Cheer

Mood: Good
Hair: Flatter than flat, and dry
Eyes: Itchy. here we go again....
Listening to: The house. It's VERY quiet.

I opened Borders today. Hee.

I also grocery-shopped in anticipation of what they've been saying is going to be a GIANT STORM. I always use the self-check lanes at Meijer's because it's faster. They have hired some people do help bag on those lanes, which is nice. The guy working mine didn't do a great job, but it did save me some time. On the way out the door, a voice behind me said, "Uh-oh. You dropped your cheese."

People are nice.

---

WordSpy Word:

murketing: n. A form or marketing where the product or service is not mentioned or shown.

Obviously, I'm not murketing Meijer's. They have their issues, but I do like the store near us.

Busy busy

Mood: good
Hair: blown out and that's it so far
Eyes: sleepy
Listening to: the toaster ticking

This was a big weekend, one of those when there were at least two things going on at all times, choices to make about where to be and which option to choose.

Friday was my sister Ellen's 59th birthday. That can't be right, but it is. That means I'm the age now that she was when the cancer started growing in her. Signpost.

Saturday when I got to work, I found confirmation of some big news. No: HEE-YUUUUUGE news. 2009 is going to be...interesting. And I cataloged 100 books on the same day I was at the Reference desk for nearly half my day. Not that I did the cataloging at the Ref Desk...hell no! It was just a pleasantly quiet day; no drama, no freaking out. Some of the people at MPOW can function as adults when faced with upcoming change.

Yesterday was Church Activity Day Times a Billion. It was Music Sunday at our church, and there was a Congregational Meeting to confirm the nominations for next years' slate of Elders and Deacons, and it was the last Session meeting of the year, which traditionally is when the old and new Session members and Deacons mingle and eat together. As Clerk of Session, it was a big day for those last two reasons.

However, the Clerk wasn't there. At the time of the Congregational Meeting, the Clerk (with the Chair of the Nominating Committee and ten other people) was on a train with a lot of people wearing blue and orange and heavy winter clothing. At the time of the luncheon/meeting, we were exiting a Really Fancy Church and getting ready to hit the streets. Actually, most of us pretty much stuck around here, although some braver souls ventured to neighboring shopping emporia like Borders and the Hershey Store. By 3:30 we were on the bus back to the train, where we rode with some of the same blue- and orange-dressed people we'd seen in the morning.

This is an annual tradition for our church's youth group, one which we inherited from previous leaders. It's important because they (we) get to experience a worship service that is Presbyterian but wholly different in tone from our church. Many of the kids over the years have noted that they've never 1) ridden the train, 2) taken a city bus, 3) been to the Big City to the East...before this trip. These are high school kids--that boggles my mind. By the time I was in high school I was riding the bus in Denver, and had been all over the place outside my little area of the universe. I'd even ridden a train, though it was a tourist thing, not a commuter.

In any case, Beast and I spent the afternoon in the Borders cafe after purchasing puzzle books for each of us to work on. That's the extent of the shopping I did.

It was a fun day.

Coming up this week: printing off the dreaded Xmas letter and address labels, putting up the tree, etc., wrapping the presents I have and figuring out what I still need to buy (and maybe even shopping for 'em!), sending the parent letter out about the mission trip... Yeah, the fun just never stops around here.

---

Urban Word:

Mass Merchanditis: The hazy feeling one gets after spending too much time shopping at large chain stores including but not limited to Walmart, Home Depot, and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Characterized by a headache, dry eyes, blurred vision, blank stare, sore feet.

We were fortunate yesterday not to have the opportunity to experience mass merchanditis, though there was a small outbreak of "where's the exit?!" from one group trapped in Macy's.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Mood: Tired
Hair: Meh; Friday can't come soon enough
Eyes: Dry
Listening to: Sparky remembering that the Pack plays tonight--like NOW!

I'm here. Kinda.

It's kinda just that everything is busy and yet all the same. We are in that dreaded holding pattern of running around prepping for FIL to move while trying to keep our regular lives going.

So, last night: youth group meeting. I love those, but they take time to prep, etc.

Yesterday, I went to Adult Sunday School for the first time in ages. Nice.

Saturday: shopping, but really just wandering to and fro. Lovely day, good food, FABULOUS company.

