Of Two Homes

Friday, 26 August 2011

If you scroll up to the top of this page, you’ll notice that just under the title, there are three tabs. One tab says “Home.” That’s the tab you’re on now. Another tab says “About James,” where I provide a smart-ass explanation of this blog then segue into a list of things I’ve learned in my 36 years (copied and updated from a post I made on my birthday last year). The third tab is “Books I’ve Read This Year.” Click on it. Go ahead, I dare you.

What’s that you say? Nothing’s there? That’s right. Ive been trying on and off for weeks to get a workable, coherent list there, and I have consistently failed. What I envision is a list with four columns: Book title, author, my letter grade for the book, and a brief review. I have figured out how to import a list, but it’s static – meaning that in order to update it – and that’s something I’d like to do every week or so – I’d have to re-import a whole new list.

That’s not too big of a deal, really, because I could just maintain a list on a computer file, update it as necessary, then re-import it. But the bigger issue is that I want it to be sort-friendly; that is, I want to be able to click on a header and have the list sort by the items in that column. So, if I want to sort by author, I can do that. If I want to sort by grade – to see a regression of books I’ve that have received an A, B, C, D, and F – then I can do that, too.

Here’s an example of a sortable list. Notice that you can click on the arrows in any heading and the list then immediately sorts by that column, either ascending (one click) or descending (two clicks). That’s what I want.

Can anyone help?

Saturday, 27 August 2011

Yesterday, we closed on our new house. We have rented out our apartment until late September, though, so there’s no rush to move. Jennifer wants to clean the new house and paint some of the rooms before we’ve moved everything in. I have scheduled a truck rental for September 10th, so if anyone can help on that day, that’d be great. Our plan (and we are making headway on this already) is to have most of the boxes moved over before then, so that on the 10th we just need to pack up and move the big stuff: beds, dressers, bookshelf, table, chairs.

We spent some time at our new place today, and Jennifer’s mom came over to help us clean the kitchen. I spent most of the time watching the kids, and while Isla was sleeping (at our apartment), I busied myself doing dishes and cleaning our apartment so that it doesn’t become totally trashed during our final days here.

The next 15 days will be busy ones: besides cleaning our new home and our old one, Owen will be beginning first grade, I will start back in my never-ending career at Hamline, I’m slated to move to a new cube to be closer to my new co-workers and lab (finally!) and we need to plan for a trip to Atlanta, which begins on September 18th.

All this makes me very stressed-out, especially considering I don’t live with the two most easy-going kids in the world, either. But thanks to Jennifer’s mom, and thanks to anyone else who can help – it eases the stress and makes the job more fun!

Sunday, 28 August 2011

As home-owners, we made our obligatory first trip to Menards this afternoon.

Here’s how Isla sits in the shopping cart:

Before you get too worried about her safety, I’d like to point out that she is buckled in. But since even facing the wrong way in a shopping cart gets boring after a while, Isla next decided to take a more active role in our shopping excursion:

This makes for slow going.

Later, at our new place, Owen tried out our new hose:

Little sister watches with delight as Owen says, “I finally have a hose!”

Later, I went out to my car to retrieve some things. When I walked back towards the front door, I saw Isla standing there, waiting for me. This immediately reminded me of Owen, when he was little, also standing at the door watching me when I went out to get the mail or do something with the cars. It was funny to think I hadn’t seen anything like that in over three years – our apartment door, after all, has no windows and is on the third floor, so there’s no way for anyone to watch for me. Instead, I just surprise them when I walk in the door.

How cute is this? I just had to take a picture.

This evening, back at our apartment, the four of us relaxed in front of the TV. We watched Muppets from Space and snacked on pop-corn. We HAD to do this. The reason why we had to do this is because, on Owen’s last day of Kindergarten, his teacher gave him (and all the other students) blank calendars and twenty stickers with twenty different summertime activities. Since that day, Owen has worked hard to try and complete each activity. Some were easy – such as going to the park, going for a walk, and watching the fireworks. Others we had to make special plans to do – such as star-gazing, making rice krispies, sending a postcard to someone far away, and going to a museum. The final sticker on the list was to have a family movie night and eat pop-corn. Now the goal is accomplished. Owen is ready for first grade.

Owen attaches the final of his twenty stickers.

Owen proudly stands next to his June, July, and August calendars, while pointing to today’s date. Notice the blank strip to the left of the calendars – that’s where the stickers were originally hanging.