Last day of summer "vacation"

Tomorrow starts a week of pre-school teacher workdays, so today I am trying to finish as much of the kitchen ceiling as possible.  The hardest pieces of cutting and fitting are done, i.e. the pieces that go around the ceiling lights.  It looks pretty good even though we have some caulking to dissolve from a mistake I made.  I have 4 more tiles ready to go up when my son is ready to help me.  Then over half of the ceiling is finished.  I'd like to get 4 more tiles up before the day is through, but that's iffy.

I have learned one thing that I would change if I were to do this again.  I would not select tiles that require 2 people to glue up.  The tiles would be either 1 foot by 1 foot or 2 feet by 2 feet, not 2 feet by 4 feet.  Since my husband's not been well, I need my son's help, and he, like my husband, does not share my daily circadian cycle.

Thanks, Dad.

This is a story of something I learned from my father that still has value.

When I was in college, my husband John and I owned a Hoover apartment washing machine and dryer set.  The washer had 2 main parts:  the washing section with the side rotator for agitating the clothes, and the smaller bucket that rinsed and spun out the water from the clothes.  The user did have to stand by the washer while it worked, but it was better than taking the clothes to a laundry since we had no car for 2 years.

At some point, the turn-switch for the washing side no longer moved.  We had to time the wash cycle which was a hassle.  I determined that since it was a mechanical tool, there had to be a logical fix to it.  Hence, I took the washer apart by removing its back and looked at everything there was to see.  I could not see anything that looked broken, so I called my father and explained my dilemma.  He said that it sounded like the timer needed oil and told me how to do that.  In the meantime, John who had been at work returned home to see the washer in pieces.  They were big pieces, but they were still pieces to his eye.  He was shocked and asked me what happened.  I told him that I was determined to fix the problem and put it back together.  He went to take a nap with serious doubts about my ability to put together that which I tore apart.  Following my dad's instructions, I oiled the timer, tested it to discover that it now worked, and returned the washer to its complete state, i.e. I undid what I had done.  John awoke to no more problem and was very pleased and relieved.

It has been more than 30 years since that experience and 14 years since my father's death.  We now have a portable dishwasher that the turn-switch suddenly quit working on the drying cycle.  John woke me up at night to lament that it was broken, and in the back of my mind was the thought that the timer might need oiled.  He said that he turned it off and would try it out with a new load just in case it was a glitch in the system.  Okay.  Back to sleep.  When he tried it out 2 days later (we rarely have a full load in 1 day), it turned on but did not move.  With the memory of my father's help so many years ago, I pulled out the turn-switch knob and oiled the timer.  It has worked well since then.  Thanks, Dad.

Summer preparations

It's summer, so I am preparing for the next school year.  Considering that this is one of my 2 unpaid months of the year, that is unpaid labor, but no one cares about that.  It's my choice to spend extra UNPAID time now so that I can concentrate on teaching and other tasks "as assigned" starting on August 15.  So what have I done so far?

When we were camping, I planned out the first quarter of my Honors Computer Science class.  When I spent 4 hours in a government office (NCDMV) yesterday, I planned out the entire year of Intro Computer Science.  Before we went camping I also worked on my Algebra 3/Trig class, but it will be an ongoing planning situation because of day-to-day challenges of the different students.  At least this year I have "only" 4 subjects to teach.

I am currently fixing up the homework pages for our new teachers.  That'll teach me to volunteer, except that I really like helping my fellow faculty members with their computer work.

I have found one thing different this summer, though.  For the past 2 summers, I was concentrating on doing things for my mother and seeing her at least twice a week, so I did not do as much sewing and working on the house as I had before.  Now that she is gone, I am having trouble getting back to the sewing.  The work that the house needs is another ongoing situation in my life, so that hasn't changed all that much. 

The tiles for the "tin" ceiling are supposed to be ready by tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to doing that work in this heat.  Maybe I'll just move our new air conditioner to the kitchen for the duration of putting up the new ceiling.  I just keep on reminding myself that I will be so happy when it's done.  I'm making that my mantra for the time being.

Real Life Happens

Real life is not scripted.  It follows no pattern set in stone.  It just happens.

I had planned to spend this morning doing some sewing.  I was in my sewing room bagging up my wastebasket trash when I heard a crash from downstairs.  I assumed it was the spring rod for the shower curtain, so I wasn't too worried when I went downstairs to check.  Only it wasn't the rod.  The downstairs bathroom had no problems.  I knew the crash had been below me, so I went on to the next room.  There was a new big hole in the ceiling above the television and plaster all over the floor, rug, furniture, television, and assorted devices.

We started cleaning up everything, then drove to the local home center and bought a wet-dry shop vac because our vacuum couldn't handle that mess.  Spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon cleaning up that mess.  I guess that next summer we'll be putting in a new ceiling again.  What really irks me is that we haven't finished putting in the new kitchen ceiling.

