Snobby beer rules.

Forget wine-and-cheese parties.

Last night Ben and I hosted our first party (not including a pre-race spaghetti dinner) at our sweet Minneapolis pad. We invited a few dozen friends and family and asked them to bring a six-pack of "snobby" beer. We told them specifically what to leave at home (your Miller, Bud, Coors and so on). We provided appetizers and some brew of our own.

Guest filled two tubs with beer and five paper grocery bags with the empty bottles. And we have a map to show where all the beer came from. We had beer from Japan, Australia, Belgium and so on. I'll post a photo of that later.

Things kicked off at 7 p.m., and the final guests left after midnight.

I think another beer party might be in our future, given the compliments we received. Although one guest proposed throwing a "white trash" beer party, in which we ask everyone to bring crappy beer.

One party down. Many, many more to go.

Redemption

We went to Bachmann's today. which is the giant of all garden centers. I wanted one of everything, include the pastries from Patrick's Bakery next to the indoor plants.

We settled on a flower bed and filled it with New Guinea impatiens. I don't have to write about how gorgeous they are; you can see for yourself. I pray they survive the summer.

We also picked up some herbs. This time I'm giving basil a try. Ben bought mint and oregano for the deck.

Plant killer.

I know what you're thinking.

That girl is a murderer.

It's true. I have killed my first plant at this house. (I must be a serial killer because at least one other plant -- one in college comes to mind -- died on my time, too.)

Even as the rosemary was so brittle that leaves fell on a daily basis, I denied the plant's slow death. I continued to water it, usually weekly. The plant wasn't dead. It was just depressed. It needed a pick-me-up. Some nice weather. A nice caretaker that remembered to water it more often.

Even yesterday, when Ben told his mother that I could use a rosemary plant since mine was dead, I argued that it was alive and well.

When we got back home last night after a weekend in Tracy, I agreed to sign the death certificate. Ben buried the plant deep in the garbage for me.

Not a $9 T-shirt

We found the house yesterday.

It had three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. The location was just three blocks from Lake Harriet. It had all the amenities we wanted, and it didn't need thousands in repairs.

We thought we'd make an offer. We were so serious that we went through the house a third time, marking down any items we wanted thrown in with the house (i.e. appliances).

Then we got home. And we thought about it a bit more. It's a challenging decision; I have a hard enough time buying a $9 T-shirt from Target.

There will likely be no better time to buy a house. It's a buyer's market. Getting a house now could pay off later.

But....

Ben and I worry about a house becoming our life. If he goes to grad school, we can rent the place. That's somewhat easy. But if we want to drop everything and travel the world for six months or a year -- something we're contemplating -- having a mortgage will make it very hard to do that.

We're not making an offer, and we're not going to rush into buying a house. This doesn't mean our search is over. We'll continue to look for a house, perhaps something less expensive. Something that won't be our ball and chain.

Thanksgiving in May

Ben and I are about to have a kitchen misadventure.

We're making a turkey, as in the kind you fuss over on Thanksgiving Day. We're sticking 'er in the oven on Saturday.

If you have any recipe suggestions for leftovers, let me know. This bird, so far, will only be feeding us two.

Buying our first place

It's true that we are looking at houses again.

The market is in the pits, which means the ball is in our -- or the buyer's -- court. Still, in the last week, three of the homes we were interested in looking at were sold. That's good news. It means that even when the market suffers, homes in southwest Minneapolis fare somewhat well. And that's good for us, considering our first home will be a starter place -- not a gem out of some HGTV episode -- that we'll likely sell down the road.

We've looked at eight properties so far, three of which might be worth a second look. Most were built around 1900 or 1910. So they have the charm of homes built in that era -- hardwood floors, built-ins, fireplaces and "hidden potential." But they also have the quirks -- radiator heat, air conditioner boxes instead of central air and tiny bedrooms.

The prospect of buying our first home is exciting. But Ben and I share different opinions on some of the homes we've seen, making it a little bit stressful, too.

I hope we find a place that wows us and is suitable for our future dog, Indiana (Ben named our dog today after watching his favorite movie Indiana Jones).

News announcement

My prolonged absence from the blogger world is due to our renewed search for a house.

I will have details soon....