This has been a long week but not a bad one. Due to very last-minute circumstances, I ended up covering some classes at a satellite campus on Monday and Wednesday. My own classes are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Gearing up for my own classes, trying to write syllabi and prepare for someone else, and a long commute added a bit more to the mix. I'm finally catching my breath today when I have no classes, getting to unanswered emails, setting up online course management software, and doing other administrative work. I will need to build research and publishing into my schedule soon too, eek.
A few things have progressed on the house. We put up blinds in my office, the dining room, and living room. Two new houses are going up right by ours so the blinds were essential with lots of workers coming and going. The house next to us is really, really close. You can catch all the exciting construction action here if you're into that sort of thing (and I know at least Austin's dad is!).
We also have some towel bars and toilet paper holders up, yay. I believe mirrors and the kitchen backsplash are in the works. I haven't had a chance to take any photos due to the busy-ness of our week (which also results in a less-than-photo-ready home environment) so here is a picture of the nice zinnias growing in our front yard.
On thing we did find time for was organizing our book group. Five of us met at the bookstore and scooped up some fantastic titles. It was incredibly difficult to choose the first book and I am hoping we can get to some of the others at a later date. We ended up selecting one of my all-time favorite books,
The Shadow of the Wind. It is set in Barcelona and I read it in its original Spanish while we were honeymooning in Spain. It turned out another member of the group and I share Barcelona as our spiritual hometown. We thought some compelling and readable fiction would be a good starting point as we all get to know each other. It's also a great excuse to have tapas and sangria at the first meeting which Austin and I are looking forward to hosting.
P.S. Feel free to comment if you've read any of the above titles.
5 comments:
Wow, what a week. No wonder you are overwhelmed. Take your vitamins! And what a great stack of books. Some great titles in there. If it were me, I'd skip Omnivore's Dilemma. Unless you like to be depressed about the world going to hell in a hand-basket and you unable to do a thing about it. With, of course, Monsanto being at the root of all evil, which we already knew.
The Old L and yours truly are ensconced in the deep up north right now. He is harumphing around making various mysterious repairs to the giant tarp. I am working from the Ely office.
I'll be curious to see what you think of "Water for Elephants." It's one of the only books I can think of where I enjoyed the movie more than the book, but neither were completely amazing.
I might to have some of the others to my Goodreads list. :)
Who planted the zinnias? Obviously, you haven't been there long enough to have planted them and produced big ol' blooms like that.
I read The Omnivore's Dilemma! I liked it.
@Liz, the zinnias were planted by the builder along with a few other shrubs.
@Allison, I'll let you know if we get to "Water for Elephants."
@Karen "Omnivore's Dilemma" is making me corn-phobic!
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