I had a couple of rehearsals yesterday, one with the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. Those of us who do choral music mostly without an orchestra had a little trouble with this rehearsal, frankly. The thing is, we're used to having the conductor communicate with us mostly. In fact, the last few times we've done a piece with an orchestra, we had our choirmaster as the conductor.

So... well, there were a couple of entrances where the chorus simply didn't come in at all. Because no one wants to be the only one singing, when there's a chorus of sixty or so. And since we were all sort of waiting for the conductor to cue us... It was not a shining moment for us.

At last night's rehearsal, our own beloved conductor tried to help us out with this.

"I'm really concerned about my French horns," he said, "so you just come in when it's time." And he would gaze fixedly at the imaginary French horns, ignoring us, and we'd attempt to come in at the right time.

One of the things I particularly like about working with different conductors is the way they use language. English has lots of very specific kinds of words for spatial and visual things, so when we want something visual to happen, we can say stuff like "A little to the left" or "Let's make it cerulean blue." With sound, there has to be a lot of metaphorical language.

"Try to come into the same soundworld," this guy said to the strings, "that the brass has already established."

I love that. He also told the tubas or somebody to make "a fleshy pizzicato." I was glad he hadn't said that to the altos, because I really wouldn't know where to begin.

And he said that passages sounded, "like Esperanto -- you don't know what that is" and "like a typewriter, another thing you don't know about." It was looking out at all those young people.

It's sounding good, though, the Brahms. If you're in my neck of the woods, you should come hear it.

I got a couple more assignments, too, so this week is nicely filled up, and I have a website for The Computer Guy and me to do in May, so I guess that counts as having stuff out on the calendar. I'm mostly waiting on things right now, so  I was glad for the immediate jobs. I also have a couple of phone meetings, one with a PR person for the Wall Street Journal article, and one with my Northerner, who now that the floods have receded is having a freak blizzard. He seems to take it in stride.

I made myself a stock and flow diagram about work.

The green thing in the middle is my stock of work, which I like to keep at twenty billable hours a week. The sources of work inflow are at the left, and the completed jobs flow out at the right.

Then I made unsmooth loops showing that I can do things to increase work from my normal sources if the stock gets low -- different things for the different sources, and I could also add more sources if I wanted to -- and also that completed work sometimes comes back.

I don't have complete control over the inflow from either direction or from any of the sources. In order to increase the amount of workflow from the college, I did the training for online courses, and did a good job with my face to face classes so that they wanted me to teach more classes. However, there are times off from the college work when I either have no work or the work I have becomes unpaid and therefore unbillable. I can increase work coming to me from The Computer Guy by bringing clients to his firm, but then it can be weeks before the work reaches me, because he puts them out on his calendar. I can apply to jobs at oDesk if I seem to have too little work, but there is a gap between application and starting work even if I get the jobs, and I don't always -- and my regular clients there can come back to me with assignments while I'm waiting to find out about the jobs I've applied for. I can increase the number of random clients I get through marketing, but they remain random and unpredictable, and some of them I need to take to The Computer Guy as well, which adds another layer of unpredictability. And the unbillable hours do affect the system as well, but I don't know how to draw them in at this point.

Since the stock in a system doesn't change immediately when the rate of inflow or outflow is adjusted, this means that sometimes I have oscillations in my workflow -- times when I have either more or less than the ideal amount.

The systems book I'm reading talks about how to smooth oscillations by responding to feedback (in my case, increase or decrease in work inflow, which they call a discrepancy) sooner or later in the cycle. This would mean that I could in theory step up or slow down my efforts to increase the workflow at just the right moment and keep my workflow more steady. I don't know about that; there are humans involved here.

I could also adjust the outflow. That is, I could slow down when I have less work and speed up when I have more. I may do that, to a limited degree. That is, I think it's possible that I work less painstakingly when I have huge amounts of work to do. I wouldn't slow to a crawl to lengthen a by-the-hour job for the sake of getting paid more, because it would be wrong. Nor would I speed up past the point of doing excellent work, for the same reason. Again, there are humans involved.

But I do like the stock and flow view of work. It seems more predictable and stable, just because I put it in boxes. As I say, there are humans involved.

#2 daughter and I were discussing The Computer Guy's vices. We weren't gossiping, of course (it's against our religion). Rather, we were analyzing an interaction.