Today, I spent the day moving posts around from here to there. Yes, I'm mysterious. Sorry (not really). Also, I ran to the grocery store in the rain. And the highlight: the septic dude came and did what septic dudes do. Ick. That's done for several years, however. ;-)

Beast leaves on a business trip tomorrow. He hasn't traveled enough lately.

Tomorrow here at home: pedicure for the guinea pigs. Wednesday: dinner at church. Thursday: massage in the evening. Friday: hair appointment for me.

See what I mean? Real thrilling. Aren't you glad I checked in?

---

Urban Word:

jack in: v.
1. To gain entry; to connect, as to a network.
2. To enter or connect by deceptive or unscrupulous means, esp. with malicious intent.

I'm jacking in to another blogging platform. So far, it's good. Blogger needs to wake up on a bunch of levels.

---

P.S. My shoulder hurts a lot. I'm taking Beast's muscle relaxants. They make me really wackadoodle, and tired. And the pain thing? Don't help much, but even a little is critical.

Grab Bag o' Weird Sh...Stuff

• Our entire neighborhood got tagged a couple of weeks ago. Remember, I talked about finding some grafitti in the street in May? And I mentioned that it was an odd color of pink? Well, it was an odd color...because it was landscaping paint, not regular spray paint. Last month (two weeks or so ago), one street in our subdivision awoke to find paint on the streets, on cars, on houses, everywhere. No more "Killah" stuff either. There was a lot of 'fuck' and 'bitch' stuff. Luckily, because it's landscape paint, it most came off pretty easily. The stuff on the street took some scrubbing but it's gone now, after a couple of rainstorms. And we hear that the little miscreants have been caught.



• Roomba is spinning in circles. It's discouraging; we can't figure out why. So we have a call in to the iRobot people in hopes they can diagnose the issue and fix it without having to hork around with shipping back and forth. We still love Roomie, but it's annoying.



• I had every intention to do several different kinds of shopping today. Unfortunately, I neglected to ascertain the location of my purse before I went to bed last night. Beast took it to work with him--in the glovebox of his car. So that fubar'd my day completely. I went and picked it up...but instead of continuing on the way to the shopping, I ended up coming home and going to bed with a headache again. Stupid allergies.



• I've bailed on a large number of books lately. I think my attention span and patience have left completely. Or I'm picking crappy books. Possibly both. My standards, I know, are pretty high. However, right now I'm reading Elizabeth George's latest, which is back to the main characters. I didn't get past page 25 of her last book. This one is better.



• Sparky has decided to try out for his school's golf team. This should be interesting. That will send this year's registration fees over $300. Ish. How can people afford more than one kid??



• While I don't wish Cranky on anyone, it is somehow comforting to know that I'm not the only one who gets tired of listening to Cranky Me, that others also get tired of hearing their own Cranky Voices. It makes me feel less like I'm crazy when I realize that everyone feels that way sometimes.



• So, I watched Jon & Kate Plus 8 today. Damn. Shoot me first, please. I really do love kids, but...just...wow. That much whinage, plus potty training, and general mayhem...24/7/365...wow. I wouldn't recommend this show except for its birth control potential. The parents seem like nice, normal, sensible people. It'll be interesting to see them when all 8 kids are teenagers.
  
  
• This year's bombings in the neighborhood--i.e., illegal fireworks--seem to have been slightly more contained, less scattered, and reasonable. Reasonable, that is, if you don't mind three straight nights of 9:00-10:00 p.m. fireworks shows 100 yards from your house. There were those occasional afternoon explosions, too, but in comparison to past years, it's been pretty calm. We'll see. The party usually continues all bloody summer.



• Tomorrow, it's back to the mines. Whee.

---

Urban Word:

Fourth of July: The day people light things on fire, and blame it on loving their country.

I don't think John Adams really anticipated us all blowing the roofs off our neighbors' houses or setting our own on fire on the Fourth of July.

In which the media is the massage

Mood: So far, so good
Hair: Unkempt
Eyes: Finally focusing properly (I've discovered, while trying to get back into early-morning Bible study this week, that my eyes can't manage small print for the first 15 minutes of the day. This sucks)
Listening to: Silence/random homey noises

So, we've had all this weather lately. It's been ... fun ... if you're a weather geek, or get off on carrying a flashlight everywhere with you, including the bathroom (we have no windows in any of our bathrooms).

