Here’s a hint (photo courtesy of Adina Katz):

Yes, the kitchen is still red. We are keeping occupied with other home projects right now so re-painting the kitchen is low on our priority list.

What else have we been up to?

Matt has been a taiko practicing/performing whirlwind. I’m teaching again and let’s just say that I was completely spoiled in the Fall. This new group is a challenge. To put it bluntly, I have never dumbed down writing assignments so drastically, defended the reasons for annotating so passionately, and threatened failure for never coming to class so vehemently to any other class. Oh well, only about a month left with these young “adult” terrors.

More later.

Matt and I work. We sleep. We paint. We sand. We eat. We watch glee sometimes. Other times we actually talk to each other when we can form complete sentences.

This is our living room that took us about 2 months to complete:

Some of you might remember the bright yellow walls and puke colored carpets. That’s all gone and we love the change. Our dining room is the same color and the awful chair rail got torn off and patched (Thanks, Dad!). I picked the color and Matt painted.

I’ll post the other rooms later.

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Grading papers: 10 hours
House project (right now we are in the demo and patching stage): 3 hours
Sleep (or attempting sleep): 8 hours (I am just counting Sat. night)
Laundry: 2 hours
Eating: 1 hour
Gardening: 2 hours
Walking with my mom: 3 hours
Talking with Matt: 2 hours
Cooking: 2 hours
Watching Househusbands of Hollywood on hulu: 44 minutes
Getting supplies at the paint store: 1 hour
Internet: 2 hours
Thinking, showering, escaping bees, talking to neighbors, etc.: 1 hour

Is that 38 hours?

Now, I won’t have to spend 10 hours grading papers every weekend, but there will be three more, and they will keep getting longer. Obviously, I should cut out Househusbands (Grant looks just like Christian Bale, though!) and my internet usage. What else? I did watch the Emmy’s, but I was grading papers at the same time so I didn’t count that. Ideas, please?

I did hand the papers back today (very strategically at the end of class) and no one cried (in my presence). A couple walked out in a huff after they read their comments. Now I have individual conferences all week and I am pretty worried about those. I have a panic button in my office, just in case!

Our most recent project has resulted in an entire new list of Things To Do! Our floors are 90% finished, an d that 90% is great. The other 10% is a long story, and their quality remains to be seen. Because our floors look so nice, (and because most of our stuff is already boxed up in other rooms) we are taking this opportunity to fix some of the sloppy paint, chair rails, and other work done in the main areas.

So, long story short, please don’t expect any parties or invitations to come over any time soon! Unless you want to come help.

Floors before:

Floors (almost) after:

Matt’s dream come true:

And now we want to fix the chair rail that has been very inventively attached into the walls:

So, here we go:

As I just said, I am teaching Analytical Reading and Writing, which is a required course for all students at Temple. They must pass the class to graduate. So someone, presumably me, needs to teach them how to read and write well enough to do so. No pressure. They are a good-natured group and so far fairly well-behaved. I tried to be both strict and approachable today. I hope I can toe that line for 15 weeks.

Matt and I are preparing for a huge home improvement: getting most of our floors refinished. We probably would not have gone through with it right now if we had known how much work it would be to prepare, but we’re in the throws now. No turning back.

Our garden(s) are feeling a bit more neglected these days, but they are hanging in there and still giving us some veggies and herbs. We’ve been eating (and I’ve been freezing) a lot of tomatoes. I get really excited when we have freezer-food stocked up for when we don’t feel like cooking.

We’ve been having some fun, too. Matt went to the North American Taiko Conference in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and I joined him for a long weekend. L.A. was fascinating and we’re not sure we’d choose to go back any time soon, but it was a good time and a well-needed break.

(We have since found Phileoyogurt on South Street, which is exactly the same as Yogurtland in L.A. We were having serious FroYo withdrawals for a while.)

Let’s see, also since my last post (Mel’s shower) we celebrated three birthdays: Matt turned 30 (!!) and my parents turned, well, they had birthdays, too. They are all still young at heart. Andrew and Chad hosted a fun party.

I think that just about covers everything for now! I can’t wait to post pictures of the new floors!

Oh, and our college neighbors have been behaving themselves very well. No wild parties, but the semesters have just begun so we’ll see!