This was not a very eventful week. I went biking with the B group again on Wednesday evening, and we were out until it started getting really dark (which is getting earlier). Friday Beth and I decided to go out to a new restaurant we'd never been to before so we tried the Oasis up in Goshen, which was really good but expensive. We'd tried to go there once before with all the kids, good thing it was so crowded we didn;t wait. Saturday I went for a run (I'm still thinking about the Fort 4 Fitness half marathon) in the morning, and Beth and I worked in the yard most of the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Beth was weeding the front garden, and I was working on installing concrete blocks all around the back of the shed to keep the ground hog out...permanently. It should be good to go there now, there's a full row of concrete blocks set in concrete along the front and back where he had done his digging before. Hopefully he won;t try to break in again. Or connect to his tunnels under there from a remote location. Anyway, we worked until we were done and then went to the RV store in Columbia City to check out what they had in the way of class C campers. Just for fun, not seriously looking. Way out of our price range, and most seemed...impractical...for us. But some were really nice and we thought we could see ourselves with one someday. Not soon. We spent the entire afternoon walking through those and all the other campers they had for sale, but nothing tickled our fancy enough that we had to have it. Today we were going to finish up the yard work (I have one more block to set) but it got cold and rainy overnight so we did not. Instead we went to see a movie, "See How They Run," based around Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" which has never been made into a movie, clever. We liked it, but it's not going to win any awards or make a ton of money. Chinese for dinner.

 We had Missy home for the weekend! This was parents' weekend so Beth and I were going to go down there for the scheduled activites, but none of us were very interested in them, so we had Missy come here instead. Beth went and got her Friday night, and she said the traffic around Muncie was crazy. We stayed in Friday night, and on Saturday we all went to Black Pine Animal Sanctuary. What we didn't know was that they now do only group tours, not just general admission. Not sure why, maybe staffing or something. But fortunately there was a large group of Girl Scouts just arriving for a tour when we got there, so they let us sneak in and hitch a ride as it were. Missy had to work on a map of some sort for a class project, and she wanted to do the map of the sanctuary. The map needs to incorporate sights and sounds, and feelings and smells and such, as you're walking around, so she brought a sketch pad and drew stuff as we went. I'm not sure there has ever been so many animals sleeping or otherwise unavailable while we were there, but some of the highlights (tigers and other big cats, couple bears) were out and about. We spent a couple hours there before heading back home. We told her she could choose anywhere for dinner and she picked Oak & Alley. Sunday we all went to church, then she got together with a friend for a little while in the afternoon until it was time to head back to Muncie. We got dinner there, did a little more shopping for some supplies she needed, and dropped her off (with her clean laundry). We finally got to meet Kaylee her roommate, with whom she seems to get along really well. 

My group at work had a volunteer day with Habitat for Humanity Tuesday this week. There is a house that is nearly done and we went over to paint. Habitat provided all the paint and painting supplies, and we provided the labor. They said they thought a single coat was fine but I would have said not. Anyway, we painted the great room, the laundry room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and some closets completely in just about 3 hours. I was basically just painting the edges of the walls and ceilings for someone else to come paint the rest of the wall behind me, which worked out really well. We got everything done even faster that the Habitat team leader thought we would. 

Work on the downstairs continues, but it's going to be a slow pace. I got a piece of drywall this week to replace the nasty old plywood temporary fix that was put up probably 30 years ago at least, but it wasn't easy to find it. Well, at Menard's anyway. They had none. NONE. Except for a stack of damaged drywall sheets, which I picked one of. The damaged sheets were going for $9, which is more than a new and good one should be. Those are about $21 each if they had any, They have some at Lowe's but I think I'll just keep the work space small and work through the basement one piece at a time.

After this past week it seems that Beth and I are still kind of trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. After the long weekend last weekend, the rest of the week was uneventful. Part of that is because Beth is battling vertigo again, though. So, she's not going out as much (skipped book club, praise team rehearsal, and church this week) and I've been helping where I can. Like last Tuesday, she was going to book club so I was going to go watch the church softball game (I'm not playing coed because of my shoulder) but she was too dizzy to go so I stayed home and made dinner. That's been a lot of the past week.

It was a quiet weekend (mostly) too. Saturday I went on a 30-mile bike ride with the 2nd Mile group, and the rest of the morning/afternoon Beth and I drove out as far as Rochester looking for new Amish grocery stores. Well, new to us. We visited 3, found some good stuff and good deals, but only the one in Mentone will likely ever see us again. There was one in Rochester that advertised itself as a "deli" so we were going to go there for lunch. But when we got there we saw no deli. We found an actual restaurant elsewhere.

I started today on a new house project. I am pulling down all the 60s-era wood paneling downstairs and will replace it all with drywall and paint it. And I'll replace the receptacles down there while I'm at it, though they may all have to be GFI types because they may not be grounded. Few of the receptacles downstairs have the third plug hole for grounding. The ones that do...probably shouldn't. 

Posting on Monday because of the long weekend for Labor Day. Yep, it is weird around here with everyone gone. Largely Beth and I are trying to figure out what to do all the time.

My work group had another team-building even on Friday, 

We spent a good chuck of Saturday helping Mary Jane get her apartment unpacked, which it still isn't from moving a few weeks ago. We sorted a lot of stuff into donate, trash, and keep piles and then moved the piles appropriately. We got a lot of work done, and I got some more curtains and tie backs up on her walls. 

Today, we went to visit Missy.