This year school does not start until after Labor Day weekend in Maryland. No so for Allison however. Her grad school program started at the end of August as usual. She just had one more week at home to get ready to go back to school. Fortunately she is already moved in and just needed clothes and food packed up. The difficult part has been trying to find a replacement roommate. Jen graduated last December and her lease was up after August. Also, Allison's other roommate, Helena was going to be away for the Fall semester studying in Paris. So they needed to find replacement roommates to cover the cost of rent. Allison and Helena have been looking for replacement roommates since last Spring. They have had multiple offers that fell through. I also signed them up for a roommate search website that had a couple of nibbles, but still no one committed. Now it was coming down to the wire. Helena managed to find a girl to take her room until January when she returns. One down. Looked like we had another full time renter, but she was waiting on a school loan to sign the paperwork. Oh no.
In the meantime, Allison enjoyed visiting with a few of her college/high school friends before going back to school. I also kept them busy during the week while Tom was gone. I took Scott and Allison out shopping at the mall on Monday night and out for dinner. I had a bridal shower at work on Tuesday and needed to do some shopping. Earlier in the day we all enjoyed the solar eclipse! How cool was that! Of course, I was at work, so I did not get to sit outside all afternoon, but did run in and out of the building several times over 3 hrs to watch the ordeal. The kids were at home enjoying nature's show. I know my niece, Stacey and her husband even traveled down south to catch the full effect of the eclipse. The best thing was that during our visit to the Osh Kosh Air Show this summer, we picked up official eclipse glasses at the NASA display. Little did I know how popular the glasses would be, and such a shortage. I wish I would have grabbed handfuls of the glasses! I could have sold them on Ebay for big bucks! Turns out I was the only one at my Nursing Home that had glasses, along with a maintenance worker, so we passed them around to the staff to enjoy. It was amazing watching a black shadow move over the sun. At peak eclipse, it got dim, like a rain shower was coming, but it did not last long. Very cool. Allison and Scott had glasses, but Allison also made a shadow box to catch a view of the eclipse. The glasses were so much cooler!
On Tuesday night I took Scott and his friend out to the movies. AMC has a special $5 Tuesday movie special, so we decided to go see the "Annabelle Origin" movie. It's a scary movie series about haunted items, specifically Annabelle which is a large doll that is haunted. There have been several other movies with Annabelle making an appearance, including "The Conjuring" which is based on a real story. And the couple that collect and store the haunted/possessed itesm. We thought it would be fun to go out and see a spooky movie in the theater. For $5 bucks we had nothing to lose. The theater mostly had high school students-a bit of a jabbery crowd and of course, flipping through phones before the movie started. I really thought we were going to have a problem when one of the adults had to yell at the kids to settle down before the movie began. Turns out it was the most fun we have had at the movies for a long time. Most of the high school kids were terrified and screaming and yelling at the movie screen for the stupid actors to stay out of the scary rooms! Of course that did not happen. It was your typical scary movie actor mistakes and very funny. We never laughed so hard. And we enjoyed our $5 dollar popcorn and soda combos as well! It was so fun going to the movies in the middle of the week, but it made for a late night and a long day at work afterwards.
The next evening I was running home to attend a Driver's Training class with Scott at school. Parents and students have to attend a training class for new drivers planning to drive themselves to school. So we completed the class and picked up the application. Scott still had to pick up his placard early Friday morning which he did on his own at school. He actually got there early, but the office was not sure when they were supposed to start selling the placards(yes, the kids have to pay for parking at the high school since there are so few spaces). By the time the office opened, several more families had showed up and they rushed the door. Scott still managed to be #11 in line, but he was #1! We are just happy he got a placard since he plans on driving himself to school every morning and then to his new job(at least that is the plan). He is really looking forward to his Senior year at school. He has some fun classes mixed with science and math classes. And this week he kept up his math studies with the ACT tutor. The clock is ticking.
On Friday I was also busy running errands. I took Cookie in early to the groomers. She needed a shave since it has still been so hot. And she also needed a break from Ripley! Our neighbor's finally returned on Weds from their Hawaii trip to pick up Ripley. We love having her, but she is a bundle of energy! I spent the rest of the day at my swim class, picking up medical forms for Scott's new job(we hope) and dropping him off to his roller skate job. I also went with Allison for a medical check up for her anemia. She needed to give more blood for testing. We keep filling her up with lots of iron rich foods!
I also stopped into the grocery store to pick up some items for the Boy Scout Parent picnic on Saturday. We have a decent crop of tomatoes this year, so I thought I would slice some up with mozzarella cheese and balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with fresh basil leaves. So I needed supplies. I was going to make zucchini bread, but sadly my one and only zucchini did not survive the hot sun and rain storms we have been having. Not sure who/what ate all the others. So on Saturday I made up a plate of tomatoes and spent the evening visiting with the other Boy Scout parents. Our big discussion lately has been BSA's plan to add girls to the Boy Scout program. I attended a parent meeting and watched a video from the BSA discussing the plan to add girls to the Cub Scout program. Afterwards I filled out an online survey with my opinion on the whole idea. The scouting program has been losing members, and the BSA reports they are getting feedback from boy scout families that they want to include their girls in the program. I am not so sure about that. I think parents are becoming lazy and just want to drop off both the boys and girls to activities at the same time. They certainly gave us that impression in the video. Anyhow, after watching the video, we were asked to fill out an online survey asking us if we thought adding girls to boy scouting was a great idea. Needless to say, I am not sold on the idea. But that is a discussion for another blog. On the other hand, the scout parents ate up all my tomatoes at the picnic!
By the time I got home from the BS picnic, Tom had returned from Scotland. During the week, he mailed us some souvenirs. Scott really wanted a kilt to wear to the upcoming Renaissance Festival. Tom actually stopped into a shop in Edinburgh called "It Dam Near Kilt Him" to pick up a black kilt for Scott. Tom ended up mailing the items home since it was more cost efficient. We couldn't wait for him to return and we peaked at our packages early. Turns out the Kilt was actually made in Taiwan, and the two shawls he bought for Allison and myself were from China.
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