It's now 2:10pm. The line has been busy for 10 minutes. Is she really going to such great lengths to avoid me, or am I imagining things?

Ughhh, I cannot believe what a headache it has been to be a landlord... and we've only been at it for a few months! When we bought our new house, we decided that the best thing to do in this economy was to rent out our townhouse and sell it eventually if housing prices go back up. A ton of prospective renters came to our realtor, but were all rejected because of low credit scores -- too risky. Finally, we found a single woman who worked at a pharmacy and seemed totally legit. Praise God, someone who might be able to pay the rent on time!

Wrong! It has turned into a complete nightmare. Her very first check bounced already -- the security deposit! This month beats all though. When her rent didn't show up on time, I called her a week later to remind her so she wouldn't incur any more late fees. She told me that she had already mailed it and it must have gotten lost in the mail. A red flag went up, but Tony and I decided to show her mercy since it was the first time rent was late. So we said OK -- just send in another one and we won't charge you late fees. Another week passes. Still no check. So I called her again. And AGAIN, she said that she mailed it and it must have gotten lost in the mail AGAIN!

Now getting lost in the mail once I might buy... but twice?! In all my years of using the USPS, none of my mail has ever gotten lost. The USPS is highly, highly reliable.

So then we arranged to have her drop it off at our house the next day, Saturday. I waited at home all day... no check. I have tried calling her work, her cell, and emailing... no response! This is becoming ridiculous. We even threatened her with eviction. Of course, I don't even know if she got the message...

Just now, I tried to call her work again... FINALLY, someone answered and said very professionally, "okayholdon." I held... and held... for freaking 10 minutes. Then I hung up and called back. I was greeted by a nice automated message that said "The pharmacy is closed. We will reopen at 2pm." It's 1:30pm! WTF?! I'm actually very suspicious that the person who answers the phone every time I call actually her... and she's just pretending that she isn't available. Because she always says "she isn't here" or "she can't come to the phone." And it totally sounds like her voice! That would be sick.

Sigh. We honestly don't want her to be slammed with all these late fees... I just want to help her get the rent in on time. Is that so hard? She's a freakin' pharmacist! It's not like she doesn't have the money. Well, I guess I can't know all her circumstances, but it's hard not to be frustrated in this situation. Maybe God is trying to teach us about grace and mercy.

We have had 6 parties in the last 5 days. Whew! The first two were holiday parties for Tony's and my workpaces, both on Thursday. Then Friday was our youth group Christmas party (we call it Jesus' birthday party). On Saturday, we hosted the Agape Christmas party at our place and stayed up until 2am playing Super Mario Bros. 3 -- yes, on the original 8-bit gray box Nintendo (the best one!). Sunday, we went to Auntie Rachel's house for dinner and it turned into a semi-birthday celebration when they found out my birthday was on Thursday. Yesterday was Janelle's 21st (golden!) birthday, so we went to go meet up with them for a while and bought her a drink. Then tonight, Tony and I are celebrating my birthday early (because of all the festivities to come) by going to a fancy dinner (thanks, Annie and Ben!).

Honestly, with all the decorating, celebrating, eating, wrapping, opening -- there's hardly a moment for me to have a "silent night" and reflect on Jesus! That's partly why I'm looking forward to the next two weeks off work. This is the first time that we're not going anywhere and no one is coming here. Well, family, anyway. I'm kind of sad about that, because I really miss my family (especially little 'Lip!). But I am seriously looking forward to doing nothing. I have absolutely no plans for Christmas break -- and I love that! Tony will be volunteering at Urbana, and we're hosting a bunch of college students for Urbana, but during most of the day, it will just be me and God, alone in the house... My favorite times. :) I suppose I am more of an "I" than an "E." :P

But unfortunately, there's no such thing as "having no plans" in this day and age, though... Because "having no plans" doesn't mean my mind isn't going a million miles an hour making lists and crossing things out and thinking about the next thing that needs to be done. I have to admit that I do have plans to work out, catch up on some reading, do some serious scrapbooking (of the past 6 years), and experiment in the kitchen. I guess it will be my little trial run at being a stay-at-home housewife. :) We'll see how it goes!

So our teen girls' small group rotates around to different homes each week, and the wonderful parents (bless their hearts) always prepare snacks for us after Bible study. It has gotten a little out of hand, to the point where some parents are going all out and preparing actual meals for the ravenous girls to eat after studying the Bible (hey, it's a hard workout). And this is at like 9-10pm -- a second dinner! Anyway, one of the moms always makes this delicious lasagna for us, and I rave about it every time. I wondered for a long time whether she made it from scratch or if it was a frozen Stouffer's lasagna that was slyly placed into a pyrex dish. :) I finally asked her for the recipe, and it turns out that she does make it, semi-from-scratch -- her "secret" is using 2 jars of this specific Ragu sauce and no ricotta/egg mixture (since Chinese people hate cheese).

The snob in me thought, well that's not homemade! I slave over my lasagnas for hours to make even the sauce from scratch, painstakingly layering the ricotta/egg, spinach, mushrooms, meat, etc. Mine should taste way better! But alas, it doesn't. (Sub-par lasagna pictured above.) I have to admit that in the end, it's all about the taste. Who cares if mine took 4 hours to make and hers took 30 minutes? Prep time doesn't necessarily translate to quality. She wins, hands down. Sigh. I suppose I will make her cheater version next time.

I've been inspired to document our cooking adventures in the kitchen more often. For date night yesterday (first in AGES), Tony and I watched the movie "Julie & Julia." I actually wasn't too impressed with the movie itself (really slow, too long, not enough food/cooking featured, Julie never met Julia), but I am motivated to blog more. (I feel like I've said this before.)

Tony is the real chef here... I always tell people that he's the real cook, and I am his sous chef. I mainly do all the chopping and prep work (i.e. the hard hours of dirty work that get no credit, hmph), and then he comes in, proceeds to "chao" it all up in the wok and gets all the glory. :P But although he is definitely more of a foodie (I'm the one who had never had Korean food until college), I do enjoy cooking my own things as long as someone's there to appreciate it (much less motivated when I'm eating by myself).

Tony's cooking style is more of the exotic throw-things-in-a-wok-and-adjust style, whereas mine is more comfort/"normal" foods and by-the-book. We often do not appreciate each other's cooking, which makes me sad. Case in point: Tony made this (supposedly) delicious Chinese pig's feet stew the other day. I ate a tiny piece. It was OK. Then I proceeded to ladle up the leftovers and give them to his family to take home with them. Then last week, we had a humongous 10 lb. bag of giant potatoes, so I made a homemade chicken pot pie from scratch. Tony ate half his plate and gave the rest to Tim to finish. Sigh.

Explosion fail in the ramekins. Next time I'll try less filling or less crust.

I discovered that our company IM has application-sharing capabilities with a whiteboard. I tried to draw a picture of a pie for Jimmy, and this is what I got!



HMPH!