It has been an extremely busy couple of weeks. For those of my readers who don't know, I was laid off from my position at Case New Holland. Friday, August 8
th was my last day. The higher HIGHER ups made some radical decisions, and one of those was to let all contract employees go, so I was not the only one who ended up leaving. I enjoyed my time there and will miss most of the people I worked with, but I am excited to move in a new direction.
For my next step, I'll be stepping back into teaching. I've gotten positions at two schools as an English and
Humanities adjunct instructor. I'll be teaching The Search For Meaning in a Changing World at
Friends University, and two sections of
Fundamentals of English at
Butler Community College. Classes start next week. After I finish this brief update, I will continue working on figuring out what exactly I'm going to do in those
Fundamentals of English classes! They provide us a book and a general idea of what the students must be able to
achieve by the end of the semester, but that's all!
The
Search for Meaning class is a little different than the classes I've taught in the past. It is in a five week format, and it is continuing adult students. It is also a four hour long class. FOUR HOURS. Luckily, Friends has already provided the entire course to me so I just have to teach it. (Of course, "just having to teach it" is not as carefree as it sounds!)
All of my classes are night classes. It will be nice to have my days free again and to do a large portion of my work at home. One of the things I liked best about teaching was the fact that I only had to be someplace a few hours a week. Everything else could be done anywhere. I'm hoping that it will be less overwhelming this time, but I'm thinking it should be. The last time I taught I was taking a full load of graduate level classes. Nothing is more horrible than grading 60 essays while you're trying to finish a couple of 20 page papers.
I'll get some pictures up of the garden soon. Our
tomatoes are doing great, the zucchini is slowing down, and we were
disappointed by our cucumbers this year. Kirk's dream of having rhubarb is dead- the plant died for the second year in a row. Our eggplant has flowers on it, but I'm not sure if we're going to get any eggplants yet. I'm already thinking about what we may try next year.
Sarah thinks that any type of party is party for her.
She was really happy to have her own present to open, and even more thrilled with the gift.
Sarah carried her new rawhide bone around for at least 45 minutes. When we refused to let her bury it outside, she decided that stuffing it between the cushions of Jeremy's couch was an acceptable substitute.
Kevin marches in with the other Police Academy graduates.
Caiden, Kelly, Kevin, Vanessa, Sylvia, Kirk, and Linda after the ceremony.
Dinner at Old C's with the Denver crew. Cathy, Kendra, Tom, Kendra's sister, baby Ethan, Leslie, and Jason.
Kirk and our nephew Caiden take a nap.
For some reason, we took a picture of the coffee that Dustin, Kirk and I drank...but no picture of Dustin. Huh.
Kirk especially loves playing with the multimeter. Sometimes he'll go around and test things with it for fun.
Look at those big smiles! I bet they wish something would break every day, just so they could fix it!
My first stop was Target. I snapped this picture just before I backed out to turn around. (I could not see how bad the road was until I turned to get in, or else I would not have tried it.)
Another picture of Target using my close up feature. Looks like Target is now on lakefront property.
Wal-Mart's roads were not flooded, so I made the rare decision to buy the stuff I needed there. The roads were fine, but parts of the parking lot were flooded, as you can see.
A blast from my UNC past. I think this picture turned out rather well.
Last year we nearly pulled this thinking it was a weed, but then it bloomed. This year we got a lot more flowers on it. Very pretty, but it only lasted a few days.
This is my friend Amber. She's Sylvia's brother's wife, and under that blanket is their new baby girl. Her name is Charlotte. Sarah really, really liked Charlotte and wanted to cuddle with her. (That is, when she was not sniffing her diaper with interest.)
Here's a general picture.
The zucchini is HUGE. I have never seen such huge leaves. This picture was taken last week- it is even bigger now.
Here's Kirk's hand so you can get an idea of how big a single leaf is.
The tomatoes are doing well. Here's our patio tomatoes- we're going to get a lot out of this one little bush.
We're going to have to figure out lots of creative ways to use zucchini. We tried this soup last night and it was really good.
Our first really big one- we decided not to pick it and then left town for two days. It got big, but it was delicious in the soup we used it in.
Our emergency shelter- the downstairs walk in closet.
Sarah was not happy at all about the storm.
Our little portable wind up lamp came in handy when the power went out briefly.
See the eggs? They're in the left centerish part of the picture.
Here's a blurry picture, but you can see the eggs a bit better.
Cathy planted some jalapeños at Kirk's request. His coworker has an awesome recipe that features cream cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped jalapeños cooked on the grill. We'll let you know how that works out!
Our dishwasher is making a funny noise. Kirk, using tools from his favorite brother in law and the wonders of the internet, is trying to figure it out and fix it.
Meanwhile, in the garden, Cathy spots some green tomatoes.
Sarah sits wherever she wants. Nappers beware!
Cathy and Kirk had time to hit up a yard sale, where they got this adorable bunny picture for ten cents.
We put down this stuff over our garden that we're calling a weed tarp. Over it, we put mulch, but here's a before picture. It looks like garbage bags, but is tougher than that. We hope it works- fighting the weeds last was the opposite of fun. This year we've planted tons of tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, rhubarb, and yellow squash. We also have several herbs in pots around the yard, including basil, thyme, mint, parsley, and chives.
We spent a good part of today putting down mulch. We were happy to have the Scion- with the seats folded down we were able to get all 18 bags of mulch in with no problem.
We repainted the bird houses that the previous owner left awhile ago, with leftover paint we had hanging around. A family of sparrows has already moved in. Revitalize the neighborhood, and they will come.
Our two big pots by the shed. One has cherry tomatoes in it, the other has my mint plant.
Flowers under our bedroom window. We put new mulch in this bed as well.
Our irises are doing well.
In our spare time, we finished repainting the office. The color on the left is the new color, "Seaside Blue" and the right side is the pinkish brown color we painted over. It looks really good.
