Ithaca Apple Festival

Ithacans are fond of their festivals. In general, there is a theme, but it's also an excuse for food, shopping and people watching.
This weekend is the apple festival. This is the first festival that I've attended twice - I guess I am well on my way towards being an old timer (as well as an old biddy).
Anyway, the apple festival features apples + tasty calorie-enhanced apple products, wine and cider, and a large number of non-apple food vendors. There are also arts + crafts + gifty stuff for sale, and a few carnival rides for kids.
I went with some of the grad students last year. It was a picture-perfect fall day - clear and crisp and not too cold. I bought a peck of apples and some cider, and had to haul it all up the hill.
This year I went with cowdude. Unfortunately, the weather was not so cooperative this time around - 40F with wind and rain. Did I mention that it's been in the 60's or 70's for the last few weeks? Needless to say, no one is acclimated to the cold yet. We walked around and checked it out, and I bought apples. Despite the cold, it was still very crowded, and the lines at the really popular food vendors (hello, pumpkin funnel cake, where have you been all my life?!?!) were way too long. It was dinner time anyway, so we opted to go eat at a Mexican restaurant across the street and get out of the cold.
It's slightly warmer today. I may have to go back and get that pumpkin funnel cake, after all.

Big Red

I got the lowdown on the neighborhood bear. People think there’s just one, and it makes the rounds every fall. I have heard more noise on the patio/in the yard recently, but it could be coincidental. He’ll be hibernating in about a month, hopefully not in my yard. Someone took a picture and took it to a taxidermist, who estimated the bear is about 400 lbs. He is partial to taking out bird feeders and barbeques. The neighbors were surprised he didn’t go after my smoker. I think he was too busy messing with my sewer vent cap* to pay attention to my smoker and grill, but hopefully he won’t mess with anything when I am gone.
I am calling the bear ‘Big Red’, in honor of Cornell’s mascot. I’m bringing a Cornell T-shirt for Missy’s son Kadin. It has a bear on it, of course. I am going to tell Kadin that it’s the bear that lives in my neighborhood.
I haven’t actually seen Big Red. I am kind of disappointed about this.

* Bears are interested in stinky and chemical smells. They would frequently overturn the pit toilets at T’s gold panning claim, and one time a bear chewed a hole in a gasoline can. So popping the cap off my sewer cap and going after a Weber grill are pretty much par for the course for a bear.

The Rug(s), part 2: Old Biddy Garage-sailing

After my short lived ownership of the French woman's rug, I still wanted a rug for my kitchen, and somehow not just any rug would do.  I wanted one with a similar texture, and I wanted an interesting one.  There were a lot of nice rugs available online, but I continued to troll Craigslist. Meanwhile, my dining room table arrived and I needed a rug to put underneath that.  I did not have strong opinions on the dining room one other than wanting one that was cheap, clean, the right size and didn't clash too badly with the color scheme
I hit paydirt on Craigslist this weekend. Several people were having garage sales and selling rugs.  I bought an antique Turkish rug from a woman who'd inherited in from a family friend in 1995.  It had a similar texture to the other one,with slightly uneven edges.  It's a bit threadbare in spots, and I'm sure I will wear it out completely.  I think it will also be good for hiding dirt

I know it's a bit odd to put a old handmade rug in the kitchen by the sink. I would never do that if I bought it new or paid a lot of money for it.  But somehow it seems that these sentimental favorites which have already been used and enjoyed by many people should be continue to be enjoyed rather than set off in some room that is rarely used.
In contrast to my weird obsession with getting a kitchen rug, I was not on a mission for a  unique dining room rug.  I got a very large rug for a very low price. It meets all my criteria and I got a really good deal.  The cats like it a lot too. It's also pretty dull.  There is not much history - the previous owners bought it new, had it for two years, and charged me 1/20th of what they paid. 
I haven't put it in the dining room, since I going to need to get one of the neighbors to help me move the table.

Yes, I'm turning into my mother.  She likes to go to garage sales and buy stuff, and then tell everyone the story behind it. If it's a good story and it's an item that gets used a lot, she'll still remember the story years later. 

