Summer is Afoot

This is mostly a life update that I'm using as a way to organize my thoughts. Summer is officially on our minds now. It's crazy that we submitted grades three weeks ago and it's only this week that I am not constantly on edge about my work at the university. Anyway, Dr. BB is on sabbatical in the fall, so we need to have a plan or we'll find ourselves at the end of December having frittered away all our time.

Here are things that are going to be changing for us soon.

1) Car - Our car is a 2010 Elantra (look at when she was new!) with 240,000 miles on it. She's still puttering along, but there are occasional issues that are worrisome. Multiple times I've turned on the bright lights to find ALL the dashboard lights coming on. Sometimes if we're on the highway using cruise control, the engine revs in a bit of a concerning fashion.  It's a good car, but we're looking for something that I don't worry about when I'm driving an hour or two away from home and that might have a bit more cargo space.

We're looking mostly at hatchbacks. I still want a smallish car because we drive in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago enough that I don't want to have to pilot a boat around in a parking garage, but we do want cargo space. We looked at the Honda Fit and Civic Hatchback, the Elantra GT, and the Subaru Impreza Hatchback and Crosstrek in a test driving spree last Thursday. We still need to track down hte VW Golf and Golf Sport Wagen and the Toyota Camry Hatchback.  If you have an opinion on any of these cars, please tell me.

We're looking for cargo space because...

2) Dog - We're going to get a dog.  I've waited patiently for years. We have a house now. Dr. BB will be on sabbatical in the fall, so he'll be home and we'll have time for dog training. I'm super ready and excited. The rescue we're using came and did a home visit last week.  Right now, the two dogs we're leaning towards are a one-year-old female shepherd and a female puppy Great Dane/boxer mix (they call these dogs "boxanes"!).

They're both big dogs, which we want because we've heard that's the way to go when you have cats.  These dogs have both been around cats and have a known history as being good with them.  The shepherd will be a shedding disaster and if the boxane has as much energy as a boxer, she might be a bit too much for us.  We're in contact with the rescue about them and we'll see what additional information we can get. I think that boxane is beautiful, but there's something in that shepherd's downturned ears that make me want to take her in and cuddle her forever.

3) Piano - We've been taking piano lessons for a few months because we have a great room downstairs that is begging for a piano to be in it. Right now we're practicing on a keyboard and it's not really conducive to loving to practice.  We've been poking around the used piano market in Madison and Milwaukee and it looks like we're probably going to have to spend $3500-4000 to get a piano that meets our sound and aesthetic needs.  That's almost twice our piano budget, so we might have to save a bit more and keep on keeping on with that stupid keyboard for another year or so.

Northwest corner of the great room. 

Southern wall of the great room

4) CSA - Brand new CSA has started!  We have a new farm, a new pickup location, and I'm all in all fairly nervous about how all this will go. That being said, I'm also super excited and hope it's amazing. 

And that's a lot for the likes of me. I'm trying to be cool and act like these major purchases and adopting a new member of the family are just things that happen (and they are!), but they are exciting things that are happening and I am excited, but just a little bit terrified, too.