Our water passed its tests with flying colors. I’d like to take it out for ice cream. Good job, water.
Archives for August 2017
Anniversaried!
25 years, no joke!
Lloyd was worried that he would come off like a jerk because he posted about the eclipse instead of our silver anniversary, but I assured him that there were several other reasons people think he’s a jerk. Eclipses are even more rare than silver anniversaries, so he went the right route.
I took our wedding photo to school and asked the children to draw us. They made some pretty cute pictures. They had lots and lots of other comments. Some were hurtful.
When we got home, Beth stopped by with a spectacular present, wrapped in a map of Germany, where we bought our wedding rings!
It was complete with a sappy, schmaltzy, shiny card. It was perfect!
She combed through our local thrift store to find ALL the 25th anniversary goodies, and even found a glass bell from 1992! It was funny and fabulous.
Happy Anniversary, Lloyd. Best 23 years of my life.
Eclipsed
We had a good eclipse day at Lincoln Lutheran. I had my tech crew kids make some really big pin-hole cameras (or, as we like to call them, camerae obscura) over the past few days. We had some boxes that were 2 x 2 x 6, so you could fit two people’s heads into them (or one person with two heads, I guess). About 50 people got to use the boxes.
We didn’t spend a lot of time outside. Maybe 40 minutes total. It was a little cloudy, but you could still see what was going on, and totality was awesome. Lots of parents showed up. We had blankets, folding chairs, an outdoor speaker system with music, and at least one welding helmet.
We got the welding helmet about 22 years ago at a surplus store in Maryland. It has seen use on at least two occasions for Hat Day at school, but other than that, it has been quietly biding its time in the basement, storing up spiders and waiting for an eclipse. Well done, welding helmet. Well done.
Oh, and I changed our bell tone for between classes to 15 seconds of Total Eclipse of the Heart. I don’t know if any of the students knew the song, but all of the teachers groaned.
Here comes the Apocalypse!!
Well, it’s been a heckuva Sunday. Let’s begin at 1 a.m.
1 a.m. My phone rang. 800 number. I ignored it. Lots of lightning and thunder outside. Ahhh….
6 a.m. I heard Lloyd typing on his sermon downstairs. I decided to call that 800 number back and mess with them. “Who are you? Why did you call me?” Well, it turned out to be the alarm company and they wanted to tell me that there was a power blip with the CDC elevator during the storm. “Um, thank you. Sorry I was mad….”
I got up and went to the CDC to check the elevator, reset the tripped outlets, and it turns out we also lost internet and three computers crashed. Awesome.
10:45 After services at Ridgewood, Lloyd took out the computer guts and took them to Lincoln. I dorked around at the CDC and then went home.
2:30 Facebook is abuzz with people who have low water pressure. I deal with it by falling asleep.
4-ish Deborah calls to ask if I have water. I do not. Nobody does. A water main has burst. Probably under the flooded streets from last night’s storm. Facebook continues to buzz.
7:30-ish Lloyd returns with bottles of water and fresh computer guts. We go to the center where there is a young girl on the porch who is writing a note because she just knocked our mailbox over. “Forget about it,” we say. “Minor detail today.”
Computers reassembled, but software is missing. Awesome. While we stood around thinking about it, the porta-potties drove by for the returning college students and the hundreds of people coming to Concordia for the eclipse party ……
This is going to be awesome.
Gearing up for the professionals
Gah. This again.
The summer sun is SO BRIGHT in the kitchen in the mornings. Our cook is a lovely woman and has never complained, but I just feel so bad for her. The light comes in the top windows and blinds her and then it comes through the bottom windows and bounces off the floor.
So I put up some ugly foam core boards in the very top windows and went to Lincoln to talk to some professionals. They’re going to work up some estimates for real solutions and we’ll see how this goes.
Help me out, Hannah.