#2 daughter had tried to arrange a meeting with The Computer Guy, and he had declined, on the grounds that he had to work. #2 is not accustomed to having boys decline on any grounds. She expects, in fact, that they should be happy to give up their work entirely for the privilege of taking her to a movie. She was, therefore, seeking a hidden meaning in the conversation.

I don't do this. I don't trade in hidden meanings, myself. If I said that I regretfully declined an invitation because I had to work, it would mean that

so I generally miss all hidden messages.

However, I'm pretty good at coming up with theories and multiple possible interpretations, and also I'm a good mom, so I joined in.

The two obvious options were that he had to work and that he was being polite, but actually doesn't like her and doesn't want to spend time with her. Having proposed those two scenarios, I then moved on to more elaborate interpretations. Unfortunately, all my other proposals involved The Computer Guy's being snarky or mean.

"The problem is," I said, "that he's not mean. We'd know by now if he were mean."

#2 daughter agreed. "I can't even imagine him being mean. He has no vices. He doesn't even drink coffee."

We contemplated this in silence. And then we continued to contemplate it loudly, in scandalized tones, because we are talking here about a tech guy who, as far as we can tell, doesn't drink caffeine at all. This is even more amazing than a boy who doesn't want to go out with #2 daughter.

It isn't possible that The Computer Guy actually has no vices. Everyone has vices.

"He drinks beer," I offered.

#2 daughter snorted. She has been out drinking with him. "He drinks one beer."

Further contemplation.

"He watches TV," I suggested.

And in fact this was all we could come up with.

"Maybe he plans to run for president."

We all have vices, though. It's just that some of us have interesting vices worth blogging about, and some of us have dull, boring vices. Or that some of us have obvious, public vices, and some have secret vices that no one knows about.

Those are the ones that get a people in trouble when they run for president.

I'm back with a recipe I promised to Chanthaboune. This is Spicy Chicken with Pineapple Avocado Salsa, from Saving Dinner.

Combine all these things:
1 small can crushed pineapple
1 avocado, chopped
1 green onion, sliced
juice of half a lime
cayenne pepper to taste
1 t ground ginger (except I just put a slice of fresh ginger through my garlic press)
1 t cumin
2 T chopped cilantro

That's the salsa. Now combine 2 T chili powder and 2 pressed cloves of garlic with a bit of olive oil and spread it on some boneless chicken. Saute the chicken, drizzle a bit of honey over it, and cook it till it's nicely browned. Yum.

I went to church, where I mostly cried. I'm actually doing pretty well, now. Last night I had a moment where I felt happy -- this is my default, actually, I normally feel happy, but I noticed it because I haven't for a while. However, this was my first time out in public and of course my church family was being sympathetic and giving me hugs, and I absolutely can't stay composed under those circumstances.

I'm not a decorous weeper, either. I'm a red-face sniffler. But next week is Holy Week and I have a whole bunch of singing to do, so I had to get it over with. And of course it is very comforting to have people being comforting, even if it does make me cry.

But it also felt like a faux pas, sitting and crying. And then I'd be planning music or practicing a solo or discussing the Lenten study and perfectly okay, and someone would come up and say something kind and I'd burst into tears and have to apologize to everyone. Well, this is why I'm not going out in public, isn't it?

Can we talk about cell phone courtesy?

A while back I was in the Art Department ladies' room and there was a girl sitting in there talking on her cell phone. It seems wrong, somehow, talking to people while peeing. And then I had to make a call during #2 daughter's and my shopping trip, and she thought it would be fine to discuss webmaster negotiations while walking around the store, but I lurked in the handbag corner quietly till I finished the call. Given the fact that modern people walk around talking on their phones in public all the time, this probably made me more conspicuous than if I'd strolled unconcernedly through the shop, but I would have been uncomfortable.

Isn't it all about public vs. private? It's perfectly okay to use the bathroom, to make phone calls, and to cry, but they're all things we ought to do in private, right?

You might have friends close enough that you don't mind talking to them while they pee, I don't mind telling The Computer Guy that our client says she loves him in front of my daughter, and my church family doesn't hold it against me if I cry in front of them, but some things feel too public.

Or do they? This may be old-fashioned of me.

I have a lot to say today but no time to say it, as I am going to  church this morning.

Let me just update you on my continuing learning about the Kindle 2. You can make the letters really big, and you can make it read to you, so it would be good for people who have limited vision. It's lighter than a book, so it would be good for frail people, too.

