Home Improvement

We were supposed to go to Atlanta this weekend, but Mark's work and our exhaustion level prevented us from going. So, instead we decided to get a few projects done around the house. Between Staples and Home Depot, we've made a nice dent in our tax incentive check!

On Friday, I finally found the bookcases I want for our office, and they will be delivered on Wednesday! Saturday morning was our trip to Home Depot, where we bought three new toilet seats for the three bathrooms in our house. BUT, these weren't just ordinary toilet seats! These toilet seat lids go down by themselves! No more slamming seats in our household! :) We also bought some new vent covers for the bathrooms and weather-stripping for the front door.

The big thing is the new storage shelves and a unit with doors for our grass seed and pesticides for the garage. After we go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this morning, we'll work on the garage and get everything up off the floor for the first time in several years!!

Lastly, we went to Staples and bought a new flatscreen monitor, new memory for Kennedy's computer, and some office supplies. Mark set up the new monitor yesterday and gave his old flatscreen monitor to Kennedy, which frees up mega space on her desk for 5th grade homework (which starts July 7th), and frees up her old monitor for a desktop system he's building for Sam (Sam's laptop is on its last legs). I am in the process of organizing the office -- the new bookcases will help immensely and allow us to get our Hurricanes memorabilia out in the open where it belongs! Then I just have to organize my files and get my paperwork done for the business before the year gets away from me!

Have a great Sunday!!

Soccer, Golf, and a Sock Hop!

This past week was CRAZY for me, personally, and of course I drag my family along with me for the ride! Over a week ago, Mark and I took Kennedy to her "end-of-season" soccer party at Golden Corral in Cary. It was uneventful, with the requisite gifts for coaches and the team manager, but the girls enjoyed getting together one last time before the team disbanded for the summer. This will be the first summer in three years that they aren't playing indoor soccer together as a team, and except for tryouts for next season that are happening this week, we are done with soccer until August. Kennedy has decided to take a break. She didn't take a break last summer and she almost quit completely when the Fall season began. This summer she wants to take a theater class and swim and go to horse camp instead. :)

Last Thursday was the Rotary Golf tournament that I've been working on for the last four weeks... I knew I would be very happy when it was all over, but it was even better because we beat our goal by $200 and earned the extra $3,000 that was promised by a local businessman who was challenging us to secure $25,000 in sponsors. So, our grand total was $28,200 on the day of the tournament! Making our goal made the day that much sweeter! And yes, I am very relieved to be past that particular hurdle. Now we pay the few expenses we incurred in the planning process and look to next year's tournament. Both Mark's employer and our company sponsored tee signs on the 17th green, which are shown above. Next for Rotary is our Officer Installation ceremony in June, when I will officially become President-Elect for 2008-2009.

Friday night we went to Kennedy's school's Sock Hop. For 2 months I had been compiling the contents of a gift basket with a "Movie Night" theme for Kennedy's class. Parents donated items and money for me to purchase items for the basket. Every classroom in the school donated a basket to the auction that was held during the Sock Hop. Kennedy helped me put it all together, complete with the cellophane that shrinks when you put blow hot air on it with a hair dryer. The school raised over $5,500 from the basket auction, and the kids had a blast dancing to music from the 50's and 60's. The basket auction is another chore that I am very happy is behind me. Trying to raise money for a golf tournament AND find donations for that Movie Night basket at the same time was a bit trying!

Saturday afternoon and evening we spent at Tollan Wade's house talking about his trilogy of books and how to make them "arrive" on the national scene. After an hour of talking, we enjoyed a cookout and a pitcher of margueritas, and agreed to get together again in a couple of weeks to celebrate the four Gemini birthdays in the group! It was a lot of fun, and Kennedy enjoyed spending a few hours with Tollan's son, Alex. If you remember Alex, he's the one who wants to be a geologist (see my first or second post on this blog!). :)

Last, but not least, my parents came here for a visit yesterday and today. It was a very leisurely visit, and aside from a furniture-shopping expedition today for a couple of hours, it was two days of catching up and chatting. The only bummer was Dad's inability to get connected to the Internet through our system. It was very strange and we never did solve the problem. But, my computer was available all day today, so it was a good second choice. :)

Well, this week Kennedy is attending music class at school as she prepares as the understudy for the 4th grade production of Annie next week. She is "tracked out" right now (this is her second week of 3 1/2 weeks of vacation), but is going in to school 2-3 times a week to rehearse for the play. I have to give her credit for being so committed to the process!