Treman State Park

I went walking at Robert H. Treman State Park today.  It's a few miles from my house, as the crow flies, although it's a bit further by car due to the idiosyncracies of the roads in the southern part of Ithaca.  I parked at the southern end of the park.
Like Buttermilk Falls State Park, which is also near my house, the main draw is the waterfalls and the swimming hole.  It's about 2 miles from the lower parking lot to the upper parking lot.  You can get there on either the Gorge Trail or the Rim Trail*, or do a loop. I walked up the Gorge Trail and back on the Rim Trail. 
Now, I know what you're thinking.  "Hmm, four miles is not that far."  This is not some nice flat midwestern trail, or even like the nice rolling hills in the Santa Cruz mountains.  Nope.  There are waterfalls, big ones, and that means lots of steep climbs interspersed with flat areas.  As was the case at Buttermilk Falls, many of the steep areas had either stone stairs or stairlike areas with wood beams in the trail.  Even though I climb a lot of stairs in my treks to, from and around the chem department, there were parts where I was out of breath.  However, it was worth it.  The Gorge Trail is the more scenic of the two, and follows the creek.  There are many waterfalls.  At the southern end, the area beneath the waterfall has been converted into a swimming hole.  There are lifeguards, a diving board, showers, picnic areas, etc. When I was a little kid, I dreamed of places like this, but they're hard to find in California.
As you walk north along the Gorge Trail, there are lots of other waterfalls and pools.  It's pretty easy to climb down into most of the pools, so there were people swimming and relaxing.  At the first area, there is what my brother would call a "butt slide" where people were sliding down.  I didn't have my bathing suit on, and my Tevas were in the car, but it looked very fun.

As I continued walking up the trail, I passed more pools and waterfalls.  Some of the pools were totally deserted and looked like a great place to swim or relax.  I also saw what I thought were wild roses, but they were actually some very big raspberries with pink flowers. 

Unfortunately, they weren't ripe yet.  It still seems strange to me that it's mid-July and the berries aren't ready yet.

Towards the end of the Gorge Trail, Lucifer Falls drops 115 feet.  There is a stone stair trail next to it.  There wasn't a this much  water today, but it must be really dramatic after it rains.  (My picture came out badly, so I got one off the internet)  At the northern part, there is another picnic area, as well as an old mill.  There was also a soda machine, so I drank a can of diet coke and relaxed for a while before heading back.  The Rim trail was not quite as scenic, but  was quite nice and shady. 

At the end I went to my car, changed into my Tevas, and walked over to the swimming hole.  I wasn't dressed for swimming but it felt really good to sit and dangle my feet in the water.
Next time I'll bring a picnic lunch, a swim suit, and go hang out by one of the quieter pools, and then I'll come back and swim in the main pool.  That diving board is calling my name.

*  All the parks I've been to have a Gorge Trail and a Rim Trail.  Inevitable, the Gorge Trail is more scenic.

