90% nice weekend

I darn near had a perfect weekend. More on why it wasn't perfect at the end of this post.

On Friday, Bernie and I waved a tearful goodbye to my mom and dad, who are vacationing for 10 days in Williamsburg, then cooked our dishes to take to Chris and Elizabeth's Christmas party in Raleigh (Apex, actually).

We got up early on Saturday (10am, ha ha) and got in the car. Despite a couple of unscheduled stops (Bernie is still a little car-sick), we got to Chapel Hill and had lunch with some old friends at the Malaysian restaurant there (Penang - wonderful, authentic, and inexpensive) then made it to C&E's house by 3 in time to help out a bit before the party began at 7. We didn't have much to do, actually, so it was nice to relax a bit before the rest of the crowd arrived. After several hours of great food and company, and Elizabeth's "evil santa" gift exchange, we went to spend the night with two more old friends.

On Sunday morning, we had breakfast with Phil and Selena and had a great time - reminding me of how much I miss all my friends in Raleigh. We went and visited Bert for a while, dropped off a Christmas present from my mom at one of her friend's houses, then went shopping at two Asian grocery stores. The Asian groceries in Charlotte really stink (literally), so we save up for our trips to Raleigh to stock up. The trip home went pretty quickly and Bernie didn't have any car-sickness, so thumbs up on the whole weekend to this point. Once we got home, we took advantage of my folks' absence and made dinner our way - in the rice cooker.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is using my rice cooker. When I first got this device, I wasn't convinced I'd use it. In bachelorhood, it turned out to be a great time-saver and I fell in love with it. Throw in rice, liquid up to the mark, and whatever tasty leftovers there might be in the fridge, close the lid, and press the button. 20 minutes later - dinner! Since I've been married, Mom has been doing all the cooking in her kitchen, so it's been in storage. We got it out of storage last week and Bernie and I finally got to use it last night. Bernie had leftover corned beef hash from breakfast (not my favorite, but it is tailor-made for the rice cooker, being very fragrant and flavorful), and we added turmeric and used garlic chicken broth. It turned out great.

Now, of course, it was time for fate to intervene with some bad news. I'd had it too good for too long.

Dad calls and says that the realtor that is representing our buyer for my Raleigh townhouse has sent us the inspection report, and it has something about codes and firewalls in the attic. Despite the fact that my townhouse is 30 years old, and that other units have been changing hands for all that time in the same condition, the inspector apparently thinks he can force us to comply with 2005 building codes. Now I'm pissed off. The law says that houses must comply with current code at the time they are built, which this one obviously was. What idiocy! And now the realtor says that even if we choose to terminate the sale, we'd have to report these items on a disclosure report to future buyers. Sounds like a shakedown to me. Thus ends the nearly perfect weekend. Grrr.