chimney demolition

I thought many of you may appreciate a picture or two of our project this week: that of demolishing our chimney. We scheduled a wood stove insert to be put into our existing fireplace chimney, but when they came to do it, they discovered that the chimney was falling away from the house and was unstable and unsafe. We were told we needed to tear it down. We have a gaping hole in the side of our house now and are not sure what to do next! But I thought you would enjoy the pictures. In addition, our oven went out. We purchased a new one of those already, but to our alarm the breaker just flips when plugged in. We are dumbfounded. Why would that be. Everything seems to go wrong at once!
Love you all

I won an IPOD!

So, a couple of weeks ago I entered a drawing here at work put on by a vendor of lab equipment. The drawing was for a new 60gb apple video ipod. Yes, a little device that lets me listen to music, save and display pictures and videos... up to 15,000 songs 25,000 pictures, or 150 hours of video. Well, I won. I'm kinda excited. Actually, I'm listening to it now.

40

Thank you for the kind expressions on my (gulp) 40th birthday, and thank you for the very fun surprise birthday party. It was good to see and hear from so many I love. And, I promise to play my drums at least as often as I write in my journal. (Oo. That was a spineless commitment. They really will be used!) Again, thank you all!