she chooses a song (Poker Face). She has the length of that song to complete a task (pick up all books and put them away).

That is exactly how I clean! You know, when I clean.

Hmm... I may take that as my tool for cleaning tomorrow. Provided i can move. Biked to work and then we had water day at the library . 2 hours of water guns, water limbo, various water races , a few quite crafts , and bubbles. I'm beat.

We're refinancing, and the appraiser is coming tomorrow, so today was supposed to be cleaning day, but it was hot and extra muggy, so cleaning turned into sitting around, berating myself for not cleaning and then a mad dash to make the house appear clean. Sigh.

But I don't know how to empty it.

Most manuals are online. I was comparing acs recently...

Water day sounds like a lot of fun. I hear it's been chilly up there, beth. God knows it's decidedly not chilly here so being profligate with cool water is tempting.

Had stalled on moving on because I had enough of a donnybrook with my dad that I wasn't sure if I was going to have to move right out again. But I decided it's depressing me living among part-empty boxes all over the place so I decided to keep filing books in the one bookcase I have left. (I once had 4 bookcases.)

Makes me sad to think of all the books I've had to sell or give away over the years. Same with LPs, 45s, cassettes and 78s. I tried to be ruthless this time but I still own too many (sold off all my 78s and half my LPs). I'm very much *into* the items when it comes to LPs and books. 12 full inches of album art and lyrics is something missing from CDs and MP3s. With books, well, it's even more expensive to replace your books in a digital format than music. Many of the books I have are not out on digital and never will be. Still, I need to find a way to become more compact and nomadic. At least until I win the lottery.

my parents got here and hour and a half before the visiting aunt and uncle and the helped me get some cleaning/organizing done. Amazing what can be done with a little focus and extra hands. Linens now fit in the linen closet because they are in there folded and organized not shoved in. An extra load of laundry got done because someone could get the clothes out there while I did something else. Mac's bed got made and I cleaned off the breakfast bar. I think by this weekend I will be ready to take pictures of how it is coming along.

Dad's pacemaker surgery seems to have gone well and it seems to be working.

So, my mom and I came to some conclusions. Dad will have two options to chose from if it all jives with his DC orders. His choices are to go with mom, sister and niece on their cross country journey (certainly more enjoyably done than ours the opposite direction) and then we can go to Arizona to see everyone. His other choice is to fly here if possible and stay with us then we'll drive over to meet them and he'll drive back.

If he's not allowed to travel then I will leave the kids here and fly up there. This is a last option that I really don't want to do.

That's great. Yeah, things go faster with help, no doubt.

Kat I am so glad things went well. I was thinking about him all day.

So I picked up the anthology for the writing workshop/course I've been teaching at UCLA from the printers. I dropped them off at 3:00 today and had to beg them to get them prepared in time so I can give them to students tomorrow.

My students kinda worked my last nerve on trying to turn things in late and we spent two hours this morning in a computer lab on campus finishing the book.

I'm grateful that the printers were able to rush it and it certainly isn't glamorous. It is almost certainly cheap enough -- I ended up paying $66 for the whole job including covers and a spiral binding. But they didn't copy it correctly (it's not duplexed front to back) and I'm irked by that. But I'm not gonna complain given how rushed we were.

Now I'm writing the student's their evaluations.

I have had a great time teaching but I can't wait for this course to be done.