Hello again

Up until 3pm on Friday I was preparing for our party - an open house to celebrate our house's 100th birthday and our third anniversary of living there. My parents arrived just after 2pm to help with the last minute fruit and vegetable chopping and food layout and R's parents arrived right at 3 to add their edible contributions to the layout.

Guests started trickling in around 3:30, and we had a lovely crowd all afternoon. It was nice enough to use the backyard, so there were a mixture of people inside and out and a number of people had tours of the house. It was a very nice day and I had no trouble falling asleep that night.

Father's Day was unfortunately hot and humid, but we still managed to have a nice day. We began with brunch at our local coffee shop and while Dad spent the afternoon watching the U.S. Open, we all kept ourselves busy. R unfortunately had work to do, I had a wedding present to finish (cross-stitch) and Mom worked on her knitting. We ended the day with dinner out and then spent the remainder of the evening in the backyard.

It has been a relatively quiet week. It looks like the House Tour will be postponed until next September and I've been having major problem trying to work a short row heel on my current pair of Trekking XXL socks. For the moment, I've put them on hold and started a Dulaan 2007 hat to keep me busy on the bus because my other ongoing projects are too big for travel. Two of those big projects are presents that I would like to finish before I start another sweater or tank for me.

I should also add that I went to a great all-day seminar on green building last week. I plan to take the exam in the next few months to be a LEED accredited professional. The competitive spirit in me wants to take it before the other four people in my office (all older men, 3 of which took the same seminar 4 months ago). I'm not in the mood to write a long piece on green building at the moment - you can learn more about the LEED rating system at www.usgbc.org. :-)