We're off

Like a herd of turtles. We have been getting ready for our summer travels for such a long time- it seems crazy that tomorrow we will finally get on the train to the airport and head West. Our big plans to have all the projects finished on the house has been put off till August- I had as much editing work on my desk in the last two months as I had all of 2006. And even though I actually wanted to tile the bathroom, there was just no way to get it all done. A few things did get done on the house- the balustrade is up, if not sealed with finish, and the kitchen and front hall are prepped for new tile. Oh, the front door and windows finally got painted; at least it will look good from the outside...

Balustrade-



James helping with tile plan-



Another thing that ate up time recently was upgrading our computer. As Katharine is technically a 'student' she has a great discount on software through the university and we recently got a copy of Vista (the new Windows) practically for free. I have been wanting to replace a lot of noisy and slow components on the desktop anyway so this was a great opportunity to upgrade everything at once. Our old roommate David generously coached me through buying components (no way I could have attempted this without someone who knows what all that jargon means) but I assembled and installed everything else myself; it really educates you as to how it all works in there...
Vista is a fine OS- I think the general improvements outweigh the annoyances of tightened security and hand-holding.