Sold my soul to the devil

Yes, it's true.  I lasted approximately one month without Costco before breaking down and joining Sam's Club.  You have to understand I'm a dyed in the wool, Walmart-disliking liberal who's lived the majority of my life in extremely liberal areas (SF Bay Area, Boston, Chapel Hill, and now Ithaca)  It's not cool to shop at Walmart or Sam's Club, when you can get the same stuff for similar prices at places where they pay much better wages, like Costco, Target, or Trader Joe's.  Sadly, I'm in a new town and need to fill up my larder/supply the house/get all those things that they only seem to sell at warehouse stores.  I resisted for a while, until it became clear that I was starting to eat like a grad student again and spending way too much to do so. It didn't help that my metabolism has sped up and I am hungry all the time.
Don't get me wrong.  Wegman's is great and prices on some stuff (milk, ice cream, junk food, soda, beer, and blueberries) are better than I'd get in CA.  The produce is reasonably priced, although sometimes it's pretty picked over by the time I get there.  And the bulk candy bins are to die for.  But Wegman's does cater to people who want pre-prepared foods, either of the cheap grad student variety (massive subs!  microwave burritos! peirogies!) or the more upscale varieties (rotisserie chickens!  $6 meat and two sides dinners! premarinated grill ready pieces of meat! Asian and Indian food bars!) This was fine when I didn't have a fridge, but it gets old quickly.   For instance, I found a whole row of frozen chicken in various forms (nuggets in various shapes, pregrilled chicken breasts with different marinades, etc) but no plain uncooked frozen chicken breasts.*  Cheese costs more than twice what it did at Costco/Trader Joe's.  Clearly it was time to sell my soul and get my warehouse shopping fix at Sam's Club.  
Oh, what a fix it was!  It was well worth the $40 membership fee, 1 hour drive, and the world's ugliest picture.  I should've done it a few weeks ago before I started trying to stock my house.  I won't bore you with the details, but I am now amply supplied with cottage cheese, cat supplies, vanilla, chicken sausage, 100 calorie ice cream bars, frozen chicken breasts, and more.
I tried to learn from the no-shopping experiment and not buy the stuff that I use rarely, like pancake mix or marinara sauce.  I'm not going to go there that often, but at least now I can go stock up when I need to.
It's not really about the frozen chicken breast, or even the big tubs of cottage cheese.  It's about having some continuity with my old routine back in CA.  I didn't even realize this when I first posted this.  But then I remembered that when I first moved to Boston, I used to really like going to the mall because it reminded me of CA.  I wasn't unhappy there, and was settling in very well,  but going to the mall was kind of soothing.  Now that I'm n old biddy, I haven't had any mall cravings yet, but the warehouse store fulfills the same role. 

*I don't know if this is an Ithaca thing, I only found a few freezer-burned bags at the other grocery store too.  So I did the obvious and bought a bulk pack of the fresh ones and froze them.

Monster House: Scary old witchy cat lady edition

Sometimes Missy tells her students stories about her family and friends.  She told them that I was buying a big house.  One of the kids asked if I'd be living in it by myself, and said that was sort of scary. I assumed he meant it was scary to live by yourself, but no, it was more along the lines of me scaring other people.  Yes, it's official, I am now a scary old crazy cat lady, and I haven't even gotten another cat yet. Just a crazy old witch and her cats living on the edge of the forest.. in a monster house with a jacuzzi tub.   From the neighbors' perspective, I'm sure that's still preferable to multiple foreclosure family (who apparently didn't fit in very well, according to Beth) or an empty house.

Houses are bigger and prices are lower out there, and incomes are still pretty high, so it's not uncommon for people without kids to buy large houses.  Beth pointed out some 2500 sq foot houses that she'd sold to single people, who then traded up for something bigger once they got married/had kids.  So me in the monster house is apparently not too unusual.

Blogging from the airport, Syracuse edition

I'm at the Syracuse airport now.  After getting the house stuff wrapped up on Friday, I worked on the proposal on Saturday and did touristy stuff yesterday.  It was nice to have some time to go explore.
Sunday started off cold and rainy. It was about 40F. I had brunch at a motel nearby.  The grad students had recommended it.  I could understand why - all you can eat for $6.95.  Then I drove up the east side of Cayuga Lake to Taughannock State Park.  The park abuts Cayuga Lake, and there is a nice picnic area and boat launch at the main entrance.  The main attraction is Taughanock Falls, however.  It's one of the highest waterfalls east of the Rockies, and is actually higher than Niagara Falls, although a lot less water falls through. Eons and eons ago, the waterfalf was right by the lake, but over time the rock got eroded so that now it's about 3/4 mile inland.
The trail stays open all year, so that's sort of unusual.  It's wide and flat.  If you want a better workout you can do the upper rim trail, but it was cold and I hadn't packed enough warm clothes, so I stuck with the easy walk.  The falls are pretty dramatic.  The amount of water varies greatly throughout the year.  After I finished my walk, I continued driving north towards the Cayuga Lakes Wine Trail.  There is a cluster of wineries in the area, as well as a place that makes hard cider. I'll come back sometime and try it.

