Construction is happening, though slightly slower than I had hoped. At least, that's how it feels. Here's a quick overview of what has happened:
Goodbye to the fireplace!
Goodbye to the pantry that sticks out for no good reason! The gap will be replaced with a pantry that runs flush with everything else.
There's more stuff going on. The ceiling fan is on the floor, ready to be moved into its new position. A support/backing wall has been put up for the island. The flooring is sitting in the garage, ready to be laid.
I've been trying to keep the eating out rotation interesting. Where have I eaten in the last couple weeks? Faustos, Q'doba, Taco Bell, Del Taco, Wendy's, Ziki's, Crazy Pita, Pho Saigon 8, Weinerschnitzel, Chipotle, Arby's, and Fizoli's are all places I've eaten at (I don't think I missed any). I would have also eaten at Yummy Sushi Grill, except that when I got there today there was a notice that they have been locked out of their building for failure to pay the rent. Unfortunately, I'm very quickly running out of new places to eat. I've also had some frozen dinners at home. Those happen when I get hungry late in the evening and I don't feel like going out.
At school, I've finally gotten all of my notes completed for the semester. That one is a big weight off my shoulders. I'm usually done with that before the start of the semester, and this time I'm more than halfway through before it got done. But it's done, and that's the important thing.
Fortunately (or perhaps not), the 3rd grade curriculum project has been more or less on hold. We're waiting to find out which school we will be working with, so that we can begin working with the teacher and principal to start building up specific processes and programs that will work well with them.
I gave my talk at UNLV this week. I think it went pretty well. My read on the room was that I was able to hold their attention and focus through most of the talk. I did stick with the hook of "Your theology of grace is only as deep as your theology of sin." I talked through the story of David and Bathsheba, including Nathan's intervention, and then used Psalm 51 to build out the application. I think I managed to keep a good balance of humor and content, and there were a couple things that I had that caused the room to explode. The double entendre on the first line of this one got a good reaction:
My favorite:
I invited Pastor Roger to attend to give me some feedback on the presentation. I haven't talked to him yet, but I'm hoping to get a sit-down with him for 30-45 minutes to talk about it and extend the conversation into a couple different things. But I'll have to see where that goes.
Last night, I had one of those nights where I couldn't really get myself to sleep. After meeting with a friend for lunch, I ended up sitting in a quiet house (no TV during construction) for the next 6-7 hours before lying awake in bed in a quiet house for another 3-4 hours. That much silence in isolation can put one in a weird place. I think my brain decided that it wanted some time to process a bunch of stuff that has been floating around for a while. (My deciding to take some time today to blog some stuff is the continuation/conclusion of that process.) I think this sort of thing is good, even though I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night. One thing I know I don't like about being super busy is that my brain gets backed up, like a form of intellectual constipation. (I ran into that phrase the other day when browsing through the PhDComics website. It's definitely imagery that I want to keep around.) I do know that when I get into that state, I'm much less efficient and less focused on whatever it is I'm doing.
And I think I've cleared the clog. Today was mostly about running errands that needed to be run. And I'm really tired now due to lack of sleep. It's 6:30 PM, and I'm going to try to stay up until for the next few hours by listening to some podcasts and other such stuff. I might also do some reading, too. If I get to 10:00, I think I'll be happy. Otherwise, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning at something like 5 AM and be in a similar sort of place again tomorrow.