One of the other traditional spring activities around here include trees splitting and falling on power lines. We've been up and down a few times already this year, and as a result our basement "baby" TV (i.e. slightly smaller than the main one in the living room) gave up the ghost last week. Beast took the cover off, took one look at the circuit board and said, "I can't fix this."

He can fix everything. ;-)

Since there is a federal law in this country for households having three or more people that requires a minimum of two television sets, or at least one set for every two people...we had to go buy a new TV. But being us, first we had to go find the Consumer Reports information. Yes, we are dorks.

We (briefly) considered The Mirrors. But like all mirrors, it's hard to see what's going on in them if you aren't standing directly in front of them. So instead we are on the brink of--oh hell, we've dived into it head first!--a Bravia new world.

Of course, there had to be drama. We went to Circuit City because they hire people over the age of 22 to staff the sales force, instead of the big blue store from hell where everyone is 18 and thinks that we are too stupid to deal with when we ask questions like, "How often does this model break down?" Big box stores tend to all be the same, to a point, so when the sales guy disappeared with the sign saying that the set we'd selected was on sale...we got leery. We stood and watched the lamest EVER movie--well, it did have Sylvester Stallone (gaaahhhhh!) in it as a race car driver--for about 15 minutes before the same guy returned having battled apparently to the death in the stock room. Turns out the stock number on the item that was "on sale" was a different stock number from the set it was touting. So, technically, the set we chose wasn't on sale.

HOWEVER! Pay attention, people, this is unheard of! Dude didn't say anything except a little grumbling over the restockers who stay out all night Saturday and come to work early on Sunday...he didn't quibble with us, he didn't tell us that he was "making a special deal" for us, he didn't say anything akin to "we fucked up and that isn't a deal we can actually do for you," and he didn't narc out any specific co-workers. He just gave us the advertised price, took our money, and was a consummate professional all the way through.

We will continue to shop at Circuit City, just because of this.

Oh. The (huge-for-us) TV? Rawks. And the massage? I'm getting one this morning because my neck/shoulder thing started yelling at me on Saturday again.

---

Urban Word:

consumerican: An individual suffering from the particularly American brand of consumerism.

Much as I sometimes hate to admit it, even Beast and I have consumerican tendencies.

Still around?

Yup. Busy. Yup. Synopsis:

FRIDAY:

Stayed home from work. Took drugs for my neck. Slept. I believe Beast was home for part of the day. Don't remember.

SATURDAY:

Our annual spring mission trip to the Big City to the West. Beast rewired a basement room with three or four others. I grouted about 3/4 of a bathroom and laid tile in a short, 8-food hallway. We actually only cemented half the hall. I worked with five or six others who were putting in a closet and drywalling a porch and (different) closet. All of us were in a halfway house where Beast has worked before (men just out of prison) in a neighborhood "in transition." Not sure which way the transition is going. There is a crack distribution house at the end of the block one way, hookers a couple of houses away, and families in three houses across the street. Links to previous mission trips.

By the time we left--10 hours after arriving--my knees and back were shot, and Beast's nose was cut by flying metal. He nearly injured his eye. And they have interesting toys in the office where he was working; interesting in a "Christian" office but necessary for their counseling of sex workers. Sparky has no idea what we were giggling at, and I told Beast he can explain.

My neck/shoulder obviously had improved, but I basically replaced that agony with the pain left from kneeling on ceramic tile for 8 hours. I will not be converting to Catholicism or any other religion requiring kneeling.

SUNDAY:

I went in to work at 11 to try to get a little caught up on last week's pile o' shit. It was my Sunday to work anyway, so that covered 1-4 on a beautiful day where we who were forced to be inside kept saying, "Why are all these people HERE??"

I came home, helped (a little) with kitchen cleanup. Beast has finished painting, so we can move all the stuff on the island back to where it belongs. I made the last DbD meal, and then spent the evening looking for typos in our library catalog and checking for Dewey Errors. I know what this means. If you don't, trust me when I say it's a clear sign that I'm beyond anal.