Happy Mother's Day!!

Look at my Mother's Day present!!! I got home from camping this weekend to find this on my front porch! Isn't it cool? It was a gift from Mark, Sam, and Kennedy! I've ALWAYS wanted a wicker set for my front porch, and they got a resin version that can just be hosed off after pollen season! MUCH more durable than actual wicker. :)

My week has been crazy. I've been working lots of hours on the Rotary Golf Tournament. Looks like we're going to make our goal of raising $25,000 for educational and civic projects in southern Wake County. Our regular tournament planner had triple by-pass surgery four weeks ago and hadn't gotten anything done before she got sick, so we've been scrambling for a month to get sponsors and plan the actual event. I'm really proud of all we've gotten done, but I will be SO glad when Thursday is over!!!

Last weekend we actually did yard work and got the garden planted!! We put pots of trees on the front porch and watered morning and night all week until the rain took over on Thursday. It felt great to get it all done!

We also had James LeCroy over on Wednesday night to watch a TV special I had taped on our DVR about the gospel roots of Elvis Presley's music. James and I are collaborating on a book and screenplay about Elvis returning from Heaven to spread the word that Jesus is returning soon, and the special has a lot of great info in it that we can use. We had dinner and watched the show and then watched American Idol while James searched for character sketches on his computer.

Then this past weekend I accompanied Kennedy on a girl scout camping trip to Camp Mu-Sha-Ni in Aberdeen, NC. I was dreading it at first because I had so much else to do, but once we got there I realized that sometimes you just have to take a day or two out of your busy schedule and smell the roses -- in this case, the blackberry bush flowers! :) We hiked all afternoon on Saturday, and cooked whole chickens and baked ziti over the campfire. We made s'mores over the fire and sang lots of songs Saturday night. Sunday morning was very rainy, but the girls made bacon and eggs on the camp stoves and then we hiked to the beaver pond and looked for arrowheads in an old field with the camp's site manager as our tourguide. It was so much fun and a nice break from the craziness of the golf tournament!

When I got back, there was my lovely wicker set! I also received a rechargable lamp from Sam and a garden cart that I can sit on to weed the garden and store my tools from Cassie. My present from Serena is on it's way (she ordered it). The family took me out to dinner and we came home for cake and looked at scrapbooks for an hour before we watched the hockey game! :)

Well, wish me luck -- the golf tournament is in two days and there's LOTS left to do! But we'll have a blast and be happy when it's all over and wrapped up.

Our First Reading!

We survived the first reading of our play, Inextricable, by members of the Burning Coal Theater Playwriting and Director's Lab last night!

The company read through 15 pages of our script, and then gave us some interesting feedback afterwards. It wasn't what we were expecting, which was very cool, but it helped spark a conversation between us about the vision we have for the play and why we wrote it the way we did. It's very difficult for anyone to grasp the themes and character development in this play without reading the whole thing, because the meat of it all doesn't hit you until you're halfway through it. So, while we enjoyed the reading and will consider a few of the things they had to say, we also know that some of the structural changes they suggested aren't possible to make without fundamentally altering the story.

So, that's the mixed blessing of asking for feedback -- you can work with some of the suggestions, but not others. They will be choosing 3-4 plays to develop over the next 6 months, and if ours is lucky enough to be chosen, we'll ask them to read the whole play before agreeing to work on it with them. We just feel that strongly that they need to understand how the story develops before making judgements about the structure of the entire piece.

So, now it's back to tweaking dialogue and peddling it to a few more places. The UNC Playwriting Lab has put it on their September schedule for a read-through, after the students return to campus. That is exciting! And, a friend's brother who acts and writes in Brooklyn has expressed an interest in peddling it for us in New York, so we'll try our hand at that also. Stay tuned! :)