What's new? Peef Spills the Beans on Life & Home Ownership

We haven't talked in awhile. Sorry about that. I'll get you up to date since we have been a bit busy...

First off, we've been watching political conventions for what seems like weeks on end. FINALLY, this week we have a reprieve and can return to our usual schedule. Well, sort of.

Lo is back in school. She is taking a class on early American Lit. Not super exciting (she's reading Benjamin Franklin, for goodness sake!), but I think she is enjoying it more than she lets on. Since she has reading to get done most nights, we've struck up an agreement of sorts for how we operate on weeknights. We start off cooking together; but, after most of the preparations are completed, she goes off to start her reading and I finish things off. After we eat, she finishes up her reading while I handle the clean-up. It makes for a fairly quiet life most nights, but we're getting on pretty well. As you can see from our posts over there at Burp!, we're still cooking up quite the storm.

On my end, things are settling back down a bit. Having finished off all of my summer school business in August (I made the grade in both Accounting AND Macroeconomics!), I'm looking forward to starting my fall traveling for work. Well, maybe "looking forward" is a bit of an exaggeration. But, a boy has to make plans, or nothing gets done! So, next month, I'm scheduling my semi-annual trip to Seattle, and then maybe another one to New York following that. I might also sneak in a trip to Minneapolis as well, but since I would probably turn that into a weekend adventure, it seems less like a work trip (and that's the sort of thing I like).

In other news, even after five years, I'm still floored by how much work is involved in home ownership. It seems that, despite all of the work we put in over the past few months, we still seem to have a few unfinished projects around the house that we need to finish before the cold winter snow starts blowing. First, we still need to finish painting the garage (we managed to primer it back in July, but we tired of painting in the heat and humidity, so we put the project off for cooler days). In conjunction with that project, I need to take some measurements and make a trip over to the local door shop and get a new wooden service door, which we've been needing for a while. Last winter, a gap in the lower portion of the door got so bad that we had snow blowing right underneath the garage door and drifting into lovely little piles right inside the garage! Finally, we'll soon be looking forward to clearing out the gardens, winterizing the lawn, and digging up and splitting up the perennials. I'm getting tired just thinking about it!

I'd like to think that once winter hits, we'll be through with the household projects. But, it seems they never really end. Once the cold weather hits, we'll simply take to the inside projects! We've got some painting we'd like to do. And the basement could use a bit of cleaning out. Looks like another one of the things we'll be considering this winter is a small renovation to the bedroom as well. We've both been waking up feeling pretty creaky lately... and we're starting to suspect that our 10-year-old mattress is to blame. I think we might be leaning towards a sleep number bed... we ran into one at the State Fair this year, laid down on it, and pretty much fell in love. But, we'll take any suggestions you might want to offer!

Alright, it's getting late. So, I'll let this suffice for now.
But, let's try not to let so much time get between us. It really is good to talk to you...