Packing Day . . . .

The landscape of the house has been transformed into some sort of sculptural cardboard wasteland.  The kids love it - perfect for hide-and-go-seek.  I love them for seeing the positive in a situation that does nothing but make me twitchy.

We had three packers arrive this morning, joined by a fourth later in the day.  Packer #4 must have drawn the short straw because he got the kitchen.  Steve got pizza at lunch for the whole group, and after lunch Micah and I took Tesh and the vacuum over to Krebs Road.  I cleaned out the refrigerator, Tesh vacuumed and got rid of some cobwebs that had been left behind.  I managed to finally pull out the metal casing from the halogen lamp in the kitchen.  At the walk-through I noticed that the bulb in one of the two lamps above the kitchen island was burned out.  The former homeowner showed me how to open the lamp and pull it out, but he didn't align the little nubs that hold it in, so the metal casing from the bulb remained in the lamp and on the first ten tries, I couldn't pull it out.  Today, it finally yielded and we have two working kitchen island lamps.

Good thing because the refrigerator light was out and I found five different bulbs in the dining room lamp.  Minor details that will have me haunting the aisles of Target and Home Depot.

Tonight the Plainsboro Zoning Board of Appeals was scheduled to hear the case of allowing Thea's Mandarin-immersion charter school to occupy space at St. Joseph's Seminary.  The school district has mobilized itself against the charter school and is trying to turn the zoning request into a referendum on the charter school itself.  The state board of education has already approved the application for the school, so the school district is attempting to hijack the process late in the game.  Mind you, there are no language immersion programs offered within this school district, and no Mandarin classes offered in the elementary schools.  And despite this, I have to still make nice with the school district because Micah needs to get into the system and start draining its resources.

Which is a fine welcome to the neighborhood. . . .I am not enamored of the political process in the Township of Plainsboro.