A Year Later...

It's been one year since I've posted anything to my blog. During that time, I have religiously read all the others that I follow, getting slightly frustrated when there's no new ones to read, but until now I just haven't bothered to post anything to my own... :)

My last post was when Nik was in Taiwan for 6 weeks. Now he's been in Beijing for 2 weeks. Perhaps I only post when he's gone.

We recently got an alarm system which has helped me be more comfortable in the house at night by myself. Once again I got to mow/rake all the leaves at the front of the house by myself.

Here's my very brief description of what happened in the past year (I'll make a few of these individual posts later, maybe)

• Nik returned to Taiwan for 4 more weeks in January





• We took a trip to Oahu in March (I got the flu on the way there...fun fun :))





• Finished up my fourth year of teaching





• Spent 4 weeks at Walla Walla doing summer school for my masters





• My sister had a baby!





• Started school with only five students this year





• Went to Walla Walla to see the baby





• Continued school





• Went to Walla Walla to see the baby





• Continued school





• Saw Kristi and the baby at the SeaTac Airport

Do you notice a trend?

Not sure what I'm doing for Thanksgiving yet. Nik's boss wants to bring him home the 22nd, but he rarely ever is able to leave on time, so I'm just waiting to see where he's going to be.

Wishing everyone a happy Sabbath!

Life of a Temporarily Single Woman

Nik is working in Taiwan for 6 weeks or so (by that I mean it was supposed to be 4, then more, then more :)) He's working 100+ hours a week (121 last week), and is getting very frustrated. However, we're almost 3 weeks down, 3 1/2 to go. Here's some things I'm learning at home by myself.

1) Mowing the lawn when 12 inches long and wet means you have to dump the bag 20 times and keep pulling out wet grass from underneath the lawn mower.

2) Taking the lawn bin outside while wearing a headlamp helps because you can see the spiders before touching them, and get the off with a long-handled broom.

3) Lasagna does not keep well in the refrigerator for more than a month (Nik cleans out the fridge more than me).

4) The creaking in the house does not mean someone is trying to break in.

5) Locking my bedroom door gives me a sense of security...whether it would stop people from getting in, I don't know. I also leave the garage and hallway lights on all the time, which helps as well :)

6) You don't really have more time when your husband is gone, especially when he never stops you from doing anything anyways...

7) Spending the weekends with Nik's parents helps the time go faster and makes it so I don't have to cook as much food.

8) You shouldn't throw away the only bill that comes in a paper version.


I've been keeping myself so busy that I've gotten behind this week. Took me 3 days to clean my house and catch up on grading, but I'm finally there. Helping Nik's mom with her school's Fall Festival on Saturday. We'll be making funnel cakes...yum :)

The New Refrigerator that Doesn't Work

Our dishwasher has been on the fritz, so we decided to buy some new appliances (by fritz, I mean it gets stuck on dry and melts plastic things). Sunday we bought a new Frididaire side-by-side counter depth refrigerator and a new dishwasher. We'd like to replace all our appliances, so we thought we'd get a start on it now.

The appliances were delivered Tuesday and were very pretty. After raising one of our cabinets up an inch so the fridge would fit (oops), they looked lovely and worked great...until Thursday. I was filling up my cup of water and noticed that the bottom of the fridge was leaking. I stuck a towel under it and waited til Nik got home to fix it. We had moved it so much raising the cabinet that I thought something just came unplugged.

Nik couldn't find anything, but the water didn't work when I tried to fill my cup again. Unplugged it, plugged it back in, and the display just kept beeping and flashing, but it was not cooling. We repeated this a few times before giving up and just unplugging it for the night.

This morning I called someone to come fix it, but he wasn't able to make it out today. So then I called a very nice guy at Lowe's who's sending someone out tomorrow to look at it. Who knows if it's fixable. They don't have any more in stock so they'd have to get us one from another store. Nik and I are secretly hoping they have to upgrade us to the next model that has stainless steel on the sides too, but doubt we'll be that lucky.

Hopefully we can get it fixed soon. All the ice is melting and keeps dripping on our nice laminate floor that I've tried hard all day to keep dry. In addition, we'd like to have some cold food. Is that too much to ask from a 3 day-old fridge??

It's very pretty though.

p.s. the good news is that after we bought it, it went on sale, so we'll get $200 or so back from Lowe's this weekend.

Cleansing

This is my summer goal...I have learned that I get very lazy unless I am quite organized and make lots of lists. Therefore, to allow myself to have a wonderful school year, I am organizing, cleansing, and list making.

Last week I cleaned the office. Since moving into our house a year ago, our office has never been completely clean. We've cleaned the floor, but not the closet and there's always been a pile somewhere. This time I cleaned it all. I even put up a beautiful calendar (given to me by my sister) and some corkboard squares. It's amazing how much more I want to work on my computer upstairs just because I want to be in my clean space. (not great pictures, but oh well...)

Last week I also started deleting e-mails. I have gone from 136 pages of e-mails to like 43. That is definitely cleansing. I read e-mails from back in 2005-2006. I will still hopefully whittle this number down to the 20s or so, but still...not too shabby. In the e-mails I ran into a million from my dad who had scanned and e-mailed me a ton of pictures from when I was little to be used in a wedding slideshow. Here are some of my favs:

Runaway Bride

Today I watched The Runaway Bride. My sister owns it and we used to watch it all the time, but now I realized I haven't watched it in years...so that's what I did today instead of homework.

This is such a quotable movie, and I love so many of the lines. This is one of my favorites...who doesn't want a guy like this??

(said in a Richard Gere voice...)

"You want a man, who will lead you down the beach, with his hand over your eyes just so you can discover the feel of your sand beneath your feet. You want a guy, who will wake you up at dawn, just bursting to talk to you, he can't wait another minute just to find out what you'll say. Am I right? "

Walla Walla

I'm in Walla Walla for two weeks taking some classes. Though I've been here to visit my sister, it's been two years since I've been on campus. It's been a little weird, but I always liked this place anyway and have already seen some people I know. I'm staying with my sister, her husband, and two dogs. Nik is home by himself and loving it. What did his facebook page say after I left? "Quiet house...two weeks of single livin!" Can you tell he's terribly clingy? :)

We went to Rooks Park on Saturday with some friends for a picnic. I tried slacklining for the first time and was terrible...wish I had some pictures.

I've invited some of my old girls I used to coach to go to the gym with me for a couple times this week. I'm very excited because I've been missing coaching terribly. Teaching is great, but after 9 years of coaching and 13 years in the gym, I miss the atmosphere.

Next weekend, Nik is coming down here and the four of us are going backpacking somewhere. We'll finally get a chance to use the tent that we bought a year and a half ago. Yay!

Rug Dilemmas

Nik and I just inherited a brand new area rug, which I am very excited about. Nik's parents bought it for us this week. They were going to give us one that they already had, but found that it looked nice in their new house. Since they had promised us that one, they decided to buy us one that would fit well in our space. I'm very excited and love it.

Here the dilemma...our family room is very oddly designed. Almost right across from our fireplace is the door going out to our garage. This means we can't put the couch across from the fireplace, but has to be a few feet off to the side. So, I can't figure out where to put the carpet. Does it line up with the fireplace or the couch? I've taken a few pictures to show you what I'm talking about. Our room is very small, so it's hard to get a complete picture cause I can't stand back far enough.

Please, tell me what you think I should do with the space.

p.s. Eventually we will get a new, smaller chair.