FISH MYSTERY SOLVED
I figured it out, and my suspicions were confirmed by the nice fish person I finally found at PetsMart: the water was too cold. I watched the last danio succumb on Tuesday night. He just kept sinking. So now I have a heater. This aquarium thing is very complicated, but now I have a community tank. Well, I like to think of it as a community. I'd like to have one more fish but I'll wait to see how this goes for a while. I have 2 zebra danios and one coral platy who is bright orange but who will grow some yellow as it matures. They are pretty happy but not as perky as the others were. But now we know why: the others were swimming quickly, trying to stay warm. The water needs to be 78-82 degrees. It was 67 when I put the heater in yesterday, not it is a toasty 79 degrees. The platy hides in the plastic plants too much to suit me and the danios aren't as zippy as I'd like them to be but at least they're alive!

It was really cold this morning, and very dark when I got up. I awoke, glanced at the clock, which said 6:30, normal rising time. Very dark, I thought, must be extremely cloudy. I sniffed one quiet sniff. Tess came tearing out from under the covers and Chances attacked my head. They're light sleepers in the early morning hours. And it was early morning, 5:30 instead of 6:30. How do people fill the hours before work when they have more than 20 minutes to get ready? I took a very long shower, did the dishes, ate yogurt, fed and watched the fish, watched CNN and still left for work almost half an hour early.

It was so cold that the deck steps had a thin coating of ice on them. Unsuspecting me slid down them, twisting my arms backward and bruising my back and butt badly. But I didn't break anything, just suffered a lot. There was a coating of ice on my windshield for the first time this fall. Inevitable. This weekend it's supposed to be 65-75 both days. YESSS!

Tonight I'm having dinner at Linda's camp with a friend of hers/ours who has been staying there all week with her son. Tomorrow night I'm having dinner in Plattsburgh at the home of Bill's good friend (the head of the Health Center at the college) for the first of 3 celebrations of Bill's 60th birthday. Sunday I'm cooking Sunday dinner at camp. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes with apple crisp for dessert. I'll see if Duncan (I'm crazy about Duncan) and Sue (this time he brought his wife), who are in camp just below my house want to join us.

I have many errands to run before I can get to dinner tonight. I've had errands to run every night this week. Last night I got my hair cut. Every time she cuts my hair now she darkens my eyebrows (I have such blonde eyebrows that they are virtually invisible). As she was rinsing them out she said "Want me to shape them? Yes, yes I think you do." So she did, with hot wax. What an experience. Sure, women start doing this in their teens and twenties, but I'm almost 53 and slow to develop in these ways. Now my eyes look bigger (she says) and I'm none the worse for the wear. I like her, she's very nice. Older woman, been cutting my hair for quite a few years now, understands exactly how much time I'm willing to spend fixing my hair in the morning. None. She lives way out of town too, at Chazy Lake, which has a higher elevation than Silver Lake does and a shorter growing season. She knows just enough about my life without knowing too much. She was really sweet when I was getting ready for my ex-husband's wedding, making sure that she did all she could to make my hair look its best.

Today is Old Boss' last day ever. Although I can't believe my good fortune, I'm still unsure. New Boss is joining the staff for lunch today, New Boss is buying it for us. We're having a staff-prepared potluck for N.B. on Monday, her first day. We left the sign-up sheet in the kitchen, and my theory is that O.B. saw it and decided she would beat us to Lunch With N.B. by buying us all lunch and inviting N.B. today. That would be so much like her.

Your Personality Type
You are an optimist who is often more focused on the past and the future than the present moment. You have an active imagination. You have good hunches and intuitions and people notice that.

Your Motto
"I want to discover the truth in life."


How You Work best
You work best in cooperative, harmonious environments. Competition, a rushed pace, and a strict format for communication don't work well for you. Your strength is your open-mindedness. Your Achilles heel is that you are sometimes too hard on yourself.


Your Life Situation
You are not fully satisfied with your current life situation.


hmmmm... I'm not? Well, I'd like my house to be cleaner and better maintained, but I really like where I live (it's where I
always wanted to be, and I like my job a whole lot. What's left?

C+

You tend to notice the big things in life... But the details aren't exactly your forte

How Observant Are You?

Well at least I get credit for noticing SOMETHING.

Your Animal Personality

Your Power Animal: Eagle Animal You Were in a Past Life: Whale You are active, a challenger, and optimistic. Hard-working, you are always working towards a set goal.

