close, but not cookie

..this post not triggered by any major events, but by one funny-looking picture. The picture was triggered not by any major motives, but by one not-so-successful recipe. When our neighbor came over to our little housewarming bbq the other weekend, not only did she walk with her own beer (best neighbor ever) but she also brought gluten-free peanut butter cookies. I know, they sound, well, not fabulous. Turns out, they were fabulous and we ate them all up. So tonight I thought it would be fun to try some myself, and I went to my trusty recipe book - google - and found some instructions. I don't know whether the instructions were sub-par, or whether my attempt to be healthy by getting 'better than peanut butter' rather than the real thing completely backfired, but, well, the cookies looked like this:


Just in case that image doesn't immediately trigger memories of biology class and early life-stage cell division, have a close-up.

And then we ate them. I think next time I'll just ask my neighbor for the recipe.

the new place!

Quick posting of pictures~

We drove back into town after our long absence on Jan. 2nd. We then furiously moved everything from our storage locker into our new place before the winter storm of the century dumped rain all over our county. Then school dumped work all over me. And that's the basic summary of the last month and a half. Still, we managed to get settled into the house, which is a big rental step up for us. We almost feel like grown-ups now.

Things we like about it: it has a fireplace. And a front porch, which gets sun in the afternoons. We have a tiny garden patch for growing things. There's lots of room (for visitors, obviously). It's close to downtown Santa Barbara, so we can walk or bike to most of the things we do regularly. Our neighbours are nice.

Okay, on to the pictures:

The living room & fireplace, with the embers of the inaugural fire

The living room in daylight, with the guest (bed)room visible through the doorway

The study-chair set up in the spare room

The kitchen. This photo was taken in the throes of the unpacking. We don't keep our cardboard boxes on the stove anymore.

:)

evasion

The best politicians know that it's easier to start something new with great fanfare than to finish something old that's been going on for some time and has a number of messy loose ends. I'm not saying that's what's going on here. Welcome to the Santa Barbara version of the blog. Now that we're back in the sun, and (more or less) settled into our old habits, this will (hopefully) be a way of keeping the habit of sending updates about our life, universally, and everything. :) There might even be pictures.

And maybe we'll manage to write up the last of the UK adventures while we remember the main parts.. Here's hoping.