Whateley tried Tuna steaks for the first time today! Of course, he had it fully-cooked, which isn't as good as it could be. And next time, I will make sure to make it rare instead of medium-rare, which I realized cooked out too much of the yummy goodness inside.

I'm very proud of Whateley for his willingness to try new foods, especially fish. I've heard of a Thai place w/ an all-you-can-eat sushi lunch deal, so it looks like we'll have to drag ourselves out of bed early one weekend to go there.

We had an interesting talk with the Chase Bank representative today regarding mortgages. Apparently, first time home-buyers that are planning on buying a home to live in have pretty good opportunities available to them. Mainly, we don't need the 20% down payment that Homebuying for Dummies says we need. Yay. So there's a good chance that at the end of our 6-month lease here, we'll actually move in to a house instead of extending our lease. Yay! :)

On a different note, I finally got a library card so I can happily borrow all those books that I want to read but not buy. Though, sad to say, I think the state of Austin's libraries are sorely lacking compared to the vigorous bookstore industry here. What does that mean?

Oh, and I'm suppose to say something nice about Whateley here since he keeps pouting that I say mean stuff. Anyway, Whateley has been very sweet to me lately, and he's been telling me that I'm byoo-tee-ful every chance he gets, which just makes me go all jelly-like. He's such a sweetie-pie. :)


Alright, that's enough of that.

Ugh. This month's Discovercard bill is gonna suck. Not only does it have many of the hotel charges for our drive to Texas, it also has all the shopping trips to Target and Ikea to set up our place. And it also has our new car insurance payment, since we had to switch over to Texas liability limits, etc. And... it also has the charges for the plane fare for our trip to Las Vegas for our upcoming first wedding anniversary. Urgh.

We're trying to keep our spending as low as possible, but that's just hard to do. I found out it costs more money to set up utilities because of deposits and initialization fees and whatnot. Just more money being hemorrhaged out of our house-buying fund. :(

I'm most likely being paranoid. After all, part of moving here meant a $2 an hour raise for me, and cheaper medical insurance since I can get my own. (It's true, it costs more for Whateley to insure himself and a spouse, than for us to each get our own insurance. I'm not sure how normal that is.) But I'm thinking due to an increased cost of living (since we're living on our own and not sharing an apartment with roommates), all that will even out. At least for the moment.

Sigh. My parents were paying for my car insurance until recently when we obtained our own coverage in Texas. (Long and faithful readers, or just friends and family in general, will remember my really bad accident on August of 2005 made my insurance go through the roof.) Anyway, since Whateley's the primary driver now, my car insurance has gotten much cheaper. My mom offered to send money to help pay for it, but I asked her to send money when we're ready to buy a house instead.

But that's another thing! Most books and websites say you have to have 20% in down payment if you want to get a decent rate. But 20% of a $200,000 house is $40k! I mean, we could go cheaper by moving away from the heart of Austin, possibly even to a nearby county or suburb. But Austin's so small already, it doesn't seem necessary. I am amazed by the housing prices here though. I see listings for homes that are $120,000 that could easily fetch $600,000 in Orange County. I know there are ways to spend less on a down payment, but I haven't gone past skimming the first chapter of Home-Buying for Dummies yet.

What's funny is that Austin is Texas's most expensive real-estate, although I hear parts of Dallas are really pricey. Which makes me wonder how cheap it is to buy a house in a podunk town. But then, why would I want to live in a podunk town? It was a small victory when I realized there were Asian markets in Austin, and we found one place that sells boba with barley.

Anyway, I'm sure this drama with house-buying will continue throughout the coming year. At least for the next 6 months, we'll be in our little apartment (which is very nice, btw! pictures to come as soon as I find the usb cable for our camera). If anyone wants to come visit, you can sleep on our nice couch from Ikea!

Please come visit?

So far, I have mixed feelings about Austin. I like our new office building, I love that we can afford to live on our own without forking over half our paychecks to rent, and I'm starting to like the quirkiness of a college town. It remind me of Berkeley... without as much homeless people. And since it's the summer, it's actually the quiet time of the year, which is the opposite of places like Santa Monica, which is a tourist town and summers get busy. Supposedly there's a millionaire homeless man (or woman... I mean, with a name like Leslie it's hard to tell) that likes to run for mayor.

But the humidity is driving me nuts! Which is sad cuz my skin's never been better. But I really hate having my clothes cling to me when I step outside for five minutes. We got our first electric bill, and sigh, air conditioning is going to bankrupt us. Well, it's not that bad, our computers and TiVO probably suck up more juice, but still....

And the freeways and roads don't make sense. It just doesn't. I mean... it sort of does if you think about it, but you do wonder why they decided to do it that way. For one thing, each freeway (or highway) has an access road that runs alongside it that goes one way. Each cross street has a loop that lets you get from one access road to the other side access road. My question is, why have access roads at all? Why not just have regular two way roads, and have on and off ramps off cross streets? You don't know how many times we've stayed in the left most lane expecting to make a left turn only to end up making a U-turn because we entered a loop.

I do have to say, if there's one place we've really come to like, it's the Kerbey Lane Cafe. Well, there's four locations, but it's not a chain. They try to focus on natural, organic food with especially locally grown produce. And the best part is they're open 24-hrs a day. Whateley and I have been making a weekly date that on Saturday nights, after our shift ends, we go there and begin our weekend. We've invited other people to go with us, and tonight was the first time we've actually had people accept. Which is weird since we're both not social butterflies, and we rarely plan things and try to get people together. So it was just a bunch of nerds and geeks hanging around talking about WoW and whatnot. We discovered that the men's bathroom has a fountain like sink where the water just flows in sheets... and the women's has a plain faucet. So not fair. Whateley was going to sneak me in to look but a couple of burly guys were in there, so we decided against it.

Anyway, if anyone will actually come visit us, we're totally taking you to Kerbey Lane Cafe. And maybe to see the bats go out in the evening. We haven't even done that yet.

Quick entry:

Whateley compared Mabo Tofu to Hamburger Helper, especially since we upped the amount of ground meat (turkey) and served it over rice.

I was trying to find an eloquent way to express that Mabo Tofu is not Hamburger Helper, but words escape me. If anyone else wants to try, please do.

... I mean, he's talking about making Mabo Tofu without tofu! You... you can't do that. That's like having... well Hamburger Helper without hamburger!!