Gotta have a wristband

Miracles evidently happen. When I came to my classroom early on Monday morning, the ceiling was intact, everything was dry and the computers worked. The only thing that absolutely needed to be replaced was one keyboard. It typed nothing but a constant stream of 9s. Not terribly useful. 

The only other casualty of the great flood of room 329 was the air conditioning unit. My room has an independent system, and it's didn't work Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday or Thursday. It finally came to life at 12:34 pm on Friday. 

It was a relatively smooth the beginning of the school year, temperature notwithstanding. I think it's going to be a good one. 

Something about being a newlywed gives you a built in excuse if you need one. Last night, Cas and I celebrated being married for one month. In addition to that, the school had its first dance of the year. The luau dance. A lot of people wanted to know if I would go and help chaperone. Built in excuse! I have to celebrate being married for one month. 

And celebrate we did. Cas and I had several gift certificates to choose from, but last night we spent the big one. It was $150 at any number of restaurants. We chose Chamberlain's fish market, because we had been there on some significant date in the past. It was delicious. It was very delicious, and we went a bit over the $150 gift certificate. 

We decided to arrive before our reservation so that we could have a cocktail at the bar. As we sat and ordered our drinks, Cas rolled his sleeve of slightly to show that he had put on one of the wristbands we gave our guests at the wedding reception.

What a completely funny, wonderful, thoughtful thing to do. I hadn't thought to wear a wristband myself, but as it turns out, he had an extra one in his pocket. So, there we were, all dressed up in fancy clothes with rubber wristbands on. It was perfect.

As for today, I am headed to Richardson to see my folks. Typical Sunday, typical behavior. Tomorrow, Jeff is going to be in town. He will be around only briefly. We will be a stop off on his way to Fort Hood.

Of all the places the Army has sent to Jeff or could send Jeff, it's kind of nice they chose to send him to a spot in Texas this week. That means he can stop by any dinner at his old house. Bonus. That's a pretty nice birthday present. 

Rainy days and Mondays

I've been in training and doing teacher workdays this week. It's just about as thrilling as you'd suspect. On Monday, we did training. On Tuesday, we allegedly had a day to work in our classrooms. I am on the third floor, and we were only allowed upstairs before 10 am. See, the roof had been leaky and they were trying to clean up the floors. 

Needless to say, I didn't get a lot done. I spent the majority of the day helping some of the newer teachers get some of their work done. 

Wednesday was another training day, and today was, as well. I decided to go to campus an hour early this morning so I could set up a little bit in my room. I walked in to this: 

So I'm still not set up. Not yet. I nearly cried. I definitely cursed. I certainly have a big day tomorrow; I've got to clean everything up, plug everything in and get ready for the students who will no doubt arrive Monday morning. I'm pretty concerned it won't all get done. 

Wish me luck. 

Trump Vader

After we floated down the river yesterday, we headed over to Cas' cousin Philip's house. Phil and Lauren were the two who got married last year, and they weren't able to make it for our reception. We had just sent a thank you card for their card and gift they sent in the mail, and in that thank you card, we said we'd celebrate next time we were in town. 

Turns out we came to town a week later. Phil and Lauren were pretty great about it. Cas asked if they were busy Saturday night, and Phil offered to have us over to the house and cook us dinner. I wasn't angling for a home cooked meal- I was actually thinking we could meet on a restaurant. Phil made us fajitas. It was pretty great. 

We stuck around a little bit after dinner to show a few of our photos from

The trip and the wedding, and we took off just in time to drop the car back at the hotel and hop in a cab to sixth street. 

Cas had gotten us a pair of tickets to the 10:00 show of Esther's Follies. He figured that, between the election and the olympics, there would be some pretty good fodder for the show. It was brilliant. They has one sketch in particular where Hillary Clinton was dressed as Princess Leia and Bernie Sanders was Yoda. Trump was, of course, Darth Vader. 

The show was paced like machine gun fire. It was brilliant, hilarious and fun, and the magician did a whole bunch of pretty great tricks. 

Because they don't allow photos during the show, here's the fountain out front: 

It was the perfect last weekend of summer for us. We still have to spend a bit of time in professional development and training before we greet our students for the first time, but this is the last weekend where Cas is totally off work both before and after it. I, of course, had a day-long session Friday, and I'm back at it Monday. Still, I refused to get too bogged down in thinking about the week ahead (or the stuff we discussed on Friday) to pass up one last whoopie weekend out of town. 

