Wednesday, Wednesday

It's a slow news day, except it's not all that slow. Big news: Ross popped the question. He and Laura are now officially and for real engaged! Wendy and I like how he managed it: it wasn't exactly a surprise, since both of them were in on the making of the ring, from a stone from his grandmother, and this had been ready since early summer. But he found a nice setting with meaning for them, and Laura could hardly talk when she called.

Our friend Hasan, from Turkey, will be here this weekend and stay for about 9 days. His elder daughter, Canan (pronounced "Janahn"), is enrolled in Ann Arbor at the Ross Graduate School of Business, University of Michigan, and they are getting her settled there. Getting a Ceylan ("Jaylahn") daughter settled is a little more of a project that it might be for some other families, but Canan has a week of activities so Hasan can come visit. I'm a little surprised that Hasan's wife, Ayse ("I-sheh"), isn't here. Hasan is the wise man who taught me to drink Raki ("Rockeh"), the anise-flavored drink, very Turkish, and live to tell the tale. I have taken a couple of days off to enjoy his visit.

We may or may not be at least a welcome host family for a young lady from Russia. If she comes to us at all, it will be next week, for a period of time not yet determined. Lena is from a city north of St. Petersburg, plays the violin (our contact was Laura's Suzuki violin teacher), and does a pretty good job corresponding via e-mail in English.

It's Dunn County Fair week, the only week that our neighborhood worries about closing the garages, locking the houses, and keeping the carnies out of the shrubbery. We live near the fairgrounds, and the walk to the downtown taverns goes right past our house. It's a small county, under 40,000 population, so the fair does what it can but isn't as exciting as it was when we had a small child in the house. We'll go down one evening for fair food.

We keep finding out more about how our contractor didn't do a good job for us. We had to have some repair to several floor joists; not that Larry broke them, but they were just hanging there and he didn't even mention them, much less try to address the problem. I think the problem was hidden when the house was held up by crappy old walls, but those were removed and this was a remediation that should have been done but wasn't. There's also a bit of a problem involving the treated lumber boards between the old sill and the new block foundation: the treated lumber is considerably too narrow to do its intended job. This also means that the contractor straight out lied to me when I asked him about the apparent poor fit. The accumulation of flaws and problems is reaching the point that lawyers may have a chance to make some money.

The electrician is done. We have power and lighting in the basement, and some other additions and corrections that, hey, as long as he was here... and the heating guy isn't done, but he got our dryer vented, and we can do laundry at home. Now, if the washer will work properly (may have some issues with the spin cycle), we'll be happy about something.

So: some up, some down, but the engagement news is the big story, and it makes my daughter happy and makes my wife cry (joy, of course..?..).