Constructing the addition--End of Week 8

We have siding!




And insulation! (K and S, does this look familiar?)

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and the first time we've had all four kids in the public schools.

LW was very excited to get to ride the bus and go to "the big kid school." He seemed a little sad at the end of his first day. Apparently, he thought he would actually be in class with IM and NB, now that he was a big kid too. He was disappointed to discover that his classmates were all three, just like him.

Not the thanks we were expecting

I've just lived through the most anti-climactic release of my tech writing career.

For the last year, my company has been working on a large release that would update and integrate most of company's existing standalone software. I was assigned to the project in December, and I've tackled a steep learning curve in the last nine months, necessitating a shift to full time. The release date slipped, as release dates will, from June to July to August.

Everyone looked forward to the day the project would wrap up and we could breathe. Stretch. Clean out the email box. Celebrate.

Instead, just as I finished posting my doc set, my boss called a "quick update" meeting and told us that the company was laying off 60 employees, including one writer. (Not me.) More details to follow Monday.

Nothing says "thanks for the hard work" like pink slips, eh?

Now, in the company's defense, they were a bit between a rock (the slipping release date) and a hard place (needing to plan for our fiscal year, which starts October 1). Officers and managers have admitted that the timing could not have been worse for those involved in the release. And it seems they are treating the departing employees well.

Still. Not quite the release party we were expecting.

State of the Addition

Michael pointed out the other day that if I didn't update the blog I would miss the entire process. (Or rather, you would. I see it all the time.) Of course, now that we are dealing with enclosed spaces, I'm finding it hard to take pictures that show what it is like.

This is the living-room end of the main room in the addition.

This is the end that will eventually be a kitchen. I'm planning to put all the bookshelves here.

This is the front door into the addition.

These are the stairs leading up to our current space.

And this is our future closet.

Summer Reading

Vacation and our big software release at work left me with little time for reading this summer, but I did manage to finish a few books. Here's what I read:

The Shack--I read this one because someone at church was doing a book discussion on it, and I was hoping to go. (Then reality hit me over the head. Attend book group? The day I arrived home after flying back from Oregon on the red-eye with the four kids and without Michael?) Anyway. The book is horribly written, and the theology struck me as neither profound nor shocking. Not worth your time unless you are seeking great examples of info-dumping. Then read the first chapter or so.

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog--Now this book, I highly recommend. Or would, if there were anyone left in American who hadn't already read it. I laughed out loud. Many times. Of course, I've actually lived with a psychotic Labrador retriever. It might not be quite as funny if you've only known normal dogs. (And yes, I cried at the end. Hard.)

Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith--This is an interesting look at one woman's journey as an Episcopal priest, and what led her to quit her position in a congregation to become a college professor. It makes me want to hug my minister and ask her if she is taking enough time for herself. This book also marked the return of my quotation book, which fell by the wayside for a while.

"I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I. As beautifully as these witnesses wrote, their divine inspiration can never be separated from their ardent desires; their genuine wish to serve God cannot be divorced from their self-interest. That God should use such blemished creatures to communicate God's reality so well makes the Bible its own kind of miracle, but I hope never to put the book ahead of the people whom the book calls me to love and serve.
"I will keep the Bible as a field guide, which was never intended to be a substitute for the field. With the expert notes kept by those who have gone before me, I will keep hunting the Divine Presence in the world, helped as much by the notes they wrote in the margins while they were waiting for God to appears as by their astonished descriptions of what they saw when God did. I know that nine times out of ten, the truth scripture tells us is the truth about the human search for God."

House of Mirth--I am not positive, but I think this might be my first Edith Wharton novel. The writing is brilliant, as you might expect. Unfortunately, it gets more and more depressing to read, as you also might expect. The title (not the original) comes from Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Part of me wants to re-read Anna Karenina, because I think it would be interesting to compare Lily and Anna. But I'm really not eager to live in Anna's world again. I did like this quote from Selden: Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions and the mean ones truths?

If only it were that simple

LW, handing me one of his Spanish picture books: You just need to read this one in the hola voice. Can you say hola?