Apparently, this is a thing we do, now. We've floated down the river in New Braunfels every summer just before going back to school. It's a good tradition to keep. We're headed back to Dallas, now. Actually, we're headed to West for kolaches, then to Dallas. Then, I have to go to work tomorrow. Blegh. At least the weekend was great. Hell, the whole summer was great. 

A series of tubes

As a reminder to myself: we prefer Texas Tubes or Chuck's Tubes for our New Braunfels river-floating trips. Comal Tubes are too small, and their buses run too infrequently. Also, there's nowhere to park.

Now that I have that down in writing as a sort of note to self, I can tell about my totally fun, last days of summer trip down the river with Cas. 

I had to go in for my first day of professional development yesterday. It's entirely goofy to have people come just on Friday, then come back for a five-day week of further training the following week. I was so grumpy when I learned of this plan that I had put an idea out there that Cas should pick me up at work and keep driving south until we hit Austin or New Braunfels. 

He went for it. In fact, he drove me to work in the morning, came to have lunch with me at noon and picked me up on the way out of town. 

We checked into a hotel in south Austin after 8 pm last night and got out of here early enough to have a good float down the Comal River. It was great, but perching in the somewhat smaller-than-usual rental tubes was less relaxing when compared to our previous floats. It occurs to me now that this is what we do at the end of the summer. We've done it three summers in a row; we weren't together four summers ago. 

Here's Cas in his snazzy dollar store hat. It wasn't very sunny today. In fact, it rained just a little bit while we floated, and it was all very nice. 

We're getting cleaned up to go have dinner with his cousin Phil, who lives in town. After that, we're off to Esther's Follies' 10:00 show. I think I'll try to shut my eyes and rest for 15 minutes ornao before we go. Couldn't hurt. 

Shine on you crazy Tongan

During the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Rio on Friday of last week (while my friends, family and I were bowling), the flag bearers from each country walked into a stadium followed by their country's teams.  The flag bearer from the country of Tonga walked in, leading his countrymen and women, and he was wearing a sarong.  He was also shirtless.  And all oiled up.  And pretty hot.

So, of course, the morning fluff-news programs had to meet this shiny man.  They got the shirt-averse Tongan on their show, and all of the female anchors proceeded to rub him in a very unsettling manner.  It was very disturbing.  It was also hilarious.  It inspired a pretty great trivia team name: Shine on, you crazy Tongan.  

In my personal opinion, that was our most cleverly named team of the summer, and we have Chad to thank for it.  We were talking about the Tongan and his general shiny-ness, and Chad made the connection to a Pink Floyd song title.  I think that was a real win.  Good thing, too, because we actually came in second place.  To be fair, it was a tie for first, and we had to go to a tiebreaker.  It was a stab-in-the-dark question.  How many TV households did Nielsen say were in the US in some particular year.  I have no idea what we said, but the other tied-for-first team guessed better than we did.  We were both way off.  It felt like the person on The Price is Right who guesses one dollar losing to the person who guesses two.  

Other than that, I've been immersed in the name-change process.  I have about half of it done, and the rest of the people who need to know I am Heather Dunlap now will also need my new credit card information.  They have to wait until the new cards arrive.  I think the numbers on the front will stay the same, but I'm betting the three digit thing on the back will be different.  Oh, joy...  

I was planning on spending a little time today dressing up my website for school.  I have owned misshinds.org for a pretty long time.  I used to have the .com page, but .org is cheaper.  I bought msdunlap.org earlier in the summer, and I have to get it all set up.  Honestly, all I was going to do was change the name, redo a button or two and wipe out all of last year's content.  I just need to get to it.

But first, maybe it's shower time.

Oil can

Before heading off to see the wizard, the tin man was stuck.  He could only creak out the words oil can to Dorothy and Toto, who then lubricated his joints so he could move.  Once properly oiled, the tin man was practically gymnastic.

I woke up this morning very early and felt a lot like I needed an oil can.  I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't find a comfortable pose.  I was stuck like the tin man.  Still, it was worth it.  Cas and I are wrapping up the best wedding reception I have ever attended, and I think a lot of our guests agree.

On Friday night, we kicked off the string of events with a trip to a somewhat swanky bowling alley.  Pinstack has a menu of good food, a selection of nice drinks and a lot of activities to do,  We rented out four bowling lanes and a fair amount of shoes, and nearly everyone seemed to have fun.  It was a nice night, and at the end of it, Cas and I hosted our first house guests.  We came back with my aunt Jane and my cousin Annie.  They were so pleasant and easy to have around.  They even made up the bed before taking off this morning.  

