Rose walking and school

Rose plays with the shadows of late afternoon.
My class library spread out and ready to divide between fifth and sixth grades.

I continue to chip away at the work needed to turn my room into a functional classroom. I also have devoted time to getting my curriculum together. Next week will be crunch time for those pursuits leaving me less time to get things around the house finished. I, however, only have one bookshelf to construct, two to mount, and a computer to relocate to finish the livingroom shelving.

I installed magnetic childproof (we'll see) latches on one set of doors on the shelves in the livingroom. We will see how Rose interacts with them! I hope they hold up to the abuse because they are by far the most elegant of the solutions out there.

Rose continues to walk and be excited by her newfound ability. She also enjoys playing with Reena's flip flops and my slippers.

more productivity

The cabinets arrived and were stored in the kitchen. Unfortunately, we found that the corner cabinet, closest in the image, was damaged and had to be returned. The others, however, are in place, and only the floor cabinet is awaiting its top.
Here is the floor cabinet. There is a perfect space to store the step stool next to it.
I put together Reena's rolling file cabinet first of all of the many boxes of things to put together.
I am bartering some work with Mike. This is the piece that is missing from one of his windows. Finding who manufactures it has been entertaining. I have sent them an email with photos to see if we can get a replacement part.
I have husked the dvds and put them in binders. The empty casings will supply my yearly dvd school project for years to come.
Here are some binders of dvds in the new shelf. The doors will get a baby proofing system soon, and then the pillows will not need to be stacked against them.
I finished this bookshelf yesterday. It is mounted to the wall, cut to fit around the archway molding, and has a height extension on it.
Now off to shower and to school where I am cleaning out a very filthy room. I love the space, but I have to get it ready just to think about how I am going to use this new room.

Many Days of Productivity

This last week has seen a great deal of productivity around and in the house. We have painting and work being done to the exterior. The ladder in the photo below belongs to that job. The lined up branches and chipper belong to the company that came to remove two trees from the back yard and trim the front tree back from the house. We now have a back yard!

This is how the back yard looks with the massive tree mostly cut down. It is amazing how much light and how much more yard we now have. We will think about how to design the yard in terms of lawn space and garden, but it is nice to have these options!I also went in to school to do some work. This will be my classroom next year. Afterschool stuff and a computer lab are in there now, so some heavy lifting will ensue before I can make the space mine. I am happy about the location, and it will be the first time in the new building that I control my own thermostat! I will also be getting a smart board theoretically. yay.
This is the china cabinet we purchased from a lovely couple off of Craig's List. It fits our dining room perfectly.
Here it is loaded with Reena's grandparents' china and some of our own odds and ends. So starts the reorganization of the basement project!
Many friends have visited this week, and Reena's blog has much more on that. Anna Maria stayed the night and had a great day hanging out with Rose and us.

Physical

Today I trimmed the hedges, played tennis, and went to the contra at Concord. Lots of physical activity.

The hedges had grown to take up quite a bit of the sidewalk. Last year, I did a big clearing of old, dead wood and a bit of a trimming back. Having looked up when to prune, I decided that it was too late in the season for a drastic cutting, but I did clear them from the sidewalk so our and other strollers can get through.

Dan came over (not me, obviously) and we headed to the tennis courts at the bottom of the street. After about 45 minutes of that, we were both happily warmed up, and it was time for Deana to head out. I went home, took care of Rose, and made a card for Reena. It is our anniversary.

In the evening, I went contra dancing. I have gone to the Concord Thursday night dance a number of times. It is held at the Scouthouse which is famous enough in contra to have a dance named after it. So far, the four or so times I have been, I have not been impressed with dance etiquette in Boston. People say they are sitting out and then are up in the line with someone else, and they book ahead. In other parts of the country, these behaviors are frowned upon, but I guess it is accepted enough here to make it ok. I still love to dance, and I do have a few good dances when I go to Concord, but I am repulsed by the negatives. I am so glad that I will be at Sugar Hill at the end of the year. Great dancing and great company to be had at my favorite dance weekend.

Composter

Diana came over to watch Rose for part of the day as Reena is off at a conference all week during the day. I took that time to work on putting together the composter that has sat in the hallway in its battered package for months. Here is a photojournal of the process. This composter has two chambers which allows one to complete the composting cycle while the other is being filled. There was one screw missing, so I had to go to the hardware store to get a replacement.




Today, it rained. I sat on the back poarch during Rose's morning nap and read.

Suny Days

Summer is possibly here, now. With months of cool, wet weather, the flowers have been gorgeous, but it has only added to my inability to get yardwork done. The main reason was a very intense end of year. I finally got to hacking up some of the major vegetation that has sprouted up (small trees, etc). I did clear out the rose bushes along the drive and they are happier for it.
All I did for the back yard was whack a path along the walk and trim the anemic rose bush back away from the walk. The yard is a jungle, and I am not ready to wade in and do battle with the creatures within.

midday walks

One of the lovely features of being part-time this year is that I can take midday walks with Rose. We walked by some beautiful miniature irises that are blooming along with the crocuses and snow drops. I saw them yesterday and had to return to get a photo.
Also, the utility company has just pruned the trees around the power lines. With the sap running as strong as it is, there are many trees on the street dripping their springs' blood away.

