Volunteer event & more new furniture

A week or so ago the client organized a volunteer event at a local school.  Basically we were invited to give up four hours of our work day i.e. not bill and go and do some cleanup activities at a school.  Turned out to be awesome!
Monica and I met at work and did a ride share to the school, arriving around 730am, breakfast was provided then we got down to it.  Hands On Bay Area is a local not-for-profit that co-ordinates these types of events.  With 50+ folk milling around we all signed on for one of several tasks including; gardening (this, in my view, the toughest because it actually started with breaking up some very hard packed dirt...), building some benches (and I mean building, these were sturdy little suckers that involved power tools and some heavy lifting), painting a mural on a wall (school logo, the folks doing that one knocked it out of the park!!!!), repainting the basket ball etc lines on the hard standing (this one I did, it was fun, started with taping all the lines then running a roller over them, we managed to bring back to life three full sized basketball courts as well as some other half courts in the space of four hours) and the final group who mounted a donated big screen TV in the office (this too not easy as it involved several trips to both the electric and hardware stores to get it sorted....techy folk are perfect for this type of  task).  It really was heaps of fun and a different way to get to know the client, other vendors and our own team.

My dining room table and chairs arrived and I have been progressively unpacking them....omg can't say they weren't well packed for the journey.  Anyway, love how it looks, there is an internal leaf so that it easily sits six (you know for all those dinner parties of have!).  I can now start to build the room out a little more to make it cozy, including getting some carpet tiles and curtains for the door.
What I am coming to love the most about my little house is that I do, actually, use every room.  Really the whole place is about 700sqft but I've never been that good at filling up a space!  I think it's a combo of having spent at least sometime living in a hotel room as a child and time in the military where you only had one room. Anyway all that aside, I do use all the spaces.  Even now I'm sitting in the kitchen at the breakfast bench typing!
Berlin is not far away and I'm ready on all fronts....to see mum, have a holiday from work and run the marathon!