I think tipnut.com has some magical get-the-burn-flavor-out technique somewhere on their site.

In other news, how's the house search going? We really need to have a beer-ery next week, maybe monkeytime can come out & play. How bout Remedy diner on Wednesday or Thursday?

I'm actually quite happy with the burn flavor! It's more of a roasted flavor, though. It didn't quite get to the blackened stage.

The house search continues. There are more listings than ever, but few of them are meeting my criteria. Those criteria include:

1) Location/Neighborhood. I've decided that walkability to 9th street and/or Brightleaf is very important to me. The downsides to this are that the walkable neighborhoods have either expensive houses or are somewhat dangerous. I refuse to live in a development with an HOA and/or restrictive covenants. Luckily, the latter are found in the more suburban locales rather than the more urban area I want.

2) Sunny yard. Gardening is really important to me, and I want to free up the community garden plot I rent for people who actually live in the neighborhood. This has also proven difficult, because there are many large trees in the walkable neighborhoods.

3) House: I don't want to have to do extensive rehabbing. I want new-ish windows, roof, hvac, hardwoods, tile, non-weird bathrooms, kitchen with ample . This is something I'm willing to compromise on somewhat, but something like having to install all new hvac isn't on my "that's OK" list. I also don't want (much) carpet. Or vinyl floors. I don't want to have to convert a duplex into a single occupant building. I don't want oil heat.

So essentially what's been happening is that these three conditions aren't falling into place. The house can be awesome, but it will be in an area that I don't want. Or it doesn't have a viable garden space, even if I were to take down trees. Or else the location rocks and there's enough sunny space to make it work, but the house is decrepit.

I need to change this into lemonade. I'm worried that I won't find a place and be able to get into it before my lease ends. I have to renew by 5/1 or cancel by 6/1 and it takes ~2 months to close. Property management place does not allow one to go month to month. ARGH!

Wednesdays and Thursdays aren't looking great for me for the next 6-8 weeks. Thursdays I have to leave my house by 6:15 a.m., which leaves me both tired and wanting to just get home already when the end of the day rolls around. However, if I can manage to stay in town and awake on a Thursday evening, that's actually the best night for me. I just don't want to make a plan and then cancel. I agree, though, that we need to get together. :-)