May 30, 2009

STRAWBERRY!

There is a strawberry on one of my two strawberry plants! It's obviously not ripe yet, but still!

and I have lettuce plants that are ready for salads!

Posted by Anna at 01:51 PM | TrackBack

May 23, 2009

the teddy bear shows again

So there is a nest of birds in our dryer duct---in a really inconvenient place for us to pull the nest out and also in a place such as to fully block the air going out of the dryer (causing humidity in the dryer causing inefficiency and lackage of drying and probably also causing a fire hazard).

Well, laundry needed to be done again so we decided to investigate this nest of baby chirpies and of mother birdie's flapping wings. After pulling off the outside duct flap thing, which cracked so we'll have to replace it, we discovered that the nest is at the angle where the aluminum duct piping meets the wall before threading somewhere through the ceiling down to the shady pvc piping in our laundry room. I was all for getting a hanger and dragging the nest out because there wasn't any good way to blow it out or gently pull it out. Josh insisted that we run the dryer ducting from the dryer out the basement window and leave the birdies be for a few weeks and they'll leave on their own... He is the humane one.

So after loosening a very sealed/weather stripping around the window (from both sides) this is how I managed to finally be able to dry laundry again. I could have hung it up outside...but it can get windy and there was water drippage expected from the sky today.

Maybe I'll update in a few weeks if the baby birds managed to survive and find their way out of our dryer duct. I think that when we replace the outiside vent thingy, we will also try to get one that is much more bird proof.

Posted by Anna at 06:50 PM | TrackBack

May 17, 2009

Heathen Camry and other stories

The Heathen car apparently does not like sunny Sunday afternoons. 2 Weeks ago we cheerfully set out for small group when the car didn't start. We tried everything we could think of...but nothing. So we had it towed to the mechanic and they fixed the starter contacts.

It made it to Ohio and back for Mother's Day Weekend/Anniversary, and was JUST FINE.

We went to church this morning and heard another fabulous sermon, from which i will be adding to my favorite quotes "Humility earns a hearing" (referencing Daniel and his politic self of Daniel 1) We had a yummy lunch with our engaged friends and Jason who is back in town. We finally decided to head back home, and lo and behold. The Camry won't start. In fact, it adds to the glory of not starting by having the "defunct" alarm system announcing to us and the world around that it will not start. Thankfully, we chose to have lunch at a restuarant within a reasonable exercise of walking distance from home. So Josh and I walk back, get the 4RUnner, try to jump the car and other things and are giving up on it and will get it back to the mechanic tomorrow. All this is especially cheery as I have to be in Iowa City for a temp scoring job again tomorrow by 8:30 so he'll have to deal with the car tomorrow morning rather than me taking a day off from subbing to deal with it. So we've decided the Camry is a heathen car that is attempting to prevent us from doing more than going to church on Sunday mornings.

Friday was an interesting day of subbing. I had 2 very obnoxious classes--one of which I had to leave a half page note on and march a kid to the principal's office. On the other hand, one of the good classes had another teacher who is long-term subbing and she came by later and was a gift of encouragement to me. She was very impressed by how well I read the class and managed them and also in my teaching. The irony is that the class she saw me teach was an American History class (7th grade basics). So even as I've been very grumbly and frustrated with my hunt for a job that uses my degree, and I prayed as much Friday morning-- I was blessed with some encouragement later.

BSF has last session this coming Tuesday and it has been a good year of learning and growing for me studying the life of Moses. I am so very excited for next year as we'll be going through the book of John!!!!! and I'll also mostly like be a children's leader so that really adds to the growth and learning factor.

Well, I need to be off pretty quick here for a tutoring job I have this afternoon. (Test Prep season is back in session until June 13th test day) I hope to be able to put some more thoughts into writing about this morning's sermon and also about BSF. We'll see...it's going to be another busy week and we need to get the house (mostly downstairs) cleaned up a bit before having guests for Memorial Day weekend.

Posted by Anna at 03:16 PM | TrackBack