Sunday, September 27, 2009

The book is in the mail

I know, you hear it all the time. But this time it's true! It's in the mail!
We rode the tandem to the post office yesterday, and also enjoyed a celebratory breakfast at Shaw's. Yum! Lucy loved her pancakes.

Here she is doing her impression of me over the last few months:

Friday, September 25, 2009

Printing in Process



I'm printing out my book. It's very exciting. It's going to take a while. So while I'm waiting, I thought I'd post this update. No, I will not post the text of my book, as my publisher might get a bit upset. But up there above you can see a word cloud here based on it. You too can make a Word Cloud from anything you're writing.

I'm relieved to be getting this off my plate, although my plate is still pretty full. Now that this is done, I need to catch up on all the grading I've been putting off. I'm afraid my freshmen writing portfolios have been neglected and are now perhaps breeding with my American Lit students' papers. Who knows what horror they will create.

But thanks for your support, dear readers. We'll keep you posted on late-breaking news.

This just in: Carter got a haircut today! Film at 11.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Hood project, kitchen discovery, boiler check

Today's post is a catch-up on a few little issues of note.

Hood Project:
First, as you can see from the Flickr pictures, we got the hood up. Actually, our good friend Matt got the hood up. Thanks, Matt! So it's functioning as an air re-circulator and light. We're working on getting a guy here to hook up the duct-work, which is what those pictures are about.

Kitchen Discovery:
While Matt was working on getting the hood up, he discovered that a large part of the wall by the hood/stove area appeared to be magnetic. Weird. While digging around in that wall, looking to find a way to thread the new electrical connectors for the fan/light through the wall, he discovered some strange red metal:

Upon further investigation, it appears that this wall was at some point TILED IN RED TIN! Amazing! Here's a tile Matt managed to pull out of there:


Also, keep in mind that the floor (see earlier post) was a green marble-ized paint job. Whoa!

Boiler Check:
Yesterday, our plumber came and did the check-up and clean-out of our gas boiler (it had been two years since we'd had it done). He also replaced the glass that lets us see the water level. Nice. So we're all ready when we have to put on the heat.

That's about it from 83 Durant. We're putting away the air conditioners, getting out the cardigans. I love fall in New England. My book deadline looms, but hopefully we'll do some fun things and have some blog posts next month.