Life is finally regaining some degree of normalcy. Just in time for the holidays! I officially went back to my regular workplace and my regular 40-hour schedule two weeks ago. I've spent the last couple of weeks recuperating; I kept thinking about posting, but could never quite work up the energy. Besides, I seem to have settled into a pattern of posting about every six weeks or so. Not as often as I'd like, but hey...
The kids have survived the first six weeks of school. Jamie's grades were pretty good, all A's and B's; Ren's were not so much. She brought home a C in language and an F in spelling, which she would have been in serious trouble for if not for the fact that she previously brought home an F on her progress report and had made significant improvement since then - it was just too late to pass. We struggled with her spelling grade all last year, but all her spelling tests since the progress report have been A's and B's, so I guess Denine finally found something that works. I felt bad that I couldn't really help while I was working all the overtime, but obviously they've got a good thing going now, so I'm just staying out of it. Being that I was expected to bring home all A's when I was in school (note: that doesn't mean I did), and that Jamie has always been an A-B student, it's hard for me to accept that Ren just may be more of a C student when it comes to English. She tends to do better in science and math, so maybe she's just in line to be an engineer. Or a math teacher - she does remind me a lot of Jamie's AP math teacher this year.
(Last minute update: Ren brought home her progress report yesterday - all A's and B's, with an A in spelling!)
A couple weeks back, on a Wednesday night, our air conditioner completely quit working. Actually, that's not correct - the coil just got so clogged that no air could move through it. So we finally had to bite the bullet and call someone to come out and fix the AC. We got the number of an AC guy from my sis-in-law - we were not happy with our old AC guy after the last time he came out. I'm really glad that we decided to get a second opinion. If you'll recall from my last post, we had previously been told that we needed to replace at least the coil and possibly the compressor, to the tune of about $2500-$4700. Well, the new guy came out and checked everything Thursday afternoon, and said he could come back Friday morning to clean the coil and check for leaks. When he got everything opened up Friday and showed me the coil there was so much gunk built up, it looked like a piece of gray felt over the coil. After all was said and done, the coil was clean and there were no leaks; the official diagnoses from the AC guy was that, if it were his home, he wouldn't replace anything. So my $2500-$4700 AC replacement turned into a $235 AC repair. Needless to say, we have a new AC guy. And an AC that doesn't have to run all afternoon and evening just to manage 77 degrees! Now I just wish we'd called this guy two months ago.
I've had the opportunity to get in on the beta for the new Star Wars MMO (which would be another reason I've had a hard time finding time to blog lately). I've learned a couple of things playing it in the last week or so. Firstly, the game is really, really good! This is the first game in a while that I've been really excited about it's release, which says a lot because I had pretty much written it off before I had a crack at it. It's also the first MMO I've given even a passing thought to paying the monthly subscription for since I quit WoW and Star Wars Galaxies several years ago. Secondly, I can get really, really addicted to a good MMO! If I do sign up for this game when it streets in December, I'm definitely going to have to set some limits for myself. In the meantime, the game went down indefinitely this weekend while they work on a new build, and when it finally does go up it'll probably take my DSL about 36 hours to download the new game files, so I'm viewing this as an opportunity to take a little break. Or at least as an opportunity to get back into some free MMOs, such as Eden Eternal or Runes of Magic. Hello, my name is Jonathan, and I'm a level-grind-aholic.
The next month is going to be pretty busy, we have our church's Fall Festival this weekend, Halloween on Monday, a trip to Austin for my father-in-law's birthday the next weekend, our nephew's birthday the weekend after that, tentatively going to Renaissance Festival the next weekend, and finally Thanksgiving. Whew! We should get to take a breather for a couple weeks before christmas observations officially start, then probably three weekends' worth of Chirstmas and New Year's. Let the Holidays begin!
