Useless Blogging

It occurs to me that I neever told the world via blog that I made yellow belt in Taekwondo.
So… ummm… there you have it.

The scene: preschool day 2. Day 1 featured parents sticking around, so this was the first day without familial supervision.

Sara had a great day. Her normal teacher was late to school due to a meeting (a known event), but otherwise, the day went well, and Sara was reportedly very happy and content.

The school day ends. Julie and I are running late getting Sara, but it turns out that we didn’t need to sweat that so much. Why not? Because Sara wasn’t at school.

She had been put on the bus, and was headed home.

Normal teacher figured that some kind of note had been sent in when she saw replacement teacher putting her on the bus. And us being late didn’t help matters.

So we tracked her down via the bus driver’s cell, and hung tight while the driver finished dropping folks off. The bus pulled back in, and Sara came off the bus all smiles, having just completed her first bus ride. The bus was full-sized with seatbelts, and the kids from her class were the only kids on the bus.

Riding the bus was something we were thinking about, but we wanted Sara to get used to school before trying the bus. Today’s experience may accelerate that a bit, and I’ll probably be picking her up on the corner next week or so.

I should probably get more upset about stuff like this.

Currently viewing: Just My Luck
Rented but not viewed: She’s The Man

EDIT: Watched both. I’m so proud of me.

What’s the price for a dream? What if it’s too high?

Work on the basement begins tomorrow. Today, technically. Sometime after I wake up, for certain. Two weeks-ish of random people I don’t know wandering in and out of my house. I think I’m excited, but I don’t think I’m as excited as I should be. It’s probably because even once they’re done, the basement won’t be complete; there’s the load of carpet to which my previous post refers that needs to find a home downstairs. Even when it’s all done, there’s still work to do.

An odd mixture of anticipation and futility, that.

In other, more upbeat news, Emma’s back from a week with the grandparents. Stories have abounded, but for the most part, it’s as if she never left. This gives me hope for the future.

Basement work starts Monday. We’ve been clearing out what’s down there and cleaning a bit. I did a mess of mortar-caulking to fill in some cracks in the floor. Tonight, we seal the sucker with some water sealant. The folks come in and do the walls and ceilings, and then we install a mess of carpet tiles that we got at the Home Depot recently.

At the moment, said tiles are stacked in our living room corner. The 21 boxes make a 5 by 5 square on the floor, and stand roughly 3 feet tall. Carpet is quite large when stacked like that.

Meant to post this back when I first saw it. But alas, I’m not ‘hip’ or ‘down with the times’.

This post comes to you straight from the fabulous Comfort Inn of Huntingdon PA. According to their website, I’m scant minutes from Penn State right now. Internet is free, at least.

Right now is a bit of downtime while others do some food shopping, as we’re checking out of this place that’s next door to PSU and moving into a cabin at Lake Raystown for the remainder of the weekend. So I get to sit and chill for a bit, and write to the blog.

Work already called once today (though to be fair, I don’t expect another call); apparently I really am that indispensible. Wheee.

And, on the programming front: a greasemonkey script to aid with working with the Hollow City forums. No reason for most of you to care, unless you like to read GM-based javascript.

From the Language Log.

I’ve been geeking out on language a lot lately, and the Language Log is probably my drug of choice (though I’m on many right now, thanks to the Google Reader).

I wonder how much of the hub-bub over passive constructions is merely semantic, due to the perceived weakness of the word “passive” as opposed to any real weakness in the structure of the verb phrases themselves. I think the suggestion at the end of the artcle might be worthwhile, if wholly impossible.

From the WSJ Law Blog.

Further proof that taking the lawyers out of law can make things better. “Have lunch together, or be thrown in the slammer!”