Busy Busy Bowers

Oh my goodness, we've been busy.  But happily busy so it's okay.

Things are getting 'real' regarding our move away from Davis.  The only thing I've actually moved to the Coast House so far are some potted plants but the list-making and preparations here in Davis are starting up.  Dave's tasks are starting and completing projects while mine center more around all the paperwork and logistics of moving and renting a house (writing a lease, posting the rent ad, hiring a landscape company to blow leaves/clean gutters/fix irrigation a couple times a month).  It's a good thing I like lists!

I have a whiteboard in my home office that I update every few days with my tasks.  The top is my dissertation chapter list, the bottom left is today's list (yeah right am I getting all that done!), and the bottom right is the two-month-plan list.  

Dave made a sketch of the back wall of the soon-to-be downstairs Coast House kitchen to ask me where I wanted electrical outlets and light switches.  

On the other side of the card he made a loooooooooooong list of all the plumbing/electrical stuff he'd need.  It took him 3.5 hours at Home Depot to get everything. Can  you imagine how long it'd have taken if I were there asking questions or if Eddie were there with us?  OY VEY.

Meanwhile, he made major progress with the hall bathroom here at home.  He replaced the window and we hauled the old tub out of the house on Monday before I left for school.  The new tub is in a box in the living room, currently acting as a play structure for Eddie.

Bye bye sheetrock and tub.

 As busy as we are, there's been plenty of time for fun, too.  On Sunday Eddie and I went to Renee's third birthday party.  It was rainbow theme and Kelly did an AMAZING job making sure every last detail of the party was as rainbowed-out as possible.  The kids got to play in some dyed rice she made, which was a huge hit.  And the kids surprised us by keeping 98% of the rice in the tub.  Yay!

Eddie's in the blue party hat.  There were rainbow wood cut outs to play with, along with little Waldorf people toys, egg cups, wooden eggs, tools, and little mushrooms.  Super fun!

Since I'm not adding anymore stuff to our compost pile, I've started feeding all our kitchen scraps exclusively to the worm bin (before it was about half and half).  Now that the temperatures are increasing and I'm feeding them more, they're going through their shredded paper bedding a lot faster.  Eddie and I spent some time shredding some old office paper on Sunday.

For the last two years, I've told my spring quarter students to give me all their final exam notes (it's open note) if they don't want them and that I'd use them in the worm bin.  And see?  I actually am!   As my dad always says, "paper is cheap but answers are expensive."  I got a lot of eye rolls from the students about making them have hardcopy notes instead of using their computers but I didn't want them to Google all the answers (getting yourself organized with your class notes is a skill they should learn).

Eddie was pretty excited to help with the shredder since this was the first time I ever let him use it.  

I'm done with my chai milk tea break so I'll hop back on the grading wagon.