Our kitchen and bathroom remodel returned to full swing the moment we stepped back into our house. With most of the tiling completed, we turned our focus to paint colors and lighting. We were pleased with the built-in LED bookshelf lighting, but the bath lights had a greenish tinge, making us realize how sensitive we were to color temperatures. Luckily, we found out in time to return the fixtures, and went back last weekend to Lumens, Lamps Plus, and Ikea to look for other options, including chandeliers and ceiling fans. For paint colors, we went to Sherwin-Williams and Kelly Moore for paint samples, which resulted in a dizzying kaleidoscope of paint swatches on our walls to compare. There were also a number of finishing touches – towel bar locations, window caulking, glass shower handles, pull-out drawer height, spice rack dimensions, appliance installation – that kept me occupied for the last 2 weeks. Fortunately, things finally came together and we were able to get our cleaners in for a deep clean on Monday. Meanwhile at work, I had several grants due this month, one of which resulted in more headache to withdraw than to submit due to intellectual property issues that were mostly above my head. Fellowship interviews this year overlapped with Halloween, which did not seem to affect our applicant numbers, but did ruin two consecutive Saturday mornings. On the home front, we settled on Merryhill for our future daycare due to its proximity, lower cost, and importantly, a 6:30am drop-off time. We also went out for dim sum with my in-laws to celebrate both Melody’s pregnancy and my K08 grant. With these two major projects on the way, 2016 is looking like it’ll be a busy year.