The Animal Personality Test

OK, I'm optimistic, and capable of working hard. Do I work towards a set goal? Yeah, if you count getting through the day peacefully and finishing the pile of opera videos or high school yearbooks that need to be cataloged. I don't think I like having been a whale. Why couldn't I have been a dog? or a tiger? something that at least walks on land.

Hurricane in an aquarium
I don't know what's going on but they're all dying. Yesterday morning I had 2 danios missing. I finally found the corpses: they'd been sucked up to the intake of the filter and were stuck there, ack, ack. This morning the tetra was gasping its last fishy breath and one of the remaining danios looked very iffy. Another danio was missing but when I started poking around with the net it appeared, very perky. Maybe it was laying eggs, as they are rumored to do often.
I am mystified. Why do my fish die? Maybe I'll just stare at the emptying tank for a while. I'm still missing one dead danio. There's a possibility that Chances empties bleach into the tank during the day--the dogs are very jealous of the fish.

Weekend report
Weather continues to be amazing. Warm, warm, warm. Yesterday I was walking on a path at camp and I said to myself "I can't believe I live here. I am incredibly lucky that my life turned out this way." I feel amazingly fortunate to live where I do, to do what I do, to have what I have. I like my life.

Saturday was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. I called my mother in the morning and had a really nice conversation with her. She was busy getting ready for a function that she and Mark were doing but she was happy to hear from me and we really enjoyed visiting with each other. She is a very nice person and I love her very much. After that I sat in the sun, as I promised myself I would, and read a book. I'm reading The memory of running by Ron McLarty, which I heard good things about. I've listened to McLarty read books on tape a couple of times and really like his delivery. Does this make him a good author? Apparently is does because I'm enjoying the book, even though it has a very depressing character in it. More than one, actually: I guess all of the characters are pretty depressing, and the premise of the book isn't exactly cheery. Hmmm, yet I'm enjoying it and so far haven't been depressed by it. Must be I truly am in a good place.

After the sun got too close to the horizon I made the grape jelly I've been meaning to make for a week. It is delicious. I made 6 jars, a big batch. You're not supposed to make big batches, the jelly shouldn't jel the way it did but I got lucky. I used apples from my tree for pectin and I had a nice time making the jelly. This time I didn't stand over the kettle for the hour it took to cook the jelly, I watched TV and checked on it from time to time. Sensible in my old age. I threw out some jelly I found from 1992. Mountain ash jelly, made from the berries of mountain ash trees because the woman Jamie bought the land from told me that it would be delicious. It was NOT delicious, it was bitter and tasted like crap. I gave her a jar and she pretended it was wonderful. I also threw out a jar of rose hip jelly, made from rose hips Liza and I collected on the beach in RI. That was better, but didn't have much flavor and didn't jel very well (didn't cook it long enough). Moral of all this: you can make jelly out of anything.

Friday night I bought 3 more fish, against the advice and with great disapproval of the fish man at PetsMart. I got 2 more danios and an orange tetra. That's really too many fish for my aquarium. They were fine all weekend but the danios didn't really swim in a school the way I had hoped. This morning I could find only 2 danios. WHERE ARE THE OTHER 2? Did they jump out of the tank, through the 5" hole in the front of the hood? I searched and searched the whole tank and could not find them. The 3 remaining fish were swimming innocently, happily around in Cheshire cat fashion.

Yesterday I hosted but did not cook Sunday dinner. We had 3 extra guests, Joe and Martha (Ken's nephew and his wife, much adored by all) and Fred. It was warm, about 70, so we ate on the front porch at camp. It was wonderful to be there. The living room was so cold that the mirror over the fireplace was fogged up and the glasses in the pantry were all fogged up too. Pretty funny. Bill and I worked in the kitchen together. I got there early, around 11, in case I needed to start a fire so we could eat inside. That meant I could sit on the porch and read my book for a while. After dinner I cleaned out the refrigerator in the boat house (left the beer and soda in it), then sat on the porch there and read for a while. May not be able to do that again. I'll have my Columbus Day cocktail party there, though.

And now I'm at work, happily cataloging books for Willsboro and Saranac Lake. I have to prove that we converted 4,000 "old" titles to machine-readable format in 2005. We get reimbursed $1 for each title we do, or $10 for each title that I have to do original cataloging for, up to $4000. I have to write the final portion of the application for the money, plugging in the actual figures. I keep putting it off, shame on me.

Today it's raining and raining, supposed to get up to 2 inches of raining. Given the state of things on the Gulf coast I suppose I can't really complain.

