Reunion Alternative

I'm still bummed that we couldn't make it to the reunion this year, but there were just too many things going on today, and, besides, Dave Ramsey wouldn't like it if we went and spent money we didn't have. So instead we focused on getting some things done around the house.

Adam is taking some Advanced Placement classes in the fall; as a consequence, he has a number of summer academic projects to work on. Books to read, essays to write, statistics to compute. Today's assignment was to gather data for a statistical analysis of pulse rates, so he polled the family and constructed a mathematical table of results.

Here, he is polling the girls downstairs while they play on the computer (after completing their normal chores, of course!). Deborah reports her pulse rate in beats per minute, and he writes it down on his little clipboard.

My main goal for today was to get some shelving put up in the office/library so we could unload some book boxes which have been sitting around downstairs - mostly my college and post-college technical books on programming and electronics. Plus some photo albums. After our last bit of fun with the sump pump, it would be foolish to leave them lying around on the floor, just in case. We already had the standards; last night we went out and got the brackets and the shelf board. Got three ten-foot by ten-inch by 3/4-inch boards and cut them into five-foot lenghts, then put 'em on the brackets and started unloading the boxes.Nothing better than a well-stocked home library!

Next up was replacing the cracked face board on the bottom of the futon. It's been cracked for a long time, probably due to the impact of small children as they leap onto it. Finally got the replacement board last night (when we were bracket-shopping), then cut it to size and shaped it and installed it.It looks a bit lighter than the rest of the wood, but that's because the futon has been around for fifteen years or so.

Then it was time to sit at my little workdesk and attempt to resolve the problem with my little spinning laser-level, which failed the last time we tried to use it. I took it all apart and tested everything separately - and they all worked. So put them all together again, and they failed again. Got really frustrated with that.At some point, it got boring, just sitting there banging my head over it, trying to figure it out, so I abandoned that task and went on to other ones.

The other tasks (for which I don't have any pictures) were (1) setting up the walls in the downstairs bathroom; and (2) putting foam insulation in the walls at the bottom of the stairs, which have been staring me in the face for the last couple of years like old, dried-up bones. Now they are at least covered with pink.