TODAY:

Another eye appointment; I passed. Grocery shopping. Then a stop at DbD to make 9 meals. It took me bloody forever (although I guess the new employee said to the supervisor, "She moves FAST!"), and by the time I got in the car with everything I wasn't sure I'd be able to get out of the car when I got home! My feet are killing me, still from crawling around hard floors on Saturday.

Once Sparky gets home, he and I will head to the shoe store to buy him some sandals...ones that aren't plastic this year! We'll probably also pick up some shorts for him. And I'll look at curtains for the kitchen and dining room windows. Maybe an office chair for me: the hydraulics on mine blew out last week. Thanks a bunch, Sparky. ahem

Tonight, I'm really hoping I can get the kitchen floor wet-mopped--there's still an awful lot of drywall dust on the floor--and talk to Amy about this class we're teaching in two days!

Howsomever, right now, while Sparky is still at school for another hour, I'm going to go lie down and try to loosen up my back a bit.

---

Urban Word:

acoustic shave: the act of shaving with razor; not an electric shave

The thought of anything but an acoustic shave on my pits is painful in the extreme! How does Norelco make ANY money?

Dreamy weirdness

What a weird night of dreams!

I woke up early from a dream that I was reading an email from my brother announcing that he and his wife were expecting a baby. How did I know this had to be a dream? The email was in my gmailbox, which Del doesn't know exists. Also...just...no, it's not happening.

The rest are now a full jumble in my head, with only the waking thought of "WHAT?!?!" to remind me of how confused I was. At some point, maybe as a result of the weirdness, I turned off my alarm, so I woke up 45 minutes late. Good thing I'm not working today!!

No, instead, I'm setting an appt. for Dbd, and ordering a bunch o' stuff from Amazon.

Speaking of Xmas--the Amazon order--my niece's mother-in-law called me, at work, yesterday to ask if I had any ideas for her son and daughter-in-law for gifts. WTF on so many different levels:

1) calling me at work (my own extended family doesn't even do that more than twice a year, if that!)
2) calling ME to ask about gifts for her family
3) asking, or starting to ask, for an explanation of a person--female--in a photo her ex-husband took and posted on his blog. I was in the photo as well, so therefore I would 'know'. Even if I did, it's not likely that I'm going down that road with her.
4) asking me if Katherine is 'depressed' since she's tired all the time (uh...Genderal Dipshit Alert)

And now I'm logging off here. Happy Thursday!

Advent

This is where we went to church yesterday.

We were ten minutes late, so we had to sit in the balcony, the one to the left of the lights in this photo. There's another balcony to the right (directly across from where we sat), and another in the back. We got there just as a baptism was finishing up, in time to hear the announcements, including one about the governor being in attendance. The sermon was very good, the organ music was simply awesome, and the people we were squeezed in between were courteous and kind, and very upright (in the best Presbyterian sense). After church, one of our high school kids asked why we didn't go to the Presbyterian church after all. hee

(In fairness, she was confused about the line in the Apostle's Creed: "I believe in ... the holy catholic church..."--note the small 'c'--and she and I haven't gotten to that in our confirmation meetings.)

Then we shopped, mostly here:


It was really fun. Some of the girls had never been on a train before, some had never ridden a city bus, some had never been to the city, and I had never eaten in a food court that worked the way this one does: you are seated at an assigned table, and given a credit card, which is used to scan in your order wherever you want to eat and you pay on the way out. MUCH easier than the usual food court!

I bought a couple of presents, wandered around stores filled with cheap clothes and terminally skinny shoppers (including the teenagers I was with!), and was glad not to be outside. It was a fun, loads better than the last time we did this when the weather was probably 20 degrees colder with a substantial wind chill. Yesterday was rainy, and we all had clothes on that were too warm, but we weren't freezing (till we got off the train at 6:00). Sparky was really annoyed that everything cost so much ("Baseball caps are $25, Mom!! All of them. Nothing is any cheaper!"), but he managed to find some things (at least for his dad) for Christmas. I may be getting a CSI jigsaw puzzle (he called me to ask if I'd prefer 'regular' CSI or CSI: Miami--d'oh!). Best part: we only spent two hours actually shopping, not long enough to get totally, completely bored out of my mind, just long enough to realize that I can't find clothes for myself in 90% of the stores that sell clothes--either because of the size, or because of the style, or because they are shoddily-made.

