Projects and random thoughts

Lots of projects due within the next couple of weeks. I have to do a powerpoint presentation next Wednesday night on Total Anomalous Pulmonary Vein Return, then I have a powerpoint presentation to do on Toshiba's Ultrasound systems, followed by a paper on a case study about spermatic cord torsion and finally a presentation on uterine fibroids, which is the big one that I have to present in front of like 40 people. I have a nice 4 day weekend this week, and only one test to study for next week, so I plan to spend most of the next 4 days working on projects. If I can get the majority of it done this week then I can focus on class and studying without having to worry about getting the powerpoints done. Also, I worked today instead of tomorrow so I don't have to take a break from the school stuff.

Jay's on deadline again, so he hasn't been home for dinner lately. My month of menu thing has worked out pretty well I think, and we've only switched one day. It looks like this works pretty well, so I have to work on February soon.

Happy birthday to Kirk...talked to him tonight while he was being Daddy to Riley. He said he was tired :-).

Oh my gosh...I don't know if anyone has caught Celebrity Rehab, but cripes, what the hell has happened to Jeff Conaway??? The man is barely functioning. Very sad to see...and of course I cannot look away. Dr. Drew is moving ever closer to pure media-whoredom - he may have crossed over permanently with this show.

That's it, I've emptied my brain of immediate thoughts. Fun, wasn't it? :-)

We got a new printer and some other stuff

I know, that must not be exciting news to most of you, but it's awesomely good for us. Jason's laser printer (which predates me!) was on its last legs...bravely trying to crank out just one last sheet, even though it had big black stripes running down through the middle of the page, and you couldn't put more than one piece of paper in the paper feeder at a time, and sometimes it would just cough and sputter and print out a word or two before quitting. So with three of us in school now, we knew it was time. We actually got another HP laser printer, just black and white because as much as Jay wanted color I just couldn't justify a need for that. Color is awfully expensive to buy and to maintain because now you're worried about 5 or 6 cartridges instead of just 1, and each cartridge is like 80 bucks. Anyway, he's setting it up now and we'll all four be able to access from our laptops so that will be so cool.

The people next door have moved out. These were the ones that had random people from all different states staying there and blocking our driveway. I saw one of them drive away yesterday in a station wagon packed with stuff, and today there's a big FOR RENT sign in the front yard. I hope whoever stays there next doesn't park in front of our house - we hate that.

Megan spent the weekend at Port Orchard. I guess her new friend's mom lives there so they took the ferry over on Friday night and they're on the way back now. We're going to spend our gift card to Macaroni Grill today for an early dinner, then she wants to be picked up after we're done in West Seattle.

So that's the update, really not too much going on but little things...if I think of something better, I'll post later :-)

Being spoiled

The carpet guy was here tonight to make sure that the piece of carpet we ordered for Kelsey's room will be large enough. He said we had plenty...which is good news, because we can use the left over stuff to put in the laundry room since we lost the remnants we had in there. Also, he said not to worry about picking up any of the staples or stuff off the floor, he has a tool that will do that in three minutes. So he'll be here Thursday around 9 am and he said it would only take them about an hour and they'll be all done. So by Thursday night Kelsey will be back in her room and I know she's really looking forward to that.

But I'm really spoiled because Megan made dinner tonight. It was so nice all day to know I didn't have to cook when I got home :-). She made eggplant parmesan and spaghetti and salad and garlic rolls, and it was really good. No, I'm not just saying that...it really was good. I put her recipe in my recipe book for another time.

Later tonight we'll make elephant ears for desert. Meg is doing homework right now and Jay is doing the dishes and we have two tons of recycling to take out to the side yard since it's been about a month since we last got recycling taken care of. I plan on studying for about an hour or two tonight and then going to bed early because I'm really tired today. Must have been staying up until 1 to watch "The Wire" Season 5 premiere. I should probably not do that again on a school night.

Routine, interrupted

Well, we are finally back home in Seattle but not yet back to normal. We had a wonderful time visiting with all of our families even though the trip east is exhausting. It's so nice to be able to see everyone at Christmas though, and that makes it worth it.

Meg flew home on the 29th, and is settled into her new room and has started her classes. She's also spent some time job hunting, but no luck on that front yet. It's only been a few days though so we haven't lost hope yet. We're still waiting on her stuff to be delivered though and I don't know where we're going to put anything when it gets here.

Kelsey is not yet settled into her room because she still doesn't have carpet. I called Home Depot when we got home, and apparently they never got the measurements from the measure person who was here on the 18th, so they hadn't done our quote or ordered the carpet. I finally got the quote back from them yesterday, and it was over $400 more than what they had initially estimated it to be. So today we were back out carpet shopping :-(. We found a good sized remnant at Carpet Liquidators that will do nicely, and they can install on Thursday! Hooray, Kelsey will get to go back to her lair by the end of the week, and I can clean up the guest room.

Our dogsitter had a small accident while driving home from the airport in Kelsey's car, and it looks like that's going to cost us $500 to fix. Ouch, another hit to the bank account. Oh, and while we were gone she had to call a locksmith because the dead bolt on the front door broke, so that was $110.

Oh, and when we got home and I got in my car to go to school the next day, my battery was dead. We haven't tried to jump it yet (thank goodness we have the extra car these days), but I'm thinking we'll just need to replace it because that battery is about 9 years old and probably on its last legs anyway. Just another expense to add to the pile :-(

But it's not all gloomy! I took a page from Raellen's book and I worked out dinner menus for the whole month of January and wrote each day's dinner on the calendar. I went grocery shopping on Thursday to restock the fridge and I shopped with the next week in mind and so far it's worked great (okay it's only been three days, but it's still working).

Tomorrow we have to move all the furniture out of Kelsey's room and pull up all of the staples so we're going to take it easy the rest of the afternoon. Jason is going to play on the Xbox, I'm going to read, Kelsey's watching Heroes on DVD and Megan is out with friends. There's a fire going in the fireplace and the beagles are curled up next to me. Sometimes life is good :-)