Progress (and Reform)

I had a great Memorial Day weekend. On Thursday and Friday I came into work in the mornings, but went home early to help with the cleaning. On Thursday we cleaned out our closets, putting our winter clothes either away in storage boxes to be transported when we move, or in bags to donate to Goodwill. In fact I kept yet another pile, for the nice clothes that I had back before I lost all the weight. I took those very nice outfits to a local women's shelter, so that they could give them to women to wear at job interviews, or something like that. We had five bags of clothes for Goodwill, and an overflowing box for the women's shelter.

Then the next day I went home and helped clean in preparation for my father and bonus mom's arrival. They came for a visit and to help us install a laminate floor in the kitchen. Dad and I ended up doing most of the work on the floor together, while Jeff and Marvis prepared the quarter round, weeded the yard, and did other chores. It was fun to do the laminate floor with my dad.

It wasn't actually that difficult. You can simply place the underlayment right on top of the former flooring (even carpet!) and then the laminate floats on top of that. The laminate floor snaps into place thanks to a tongue and groove mechanism, and in a dry location you don't even need to use glue. But since we were installing it in the kitchen, we did glue the tongues and grooves together. The floor is faux tiles, about 15 inches square. There are three faux tiles per rectangular piece. It was an interesting experience because we had to watch for the chirality of the pieces of laminate. That is, if the long side facing down is a groove, then the short side on the right is also a groove and the other two sides are both tongues. You have to match the tongues and grooves carefully. Dad cut one piece wrong and we had to cut another. Luckily that piece wasn't wasted and was able to be used elsewhere.

I had computed the size of the room and from that I bought a certain amount of flooring. Unfortunately, due to the chirality of the laminate and the need to match the patterns, I hadn't bought enough. So I had to go back to the store for one more package.

The new floor is just gorgeous. I think it will be a good selling point for the house. We haven't quite finished laying the quarter round, but we should finish that up over the next weekend.

And speaking of selling, a house across the street has just sold. I saw that they put up the "for sale" sign, and the next day, they put up the "sale pending" sign. What I didn't know until our next door neighbor told us was that they had been asking $109,000 for it, but two buyers got in a bidding war and they got something like $117,000 for it. And this is a house that is smaller than ours! So I'm thinking we should be able to get a minimum of $120,000 for ours. And if we do, that is an increase in property value of 50% over six years. Our house may have been the smartest investment I've ever made. It's not something that I should ever count on happening again. But it will make for a nice down payment on the next house we buy.

And we completed our celebration of those who sacrificed their lives for freedom by consuming large amounts of grilled meat products on Monday. We also went for a walk at a park, which was kind of fun. I think I was a little bit sick all weekend, because I felt really low on energy for most of the days Sunday and Monday. But I went to bed early and slept it off. Today I feel much better!

As for working, I'm just trying to finish up my computer runs, and to write some final slides for my interview at IBM next week. I'm basically recycling what I did for Sandia, and just adding the latest updated information to the end of it. It is so exciting to be just about finished!