And today, Beast leaves for a trek around his sales territory. I'm not sure how long he'll be gone, but certainly much of the week. Sparky just came down after his shower, and is doing all the advent calendars: we have about 6, including one with pockets that hold treats. Ooh, I just remembered...I have a new one this year!!

It's Monday. Life is pretty good. Honestly, I can't think of anything right now that requires whining or complaining.

Pendulum swing

From one side to the other...

This morning at DbD, I was mistaken for someone who owns horses and also makes her meals there. I like my other self, actually, if I own horses!

Later, at Sam's Club, I was called "snotty" by another shopper. OK, I probably was being snotty, but only because she and her Crew were being stoopud. I did not respond to her comment "Well, aren't we snotty!"

On the drive home I got behind Stereotypical Driver From Hell. Speed: varying between 43 and 49, but not according to the posted speed limit signs. Where we were supposed to go 40, I was left in the metaphorical dust. When the speed limit went up to 50 or {gasp} 55, I caught up. For bends in the road, we braked. At stop signs, we opened the door (coat caught in it?? I have no idea) and closed it, which confused everyone. Finally, on the last straight stretch, posted 55, I could pass without breaking 60mph. Grr!

When I turned onto Mere, I passed some friends clearing brush and slowed down to say hi. They were too occupied to notice me idling there, and it wasn't safe for me to pull of, so I went on and crested the rise...only to see a 4- or 5-point buck stand in the exact center of the road 100 feet in front of me, silhouetted against the trees and looking toward the right side of the road. He eventually took off down toward the creek.

Now that I'm home, I can hear the popping that means hunting season is in full swing. Sigh. I hope he makes it this year.... (Yes, I know deer season doesn't start till later, in November sometime)

Shopping

Yes, I went shopping today. Surprisingly, this was not my idea. I hope you all read that with an appropriatly dry tone of voice. The people with whom I went shopping got quite upset with one another at one point. This was not a comfortable event. They smoothed it over, and we carried on, but it put a damper on things.

I spent about $100, including lunch and some Christmas prezzies.

My feet are tired tonight from walking around cobblestones in one of those "quaint" recovered 19th-century town-center kind of shopping areas. The whole place smelled of apple-cider donuts. I didn't eat OR buy any. That should shock the hell out of everyone! heh (I don't care for lines, and there was a line to buy them.)

I'm thinking about going back to get something I spotted, if I don't come up with a better idea for a gift for that person. Amy, wanna come with? There's a tea shop(pe) I'd like to check out.

Meanwhile, at home, Beast finished the other closet floor (and the laundry), and Sparky shut his finger in the car door (aside from some minor surface damage on the tip of his finger, he's fine). My clothes are all back in the bedroom hanging where they belong.

Next up: painting the bedroom walls. And finding throw rugs. I really want something like these, but I can't find them anywhere except in England.
Boo.
No. Really: booooooo!

Anyone have access to kilim rugs with Greek dolphins on them? Seriously. I'm just looking for smallish area rugs. Let me know if you have any ideas for where to check. I'll go with something else if I have to, but not with good grace!

So that's my day. I'm going to bed now, in hopes of a major enough freeze tonight to kill anything pollen-y so I can be outside again.

I have to work tomorrow afternoon. Ick. But I can't complain, seeing as how I haven't worked for two days. Plus, after next weekend, I don't work Fridays or Saturdays for the rest of the month.

Good night.

Sports of varying types

Go PACK! I mean really: I never expected the Packers to be 4-0 at this point in this year's season. It's like a "pinch-me" season so far, a bonus added to the records Favre is setting.

Plus, the Browns won. AND the Bears lost.

If the Broncos could have gotten their act together, that would have been a 100% perfect football day for us. On the other hand, I just found out--ironically, from my British nephew's Facebook posting--that the Rockies have made it to the MLB playoffs.

This was a good intro to a busy week kicked off by a nuts day tomorrow: I have a ton of stuff to prep, last-minute, for a scrapbooking program I'm doing at the library in the evening, and I need to get the Session minutes all caught up so I can take them to a meeting and have them examined this month. Oh, and a mailing has to be made to go out this week to the youth group members.

I'd rather watch football games. Or sleep.

