Summary Sunday: Science Project Edition

Oh my goodness...this science fair project may be the death of me. Darian and I spent all last weekend gathering up names from the cemeteries and then a few hours during the week entering his data into Excel. And guess what I've been doing this weekend... Yup. More science project. I have now entered over 1000 names into the spreadsheet. We still have a pile more to go. Not only are we using the names we gathered from walking around, we also found a bunch more online. Thanks to projects like Ancestry.com, people have started fully documenting this kind of thing for the web. There were quite a few of our local cemeteries who have their lists of interred posted.

Darian has written the majority of his report and we are waiting on Collin to bring home the tri-fold presentation board after he finishes teaching today. Why aren't we going to get it ourselves you ask? Oh...well that would be the other gem of the week.

Collin finally came home from the mine this Friday. He was supposed to leave there around 1pm, but didn't get out of there until after 4:30 thanks to the ineptitude of other individuals he works with. He phoned me from Yellowpine at nearly 6pm to tell me he was finally headed down the mountain. Scratch date night. Time went by and I still hadn't heard from him after a couple of hours. I figured maybe the roads were just a little worse than he had originally thought. Nope. At 9 he called to tell me that he was just getting close to Cascade and that the brakes had gone out on the truck. WHAT!?! Mind you, this was the truck that had received an oil change two weeks earlier and that I had JUST taken in for service because of a faulty sensor that resulted in a check engine light and and entire Saturday spent in the service center. I was livid.

Looks like it could be a commercial right? I don't think the guys in the commercials
have to worry about taking a dive down a mountain pass...

He managed to limp down the mountain with little to no braking ability - nothing like a nerve-wracking evening. I ended up meeting him at the dealership at near midnight and left the truck there for service on Saturday. Turns out, the brake line on the left front tire had torn, spewing fluid everywhere. And of course, because of the lift, they don't have a replacement part in stock. We might get the truck back by the end of Monday. Let me tell you, squeezing the three of us into the Ranger is not a picnic.

It's been a long week. In addition to all of the other stuff, on Wednesday I learned from Darian's teacher that he has not been turning in his tests. Ugh. Here we go again. The child who had straight A's last quarter now has 3 A's, 2 B's and a C-. And why? All because he doesn't "feel like doing it." He's fully capable of doing the work, he just craps out on us. We're running out of ideas. He needs to straighten up or he'll be spending his summer in summer school.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to having things settle down. This is ridiculous.

What else did I have going on this week? Let's take a look...

Posts I Posted : It was another slow week for posting, but I did manage to get a summary out, including an explanation of Darian's creepy science fair project. I also posted a review of Sarah's Key that Erin claims redeems her for the pain she caused me with One Day. I guess I'll let her off the hook.

Books I Read : I finished reading Forgotten Country, a book I won from Goodreads. I'll be posting it's review later this week. I am currently reading I Will Teach You to Be Rich, recommended by Patti.

Recipes I Tried : The Skinny Crockpot Chicken and Wild Rice Soup turned out to be not so bad. It's a good option for cold winter nights. I, however, managed to cook it on the warmest day of the year thus far. High five for me. I also made some Cheap Korean Beef. I've had the real thing from a real Korean (shout out for a certain Mr. Kim on this one) so I'm a little biased. But I'll be honest, for a dish made from ground beef, this was quite good. I'll probably be making it again, it was quick and easy.

Projects I Finished : Haha...you're funny. Does six hours of sleep count as a project? I did accomplish that once this last week.

Favorite Blog Posts : Am I still behind on blog reading? Oh, you betcha. But I'm taking the slash and burn approach and I should be caught up within the next two weeks. So...I'm a bit late on this, but I still had to share Telling Dad's Don't Bring Magic to a Knife Fight. Quite funny, but I'm hoping not a sign of the kind of crap we're going to have to deal with as Darian gets older...this kid sounds slightly familiar...

And that's it...apparently I now get to go back to entering junk into Excel...I'm so getting a Krispy Kreme as a reward later...