Baton Rouge Week 24

Hi all

This has been a fairly straight forward week. It was work and rest, work and rest, and more work and rest. It was the final week of classes and Dana went and taught on Monday. It was probably her most interesting class because she taught partly under the influence of lortab. She then went home to rest. She also had previously invited the student teachers she supervisors over for dinner and their final work. I cooked dinner. We had barbeque chicken, new red potatoes with onions, green pepper, and red peppers, and a green salad. For desert we had some cookies. Alas, they were not homemade. We had purchased cookie dough from the neighborhood children.

Then I had my final class on Wednesday. For their final my students need to bring their final project and be ready to explain it to the others. Hopefully, I will be done with grade by Thursday. I have a mini English department conference on Thursday. I hope that doesn’t get in the way of finishing the semester.

Dana’s writing group gave her good and important feedback on the paper we are trying to get out for review. So, we hope to have that finished before we go to Utah. I have another small paper that I need to send to the English Journal. My writing group will be looking at that tomorrow.

Dana had a conference to attend in Washington D. C. This was scheduled almost a year ago. She is presenting with the reading specialist from Jordan School District. They are reporting on the elementary balance literacy project that seemed to work well. Dana went back to the doctor before the trip. She is healing fine. The doctor did tell that she will continue to be tired for about three weeks. She just needs to make sure to rest.

I am working hard planning for the ALAN Review. I am planning on spending about a morning a week working on this project. This week I made a big list of information that we need to get from the old group. It will be a big task but we seem to be on top of the project.

As you can tell we are plenty busy trying to get work done.

Yesterday, I drove with some people to Slidell where the church has a bishop’s storehouse and a canning facility. I canned a variety of foods for storage. I didn’t do a massive amount. I just tried things we eat: spaghetti, macaroni, rice, red beans, white beans, and pinto beans. I also bought some new things we haven’t used before dried onions, carrots, and apples. We also are going to try some dried milk and hot chocolate. If you don’t have a plan I really think that you need to get started. Gas is down to about 1.65 here. I am tempted to put the same amount of money in a small account every time I buy gas and see how much money I have in a year. We seem to get by in the hard times but we don’t seem to plan and prepare during the good times. We are planning to deliberate us the food storage by making at least one meal a week from the food storage stuff.

Our next big project is to finishing the laundry room. We have the cabinets purchased and we are waiting for the installer to have a day open to come and put them in. It will save us a little bit of money by contracting directly with him.

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the fire in the fourplex. We have the check from the insurance and even after the deductible we should not have to come up with too much out of pocket money. The insurance amount and our contractor estimates were very close. It really helps to have a contractor who knows the area and has worked with habitat for humanity. The standard for that construction is perfect for rebuilding an apartment. They have gutted the apartment and I have not had to do a thing. Great! I will go over and look at it tomorrow. We should be able to rent it right after the new year when we get back to town.

The Utes are in the Sugar bowl against Alabama, a team that was number one for much of the season. I think whoever controls the passing game (either offensively or defensively) wins. Georgia is in the Capital One bowl against Michigan State. I think this should be a really good game. BYU plays Arizona in the Pioneer Bowl. Wow! BYU has a good chance with Arizona in down year. It is a gift, but LSU got in the Chick-fil-A bowl in Atlanta against Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech beat Georgia in a free for all and Georgia really took it to LSU, especially in the second half. LSU had better duck and cover.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana