"Oh, it's a long, long time
From May to December,
But the days grow short
When you reach September..."
-- Mitchell Parrish,
words to "September Song"
I didn't mean for this to become a hobby!
Stupid woodshed, that is. As I was saying, we found termites so I made a foundation
of concrete blocks, and then used treated wood, and on and on. When the roofers
got here, we just had them put the roofing on the plywood I had up there, and I
have a sneaking hunch they did it ten times better than I could have. Also kept me
out of that horrid black goo they coat everything with.
The roof of the house was actually rotten underneath in spots; in particular where
there was a bulge in the corner of the living room ceiling. Well, they were taking the
ruined plywood off when one of the guys stuck his foot clear through the ceiling.
Glad he didn't fall all the way down because it was about 14 more feet down to the
first stair he would have hit! I came home for lunch and noticed plaster (drywall)
dust and paint chips all over downstairs. And then upstairs. And then on the
circular stairs.
Oh, my, what a mess! Well, about four vacuumings later it was OK. They replaced the
sheathing over quite an area and had to re-frame some of the infrastructure. Didn't
charge us extra, inasmuch as we were already paying a nominal egg. (An ahm and a leg,
get it?) Didn't see hide nor hair of the cats while there were big feet clomping
around on the roof. I didn't count how many light bulbs burned out during that week,
but I replaced a lot of them. Took four roofers a whole week, what with all of the
vents and valleys and stuff, and removing the non-functional solar collector.
Makes me feel better
about that house in Lynchburg where I took a whole month to remove the old roof and
put on a new one.
Got the guest bathroom finished, the one where the wall was a total wreck after the
other construction. Kathy did this stripey thing with semi & high gloss of the
same color. We removed the cupboards, rewired the lights, etc. Doesn't look like
1970 anymore. Mirrors and sconce lights are all the rage now; people are ripping
out the chrome light bars that were actually rather nice, so we jumped forward
about 3 style changes to what's popular now.
And on campus...
We're off to a good start. Budget is tight as usual. They've started "removing
vegetation" (playing with bulldozers and knocking down trees) across the
way where the new Events Center will be. Construction hasn't actually started;
they're still cleaning up the hazardous waste (a.k.a. asbestos from the old brake
lining factory) on the site. They will put about 8 inches of asphalt on top of the
site when they're done. Hope the construction starts soon, otherwise we will have
a million-dollar parking lot and nobody to park there.
Somehow it's really busy this fall. I seem to be in classes or meetings just about
all day every day. But I've hired a student helper and he will take some of the load.
I'm learning more about copyrights (committee work) than I ever wanted to know, and
we're developing two new courses and that takes time also. It's fun but tiring. I
come home and chop wood to relax; got about 3 cords of "relaxation" in the woodshed
so far. Kathy is also busy at work and just hired a student assistant, so she might
be able to come up for air in a couple of days.
One of the things Kathy did was to bake a bunch of cookies to hand out as prizes for
the dorms that get 100% of their health forms turned in. Y'know, students are the
oddest people. The one form can save them over $200.00 on insurance but they won't
bother with it until they get a cookie! Gotta wonder about this generation.
Oh, well, it was good practice for baking cookies at Christmas.
Speaking of which, I found the electronic parts I bought last spring and when I
get a couple of hours to myself, I need to repair the Big Blue Box that controls
the Christmas display. Happy Labor Day, Merry Christmas!
Twenty for her, twenty for me
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Christy's gonna kill me when she sees this!
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Dr. & Mrs. Kent; Prof. Marla Schlatter in background
Cake is like unto Kriss' wedding cake. It disappeared quickly.
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That's right, forty years. Or twenty odd years. And twenty even years, some of which
were even odder than the odd ones. We sit and reminisce over the bad old days when
we survived without much money, irregular paychecks, long hours, you know the drill.
Roof leaks? Fix it yourself. Need an oil change? Do it yourself. Oh, golly.
