Today is Thursday (news flash), and tomorrow U-Haul is going to pick up the pods in the in-laws’ driveway unless we call them and extend our rental for another month. But that will cost TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS. We do not want to spend that money. It’s so frustrating, as we rented them in the first place so that we wouldn’t have to move everything in and then move it back out again when the carpet got installed, only of course, as I’ve mentioned, they’re having to re-stretch the carpet in the main living space and so it all has to be emptied out anyway. At least we don’t have to re-do the bedroom.
I said last week that every Monday was going to be a Progress Post. Well, today, Wednesday, is the first post I’ve written this week. Monday our peerless contractor and his son worked most of the day on installing our very small number of cabinet units, and I kept thinking that I should run and take a picture, but I wasn’t sure where my camera was. They were actually supposed to be on a much bigger job but they made time for us. I wanted a before and after set of pictures for today, from all the boxes on the kitchen floor to everything being put away, but all I have is this one shot that was taken partway through the process. (Pretty bad shot!)
Jim and I have now been married for 25 years! Is that even possible? We had sort of planned to do something fun last evening—maybe go downtown to the Denver Art Museum and then go out to eat at our favorite restaurant on the 16th Street Mall (we’ve been there once), the Paramount Cafe. But Jim had a meeting that went long, and he’d been working all day on the kitchen . . . so we’ll do it this weekend. But we ended up doing something we really enjoyed, even though it may sound pretty boring: we figured out what we want to do with the dining nook in our new kitchen. 
Wow, what a week. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t written any posts since sending out my newsletter on Monday. Although one finish line (the end of the BSF year) had passed, this was concert week, with performances last night and tonight. Thursday afternoon and basically all day Friday were consumed with making food for the reception last night; Tuesday and Thursday night were rehearsals, and then I rushed to get to the venue yesterday in time to set up my cupcake stands and put out my food.
I wrote yesterday about passing the milestone of my last BSF class for the year and that I now need to be sure I have a new goal to fill the time left empty by the completion of that stretch. A memory from grad school came to mind as I re-read the post. A fellow speech grad student had her masters speech recital, straining every nerve, as one does, to get the performance ready and then, well, perform it. She did a good job (although for the life of me I can’t remember what her material was) and then she had a real struggle with depression once it was over.
Before I get to the subject of today’s post, I have to ask: Did you notice that the website looks different? New lettering and new features on the sidebar and at the bottom. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about this upcoming change in a previous post, but it has taken a very long time. Jim has labored to get all of my sites onto the WordPress platform, which has its own challenges, but which gives me much more in the way of flexibility and features.
Today’s pretty happy around our house. My son, Gideon, was informed today that he has been accepted in the MFA program in creative writing at Virginia Tech. Getting to this point has been a long, long process that actually started well over a year ago when Gideon was a senior in college. At that point he really wanted to go to grad school and worked pretty hard on writing all the ridiculous stuff that the various schools required—mission statements,
I just went over the calendar from now until May 13, which is 52 days (not counting today, but counting that last day). Sometimes we get really ramped up over the very short term (what’s going to happen this week) or the very long term (what’s going to happen in the next year), and we don’t think in the medium term. So it struck me this morning that there are several pretty big events (PBE’s) that are going to take place over these next 7 ½ weeks: