School Time

It's school time in several ways right now: Amanda's taking classes, and student-teaching, I'm still hammering through the Power Engineering correspondance course (half way through the 3rd and final text now!), and Friday I start my Discreet Math course. Meanwhile, the University season has begun anew at CMU which means my work involves repairs for students instead of rental groups.

My first lesson of the year was a harsh review. We have all been told "cut away from yourself" or "never cut towards yourself when using a knife." Yesterday I gave myself a little reminder why this is true. A useless ER visit, two clinics and six stitches later, my thumb is back together, happily with no tendon or nerve damage. Luckily it wasn't too deep, only 3-4mm, not like the 6mm cut on my knee earlier this summer. Seems I'm going for a record year for stitches...that's 12 so far, and let's hope it stops there. Oh, yeah, for you curious types, this lesson is brought to you by the Olfa hobby knife and their very sharp replacement blades.

Other than school, my last few weeks have involved some camping, fishing (I bought my first rod!), and rereading the entire Harry Potter series from start to finish. This fall I am also considering giving facebook the shaft instead of this blog. I was happier blogging regularly than crackbooking. So, that said we'll see if I keep my resolve.

Vacation

Hey folks, sorry for not writing for a while. I've been spending too much time on Facebook (Crackbook is perhaps a more apt title). Still been checking all you blogs though!

Two weeks ago was my first week of vacation. I spent that week out at Camp Koinonia as maintenance team leader supervising and getting to know 4 cool SLTs (servant leader trainee?). We cleared/cleaned up the biking trails and mowed lawn and did various maintenance tasks. It felt so good to be back at camp after two summers away. The hard part was when I came home and Amanda had also been away at Camp Arnes with our friend's daughter as her support worker. It was the longest we had been apart and the furthest we'd been apart since we were married. Turned out that not talking all week except for one hour on Thursday made things difficult. Still, we both had amazing weeks and since I returned with a cold we got to spend the first two days of the next week together at home as I had to call in sick. During that long weekend we read Harry Potter 7 to eachother. We both enjoyed it very much, and now I'm eager to discuss it with people. I was happy for the epilogue though I thought the last sentence was super lame.

So, having spent only 3 days at work after two sick days it was time for my second week of vacation. Highlights included the return of my brother, DeLayne from Tanzania, playing trumpet with DeLayne (he learned how while away) camping with Amanda's sisters in Bird's Hill Park, renting movies with Amanda, playing lots of board games and replacing my garage door. Let's talk more about board games. If you haven't played St. Petersburg, call me up. Today we also played Puerto Rico, another historically based development game.

Ramble, ramble, the end.

Updates and Countdowns

Someone could probably make a play on words out of my title. I'm just too tired to be witty with it myself right now. The point: 8 days till Harry Potter 7, and 16 days till DeLayne (my bro) touches tarmac in the 'Peg after a year away in Tanzania.

Sorry for the brief lull a ways back. I've been sucked into the addiction known as facebook. Is there a support group out there? I'm sure I can join a group as part of said addiction to help with said addiction, but really! what does that help?

P.S. Three cheers for people who comment. A gold star for people who update their blogs exactly when I feel like reading an update from them. And a black dot for those of you who.... Whoo, caught myself there before I said something I'd regret. Hey, since you're still reading this, check out the new linkages in the websites section.