Our week "off"

Okay, so I realize I've been a little remiss in posting lately. Or a lot remiss. But I have a good excuse! Really! M was on forced-vacation this week (his company's attempt to save money without laying people off - I'm good with that...as long as he has a job to go back to!) and with no looming deadlines, I decided to join him. We did a staycation, essentially, and became tourists in our own hometown while also getting a lot of stuff done around the house we've been meaning to get to for over a year and half since grad school started.

Here was our week, in a nutshell:

1. Kicked off the week by touring the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Kirkwood. Way, way cool, but the man was on crack if he expected that sort of house design to be for the "common man." The tour is worth the donation and I highly recommend it. Visionary architecture and design, and funky stuff like a parallelogram bed.
   
2. Breakfast for two at a different place each morning after dropping Zozer off at school. We hit some good places: Companion Bread in Clayton, Kaldi's in Kirkwood, Starbucks (always popular with me), Coffee Cartel in the Central West End.
   
3. Heavy-duty cleaning of the house and yard from after breakfast til noon. I mean heavy-duty. Like, OMG-this-place-is-disgusting heavy-duty. M tackled outside, I tackled inside. Made much progress. That I'm sure we'll have to repeat immediately upon graduation in December.
   
4. After working our asses off around the house, we treated ourselves to lunch at a different place every day, also good joints: Spencer's Grill, Crazy Bowls, Lemongrass, and Jimmy John's that we delivered to new parents Michelle and Ryan in a lame excuse to get to see Jane.
5. Shopped for, purchased, and arranged delivery of (thank you, Grandpa Ray!) Zoe's new Big Girl Bed. She now has a full-size bed that she loves. We took her shopping for new bedding and she picked out an awesome rainbow-colored set at Target. I will post pics soon. I'm pretty sure Aunt Steffi will be off to purchase a set for herself once she sees them.
   
6. Zozer had Thursday off school, so we started with breakfast at the Pancake House (IHOP) and then hit the City Museum. The girl, and her father, went crazy. They climbed through every tunnel and slid every slide they could find. I participated in most, but opted to stay firmly on the ground with the camera bag and Zozer's backpack when they went up five stories outside through spiral-welded re-bar. Got some great shots...those will be posted later.
7. M and I went to see a small Ansel Adams exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum. Very small, but lovely, and highly recommended. I made some great images of Sculpture Hall while there. How cool is it to make art in the art museum?!
   
8. Took Zozer on a whirlwind today, beginning with doughnuts for breakfast before heading to the Arch. She did great the entire time, until falling on the steps leading out of the tram tunnel after it was over. She told us later, "I'm going to tell my teachers that I went to the Arch and fell on the steps and got a boo-boo on my knee." Great. Apparently that's what is most memorable about that experience. Anyway, after the Arch we hit the Boathouse in Forest Park and paddle-boated our way into the Grand Basin and back. Lunch at City Diner, and home for a nap (Zoe took the nap, while we puttered around the house and M fixed a toilet - see item #9 for details), after which we hit Imo's for dinner and Ted Drewe's for dessert.
9. M had the joyful task of fixing not one, but two toilets this week. Several months ago, the toilet in our finished basement sprung a leak and flooded the bathroom and part of the carpet in the finished area. We cleaned it up and aired it all out with fans and turned off the water to the toilet and got back to studying. Priorities dictated not screwing around with a busted toilet when we had two perfectly fine working ones upstairs. In anticipation of having time off this week, he ran to Home Depot a week or so ago and got the parts to fix it. It was on the TTD list (that's Things To Do), but we put it off because M hates plumbing and I hate listening to him swear about plumbing. Friday afternoon I'm walking past the hall bath upstairs on my way to take a nap (you can do that when you're on vacation, and it's luxurious and makes one wonder why they stop that practice after kindergarten) and I hear water running. "Huh, that's odd," I say to myself, since we had just gotten back from the grocery store and neither one of us had used the restroom. I figured we hadn't turned the tub water off all the way from Zoe's bath the night before and went in to do so. That's when I stepped in water and realized that the water I heard running was the toilet. With a cracked tank. It's amazing how it doesn't take long for a toilet with a cracked tank to flood the bathroom and leak downstairs to flood that bathroom and, you guessed it, the exact same carpeted area that had flooded the first time. M came running when he heard me gently exclaim a few choice words in my surprise, and he promptly joined the chorus. Needless to say, my nap was kaput as I spent the time cleaning up the mess while M got out the fans, turned off the water and surveyed the damage. We picked up Zozer early from school and went shopping for a new toilet, which, by the way, was so not part of our staycation plans. Then M spent most of his Friday night installing the damn thing. It's a lovely toilet, though, and I'll be happy to post images of it here, just as soon as I get around to making them. It's now my favorite toilet in the house as it's new and sparkly and doesn't take super-human strength to flush.

All in all, the toilet issues aside, we had a great week and I made tons of wonderful images. Many with my new 10.5 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens that M got me for my birthday. This means nothing to most of you, but I'll throw up some shots and you'll see what I mean by "fisheye" and hopefully you'll think it's as cool as I do. Or maybe half as cool, as only photographers get really geeked out over new camera toys.

We started school tonight, logging in to our new classes and finding out what's in store for the next nine weeks. Profs are already on my shit-list for going off the course description outlined on the university's web site and assigning way more work than expected. So we bit the bullet and plunged in, reading our first two chapters of International Business. Wasn't bad, actually...at least I didn't fall asleep reading it as I typically did with Managerial Economics.

So here we are, at the end of our week, and I'm so glad we had it, and so happy how we spent it. M worked way harder than I (he's not as big a fan of naps as I am, choosing productivity instead - nerd) so I have to give him props for that. I'm relatively pleased with what I accomplished, and feel ready to tackle the next 18 weeks of school (our university doesn't believe in a break between the two 9-week fall terms) knowing it will all be over then. I'm excited, too, that I now have a bevy of images to work on as relaxation after a night of studying. So you'll get the photographic output of our week in drips and drabs as I get to them. Hell, I might even put one up tonight (this morning, actually - just noticed it's now Sunday...). More to come!