Someone told me there were thousands of free books for it, but that doesn't seem to be true. However, there are dozens, mostly downmarket RoMance novels and classics. I downloaded a bunch of P.G. Wodehouse, plus a paid one (the newest Joan Hess) so I wouldn't feel like a mooch. Now, with half a dozen novels, a newspaper, and a blog in it, my Kindle feels like a magical reading machine. I can turn it on and there is new stuff in it.

However, it puts sidebars confusingly right in the middle of the ordinary page, and if you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, don't think "Ah! I have a magic electronic reading device and thus can read without waking my husband!" because it isn't visible in the dark. It's just like paper and ink.

I'll probably come back later with that recipe for Chanthaboune, though I do have work to do today -- I got the two articles done yesterday, but I need to do the rest of my online course.

#2 daughter and I combined necessary stuff with a Girls' Day Out attitude yesterday. We went to TJ Maxx for bathmats (and they had good cotton ones for $4.99, in case you need one yourself), and I walked out not only  with the long-needed bathmats but also with these extremely frivolous $9.99 shoes.

I feel a little bit as though I, since I like to wear ballet flats, should stock up on them right now when they're in style. I realize that the correct attitude for someone planning to become a chic old lady in a decade or two would be to wear them only when they were in style, but I haven't yet reached that point.

#2 daughter didn't find the shower curtain she needed, but we did find a new camera for her upcoming trip to Paris at our next port of call. She had a combination of sensible well-researched preferences (rechargeable lithium battery) and frivolous concerns (wanting to feel like a spy). The salesperson was very helpful, even knocking off $20 since she had to go with an un-spy-like plum color.

We went and dealt with the cell phone changeover next. I've been not just dreading having to deal with that but actually procrastinating about it, but in fact it was practically fun. In addition to the useful man who fixed it all up for us, there was also a girl who had shoehorned herself into a trendy outfit featuring a white blouse with a bright coral bra, several sizes too small, peeking through it. This preference for tight clothing gave the girl's curves an exuberance they wouldn't otherwise have had, and she talked a lot, largely about shoes. This made her entertaining, in a Marilyn Monroe sort of way. When she told us she was going to join the Marines, the other customer in the place -- a diminutive Japanese man with white hair and a kind face -- burst out laughing. He'd been a submariner in the Navy, he told us in accented English. This caused all the people in the place to share their military experiences, and in fact I chipped in with my son-in-law's having also been a Navy sub guy. Because this is how we behave where I live.

I think my husband will look something like that man in a decade or two, when I'm a chic old lady.

We made a few more efforts to find a shower curtain for #2 daughter, and looked also for a marker board with a grid for me (#2 daughter was thinking that would help with the whole project management issue). Then it was time to buy tires.

My husband told me Thursday morning as he left for work that I needed to put new front tires on my car. Thursday evening, the boys drove off to work and had a blowout about a block from the house. Accordingly, we went to the Firestone place and relayed the need for front tires. The nice man took a look at my tires and assured me that I needed four new tires. I went out with him in the rain to look, informing him that I had been told to get front tires only, but it turned out that my tires were in fact quite bald. I know there's supposed to be some texture on the surface of a tire, and mine had none. While I did make the man look at all the tires, or at least the three that didn't have a big hole, in case a couple might somehow be in good condition still, I had to admit that I needed new  tires.

They cost a whole lot of money: $460. The guy began by asking me what was important to me in a tire. I have no category in my brain for "important things about tires." Maybe "having air inside them." As it happened, he only had one kind in stock anyway, so it was a moot point. I forked over the spondulicks and #2 daughter and I went to lunch.

This made me think of two things. First, the many times in my life when having to come up with that amount of  money would have been an emergency. I'm very grateful that, while I may still have to worry a little about taxes and tuition, and I still might not be able to have the dental work I need done, I'm now able to buy new tires and still go to lunch while they're put on the car.

The second thing it made me think of was the book I'm reading, Thinking in Systems. I've only read the first couple of chapters, which are occupied mostly by stock and flow diagrams. I'm putting some diagrams like this into this post for your amusement and possible edification.

This bit about stock and flow isn't exactly a new concept for me, but it's new terminology and formalization, so I'm finding it cool. The basic idea is that systems can be thought of in terms of a stock of something (like water in a bathtub), with inflow (like water from the faucet) and outflow (like water going down the drain).