However, the afternoon wasn't a dead loss: I finally cleaned out ALL of my saved Bloglines posts. Instead of having something like 80 of them saved, I'm down to about 25, 16 of which are memes. The rest are personal-interest things to examine more closely. Soon.

My list of favorite authors is current through books published up to 2007.

And, in case you hadn't noticed, my eyes are no longer giving me giant nightmares. They aren't perfect, but they are functional and way more manageable. To celebrate, yesterday I went out and bought a heated mattress pad for our bed, a blanket for Sparky's bed, HUGE bath towels for Beast and me (with bamboo...why?), and very very cute shoes.They're called "Poptart" in brown houndstooth. I will giggle whenever I think of that!

Prolly a good thing

Our local Meijer's just redid their whole store. I can't find anything in the grocery department anymore, so I wandered a lot today. And I nearly did something that is veryVERY unlike me: a major impulse buy.

But, it turns out they no longer sell guinea pigs, only fish.

So I didn't impulse-buy a guinea pig today. Sorry, Buddy. Have some turnip greens instead.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

Here's my list for the day:

• Call allergist for appt. (I've developed hives, and want to nip them in the bud before they take over my legs like they did in '94)
• Find Spanx (wedding, ahoy)
• Call for fitting appt. (ditto previous note)
• Sam's Club (we need lots of big-purchase stuff: TP, macaroni, pop...)
• Vickie's (to exchange a purchase from Mall of America--wrong size)
• Download photos to Snapfish & send links to assorted people (we took 175 pictures in 6 days)
• Hit the ATM for cash
• Shop for a sports coat for Sparky (changing my mind again!)
• Stop in at work (ignore that nasty voice in my head)
• Restock and pack my work bag for Tuesday (surely that will appease the nasy voice)
• Call D. about earrings she gave me for safekeeping (I forgot to give them back when we dropped her off yesterday)
• Sleep

I'm going to try really hard not to start at the bottom of the list!

edited 10:45 p.m. : Sparky has a sport coat, and "Ruth" has my dress to work on taking in and letting out and generally making it fit me correctly. Because I am not a normal-sized person. Total output today was somewhere near $400. I'm not sure which side of that number I ended up, but ... OUCH!

Home

...as in, "We are home."

We are also beyond tired. Five straight nights of post-midnight bedtimes (hah!) and pre-7 a.m. wake-up calls, over 50 teenagers, and some amazingly incompetent youth leaders, no air-conditioning in our sleeping quarters, and a lot of tears (mostly good ones).... It's good to be home ready to sleep the sleep of the just in our own beds (knowing first-hand how extraordinarily lucky we all are).

Synopsis (please wander through the sites I've linked to; they are wonderful organizations doing worthwhile, amazing, creative, and necessary work):

My group worked at Mary's Place. The picture of the playroom showed where most of our work took place, but we also played outside on the playground, and in the Children's Center and Teen Center. The sister on the right in the photo on that page, Sister Nesta, is the Mother of the house, and she is absolutely amazing. So, of course, are all the children: Lana, Lakisha, Tanisha, Tanea, Josh, Craig, Jaderea, Briantia, Arielle, Trevor (whom we think has diabetes, thought his parents are clueless), Kailani, Lily, Asiyah, Adam, Colin....

Beast's group worked all over the city. They were at Salvation Army, The Fallout, and Catholic Charities over the course of the week. While my group spent the days playing with kids and giving out hugs, these guys spent the week actually WORKING and loved almost every minute of it (the downer was a disorganized coordinator at one site that kept them away from working for too long).

Both of our groups went in with open hearts and minds and did they ever get filled up again and again. We told all the kids repeatedly that we could see them "getting it" more every day. We are both really proud of them. We were, as far as I'm concerned, with the Cool Kids, the ones who were there for the right reasons, and rarely (if ever) had to be 'corrected.'

Yesterday we shopped at Mall of America (I'm not linking). It was fun, but exhausting and very wrenching after the previous four days.

However, I'm looking forward to a long night of sleep tonight, in a bed...in MY bed! With a/c blowing on me. And NO WAKE-UP CALL! :-)

When my niece Katherine was here a couple of weeks ago, we settled on tomorrow as a day to go shopping for shoes for her sister's wedding in July. It really won't take long; we don't have to have them dyed. But we want them to be the same color at least.

