School's Out!!

... for summer

Yay - school's out and nothing to do until late August but barbecue and get sunburnt.  Ain't being a teacher grand?  Oh yeah, I forgot - I also have two new courses to set up and two of last year's to fine-tune.  And some odds and ends around the house (mercifully pretty small thus far and not involving ladders which I don't do at the moment.)

So, how have I been?

As you may have noticed, there has been a bit of a gap in the blog.  Put it down partly to laziness and partly to a number of comparatively crappy days.  Only comparatively crappy as I still haven't thrown up or lost any hair though both my appetite and my weight have been up and down - my weight has varied from 99 kg to 103 kg - you try drinking a gallon of water without peeing and see if your weight doesn't go up, too.  I've run out of freebie blood pressure meds from the doc so, unless he has been restocked by his local pharmaceutical salesman, I'd better scrounge a refill.  And I'd better see if I can get my "meds through the mail" to work - I've signed up and my docs have registered but so far no package of Mother's Little Helper outside the door.
Last Thursday was the last day of school and I'd done pretty much everything I could do by Wednesday other than a quick walkthrough of the new room to see how the furniture fits.  As I am not sharing the room with anyone, we can merrily push tables up against the wall, pull the parts rack out into the middle of the floor and other heinous crimes without having to put it all back again.  I think my plants will enjoy the extra attention, too.  I've acquired a nice 30 gallon fish tank (if my arithmetic is correct) for my room - thanks, Joanne - and will be revamping it over the summer.  I don't want to stock it until the start of school, though.  It doesn't form any part of any course although I guess I could build a time switch for the light using an Arduino.  Maybe an automatic feeder but visions of the Back to the Future dog feeder flash before me.
Back to Thursday - I felt bloody awful - no appetite, constipated, tired, couldn't sleep, you name it.  This was all set to be a fun summer.  Friday was a bit better and, other than feeling really tired really early in the evening, the weekend was splendid.  Susan and I pottered around as per usual while Sam, whose summer looked pretty unscheduled, is starting to get booked up - boffing on Sundays, a theatre summer camp next week, some classes at Montford Park and so on.  Asheville being the sprawling semi-rural location that it is, Sam's friends are anywhere up to a 10 mile drive from here so he's getting some much-delayed driving practice and we're working our reasonable ride sharing.  His buddy, Li, has gone back to China for the summer so we won't see much of him until August.
And now I am back to my usual over-energetic self even sleeping all night on Tuesday, which makes a change, and staying up past 11 last night watching "When Worlds Collide" and playing Xbox games.
Today's adventures include driving in the rain with Sam, seeing if we can scrounge free icecream at Eric's parents' shop (unlikely) and whittling down my German stamp collection to a sane size to make some money to upgrade my camera.