Got the roofing mess cleaned up in time for the anniversary bash. The news from New
Orleans and such took some of the fun out of it, of course, but we had a lot of friends
drop in, and Kriss and "our" Jon were here. Kriss' (Dr.) Jon was doing long shifts at
the hospital back in Boston. Funny thing, people still get sick over holidays and
otherwise mess themselves up. But we had a great time. A lot of our friends are having
39-40-41 anniversaries this year; we're sort of in that general age group. One of them
came over and dusted the living room and baked a cake while we were picking up Kriss
at the airport; another baked a cake and brought
it. Kathy made a couple of cakes that could be frozen. Being pessimistic, she was afraid
no one would come. Well, that duplicate of Kriss' wedding cake totally disappeared, and
there were a few slices of the others left over, plus one carrot cake held in reserve
that we gave to the neighbors who couldn't come because they had a house full of
relatives. I guess that cake disappeared within an hour or two after delivery. We
didn't eat anything more until breakfast the next day.
If you're
interested, Kriss posted all of the pictures at
http://kriss.smugmug.com/gallery/788281 Kriss was the photographer for most of the hundred or so pictures.
Back to Work
Well, playtime is over; it's back to work. For some reason, school seems busier
this year. Kathy is working steadily most of every day, doing assorted paperwork
to keep student health records in order, and I have found myself sitting in class
about 17 hours a week ("team" teaching -- I only prepare half of some classes but
have to be there every time, and a couple of labs that meet more than the number
of credits assigned), plus meetings, preparation and grading. And I will have a
student or two working on a parallel-processing real-technical-sounding project
("clustering" and "benchmarking") using assorted old & new computers. Just finished
building a brand-new one for the project, and it didn't work. Took it down to the
Warsaw Computer Shop (where we buy our components) and it took friend Ryan about
three minutes to discover it was a bad memory stick. I might have discovered that
myself, but I had plugged in one cable wrong for the diagnostics and my manual
didn't have all of the codes. Anyhow he cheerfully replaced the memory and now
we have a new machine for the project. Whatever else, it will be interesting. Oh--
in case you're curious, we'll be running BSD, not Linux or Windows. (How come Ryan
is so quick compared to me? I mean, I have more degrees than a thermometer! Well,
he builds these machines for local businesses every day so he thinks of all of the
arcane details I forget from one year to the next.)
We've just barely started on the Christmas display. Had to replace the video card,
and some components ("triacs") need replacing, plus we're reorganizing the display,
which will change most of the software for the songs. It will be fun, though. We
have some new stick-in-the-ground lighted snowflakes, 10 of them about 18 inches
across, that
we can "play" like a xylophone, sweep across, or whatever. We're also going to use
more chase lights in several places. I soldered and fiddled with some strings of
them last year. I'll work on the wiring
and the hardware end of it, and Kathy will re-program the software. It's kind of
new to her, being Linux instead of Windows, but it's no harder than before. You
just type "make" instead of "compile" and that's about it from her end of it. I,
of course, had to make major changes a couple of years ago, but now it runs all
by itself and we can sit back and have a cup of hot chocolate and watch the show.
Daughter Kriss kindly made up a DVD from three or four videotapes plus the actual
sound track of last year's show. Let us know if you'd like one. We'll probably
foist some copies on some of you as soon as I can make the DVD duplicator work
right at school.
Well, it's the last day of September. We were down at the
Caffee Villagio again
tonight with Ron Scantlen on guitar. Sometimes it goes better than others, but
tonight we were in the groove. I didn't lose my place, Kathy's wrist didn't
hurt too bad, Ron's back didn't act up, and we all just felt the music.
Usually we get about 2/3 of the way through our music, but tonight it felt like
we played everything we know. Even the new songs went well.
After the show at the college's auditorium (Rodeheaver) 2 blocks away, alluvvasudden
people came in droves. I think some waited in line 20 minutes to get coffee; at least
5 songs anyhow. People were singing along, making requests, we were "with it."
Finally it was closing time and we all sort of collapsed when everyone left. One lady even asked if we had a CD. Well, not yet.... Came
home and I took a hot shower, Kathy soaked in a hot bathtub. But it was great.
Y'all write back to us when you get time, hear?
