phew.

This is one of those weeks that you look back and can't quite believe you survived.  Thank goodness a girlfriend invited us over for a Mexican themed dinner and I suspect there will be margaritas.  I never drink more than one, but as you all know, that's enough to get me giggly and that is definitely what I need tonight.

Anyway.  Before that happens, I will tell you about my week.  Monday was the second week of my only class this semester.  I think I told you I decided to drop back to part time this semester, so I have one class and 3 credits of thesis hours.  The class is called "Whales and Shaggy Dogs," and we will be reading many (long) novels that comment in an ironic way on the fact that they are novels-- meta-novels, I think you could call them, although he hasn't used that term.  I like the professor and the reading list is interesting, but a bit of a challenge.  LOTS of pages to read this semester.  First up, Tristram Shandy, which I read 25 years ago but remember almost nothing about.

Every other Thursday I'll drive down to talk to my thesis advisor.  I'm feeling OK about it at the moment.  My goal is to get my research done the first half of the semester, and have the first draft of the written part of my thesis done by the end of the semester (which only has to be about 35-40 pages since it's a two-part project, part of it will be an addition to our website).  It seems do-able to me, and it's also something that interests me, so it looks like it could be a great semester, and doesn't feel nearly as overwhelming as last semester.

OK, I got out of order there.  Back to Tuesday, when the nice man from Lowe's came and installed the dishwasher.  Still no washer and dryer (I'm headed to the laundromat later today), but at least we have a dishwasher now.  The construction guys are still here, so we can't really put anything in the garage or the furnace room (which has about 5x8 ft of storage).  So the unpacking is going depressingly slowly.  I'm about half done with the kitchen.  I wish you could all come over for dinner because there is WAY too much food in this house.  We had a pantry at the other house, and none here, so we will have to eat many meals before everything will fit.

I think once the backlog of food is gone I won't miss having a pantry.  When I was at the grocery store, I could never remember what was in there, so I just kept buying more stuff, and the stuff in the pantry just backed up.  It doesn't work for someone as absent-minded as me.  I think we will do better to have just a few staples on hand.

Dean left on the 6 a.m. flight this morning for a week of deep sea fishing with his dad.  So this week it will be MadMax and me plus all the boxes that need to be unpacked and the construction crew.  But they are done with all the major stuff, so it should go just fine.  They have to finish drywalling in the garage, and the tile guy is (finally) coming on Monday to do our shower, and then the plumber will come. 

I just looked back and it appears I've never told you the saga of our shower.  Not that it's very interesting.  Originally we were going to have a full-tile shower with a glass block outer wall.  It was my favorite thing we were doing and it was going to be gorgeous (and expensive.  Dean was not all that excited about it.)  But then the structural engineer came out and said that the house would fall in if we did that.  So we had to scale back (literally) to just tile on the walls, fiberglass pan, and regular glass door.  Damn.  The upside is that it is way less expensive now, which is good because the engineer also told us about all the beams and joists we needed so that the house wouldn't blow over in a windstorm.  It's entirely possible that we should have just razed the house and started over, but too late now. 

First half of this was written last night, finished this morning.  I know I promised you interesting posts.  I think they are still coming but this house thing is so unsettling that it's hard to get anything done, even just the basics.