So. I can't go.

Because my WONDERFUL, BRILLIANT child, who has been working on a GINORMOUS project at school for the past ten weeks. He just realized, after some major prodding from me this afternoon, that he has to create a tri-fold display (he know about that), a brochure, a fact/information sheet, and a book of approximately twenty captioned pictures, and finish writing and practicing his presentation before next Tuesday. The report is turned in. I never saw it. Hope he did it right, since he didn't bother to recheck the assignment sheet--which had the info on the rest of the stuff listed above--until about 4:45 this afternoon.

Plus, he has to finish building a rocket out of a 2-liter pop bottle by Monday morning. He has no actual idea when that's due: "Monday, or maybe Tuesday or Wednesday."

Beast isn't feeling good tonight, and he's got his first golf outing of the summer tomorrow morning.

Sparky and I will be spending the morning (at least) back at the library--better printers, better layout programs, etc.--and I will be trying NOT to do the work for him.

If he can get his act together relatively quickly, Katherine and I could still meet in the afternoon, but it will be so freakin' busy at the mall by then I'm less than enthusiastic about that. Maybe if she goes to a DSW near her, and I go to one near me and we consult that way....

This MAY be a sign that I have too freakin' much going on.

Today I will...

...plan baby shower, start to finish, possibly including ordering food & buying decorations. preliminary plan put together, cake ordered, some supplies and decorations purchased...

...send Amazon order started yesterday, after one last once-over. done, though I edited it, and the DVD set of MASH was sold out from under me...

...call youth group kids re tomorrow's plan, because I messed up & told them wrong date (sigh). shit, forgot that

...wrap presents. tomorrow

...take some time to read. HAH, not likely! oh well I did it anyway

...print copies of Christmas letter, put address labels on envelopes, & start signing cards. Also, find Sparky's school photos. MUST do tomorrow

...get ready for tonight's party. done, ready to leave in 5 minutes

...briefly think about what to take to tomorrow night's party. I thought about it, very briefly

I've already updated my book blog, and now I'm ready to go back to bed. I think that would be a bad idea.

updated 5:45 p.m.

It was too good to last

This just in my work emailbox, from The Boss:

Hi everyone,

The City of [Where-I-Work] has instituted a dress code for anyone who works "front line" (that is all of us). As of today, jeans will no longer be acceptable, even on Saturdays. Library pages—you have special permission from the city manager to wear jeans, but please ensure that they are clean, without holes and look presentable.

The idea is to increase the appearance of professionalism for the public. With that in mind, our code will also include no tank tops and most t-shirts (other than library related).

Luckily, I didn't wear blue jeans today. I'm in a bit of a quandary, since ALL my pants are jeans, except one pair of somewhat dressy slacks. Obviously, the blue jeans are out, but what about these Gloria Vanderbilt stretch twill jeans I'm wearing today? Sigh.

I need to go shopping....

There, that wasn't so bad, was it?

I haven't mall-crawled properly in a long time. You know what? Today's Long Walk to Nowhere was actually fun. It helps, a lot, to have a list--even a general one--and money. It does not help when you can't find all the bags when you get home. On the other hand, if one must lose a bag this time of year, it's better to lose one that has one's own stuff rather than one with Christmas presents. So we hit a Big Suburban Mall, and Ikea, and walked the shit outta our feet.

I got some good stuff today, 90% of which is gifties. And we wandered for hours, giggling and goofing and gossiping.

Crappy weather though. And I didn't find a decent tree-topper (ours disappeared--we're officially old and forgetful and can't remember WTF we were thinking last year).

I'm T-I-R-E-D.

Sparky's at an anime club meeting tonight, which we forgot about until he mentioned it at 5:30. So Beast took him back to town, and stopped at church to work on fixing a hole in one of the walls which someone in Sparky's youth group probably caused last week. I will be leaving at about 8:30 to bring Sparky back home.

Then I'm dropping into bed.

Tomorrow is catalog meeting day. I will drive the opposite direction from today's trip, for almost as long, to have a mini-celebration of last week's announcement that the new platform for our catalog WON'T be ready in April after all. OK, not a mini-celebration--we are safe with our current software for another 9 months, at least. A lot can happen in 9 months, yeah? Drinks for everyone!!