Still homeless

We went and looked at a house today that we absolutely loved. There is a slight catch in that it is not available until September 1st, but we may have a situation where the landlord will let us sublease another (four bedroom, 2 bath house) property for a month. I know this does not sound logical, but we absolutely love the place and we feel that a little complication is worth four years of living in a house we love. It's a little house (actually, a remodeled horse barn) with everything we are looking for, and it's close to campus (~5 minutes) in a really nice neighborhood. It's situated on 2.5 acres and contains a garden, fire pit, and a couple of chickens running around. We are still going to look around at a few more places for good measure, but we will know by the weekend if the place is ours. The landlords are cool and live right next door. Cross your fingers for us because this place is everything we wanted in a house (and meets everything on our checklist, with a bit of quirkiness mixed in). In the meantime, we are still homeless.

We went and explored more of Corvallis today, while attempting to not subject ourselves to too much car-time. We stopped by the school where Robbie will be interviewing so he could meet-and-greet the principal, then we had our first awkward experience of getting gas. In case you are not aware (as we weren't until Jenny's sister lived in Oregon a few years ago), you are not allowed to pump your own gas in this state. You pull up and sit there until an attendant comes up and fills your tank for you. The guy today was attending to about 8 pumps at once, which was pretty amazing. I suppose it will be nice when it's cold and/or rainy.

We then went and checked out a few grocery stores - Trader Joe's, and the Co-op. We were informed later that patrons of the Co-op absolutely do not shop at Trader Joe's because the food is not grown locally. Trader Joe's was cool and pretty inexpensive. The Co-op was awesome, and one of the weirdest grocery stores we'd ever been to. There was a whole section of bulk items, from granola to fig newtons to dried fruit to various types of flour. There was also a big row of taps where you bring in your own bottles and fill them up with vinegar, various types of oil, honey, molasses, or maple syrup. The kicker was a row of machines where you could not only grind your own coffee, but you could grind your own FLOUR, almond butter, and peanut butter. It was literally a big machine full of peanuts, and you grind the crap out of them until it squeezes out peanut butter. Amazing. They also had a huge refrigerated section with gigantic buckets of things you could scoop out - hemp seeds, flax seeds, olives, goat milk, etc. Needless to say we were walking around like a bunch of Florida morons, wondering in awe how the amazing flour grinding machine worked. We will have to go back and observe the locals.

We drove to the aquatic center in town so Jenny could check it out. It's huge - an indoor 50 meter pool with separate diving well, plus an outdoor area that is used in summertime. They do have a master's swim team in town, so hopefully once she gets all of her swim gear back from the relocube she can relish in some pool-time. We also drove out to our gym (we are members of a nationwide chain), which is in a town about five miles up the road. It was small, which we like, and there were a grand total of ZERO people working out at the time. We met the owner, who was really nice, so maybe we can entertain ourselves there a bit over the next couple of days.

We then went downtown for the farmer's market, which took up a good city block and consisted of more than a dozen local farmers. The berries were fat and cheap, and we bought some in addition to some dried fruit. It would be handy if we could have bought more, but we have no refrigerator. The farmer's market is a colorful place that is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays through the end of fall.

We are now hanging out at our camp, and we might watch a movie or something on our laptops. Wish us luck that we may have found the perfect place!