A Busy Saturday

Today was a very busy Saturday, but productive and also fun!  We got up on the early side (for a Saturday), around 9:30, and headed over to meet Jerrilyn at her office.  She drove us out to look at some houses.  We had a little adventure getting there - due to the construction on 285, we ended up taking an alternate route, STILL getting caught in the construction zone, but eventually making it to the first house with plenty of time to spare (she had told them we were coming between 11 and 12, and we made it there around 11:30).  We looked at SIX houses today!  The first two were built in the late 1960s, and we weren't thrilled with either of them.  The third one was built in the late 1970s, and we liked it a little better, but still not great.  The last three were all in the same two subdivisions.  Ironically, they were the same subdivisions that Marcus and I had driven through a few weeks ago, and were a little concerned by the fact that across the main road was a not-so-good looking area.  However, Jerrilyn assured us that this wasn't something we needed to worry about, especially since the houses we looked at were pretty deep into the subdivisions.

All of these houses were built in 1999-2000, and we liked them MUCH better than the other ones we had seen.  They were very compact, but really cute, and very nice and bright and open.  One of them I really liked because it had a HUGE kitchen, with lots of cabinet space and TWO pantries!  Marcus really liked another house which had basically an entire apartment in the basement (a bedroom, dining room, full bath, and a kitchen with stove and other appliances, and an entrance to the backyard).  We concluded from the day's outing that we definitely prefer newer houses over older ones, but that we haven't really seen anything in the middle (built in the 1980s and 1990s).  Tomorrow we are going out to look at some more houses, this time out in Marietta!  Today's houses were all in Dunwoody.

We got back to Jerrilyn's office around 1:45, and headed straight over to Panera for the APO Metro Atlanta Alumni Association gathering at 2 pm.  It ended up being the same 5-6 people as usual, but it was still fun.  Paulabeth brought her baby (3 months old), who we hadn't gotten to meet yet, so that was exciting!  He's a real cutie, and he was very well-behaved for the most part.

We finally made it home around 4:30.  We kind of just hung out for a little while, and then Marcus left to go chaperone his cousin's AZA youth group event (he sort of got roped into doing it, haha).  I made myself some pasta for dinner (an old standby recipe - Marcus doesn't like it that much, so I really only make it when we're not eating together), and watched the Braves game until he got home.  At some point before he got home, my mom called, so I spent a good 45 minutes or so talking to her and my dad about our house-hunting today, family trees/reunions, and other fun stuff.

So that was our crazy busy Saturday.  Tomorrow is suddenly looking much busier than I was anticipating too, now that we're going out house-hunting again.  I also need to do laundry, and we need to go grocery shopping, so the day is filling up very quickly!  And we have to get up even earlier than today for the house-hunting, because we're meeting Jerrilyn at 10 instead of 10:30 :-P

In case anyone's interested, here is the pasta recipe that I made for dinner tonight!  I found it on the ajc.com's recipe pages several years back.

Summer Penne Pasta
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
8 ounces mini penne pasta
1 (14.5 oz) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes or 2 cups fresh tomatoes, mostly drained
1 (12 oz) jar marinated artichoke hearts, cut in bite-size pieces and mostly drained
1 (2.5 oz) can sliced black olives, drained, or 1/2 cup sliced pitted kalamata or other olives
1/4 cup freshly shaved Parmesan cheese

Directions:
Prepare pasta according to package directions.
In a bowl, combine tomatoes, artichoke hearts and black olives.  Add pasta and toss to combine.  Add additional oil from the artichoke hearts, if necessary.
Grate Parmesan (or use a veggie peeler) on top.  (If you wish to add a sixth ingredient, this dish can be served over a bed of baby spinach.)

Notes:
This dish tastes equally good warm or chilled.
To reduce the sodium further, here are a few options: Substitute frozen or water-packed canned artichoke hearts and add olive oil to moisten the salad or cut down slightly on the olives and/or cheese.

Nutrition (per serving):
350 calories (percent of calories from fat, 21), 3 grams protein, 56 grams carbohydrates, 7 grams fiber, 8 grams fat (1 gram saturated), 4 milligrams cholesterol, 448 milligrams sodium.

My additional notes:
You can use any shape of pasta, I usually use penne or something similar.
The cheese is optional - I make it without since I don't like Parmesan and don't need the cheese anyway.
I use artichoke hearts that have already been quartered, and I don't cut them down smaller.
I prefer to eat this dish warm (I don't like cold pasta), but I've tried it cold and it's actually not bad.