastard genius marketing twerps at The Coca-Cola Company had that image in my mind for 4 days until I broke down and bought a 2-liter. Good stuff. Not as limey as I had hoped, but I like it. I still love Cherry Coke more (and I prefer to make my own).

So we’re filling out the pre-approval loan application just now, and we come across our FICO scores, which we hadn’t ever looked at before. Guess who’s over 800?!?! wooohooo!!! Jeremy’s right up there too, just a few points behind me. High five!! whoot! We’re still looking for Kaweah’s score, but I’ll bet it’s pretty low…

Everything’s coming together – now if only we could find a house. We just have to wait until we return next week to check out the “very interesting” and the “curious” lists. I’m not going to waste my time on the “meh” and “are you on crack?” lists. Actually, I could live in most of the houses we’re looking at and be pretty happy. For some reason, there is this compulsion to get the best house for your money. I certainly don’t want to pay too much, but seeing as this is our first house – you have to weigh What You Want with What the Next Buyer Wants to some degree.

Let’s look at some kitchens, shall we?

**Jump for more butter**