After driving for a while, I turned around and headed back towards Ithaca.  I stopped off at Eastern Mountain Sports and bought a T-shirt and some long underwear (it was on sale).  I drove past my future house, just because it makes me happy to do that, and then I headed over to Cornell and walked around the campus and the surrounding areas for a while.  Then I drove over to to the Cornell Botanical Gardens. It's free and is open all year round.  I liked the herb garden.  All the plants are marked and are divided by category, e.g. herbs that the indians used, herbs for cooking, herbs for tea, herbs for dying fabric, etc..  I liked that everything was labelled, because I'm always looking at plants and wondering what they are. Most of the plants were still dormant, but I'm sure it will be really nice in a month or two.
There were also other sorts of themed gardens and wooded areas, but there was construction going on and I didn't see everything.  I couldn't find the poisonous plant garden, but I guess they would keep that sort of hidden away. 
The plane is about to board, so I'll blog more from the next airport.

Monster House: Intro

Short version: I'm in Ithaca now.  I put down an offer on a house. It was accepted.  This is what it looks like. The end. 
Long Version: I did everything I said I wouldn't do, except for one thing.  Buy a foreclosure house-check.  Buy something a little bit further out instead of something close to campus- check.  Buy a big house - check. Buy a newish house - check.  Buy a house that my real estate agent was listing - check.  Buy a house up on a hill so I will have to clear snow off my driveway -well, that one wasn't on my list but I added it for good measure.  Go outside my price range - well, that was actually the one thing I didn't do, but that part comes later in the story..
I'll spare you all of the play by play on the houses I didn't like, which were many.  Big ones, small ones, new ones, old ones.  The ones with a nice yard looked weird inside, and the cute older homes backed up to a really busy road or were in poor condition. The purple house next to campus was just weird.  The other purple house had floors that sagged badly and, I kid you not, a bathroom that was 6 inches higher than the rest of the hall.(There was a step). Clearly, my price range was a bit too low to get me something with more pluses than minuses near campus.  There were two that I did like - a cute remodeled house near campus, and the monster house.  The cute remodeled older house had only two problems - the bathtub sucked, and it was already in contract, which means a 3 day free for all where competing offers can still be presented.  The monster house had problems, but they were all related to my preconceived notions of what I wanted, rather than the house itself.  The house itself is great.  I have this image of myself as preferring small, older houses in convenient locations, because that's what I had in CA.  But I have a not-so-secret fondness for modern luxuries such as fancy kitchens and bathrooms. After I looked at the house the first time, I spent a sleepless night fretting about what to do.  I looked at it again the next day, along with a lot of other houses.  I still liked it the best.  The real estate agent had called the bank and they told her they would give a fast response to any offer.  I put in an offer that was $35k lower than the asking price, and $10k lower than one the bank turned down a few months ago. They accepted it within a few hours.  I can't believe it.  I'm not sure, but my real estate agent may've twisted a few arms on my behalf, and, of course on her own behalf. The inspection was today.  The city had turned off the water, but the bank thought it was on, so the inspector couldn't check that today.  He'll do it next week.  He found a few really minor things but nothing big.
So anyway, I'm getting a house on a hill that backs up onto a forest.  How f^%$ng cool is that?!?!

