Welcome back!

I'm back at school now. It's been busy, obviously, as you can tell by the recent lack of posting. Welcome week at the University of Minnesota can be summed up like this: we're all going to get H1N1, and oh, right, due to the economic downturn we have to all do our part and pay higher fees. I am not exaggerating when I say that I get an email about H1N1 every single day. The advice? If you feel sick, stay home and drink lots of fluids. If you live in a residence hall, though, you should go back to wherever you came from. Oh, and if you're going back where you came from, please don't use public transportation to get there. Because the first thing most students will do if they come down with the swine flu is to walk back to Coon Rapids.
In other news, work on our house is going forward. We have said goodbye to our old siding, our storm windows, our chimneys, and one back door. And our yard. And what I now understand as the luxury of opening windows without letting bugs or the noise or dust in. The upside is that this project is a great excuse to put off cleaning/filing/organizing anything and everything.
All the same, it's nice to be back in a routine that's a bit more challenging than messing around in the garden all day. The dogs are adjusting fine, but the garden is having a hard time understanding that I just can't be there picking tomatoes and beans and canning all the time. We're going to have a long talk this weekend and see if we can't work it out.