Gimping along

It's been a busy week. Of course, that might be obvious from the total lack of posting here...

I have finally seen all but about five of the students I'm supposed to be monitoring. I'm still monitoring them, of course, just not firsthand. But the things I hear... oy vey.

I stained the two windowpane end tables I bought from a local guy via Craigslist. We don't actually have a local list, but the one for Burlington covers the whole state more or less. Mostly less, unless you're in the Burlington or Montpelier areas. But in the process of sitting on the garage floor and staining them, I managed to throw out my back. Joy. So they are still waiting for the coat of polyurethane. But I am gimpified by the unexpected bursts of pain whenever I do something crazy... like twist from the waist.

My mom and the older of my baby sisters came up for a quick visit. They brought my old IKEA desk that I got when I was 12 - it's kind of beat up, but beat up furniture is better than no furniture right now, so I'm happy to see it again. They also brought an old maple dining room table from one of our dead relatives. It needs major refinishing, but is otherwise in great shape. We also have three more sets of "stackable" bookshelves and some metal chairs for the back porch. This is way more exciting to me than it would have been a year ago.

Prior to their visit, I managed to talk Jay into a trip down to the booming metropolis of West Lebanon, NH so we are about $800 poorer, but now own a 26" flat screen TV, a shop vac, new pillows, large microwavable bowls, and fabric for curtains. My mom very kindly volunteered to make said curtains, so they are now hanging in our living room, covering the hideous purpley-red paint smears on the wooden trim left by the previous owners' paint job.

However, we also looked through the photos from the "history of the house" file that the previous owners left for us, and the house had been a wreck when they bought it 15 years ago. Underlying structure was there, but the walls and windows and everything else was pretty well trashed. So as sketchy as I think some of the cosmetic details are, considering what they started with, it's still fairly impressive.

In non-house-related news, we also took them to the big corn maze nearby. Beautiful weather Sunday, only took us an hour and a half to get through (which is about average), and we bought a bunch of preserves from the local memorial orchard which raises money for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) research. My fridge now holds dilly beans, fresh salsa, and wild blueberry jam. Yummy.

Anywho... I should be working on my research into effective practices in basic skills instruction at the college level. Much more interesting than it sounds, I assure you.