One of the examples in the book is the bank account. If the stock of money goes down, we'll work more or spend less. If it rises, we may feel free to spend more or to work less. 

I've tried to avoid responding to my bank account in this way, because of the aforementioned taxes, tuition, and dental work. But I immediately realized that if #2 daughter and I had gone to the tire place first, I would not have bought the frivolous shoes.

Whether I had to buy four tires or not, I still had ten bucks for the shoes. Whether I had to buy four tires or not, I did not actually need a pair of shoes patterned like a beige dalmatian. But once I paid for those tires, I became unwilling to spend money frivolously any more.
 
My husband was actually very upset by the cost of the tires. He spent a lot of time telling me what I should have done instead of meekly handing over the money. But I now have four new tires, and needn't worry about it any more.

#2 daughter stayed in last night, having been unable to pry The Computer Guy away from his work, and we watched silly movies with #2 son. Johnny English and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, to be precise. When I said that I thought the former was just stupid enough but the second was too stupid, #2 son said. "True. But it addresses issues that are often overlooked in movies." I find that kind of comment from a seventeeen year old completely adorable, but I made sure not to show that in my response.

While watching said movies, I frogged Salt Peanuts again. Since the Keyboard Biologist obligingly pinned hers out on a 1" grid at her blog, I added the inches of plain stockinette that she had between the armscye and shoulder shapings. I still can't find those inches in my instructions, but I find them more plausible than the instructions.
   
I woke up at 4:00 this morning with a feeling of overwhelmedness about the amount of stuff that has piled up in the past week or so. I did no billable work yesterday, though I had a productive meeting with The Computer Guy and useful communications with clients. I did, with the help of #2 daughter, get the phone and tires dealt with. She and I and her sister also had a good planning session, since we are contemplating making my business into a family business. Both the girls have had the opportunity to see what I actually do during their visits. Reassuring tech-challenged people, advocating for them with their webmasters, and writing stuff are probably the most obvious bits. But #1 daughter sat down with me and looked at Analytics and #2 daughter sat through a meeting full of staring at the screen as though it were a patient, discussing fonts and embedded colors and missing images and launch dates with furrowed brows. I think they have a fairly realistic idea of the work involved.

#2 daughter's employer is going to pay for her to get an MBA. She is then committed to one more year with them. The year she finishes will also be the year the rest of the kids graduate. We made a timeline for moving from my freelancing to an agency big enough to support the three of us by that year. I don't know whether it will really happen or not, since one or both girls might become committed to some other job in the meantime, but it clearly could. For the sake of the fantasy, we went ahead and picked out our office building and planned to hire Arkenboy, too, though he is unlikely to be available. Hiring The Computer Guy would involve his firm's not reaching the heights of success we plan for him, so it couldn't be included in the fantasy, but #2 and I are including a plan for continued informal partnership, while #1 plans to become a designer herself and compete with him head-on. She has always been the scary one.

#2 daughter is going back to the Midwest today, and I plan to catch up on the most urgent work and housework. I'm also going to the grocery store before it starts snowing. In fact, I think I'll do that now, before it becomes too crowded.

Here is the supposedly completed back left shoulder of Salt Peanuts. You do a couple of bind-off rows and then a few decrease rows in the normal way, and then instead of knitting for six or seven inches you do another bind off row, and then a bind-off row on the opposite side, knit across five stitches, and end with a sort of a point.

Either the directions are horribly wrong, or there is some interesting shaping done with the collar or something. I don't know. I've frogged and redone it three times, got #2 daughter (with the visual-spatial skillz) to look at the directions to see what I might have missed, and now I just have to give up on that.

Either it will all become clear once I do the fronts, or I'll have to take it out again.

Actually, I just went and looked at The Keyboard Biologist's  sweater, and the back of her sweater looks quite normal, not like mine at all. Hmmm.

The service yesterday was as good as it could have been under the circumstances. The officiant offered us the image of my brother being surprised and delighted to meet God, and old friends of his told us bizarre stories involving my brother and large machinery. There were also some bizarre stories about large machinery, not involving my brother, but apparently told with the object of suggesting that having my brother there would have improved things no end.

