Happy Thursday!

As you may (or may not) know, today is Christmas Spirit Day!   If you don't know what that is, that's ok... I'll explain another day.  In the mean time, please humbly accept my tidings of comfort and joy.

Bullet points seem to be the only way to get a lot of unrelated thoughts out of my brain, so here we go!

• I'm so glad we're done working on the basement for awhile, so I don't have to write about it for awhile.  Back to sharing whatever strikes my fancy!
• Tomorrow is Friday.  This should be exciting, but I go straight from class to work until 10:15, so that's kind of a bummer...
• I saw this article on the Facebook and I really really liked it.  If you want to know what it's like to be The Sort of Pretty Girl, Ophelia explains it really well.
• Ever since I read this post by Joy the Baker, I have been craving a really big pastry. Really Steph?  Out of that whole post, the huge pastry is what sticks with you? Well... yeah.  Also, I want to bake these someday soon.
• You've heard of Apparently Kid, right? Kid Snippets did a tribute, and it's fantastic.  Whenever you need to laugh and lighten up, Kid Snippets are the way to go.

•  I was reading in my sociology book about a concept called status inconsistency (or discrepancy).  This is where people have a mismatch among their statuses, like a 14 year old college student.  I read this and I thought to myself, "this is my life."  I'm not really a "normal" college student, but college is my life.  I'm kind of an adult but not really. It's hard to figure out where to fit it.  Then my friends, Tina and Kari, shared this with me and it was such an encouragement.  Thanks, ladies!  I'm realizing that by not fitting in, I can connect better with others who don't fit in. 

• Another term from sociology is resocialization, which means learning new norms, behaviors, etc. to adapt to a new situation in life.  I have done this several times this year: adapting to unemployment, adapting to life on the other side of the pond, adapting to being back home, going to school, and a new job.  For a girl who's not crazy about change, it's been rough.  But I think I've turned a corner and I'm finally starting to feel settled.
• I had a great time celebrating this girl's birthday with her and other friends.  Love you, Mindy!

• Dancing With the Stars, Season 19 is in full swing! I'm loving it, and having a hard time picking a favorite.  I would list
  about 8 couples as my favorites, so we'll need to wait a few week and see how things develop before I weigh in.
• I've been missing England a lot lately.  I'm not sure why, but I think of it often and at random times.  Maybe we'll be revisiting London on the blog here soon.  Maybe not... I make no guarantees.

• The dogburts are as crazy and sassy as ever.  I think they're starting to get settled into a routine a little more, for which I am grateful.

Warning: this dog may contain gluten

• 
  Tim was in Alaska earlier this week.  The people he was working with said Alaska has about 2 weeks of fall, and he was there right in the middle of it.  His pictures are fantastic!

I think that's all for now. What have you been up to?

The Basement: Calling in the Professionals

Hi All.  I know you've been on the edge of your seats for the last week, and I apologize.  My excuses are the usual: life, school, work, blah blah blah, but this week I'm throwing in my first round of tests (3 in one week) and a dogburt with an ear infection (don't worry, she's feeling much better now).

We last left off with our basement looking like this.

Actually, that's I lie.  I just realized I never posted that here... Tim put it on Facebook.  This is Tim scooping the last scoop of dirt from our floor in order to level it.  I would like to point out the lack of stairs (don't worry, I let down a ladder for him, he's not cemented down there).  Also worth noting, I think this picture was taking at about 11 on Monday night.  Great way to start the week.

Midwest Basement Systems arrived Tuesday morning to find our basement looking like this.

When they left Tuesday evening, things looked like this:

What they had done was put a trench (kind of looks like a tray or gutter) all along the exterior walls.  They also applied a moisture-proof cover to the walls that ties into the trenching to help with drainage.  The trenching all leads to a sump pump, which will pump water out as needed.

The cement guys weren't available until Thursday (they were contracted by Midwest Basement... we didn't have to line them up ourselves).  It was kind of fun to watch them get the cement into the basement.  

They brought this truck that pumps the cement through a long hose.  As you can see, the hose had to go all the way over our tree-- it was higher than our house!

When they finished, things were looking MUCH better.

Someone asked if we put our hand prints in the concrete.  No, we didn't.  We didn't even thing about it, actually.  I would have hated to mess up that nice shiny surface anyway.

On Friday Midwest basement came back and installed the sump pump and finished things up.  

Right now we still don't have stairs, and have no motivation to build them either.  Now that we're over this hurdle, we'll take our time starting to finish the basement.

The Basement Weeks 6&7: Ugggggh

As I write this I am sitting with a heating pad on my back and wonder if I will ever move again.  As that shirt on the Pinterest said, "My everything hurts."  We skipped our church's annual retreat this weekend to get the basement ready which was a major bummer at first, but... it turned out all right.  Tim and I spent a lot more time together than we would have otherwise, and (here is God at work) we got along all weekend!

I didn't update you last week because, well... life.  You know, classes, work, both of us came down with nasty colds, we had out of town company (which was FANTASTIC-- thanks for coming, guys!) Tim got sent on a business trip at the last minute...so we are down to crunch time.  And we got SO MUCH DONE this weekend.  In fact, here is a summary of what has happened since the last check-in (all of this did not necessarily happen this weekend):

Tim leveled the landing.  It was pretty bad.

See the bubble all the way over there on the left?

 The old cast-iron drain-pipe has been replaced with PVC.

This is a before picture

Jynx dug the trenches for the plumbing.

Tico did the plumbing.

I filled the trenches back in.

Tim is leveling the floor.

I have a couple of loads of rubble to take to the dump between classes tomorrow, and we need to finish leveling the floor (we've done the worst of it).

When I get home from work tomorrow night, we're going to take out the old stairs and set up a ladder for the construction guys to use.  And we will be done... for now.

In just a few days we will have a waterproofed basement with a new slab!  I can hardly believe it...