Cranky old biddy, mortgage edition

I'm going out to Ithaca to look for a place to live.  As in, I am going to look at houses for sale and put down an offer on one if I find one I really like.  My parents were somewhat unclear on the concept.  They thought I was looking for a place to rent.  My mom gave me a lot of grief when she figured out I was thinking about buying a plce.  She shut up when I reminded her that there's a $6500 tax credit but to get that I have to be in contract by April 30.  I didn't bother to tell her I may not qualify for the full amount because my income is too high. 
Anyway, I'd like to get pre-qualified for a mortgage. I've got perfect credit, lots of money in the bank, and a job offer in hand.  Additionally, I've paid off half my mortgage on my current house in the 9 years I've had it.  Do the math - this corresponds to lots of extra payments and general fiscal responsibility. My real estate sent me the names of a couple of her contacts at the local banks.  The person from the Cornell credit union was very helpful.  I'll be meeting with her when I'm out there next week. She wanted to see my offer letter and bank and brokerage statements.  That's all.  The person from 1st Weasel Bank was nice, but I do not like their lending rules.  I don't mind providing documentation about everything from 3 years of W-2's, a letter stating why and when I was laid off, etc, so I did that.  Then she called back and told me "oh, by the way, you'll need to be in your new job at least 30 days before you close on your house."  WTF???  Yep, new FHA rule, and apparently 1st Weasel Bank doesn't make exceptions.  It's apparently not a well known new rule, either, since neither my financial advisor nor real estate agent knew about it. It probably won't be a problem at the credit union, since they have more flexibility.  (As in, they can wait a whole month or two before my mortgage becomes FHA eligible, or they can keep it in house)
Anyway, I don't think it will be a problem but it made me cranky.  This is partly because the T situation is still getting under my skin, of course, but also because I'm a geek and don't like it when I have anything other than perfect grades/SAT/GRE/credit scores.  That's not to say that it never happens, just that I get cranky when it does.  My financial advisor pointed this out to me.  He's the same way, as are a lot of his clients. 

Real Estate Porn

You know you want it, baby....Don't be shy.  No one can resist the lure of vicarious real estate porn.
It's time for me to find a place to live in Ithaca. Now, housing costs are a lot less there than they are here.  In fact, housing costs anywhere are a lot cheaper than here.  I am indulging in some good old fashioned real estate porn. I can get a house that's two or three times the size of my current house with a lot that's 10 times the size for half of what my house would sell for here.  (The real porn equivalent would be watching men half my age who are twice as well-endowed and have ten times the stamina of what I might find in real life, and they never leave the toilet seat up). Drool drool drool.  I'm not selling my house here, so I can't get the giant mansion with the pool boy and lake view  just yet, but that doesn't stop me from fantasizing.
A real estate agent is sending me selected listings from the neighborhoods I'm targeting.  I'm supplementing with internet searches on my own.  At this point it's mainly serving for me to familiarize myself with what to expect at various price points, and for her to figure out what I like so she can narrow it down a bit.  Some of the houses may still be on the market when I go out there in two weeks, but I'm trying not to get my heart set on any one in particular.
The sentimental favorite is the purple Craftsman-style house within walking distance from the chemistry department.  It has solar panels and is super cute.  I do hope it's still available when I visit.

Blogging from the airport, part 3

I'm at the Ithaca airport now.  My flight to Detroit is delayed 2 hours, which means I'll miss my connecting flight to San Francisco unless that's running late too.  I don't know about the weather, but there's a huge backlog of people trying to get to their destinations, and that's not helping things.  They told us we might not be able to get where we're going until Tuesday. It's Saturday now.  Great.
Anyway, this morning I got up, ate breakfast, and then walked over to Wegman's supermarket.  Several people told me I had to go check it out, and if I end up living here it's important that I have a good source of groceries.  Wegmans is massive.  It's like they combined a Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and CVS in one place, and by that I mean added them together into one giant store.  It is seriously massive and may help get me through Trader Joe's and Costco withdrawal. . Prices are good - along the lines of Trader Joe's and my beloved Pak N Save.  Sure, the gourmet stuff is pricier, but it's still a lot cheaper than Whole Foods.  There was even a small book section.  I bought the new Sookie Stackhouse novel and another book for my trip.  If I end up here in Ithaca and you come visit me, I am totally taking you to Wegman's.
After I went to Wegmans's, I stopped off at the Ithaca Farmer's market.  It's inside during the winter.  There were people selling winter veggies, eggs, cheese, bread, baked goods, and jewelry.  It was fun, but being full and being unable to transport stuff home kind of put a damper on things. 
I then walked up to Cornell again and walked around.  It is just ridiculously pretty there.  It was snowing lightly as I walked.  I was toasty warm in my grey Michelin Man down jacket, wool hat and gloves. I got back around 1:45 and had lunch at a Thai restaurant.  Then I came back to the hotel and went to the airport.