One of my favorite things that I've been doing lately at work has been testing potential students. I always feel a little sorry for the poor kids because they have to sit in a little room for over three hours. But its fun for me because I get to give all kinds of different tests on visual perception, listening, comprehension, etc. I get to be able to talk with the student and get to know all about how they are doing at school and home and how they feel about coming to this big scary place to learn.

Also, as a sidenote. This evening I decided to surprise one of my students, after noticing her "edward where are thou" type t-shirt, by adding a question onto the end of my conference. When I said "finally, how did you feel about that new movie you went to this weekend?" Her eyes immediately lit up and she went into a ten minute monologue about the special effects of wolves and the drama and how it compares to the last movie. Eventually I had to stop and remind her that we did have other things to get finished.

On the other hand one of my least favorite things lately is the lack of good coffee. Besides little gas station stores, there is only one coffee shop in the whole vicinity of where I live and work. I often daydream about the days when I couldn't drive anywhere without passing at least three coffee huts. Instead it's all about sweet tea around here. I haven't quite gotten brave enough to try it. I just keep telling myself its a helpful reminder of my budget. That is...until I drive past that cute little shoe store on my way to work.

I've almost finished up my third week in my new job and all I can say is that time is going fast. I never do the same thing two days in a row and every time I look up at the clock I'm amazed. While not all of my tasks are exactly glamourous, most of them aren't too bad and I'm enjoying getting to know all of the things that go on just to make the actual tutoring possible.

Most of what I do is preparing curriculum for new students, as well as reviewing current students' curriculum, and grading and evaluating the diagnostic tests of incoming students. However I've also spent some time doing some marketing, reception, and a bunch of random other stuff. Of course, I am still working with individual students during the evening teaching hours.

So that's basically my new job, my favorite part of which is the paycheck I brought home today!

Since the waters had finally gone down, Ryan and I went shopping on Saturday evening. He had some birthday money to spend and he was badly in need of some new pants. He ended up with two armfuls of new clothes (all of which he definitely needed).

The next day he tried them all on for me, matching them with his button-up shirts and ties (and new black shoes).

Most of all, it makes me think back on the days when he only wore tennis shoes and green and yellow jerseys and stocking caps. I used to think it was because of me that he started to think about what he was wearing. But now I am seeing that he is starting to get excited about being a lawyer. He's starting to look like one now too.

I may have bought some new clothes too. I don't think my college wardrobe is going to work for me much longer either.

The rain has finally slowed to a drizzle and the wind has died down. The Iowa boy is beginning to wonder if the sun will EVER come back. And we piled up on groceries now that the store has full power again.

My long weekend ended this morning when I got an email that said the power was back on at work and most of the leaks and flooding was taken care of. I was half sad that I couldn't climb back in bed but still happy that the sitting around at home was finally over.

Well the sun isn't out yet, but it does look quite a lot better outside. That is, besides the various lawn furniture and gutter pipes strewn around the lawn. We pulled our chairs inside after they started sliding around on our deck.

Last night we thought that the wind and rain had let up. But as soon as we put dinner in the oven, the lights started to flicker. We pulled out some candles and crossed our fingers, hoping that we could at least last until our chicken was cooked. Thankfully we got our dinner on the table just in time for the power to go out. All I could do was laugh for about 2 minutes straight at our wonderful timing. Plus, I was looking forward to a candle lit dinner. Ryan was not quite so pleased.

Turns out we got all of our candles lit just in time for the power to come back on, so we spent the evening watching a movie instead of well, whatever you do without power.

However 150,000 of our neighbors are not quite so lucky this morning, and that doesn't count the people who had to leave their homes last night to avoid flooding.

We are very thankful for God's protection this week and we're thankful that the sun will be coming back out soon.

I'm sorry but I don't have a lot of better news today. Although Ryan does. His school is cancelled today, and he's not sure what to do with himself.

This storm just keeps getting worse. Honestly, I don't really like looking out the window at the trees getting ripped around. And I'm glad we live on the second floor so we don't have to worry about flooding.

Watching the schools closures scroll at the bottom of the tv screen reminds me of the mornings in elementary school when we used to watch intently and refuse to get ready for school until we knew absolutely that it wasn't closed.

The worst part, of course, is that so many roads are closed we won't be able to go shopping on our day off. Although I may not have a day off...but I'm hoping.

Wet. That's what it's been here, wet.

It all started on Sunday afternoon. A beautiful day. A shorts and t-shirt and picnic kind of day. But before we could enjoy the lovely weather, we had a little problem. I started to make dinner, but as soon as I tried to turn on the faucet, several feet of water started shooting up out of our kitchen sink. "um, honey..." I said. (he hates when I start freaking out about something little). I told him that water shoots up out of the drain when you turn the water and disposal on, there must be a clog. But did he believe me? No, he had to try it himself. Water everywhere. All over the floor, all over us, all over the counter and the clean dishes and the mail. Oh, water and bits of chopped up food--I'm not sure what food exactly.

So at this point, the most logical thing to do would be to turn off the water and try to fix the problem. Is that what we did? no. Let's try it one more time. More dirty water everywhere.

When we finally decided that there was definitely a problem, we decided to visit our lovely neighbor who always parks his plumbing truck next to our car.

We borrowed some tools and Ryan confessed that he didn't actually do all that much "plumbing" when he worked for the plumbers that one summer. But we figured out how to get all the pipes apart. Unfortunately the clog was much deeper in the pipes. And unfortunately our plumber friend had lent his deep-clog-cleaning-tool to someone more important.

The only thing to do was try to salvage our Sunday dinner and avoid the kitchen altogether until Monday morning. Thankfully we did get an apartment maintenance plumber to come in early Monday. He was thankful that we had done all the hard work. And, um, I'm still putting off mopping the floor.

So now that we've recovered from that mess, we've been welcomed to the east coast by a lovely storm. Coastal Flood Warning, High Surf Advisory, Flood Watch, High Wind Warning. I hope this is the closest to a hurricane we get in the next three years. But we've said goodbye to summer and now it's just wet. Wet and very windy.

After a week of filling in for the day care and changing diapers, I am very happy to announce that I have been offered a new job. Well technically its only half a new job since it is at the same place that I have been working at for almost two months. Basically I've been bumped up (I like to think of it as a promotion) to a full time position.

At this point I'll still be tutoring in the evenings with similar but extended hours, but I'll also work in the office during the day doing an assortment of other tasks. Eventually I will discontinue tutoring and build up to an assistant director type position.

Unfortunately I won't be able to substitute anymore, but the concrete hours will be a big relief. I won't have to wonder if I'll get a call at 6:30am every time I go to bed after 10. And I think it will be a great opportunity to gain a large variety of experience.

Of course, the best thing is that I'll still be working closely with all of the students and staff that I've come to know over the last couple of months. And I'll have a good reason (and some extra $$) to do some shopping for new clothes and shoes!

I'm so thankful that I can set aside the job searching for a while and know that God is and always has been providing for us.

Also I'm supposed to blog about some pinball catch thing. I don't know, I think it has to do with football. Apparently it's important.