The Year of the New Roof

What started as the Year of the New Car will quickly turn into the Year of the New Roof. A few chunks of shingle were dislodged today with all the wind. We put off having any work done on it last summer even though we could see a few parts of it start to crumble. (Mostly, I was in denial. I'm man enough to admit it.)


Recently we had a neighbor who hurt himself falling from a ladder, now I get to imagine people up 30 feet above sea level stapling felt to the roof. Great! I'm going to close my eyes until they're finished. Or maybe I'll arrange to be out of town. Roofers don't need to get into the house for anything, right? They can use the bathroom at McDonald's.

I've been working with M on his Science Fair project - a battery made from pennies, dimes, paper clips, and an ice cube tray. Really. It was in one of the Make magazines dad gave me when we were there at Christmas. You put salt water in it and if you've done it right, you can get an LED to light up. We clearly haven't done it right because the LED isn't lighting, but that's OK - we're going to try again. I told M that his Science Fair project is more fun if you fail at your first two attempts. He disagrees. Too bad for him, because I'm going to keep working on it until the light works, and he's going to have to help me. Tough love in the name of science.

K is taking a drawing class where they focus on cartoons and comics. It's a neat class, a typical over-crowded room of elementary school kids, but a lot of positive energy and laughter. He and his friend across the street go to it together and we try to carpool when we can. He's almost able to keep up with the math work M does, I think he'll be a force to reckon with in 2nd grade next year.

I'll be going to a recruiting event at MSU next Thursday, representing my company. It's fun to go back and see what's changed. Then an old friend Craig and I (hi, Craig!) are going to meet at Crunchy's to trade stories about what body parts ache now that we're old. And maybe talk about other things.

I hope everyone's having a great time doing what you're doing. In closing, I'll put in a link to a t-shirt J got me for my birthday: http://store.xkcd.com/#StandBackScience ("Stand back - I"m going to try science")

Toodles!