22 July 2010

A little hint...

Thing 4 came to tell me about the present he put together for his sister.  It took a little creative questioning, but when I finally got the whole story, after I stopped laughing, I let Thing 2 know she should probably tone it down a bit.
It seems that Thing 4 went outside and talked a little with one of the contractors (also a neighbor, so it's all cool).  He went to his truck and handed him a pair of orange foam earplugs.  Contractor told Thing 4 to give them to his sister, so she wouldn't be bothered by him and yell at him so much.

21 July 2010

Summer, we hardly knew ye

Hopefully, y'all haven't given up on me out there!  Summer has been rocketing by, as summers are wont to do, and though it seems on the surface I haven't much to show for it, closer inspection reveals more. I'd hate to bore folks with the "What I Did on the First Half of My Summer Vacation" essay, but my brain works best chronologically, so deal with it.
Memorial Day Weekend we spent mostly at home, but did venture south to visit my sister's family and decorate the stones.  The kids took some rubbings and we jotted down some info for iPastor to use for genealogical work on my side of the family at his leisure.  He's a hobbyist at that, and far better at it than I.  That evening, we took a short detour on the way home and adopted Oscar, a beautiful blue merle rough collie.  I currently have but a crappy cell phone camera, so I have no pictures to share.  Google it.  I'll wait here.  Pretty, isn't he?  His family had obviously trained him well and taken very good care of him, but the kids were out of the nest and everyone left at home is too busy to give him the attention they feel he deserves, so he came to us.  Poor dog.  He's very well-behaved, if a bit clingy, and the only real fault I can find with him is that he sheds like crazy.  Every time we brush him we get enough fur for another dog, so we've taken to calling his brushings "puppies."  Thing 4 has a new job of gathering or vacuuming Oscar puppies.
The elder two Things left their McJobs after a new manager made conditions there quite miserable for them.  They have both taken on new positions as sandwich artists, however, and I can't wait until their beards grow in and they can get their very own bones. /obscure reference
We got our two exchange students sent off, and on the way home from the airport iPastor bought an iPad, which he said was a fair tradeoff for the dog.  Since I also got to play in a musical all of June, I'll call it even.  I might be able to scrounge some pictures of that, but I have to figure out who has the rights to what on the theatre Flickr account.
Back on the home front, I set out with a massive "to do" list at the beginning of summer, that I tried to make more realistic by breaking into small chunks.  As of yesterday, we had accomplished 26 out of 70 items on the list.  Not too shabby.  I definitely won't go back to school thinking I accomplished nothing.  As I speak, my neighbor the carpenter is banging about on the roof, installing shingles.  So that's siding, most of the windows, and shingles accomplished in the last 3 years.  Again, not too shabby, if detrimental to the Paradise Falls fund. /not-quite-so-obscure reference
As we settle in for the rest of the summer, I'm hopeful about a supplemental job in my district, awaiting the arrival of the next two exchange students, madly trying to help with the placement of 18 more students in our region, getting ready to plan my newly revamped class, working a little bit more at Job 2, planning a couple days camping with friends, and just generally trying to grab onto these last days of summer as they fly by.   Hopefully, they'll contain some lively fodder for these poor, neglected, virtual pages.