How I spent my summer vacation

Last year's summer was, in a word, busy. Getting married in August will do that. You know, take over your summer. Locating the wedding in a city in which you are not currently a resident ratchets the busy-ness up a notch, adding in the element of frequent travel. But you already know that story.

I was hoping that this 2008 would contain a more restful summer vacation. Knitting. Exercising regularly. Scrapbooking the gazillions of photos from the wedding, honeymoon, and mini-vacation in British Columbia. Writing. Working with a few tutoring students here and there.

I hadn't really anticipated that J. and I would start the summer with a successful bid on our new home, we'd almost immediately have to start packing, I'd leave town for a day, I'd leave town for ten days (visiting three metropolitan areas), I'd come home to finish packing and finish writing two articles while slowly picking up more students and spending two days at a work training conference while finishing up packing, we'd move and immediately leave town for two weeks (and two countries) but not before my computer died, and we'd come home to finish watching the Olympics in English. Then we'd have a couple of weeks to catch up on our laundry (two weeks of lots of walking and profound quantities of sweat washed away) during the few hours of each day in which the water wasn't turned off for sewage line repairs. Plus, I got to change classrooms at work. And J. and I have worked to rescue my files from the computer that is no more and restore everything I need to the new computer on which I am tip-tapping at the moment (OK--the keyboard isn't brand-new, but the rest of it, right down to the new 19" flat screen monitor, is).

Phew!

Which is why we think that we'll be staying home for winter break. Or at least, on this continent.

And it continues! Today started with two loads of laundry (half-folded before Joshua was even awake), acquiring nutritious items at the local farmers' market, purchase of a new computer, purchase of red-meat (and discovery that we can now get Kosher elk loin alongside our Kosher bison), acquisition of new grill racks for our built-in brick BBQ at Home Depot (while carefully avoiding the plants and gardening supplies I want to ogle), and return of unneeded items (including inappropriately sized grills) at OSH. When we got home from this rather long set of errands, it was only 3-something in the afternoon! So, J. went to work cleaning our little backyard patio, prepping it for BBQing while taking breaks to put my new computer through it's various installs. I did a bit more unpacking of the house, marinated our meat, caught up on e-mail, and signed up for Facebook because one of my work projects requires it (really, it had nothing to do with the peer pressure). Within 4 hours, I had sixteen friends. That is, sixteen of my friends (so far) have already decided I am worthy of being their "friend"--which, I am told, may or may not have to do with whether we are friends in real life.

And I still can't find everything I moved. Although, I did manage to locate my bike helmet and gloves today while looking for my copy of Davkawriter to put on the new computer.

Is it any wonder that I named the new computer "Busy Bee"?