Today #2 daughter and I are going to run errands and meet with The Computer Guy (or rather, I'm going to meet with The Computer Guy while #2 checks out his office and tries to arrange a date with him). I came home yesterday to a couple of cases of scope creep. It can be hard to tell, actually; if a client wants another eight pages or so added to a website, that could mean that I have another project, and that's nice. It could also mean that they don't realize what they're asking, and aren't expecting to pay any more for it. On oDesk, this issue doesn't arise, but for private clients it means clarification conversations.

Updating on the Kindle, I have to correct myself on the cost of books. While most are around $10, there are some that cost more and some that cost less -- including some for free. I got one of those, His Majesty's Dragon, to see whether the Kindle is in fact good for reading novels. It is, except that I find that I have to wait for the page to turn. I assume I'll get used to that. You never lose your place with a Kindle -- it opens up to the page you were on before.

Salt Peanuts is coming along, but this is where the pattern says to bind off for the shoulder. I don't believe the pattern. Maybe it has some unusual construction, though. If you know anything about this, I'd like to hear about it.

It turns out that the pastor doing the memorial service tomorrow is an old friend of mine, which will help. For me, at least. My younger brother's funeral was conducted by someone who had never met any member of the family, and it was sort of horrible. Funerals are always hard, but sometimes they can be comforting, too.  That's what we're doing tomorrow, anyway. #2 daughter is coming home tonight for the occasion.

I was approached by another design firm yesterday. Mostly yesterday I did unbillable work -- rewrites and cleanups for things about to launch, pro bono publicity work for the Master Chorale, my own blog posts. Monday I finished the work for my Blackboard certification and met with The Empress about my taxes. I still need to get the rest of my WebCT course built, do my book reviews, grade papers, and get my accounting set up -- also unbillable. But one of my British firms has a new job for me, and I also heard from this design firm in L.A.

And there's the question. I have a local design firm on my list -- The Computer Guy. I also have The Northerners, who have some uncanny similarities to my local guy, but both the firms focus on their local markets, The Computer Guy going a couple of states south and The Northerners going a state north. I turned down a Canadian firm, and felt that I had the continent bisected, and it's a big continent, so that I wasn't working for people who were in competition with each other.

If I take this new guy on, he'll be the only one west of the Rockies. I don't know if he goes with a local clientele or not. All my other IT guys are in different niches of the IT ecosystem. I figure it's fine for me to work for one sparrow and one badger in the same meadow, and I felt okay with having two red foxes whose hunting grounds didn't overlap, but can I take on another red fox and be sure that they won't at some point be in competition with one another?

While #1 daughter was here, she helped me improve my business goals. I felt that my business goals for this year were pretty lame, but I think the rewrite has improved them. Here they are:

• Increase billable hours and invoices by 35% over last year's monthly average.
• Get all needed business systems in place.
• Create and begin implementing a long-term plan for diversification sufficient to make eventual retirement possible.

#2 daughter has approved these goals as being less lame than my previous ones.

So far, I'm not on track to meet my goal for billable hours this week, but a) it's not my fault, since I have several projects pending, and b) I really have to get the unbillable stuff done. So that's the jolly plan for the day.

The Kindle 2 arrived at my house. It's a lot bigger than I had expected -- see it here with an ordinary purse-sized organizer for comparison.

It's quite flat, too, and seems delicate, though I guess it must not be. I notice that amazon offers a $65 extended warranty for this creature, which only takes it to two years. An item this pricey ought, it seems to me, to plan on lasting for more than two years.

I didn't pay for it at all. That isn't going to stop me from looking the gift horse in the mouth enough to do a proper review of it, though.

The essential first thing to say about it is that you can read it very well -- as Amazon promises, you very quickly get caught up in the book you're reading, and the Kindle doesn't intrude. Once you get the navigation figured out (and there is a user's guide, though I'll admit that I didn't use it beyond looking at the diagram showing what the buttons were for), it's no more trouble to read the Kindle than to read a book -- you turn the pages with one press of a button, and said button is in a handy spot on both sides, so I think it would be fine for lefthanded folks, too.

This is absolutely the solution for how to read and knit at the same time. No question.

It's also good for carrying around, though I think you've got to have a case to protect it. I'm going to try it at the gym, too -- I bet it's perfect for the treadmill. And if you were stuck in an airport, you'd not only be glad to have something to read, but the fact that you can instantly download books is a huge plus. You can access the Kindle Store with the Kindle, they'll send you samples from the 250,000 books they've got Kindleized, and if you have one-click ordering set up, you can have your book within minutes.

