Not procrastinating, taking a break from heavy moving

Here is the stuff that Annie built. I just put the shelf in the bathroom and maybe it'll get painted. It's got four shelves and when we get back we'll trim it out with tile and pretty wood. jordan finished painting all of the trim, etc. on the shed. The roof doesn't leak anymore (fingers crossed). The bikes are hung. Now I'm loading it full of stuff. Oh the joys are unending.

On the topic of the most amazing party ever!

We just got some pictures from Chris, well, got in that they're on the web now. This is where you should go to see the pictures. It was pretty much the best talent show I've ever seen. The first act was from 59 Taylor Hill Road. It had some ingenious elements: the olders playing the youngers and the youngers playing us for starters. The costume elements and the props were spot on. Also, the story clearly pulled from real life experience and was funny while not making fun. All in all, an excellent theatrical performance. Pictures include evidence of improv flute from Kiwi, drumming from Chad, fiddle playing and song leading from Efan, a song in Chinese from Christine, lovely banjo playing from Joe (not Chad), a magic trick from Devon, and of course the kicker for me, my favorite song in pretty much the entire universe from Eli, jordan and Emmy. Other performances included for the first time ever before a large audience, the mosquito, cricket and snail by Zoe and Rye, an awesome improv clog by Lea complete with orange slice eating, two dance moments from Raey, weird mouth music from Carol, piano playing downstairs by Claudia, a poem recitation from Tom, and of course Emmy steering us smoothly through the evening as our cruise director. All of us singing together with Efan leading the way was nothing short of amazing. I know full well that all of the performances don't come close to representing the amount of talent there was in the room, so don't be misled by this post. Alex didn't bring his accordion, Goodwin didn't show us how to tie any special knots, and no one gave extensive powerpoint presentations on their favorite thing to do when no one is looking. I am eternally grateful to jordan for having this genius idea and roping Raey, Hannah and Emmy in to make it happen. Golly. It was just amazing. If you weren't there, I can truly say that you were missed.

My Turn

Well, Annie's been doing so much posting that I figure it's my turn. We're entering the last week before we go and it's getting very real as I say goodbye to people I know I won't see again for a few years. I had breakfast with my librarian mentor this morning and analyzed my career history and future. Together we came up with a few things I can do to make sure I'm not sabotaging my career by going to Costa Rica for a while. I'm going to do some writing while I'm there, since so many of my favorite librarians are writers. Well, actually, how would I know about the other ones, since they don't write. And I guess I have some things to say about working in libraries and with teens. My mentor said she's never known me to not have something to say, which is funny because my excuse for not writing is that I have nothing to say. Guess I'll have to rethink that. :)

Our Costa Rica paperwork is finally done. That's a big relief, since that was the stuff we didn't have much control over. Now we just have to finish some projects and pack and clean the house. Yuck. I hate this part. And I have to decide how many teeshirts I'm allowed and how many pairs of socks and should I bring one hat or two? It's hard to know how wacky I can be with my clothing and still be seen as professional and helpful, so I'm going the more conservative route. No chicken hat.

We also finally have homes for kitties, which is a HUGE relief, since their plans kept falling through. Ingrid will go two houses down with a neighbor. Truck is going to someone we don't know, but found us through a friend. He'll have a 4 month old kitten to bat around. Toast seems a little anxious about all the chaos in the house and us being so busy, but she has no idea how awesome it will be to live in the jungle. Just call her jungle dog.

random links

First, I do appreciate woot.com. That should be said. I borrowed all of these links from their linking blog.

Second, I've been talking about how spas should have a treatment where fish exfoliate your skin because it feels so cool. You can have your free exfoliation many places along the sawmill river, or apparently you can go to a spa in DC for fishy exfoliation like you can get in Turkey and other Asian countries. http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/homestyle/07/21/fish.pedicure.ap/index.html and there's a picture at cuteoverload.com

Finally, I really liked these pictures and think some of my teacher friends might use them to inspire some arty learning, since I'm not sure how I'll use them next year in my math teaching capacity. http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/30-most-incredible-abstract-satellite-images-of-earth

I am the queen of the almost done project

In the last couple of days I've gotten the little bathroom toilet removed and most of the rest of the flooring put in. There's a 2 inch gap at the back of the room and frankly, that can wait until after we get back from Costa Rica now that I've taken out and re-set the toilet. That was an adventure. I've almost finished priming the entire shed. I only have to do the window frames to be totally primed which means today I'll do that and then hopefully get started on painting the entire thing. Oh, and I have to put the doorstops in and get the door to a place where it can open more easily. Hanging doors is way harder than you think it's going to be. Unless you think it's hard. I can only think of one project that I haven't even started. Everything else is almost done. And if that doesn't make you breathe easier, I don't know what will. Then again, I still am worried about not being able to "finish" everything before we leave...

Shed Photos

Here are those shed photos Annie was too lazy to post. Intentionally, but somewhat awkwardly, the shed is more attractive than our house.



Not much we can do about that, but we'll paint the house a pretty red color when we get back from Costa Rica.

The Shed, etc.

I've finally gotten almost all of the shed ready for the big move of everything into it. I still have to put the door stops on the door frame, and I've only just started priming everything, but it does feel quite good to be almost there. now if it could just cool off a bit so I can work for a longer period without practically dying, that'd be great. So there. I'll put up some pics once I get it painted, probably. Unless jor takes some and posts them herself.

cars, etc.

So, we looked at the IRS information about donating cars and it's less of a good thing than it used to be. That means that we're selling the 98 white subaru legacy wagon too. It's got stuff wrong with it visually that doesn't really affect how it runs, and about 150k miles on it. Only one owner - jordan - and she took pretty good care of it. Let us know if you know of anyone...

Otherwise, today we figured out that with our upcoming brief trip to Burlington, we weren't likely to have enough time to send our Coris back to Boston to get certified before we sent them to New York to get authenticated by the Costa Rican consulate and get them back before we left. And that meant an impromptu trip to Boston. The good news is that it only took 15 minutes once we got there and we were lucky with parking in the center of Boston because I could stay in the car in our illegal spot that wasn't double parking. And the other good news is that since we were feeling so good about how well it went that we wandered in the North End for a while and brought back cannoli for people (including me). I do love me some cannoli.

Random musing: when you're living in tight quarters, tenement style, do you have a good relationship with the persons on the other end of your clothesline? Do you share or do you each have one that connects on the other's domicile? This is what we wondered about while wandering. I do rather like wandering.

stuff to lend, stuff to sell

We have stuff that we need to get rid of, temporarily or permanently. Here is a big list. If you want to borrow, buy or just get some of this stuff, let us know.

Things to Lend Out While in CR

* sewing machine
* typewriter
* tools
* non-gas non-electric plain old push lawnmower
* gas grill
* guitars
* bouzouki
* cats
* plants
* queen sized bed & normal sized futon that folds couchlike
* various other furniture

We are selling my green 2001 Toyota Corolla with 70k miles. It gets mid 30s mpg all of the time and if you are a hypermiler, you can probably get more, but I'm still learning. Blue book is $5500 and it comes with a cd player and good speakers up front. I've also got snows for it, but I might just sell them.

The couch needs to go, but I'll probably just freecycle it. I've also got a broken electric bass (just the electric parts are broke) and a broken mandolin (not remembering what's up with it, but it might be neck related).

Video calls

I hope y'all are setting up your Skype accounts (skype.com) so we can call and video conference for free through our computers. It's super fun and a little weird like the Jetsons. If you have an account please email it to one of us so we can be in touch and see your face when we miss you.