Tomorrow I go back to sewing.  Unless real life happens again.

Working on the house

I've been preparing my kitchen in anticipation of scraping the ceiling.  We plan on putting up a tin or fake-tin ceiling this summer.  I will finish taking down everything on the cabinet tops today, my husband will wash clothes this evening, and I will cover the lower cabinets and appliances tomorrow and start scraping.  My father would probably tell me that I take too long to do these things.  I think he would be right, but I like to do quiet things in the heat and humidity of the afternoon.

My younger brother, however, seems to think I do a lot in the summer.  He skyped me yesterday and made a comment about how busy I am when school's out (I don't remember his exact words, just the gist of what I got from them.).  I do know that I hate doing the work, but I love the results, so I do it.  Plus summer can be a waste if one does nothing useful.  Besides, it's either do physical labor or exercise by walking down the greenway.  Right now the physical labor is winning.  Going up and down the step ladder for a couple of hours each day is great for my leg muscles.

I'm also trying to finish my Moodle site for the first quarter of a math class.  I know that I will either have a study hall or a different math subject this fall, and I want to be ready in case the latter happens.  I also need to do the same for both my Intro CS class and my Honors CS class.  One thing I learned this past year is that I need to insure that my CS students cannot find the answers to their problems on the internet.  For some reason, they don't think they're cheating when they do that.

Updating

I found myself with a cooler day and a desire to update my profile. It started out with explaining where I got the name "the Yoda of Math" and went on from there. I will admit that it was a little cheap of me to use a picture of me walking through the woods from the back, but I was tired of not having a picture and I liked that one.

I am currently involved in one problem with not having air conditioning. Not only is it hard to deal with the 95+ degrees Fahrenheit, but mosquitoes will find a way into the house. My husband doesn't care because they do not like him, but they see me and think "dinner time, ladies!". We really don't have that much space for them to get in, but it is enough to add irritation to my life. I guess one must always have something about which to complain. Now, back to my sewing!

Successful Thursday, lazy Friday

In the afternoon on Thursday, I replaced the screen on the fire escape screen door. Getting the trim off was not as hard as my husband expected; the fact that I did it and not he contributed to his opinion, of course. As I expected there was no spline keeping the original screen in place, so I felt confident that I didn't need any either. It took a while to get all the nails and brads out. Then my husband helped me start to put up the new screening, minus spline as explained above. While I was standing on the ladder, I found that I could easily touch the overhang on the eaves, so I measured it: the overhang on our eaves is just a tad over 25 inches. No wonder gutter people shudder when they look at our house.

Back to the screening ... I used a marking roller from my sewing supplies to push the screening into what grooves there were. There were not grooves across all of the wood. Did I mention that this was an old wooden screen door? I stapled gunned the heck out of it. That screen ain't going nowhere anytime soon. I trimmed the excess with one of my new utility knives. Lastly, for me, I replaced the trim; I think my dad would probably have gotten new trim, but I'm not that perfect in my home rehabbing skills ... yet. My husband painted over the trim after dark. I think everyone should paint after dark, it's so hard to tell how the new paint makes you realize that the whole door needs painted. It is nice, though. My sewing room is getting a friendlier, homier feeling as I continue to fix it up, and this just adds to the charm. Now, I need to work on making the fire escape landing look and feel like a balcony. Hmm. Next summer.

I did finish making my jumper that night by sewing the hem. One new jumper for the fall. Next to make is a tailored shirt. I can never have too many of them.

Home ... Work

I watch a lot of home repair/decorate/build/buy/etc. shows summer and winter. They help me get energized on fixing up our 93 year old historic home. (No, I refuse to get on the National List of Historic Places or whatever because I would not be allowed to do some of the things that I want to do, but I live in a historic district in one of the homes that makes it historic.) One thing that I've really gotten from those shows is the fact that so many home owners plan to do some repair work when they get around to it, but they don't get around to it until they are ready to sell. I do not want to be one of those people! Anyhow, today I will be working on the screen door to the fire escape. Did I mention that our house had been split into 2 apartments when we bought it and that we made it back into a single family dwelling?

One really nice perk of teaching is the ability to do stuff in the summer and save money plus add to one's repertoire of skills by working on one's home oneself. My husband thinks that some things cannot be done by us because he cannot do it, but he is the one who was sure that I broke our washing machine 30+ years ago when he came home to find I had taken it apart to fix it. I fixed it and put it back together before he finished his nap that day. I have spent the past year learning how to replace the screening, and it looks rather simple in concept. Of course, reality will be a different thing, but I am up to the challenge. Besides, I really don't like the "quick and dirty" repair he did years ago on it. I can do this.