Saturday, we started out with a trip to an indoor ropes course and activity center.  We played something called archery tag and a game of glow in the dark dodge ball, and I watched my dad zipline.  Of course, I did it too, but that's no surprise.  It was a hell of a day, and I imagine a fair number of our guests walked away with some new bruises.  I haven't checked yet, but I generally end up with a few.  Kris caught me in the act on a tightrope.  

We spent from noon to three getting all sweaty and having a great time.  The whole weekend was supposed to give our guests a glimpse into a day in the life of Heather and Cas.  Cas figured we weren't giving any of them a wedding to attend, and he didn't want to ask people to fly in from out of state just to eat fajitas.  It was brilliant.  I know most of the people there were having a great time.  It sure did win points for uniqueness.  I've never been to a reception with a rope bridge or a rock wall before.  I'm calling it a win. 

Last night, we were at Ozona.  I wanted casual, and we got casual.  Cas and I both wore shorts.  We had a room with its adjoining patio for the evening, so the flowers went inside and the games went on the tables outside.  Inside, everything was gorgeous.  The flowers were bright and pretty and very tropical.  There were a pair of orchid leis for me and Cas, and the florist even thought to put a few large leaves on some of the tables as a decoration.  Outside, we had some connect four boards, a few Jenga sets and a lot of other stuff.  There were some real dollar store specials, too, and at the end of the night, we gave most of it to kids, people who have kids or people who work with kids.  I wanted to keep a Jenga.  Hey, it's my party, right?  

The night was perfect, the people were all eating, drinking and being merry- I was very pleased with how everything turned out.  The cake was spectacular, which is a bit of a surprise, given how it came to the location.  I got a call at about 4:30 from an extremely apologetic and slightly panicked man.  He owns the bakery that made the wedding cake and the groom's cake.  The delivery driver was in an accident.  He said that in the whole 16 years he's been in business, this has never happened.  They were working on making a new cake, but it wouldn't arrive until seven or so.  He felt terrible for interrupting me.  He figured (because this is usually the case) that I was getting married, and didn't need the additional worry.  I told him I had been married for a week and a half- he wasn't interrupting a ceremony or anything.  I was just getting ready for the reception.  Apparently, I was just the kind of person he needed to talk to.  I told him we didn't even eat dinner until 7:30, so it was totally okay.  I just wanted a cake.  Perhaps he was expecting outrage.  I didn't have any to give.  Instead, I wanted to know if the driver was okay.  It was all good.  He showed up with the wedding cake and the groom's cake right about at seven- maybe a little before, and they both looked great.  Even better, they tasted great.  He seemed to appreciate my ability to keep it together.  I am guessing a man in the business of making wedding cakes isn't used to such an attitude.  I was happy, though.  I had my cake.  No biggie.  

We have one last thing to do- today is the open house for anyone who wants to stop by and see the place.  We're doing mimosas and pastries.  I also cut up a little fruit.  You almost have to...  It's been a pretty great weekend.  I can't believe I have to go back to work this Friday.  It's cruel to make us go in for one day, then have a weekend, then go in for a week to follow.  Cruel and unusual.  That's okay- I could actually use the down time.  At least in a training session, I can sit still, but for now, I have to get back to it.  This house isn't going to get itself ready for guests, no matter how long I wait.  Now, where's that oil can? 

All blogged out

For most of July, I was blogging elsewhere. Cas and I got married last week at the tail end of a really great trip. I blogged the whole trip from our joint account: heatherandcas.blogspot.com

I'm back in Dallas, waiting patiently at the Department of Public Safety. I already went to the social security office. I'm getting all my documents in order so I can be Mrs. Dunlap. Nobody told me what a pain in the butt it is to change your name. It's tough to be a girl. Gisnline is pretty rough in the Texas summer..,

I've managed all my other stuff this morning. I paid off one more thing for this weekend's reception and ordered a new water filter for the fridge while waiting. It's as riveting as you suspect. It's clearly time to blog over here again- it took me a moment to get back to it. I was all blogged out. 

Last night was a good bit of fun, though. Cas and I made our triumphant return to trivia. Laura was with us, and we each brought a brother. I also had mom with us. That's a pretty unbeatable team. In fact, we won. I know we led by five points going into he end of the game, but I won't know the final score until Quizmaster Brett posts his blog later today. 

Anyhow, the reception is this weekend, and we've got some folks coming into town for it. Aunt Jane and Cousin Annie are staying with me and Cas; Jeff and the boys are staying with mom and dad, and we've got some other folks at a pretty nice hotel closer to downtown. 

I'm regretting my poor foresight in not apply in sunscreen this morning. I had it in my head that I would be indoors. Silly me...