What a crazy, crazy, crazy week! I was back at practicum for one day this week. I met with my collaborating teacher to plan out our lesson, which is pretty much settled and scheduled. It's a fairly simple project, but it'll give me some face time with a class.
Thursday was work, and Thursday night I helped Mike prep his kitchen floor for laying linoleum. Thursday we mainly just pulled up the old tiles and ripped out the moulding.
Friday I actually had a day off, but ended up being super busy. Since I didn't know when or if I would have another non-holiday weekday off before Christmas, I focused on getting Mike's big present together. While waiting for confirmation for one step of the process, I did work emails, paid bills and typed texts (in short I archive our important conversations and my phone doesn't export :p I think it's part of being a librarian; I can't stand to lose those "writings"). I went to a lovely dinner party and saw one of my favorite librarians.
Saturday was the really intense day. I got out to Auburn around 1 (after coffee with another of my favorite librarians). We got right down to work on the floor. We patched the holes in the subfloor, pulled out the washer and dryer (which involved cleaning and removing the tiles that had been underneath them, and moved the fridge and stove. We went and got food while waiting for the subfloor compound to harden, then came home and sanded. I swept and swept and swept, then went over the entire floor on my hands and knees feeling for any rough spots or bumps.
The next step was creating a template of the floor. We cut craft paper and laid it out along the edges of the room. Good thing, because it turned out that the room was slightly off square - basically parallelogram shaped. We carted the linoleum into the kitchen, taped down the template at the edge of the roll, and started cutting. With such a big roll, there was no place that we could lay out the whole thing, so we had to do a little, roll up the end we had just cut, then do some more.
Unrolling the cut linoleum over the entire floor was the most frustrating part of the process, because we had to work it around cabinets, and it did not want to go. Amazingly though, once it was down, the fit was practically perfect. We glued one side at a time (that was all Mike, as we only bought one trowel) then used a roller to smooth out air bubbles.
Sounds easy, right? Did I mention that the whole process took about 14 hours of work time? 19 hours total (excluding time spent running out for food and supplies). We went to bed at 7am.
On Sunday, we had a family party to go to, but afterward our goal was to put the appliances back in. Mike has a newer washer that had been in the garage, so we brought that upstairs on a dolly. Not as easy as it sounds. We had to disassemble his banister to squeeze it around the top of the stairs. Then we had to bring the old, heavy, gross one down. Once that was done, it was homework time for me!
The Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge started on Saturday (a holiday-themed fitness competition) and I was unable to do an actual "workout" due to all of this. But I think I'm justified in my decision to track 4 hours worth of strength training - I spent at least an hour on the stairs supporting a washer over my head, to say nothing of several hours of rolling the floor or lugging the other appliances.
I had hoped to make it to yoga tonight, since I thought it would be nice to stretch out all my aches and pains, but I got home from work and slept for about 4 hours. I can't complain too much though. Mike has a pretty new floor, and I have major brownie points and a sparkly new bucket. It's fun watching the apartment improving all the time, and it's nice to have a part in it.
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