Birthdays and Attics

Today would've been my dad's 63rd birthday. I remember that he and my mom were here for his 60th birthday in 2006 and we went to Tanglewood for a concert. We had an ice cream cake from Frozen Freddie's. My mom and I walked down there to get it (a few blocks from our house) and then had to almost run to get it home so that it wouldn't melt. Here's a photo of us from my dad's 50th birthday:
(Notice that even my usually-prim-and-proper grandma put on a party hat and blew a noise maker!) I have few regrets in my life, but I deeply regret that my dad never got to meet Annika and be a grandpa. He would've loved her.

Today we finally got the electrical work done in the attic, after trying for weeks to have an electrician even call us back. I think they did a fine job, and I'm hoping to clean the floor and stairs this afternoon in an effort to start the process of moving our desk up there. I even bought a brand new bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap for the occasion! (Jim semi-jokingly worried that the soap will make the stairs disintegrate but I have more faith in our stairs). It will be interesting to see how our AC window-unit will do up there - I'm happy that we're going to get some more use out of it. Then, all we really need to do is finish painting the walls. It's not pretty up there, but it'll do until we have the money to renovate the attic.