I got The Geek's Guide to World Domination by accident, since I thought I was asking for more details. The Kindle doesn't operate like a computer or like a phone, so you have to get used to it a bit. I kept expecting to be able to touch the screen or to use the keyboard (that's for you to annotate books, which is pretty cool), and really it's more like a video game. It did give me a chance, though, to say it was an accident and take back my order. I didn't, since I wanted to try it out, and the book is quite fun.

Here's the negative part, so far. I would have liked to share with you some of the interesting philosophical questions in The Geek's Guide, or at least some of the witty bits, but there doesn't seem to be any handy way to leaf through books or to go to a particular place or anything like that. You have to start at the beginning and go on to the end. This makes it just the thing for reading novels and stuff like that, but perhaps not so good for other kinds of books. But I may just not have figured it out yet.

I took a free trial of the Wall Street Journal as well. You can have free trials of all kinds of newspapers, and they are way cheap to subscribe too, as well, and of course it saves paper. Since I don't normally read newspapers start to finish, my first day with the medium wasn't completely satisfying, but I'll keep you posted on that.

You can also sub to A-list bloggers for 99 cents a month, or just rotate your trial subs I guess. I am trialing Overheard in the Office, which I think Chanthaboune would really like. And there are magazines as well.

Prices for stuff to read are sort of a mixed bag. 99 cents for things that are free online is a little charge for convenience, in case the Kindle is more convenient for you than the internet. Newspapers are much cheaper than IRL. Books are $9.99. This is a good bit less than a new hardcover, but a good bit more than waiting for the paperback and of course lots more than Booksfree or the library or used books. I wish you could just rent books for the Kindle rather than buying them, actually. There's room in the Kindle for 1500 books, they say, so it doesn't matter that you own them, and you might want to read them again some day, but since it doesn't seem to be very good for reference, I'd rather rent a book for a week for a few dollars than have to shell out ten bucks for something I can only read straight through.

I'm hoping that as I become more adept (and who knows? perhaps I'll read the manual), I'll discover that it's possible to navigate well through books and newspapers after all.

Janalisa came and got me yesterday to go take a walk. This was good, though I was pretty reluctant at the time.

It's spring break for the college where I teach, so I don't have to drive up there this morning. I may still make it to the gym, which I always intend to do on the way home from that class but often don't. #2 son had spring break last week, so he has to get back to school this morning.

I have work left over from last week. I got a couple of imperfect feedbacks last week at oDesk, to my dismay, so it's possible that I wasn't doing as good a job as I thought I was. I was also expecting to do ten hours or so for The Computer Guy this week, but the websites in question haven't launched yet, so I may be able to catch up on the unbillable stuff this week, as well as finishing the things I had intended to finish last week.

I'm scheduled to join my old college chum at a little folk festival this summer. She wrote to ask whether I still wanted to. I was able to say that I had actually been through this before, so I knew that I would be singing again by then. How horrible is it that I've done this before? Surely it ought to be a once-in-a-liftime sort of thing. At worst.

Still, my level of experience does mean that I know I'll survive it. And of course religious faith allows us to worry only about the survivors. I read in some book or other that our culture has only two ideas about death: that it leads to the end of existence, like a permanent sleep, and that it leads to eternal life in the presence of God (the possibility of eternal hell and damnation being something members of our culture reserve for other people, so it doesn't matter in our own lives). There is therefore no reason for us to be upset about death. This doesn't stop us from being upset about it, but it's a good point to think about.

Three balls of Wonderwool on the way to becoming Salt Peanuts.

Heartfelt thanks to all of you for your kind comments.

I'm not going to church today. I'm able to be calm and behave normally, but probably not if I had to sing or if people were sympathetic. Which of course they would be. It's good to be sympathetic, even, but I'm inclined to burst into tears when people are sympathetic to me.

It is of course perfectly acceptable to cry in church and also while grieving; I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm just saying that I don't quite feel up to it yet.

Janalisa brought us a wonderful brunch yesterday, and brought me up to speed on the news of the community, and I spent the entire day knitting and reading.

There's work that ought to be done today, but I may just have to take another day of reading and knitting.

#1 daughter is leaving today, probably. It has been excellent to have her here. #2 daughter will be arriving on Wednesday.