I went to Tags Hardware today to get an outside thermometer having been fooled by good looking days only to find they were very chilly once outside.

One step closer.

More work got done on the house today. The outlets for the washer and dryer were moved upstairs. Here is where they used to be.
Here is where they are now. Plumber comes Thursday to get the plumbing put in place and to move the toilet a bit.
On my walk to art class, I saw these pieces of ice that had fallen from a gutter. They reminded me of the basalt columns at Devil's Tower (image linked to source page).




















Icicles cling to a tree branch. Pictures can't capture the flashing lights that refracted and reflected sunlight cast as I walked past the ice.

High Dynamic Range

My images are not uploading right now. I spent the evening taking pictures with varying shutter speeds and then feeding the resulting images into the HDR creator in Photoshop. I got some neat pictures and a much better understanding of what I might do to improve. Hopefully I'll add more photos later when Blogger doesn't spit them back out at me.

Edit: Two of the house images used to create the picture above.

Where in the World?

I have been playing with google maps. Here is a link to the one I was building. So far, I just have locations I have lived. Anyone with more precise info, please let me know. This is the street view of the house I bought in St. Louis. The address in the bar is incorrect, though. The furniture on the porch means that this was taken after I moved out. When I bought the house, the bushes in front were wild. I got them back into shape after much work. I miss the beautiful tree on the lawn. It was some kind of maple that turned the most gorgeous colors in fall.

Bees are lazy cads today!

Usually I get a few things done each day and am happy, but today I am outpacing the bees. I have oiled hinges, replaced light diffusers, put down non-slip material under bath mats, run around town shopping for things to do chores with, got new parking tags for both my car and Reena's as well as putting them in, changed my voter registration address, and the list goes on. Buzz Buzz.

Recently I posted much stuff on Craig's list. Reena and I had culled this stuff from the rest for getting rid of before the move, but it came with us and sat in a room. More than half of it has already been picked up. I am ready to give anyone who shows as much of it as they want to carry off. Yay Craig's List.

The last push to organize the basement storage/work room and get stuff down there from the dining room where it has been hulking in the shadows will happen in the next few days. I will also be writing student recommendations for next schools, doing curriculum, and some of my own art. Plenty of feet up and watching movies, too.

So here I am, a year older, perhaps wiser, perhaps more foolish, and looking at fatherhood.

Oh, I posted house pictures on the other website. Very messy, but I hadn't gotten around to it, so there they are.

One Heck of a Morning

This morning started early with the new bed delivery. Yes, they said 7:00 to 11:00, and guess which end of that bracket they arrived. At least this time it fit up the stairs. The guys who delivered were nicer than the last set. Then, I called a guy who I was going to buy a drafting table from off of Craig's List. I set up a time to meet him at his storage locker and went about trying to print directions. I knew I had to put new toner in the machine, and it took a while to figure that one out as I had never done it before. The printer refused to print. New toner was not the only problem. Now, after noon has passed, I have finally troubleshot that issue, but at the time, it ate up my time until I just wrote down the directions knowing I would be a bit late after stopping at a bank to get some cash. Ooops, the ATM spat my card out informing me that it was expired. Sure enough, I hadn't gotten around to sending in my new address, and the replacement card had been sent to the old apartment. Things like that do not get forwarded. Now I was really late, so I called up, apologized and rerouted my trip to pass by home to pick up the change of address form that Reena and I had filled out and to swing by a bank to turn it in and get cash. Fortified with cash, I set off. Yup, I don't know good routes yet in the Boston metro area, and I was stuck in traffic quite a few times. I finally got there an hour and a half late, although I had kept the seller appraised of my lateness. It worked out for him in the end as he had some shopping to do in the area. I like the table (it is still in my car right now), and stopping for my new glasses and eggs on the way home put me back after midday. That was a 9:30-12:00 trip just for a table! Much has been accomplished, but I feel that it was reactive instead of proactive.

Here's hoping the rest of the day is of a different nature.

And the Packing Begins!

Friday comes and it is a day of rest. Nope. The rush has begun.
My to do list:

• Packing
• Design next year's curriculum
• Finish up BWP things (extract stuff from e-anthology, write response paper)
• Prepare for road trip
• Work with my new teaching parnter
• Look at the two pages of to do list that I created at the beginning of the summer and have not reviewed since.

Yup, there are some heavy hitters on this list. I have started packing in a very random and non-effective way, but it is the only way I have been able to tackle this daunting task. I am sure I will give happier news midweek next week.