Good Times

Let me begin by apologizing for my absence of late. It's just that I've been a tad busy.

School has begun, we're getting our pool redone, and we're doing some traveling for our upcoming 5 year anniversary this weekend.

Life in general is pretty darn exciting right now.

School is going OK. The new teacher seems great and we are becoming fast friends. She seems to be more on my wavelength than any of the other teachers, so I appreciate that more than you can imagine. The students are *excellent! I have to tell you, that first week back without the students around was downright depressing. Our school is in the midst of a financial crisis, our principal is beginning to fray at the seams, and everything was generally unpleasant. When the students showed up that first day, it was pretty much a breath of fresh air, and I remembered why I got into this business in the first place. If nothing else, I'm sucking it up and putting forth my very best effort this year because these kids deserve the best we can give them.

The pool. So! Exciting!

Though, the first day was a bit of a disaster. The guys showed up to drain the pool; they put the drain hose into our main drain and exited the scene. Luckily, Mike didn't listen to their assurance that he didn't need to be home, and took the day off. Because, not 30 minutes after the draining had begun our main drain backed up and flooded our kitchen. Good times.

This all happened on Book Day and Parents' Night at school, so I left the house at 8:00 am and didn't return home until 9:00 pm. I don't think anything could have quite prepared me for what I came home to, though.

First of all, when I opened up the garage door and walked into the backyard, the back door was open and the dogs were outside running around. There were sopping wet towels hanging all over the patio (a result of the aforementioned flooded kitchen). From the pool to the guest bathroom stretched a drainage hose which ended in the toilet. The toilet, constantly filling up with water, was flushing itself repeatedly. All the lights in the house were on, the tv was on, the front door was slightly ajar, and one of our couch cushion covers was missing. Oh yeah, and the best part of it all was that Mike wasn't home; he was at a soccer game.

Suffice to say, I nearly had a heart attack. And I started to question whether or not this whole getting the pool redone thing was such a good idea afterall.

The next day, I came home to a scene that was just as positive as the day before had been negative. The pool was about 3/4 drained at that point, so when Mike got home he got the dogs in there to play fetch. Because our pool goes from 3 ft to 9 ft, half of the pool had no water while the deep end had about 2 feet of water. I seriously believe that the dogs and Mike had the time of their lives playing in that almost empty pool. We briefly considered spending an extra $20k and adding "zero entry pool" to our makeover wish list, but then we realized we're not actually millionaires and decided against it. Maybe someday.

And today? Well, today the workers completed all of the demolition, so I can only imagine that tomorrow they'll start on the resurfacing. If you click on this website you can see what we're resurfacing our pool with. We chose the No Fear with blue accent stone. It should look pretty awesome when all is said and done.

That's not all. Friday is our 5 year anniversary, and it's also the first anniversary in 3 years that Mike won't be in Iraq. Friday also happens to be one of my best friend's birthdays, so we'll be spending Friday evening partying the night away downtown San Diego. Because neither one of us wants to drive home that night and because the dogs will already be in the kennel, we used our credit card reward points and got one of the nicest hotels in San Diego (which just so happens to also be only 2 minutes away from where the birthday party will be). After celebrating my friend's birthday and enjoying one of San Diego's finest hotels, we'll be heading to Vegas on Saturday morning for the remainder of the long weekend and to finish our anniversary celebration in style.

All in all, I expect it to be one of the best weekends of my life. No pressure or anything, though.