Ahhhhh...I didn't have to go to Akwesasne today to train member library directors. No one signed up for the training, possibly because the site is on the St. Lawrence River, on the border to Canada, possibly because the topics were really dorky. At any rate, since I was out of the library two days this week, it was fine with me to be at my desk today. Wednesday we went to Port Henry (on Lake Champlain and the home of Champy, the Lake Champlain monster that is like the Loch Ness Monster) to barcode their irrelevant collection. My hands were black with dirt and dust when I worked on the balcony collection. The balcony is one of those beautiful, wood floor places just wide enough for one person, with brass railings. The books, however, are horrible for a library, nice for someone who wants to impress people who are easily impressed by books in a den. We had a good day of barcoding. Ate lunch in a really funky tiny Mexican restaurant that seats about 12 people, new to the former mining town of Pt. Henry. The waiter was about 70 years old, wrote our orders out completely, no abbreviations, took forever to write them down, said each word as he wrote it ("twoooo soffffft tacccos, onnne Dietttt Cokkkke"). The food was incredibly mediocre and we decided that Taco Bell was better. But you have to try these things.

Yesterday I went to Canton to a regional committee meeting. I like these meetings, the people in this region are universally nice. I traveled with the Director of the Plattsburgh Pub. Library, who is nice and is also interesting, and with a woman I have known for 17 years, someone I really like. That made the traveling good, lots of stimulating (and anti-Bush) conversation. The meeting went well, we discussed automation projects, data bases, retrospective conversion of bibliographic data (anybody know what that means?), correctional facilities and their problems accessing the regional catalog, and something called federated searching. I love that term. What it means is that you search, say, your library's online catalog, and the you click on a tab for an online data base and through the magic of software your search will automatically be transferred to that data base or data bases. This is really cool--no need to repeat your search! Very expensive, say $30,000 if you have a proprietary system, as we do. But a girl can dream.

It has been hot here, nearly 80 for most of the week. Today it's only supposed to be in the 60's, with frost warnings for tonight. The season of sleeping in the boat house may have come to an end. I won't close it, though, until after Columbus Day. We have our cocktail party on the porch there. My cousin Jim left a voice mail message asking if I still wanted the water left on and for how long. There is still hardly any fall color yet, amazingly enough.

Dinner with Ken on Weds. was nice. He loved the idea of having me buy a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store on my way home so we had that, some cole slaw and his favorite: canned creamed corn. I loved creamed corn as a kid, probably because it has lots of sugar. We had a nice, companionable evening. He has finished stacking his firewood and is in fine shape. He found someone to cut down the dead pine tree that was threatening the power line and his garage so he was really happy.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny and 65: just about the perfect day. I can sit on my new deck and read, read, read. I have been conscientious about stacking firewood, doing 6 wheelbarrow loads a day. This takes half an hour. I'm not sure when I will finish stacking the 4.75 cords I have to do (if ever!) but I can see some progress being made in the pile, plus of course there's the nice stack I'm creating. I have no other plans for the weekend, just watching hours of O.C., this really stupid TV show that I have a DVD of.

I bought 2 new fish this week, zebra danios, which are incredibly cute and are school fish so they swim around together. While I was cleaning my goldfish bowl, though, I broke it, so I had to buy something new to put them in. I bought a 5-gallon aquarium with a charcoal filter and a light in the hood (now I have "fish in the 'hood"). I have spent the last 3 nights watching these incredibly cute fish darting around the tank. Tonight I'm buying 2 more danios and 2 other fish, maybe barbs, maybe tetras. I want something really colorful. The danios, of course have stripes, horizontal ones. This is way cool. They only cost $1.29 apiece, pretty cheap entertainment.

We got our retrospective raises this week. Mine was $700 after taxes. It's committed, however: I owe at least that much to Steve for the deck. He's coming by tonight to give me the bill for the balance of what I owe him. Rats. I've been fantasizing about putting in a wall at the back of the downstairs and making a room out of what I call the library. I don't know why I want to do this but I'm really enthralled by this idea. Last night I stood there and stared at the incredible mess of stuff that's there now, envisioning a bed in the room, thinking about how much less my electric bill would be if I could close off that part of the downstairs. We'll see. This may just be a phase.

And now I move on to the work portion of the day. Cataloging cookbooks for Tupper Lake.

I can't believe we're flying into the end of September. The great thing about it, of course is that the 29th is the last day for the Old Director (OD). New Director (ND) starts on October 2nd. She supposedly flew in from Alaska yesterday and may be stopping in the library some time this week. I probably won't be here, I'm out and about 3 days this week: Weds. I'm off to Port Henry to barcode their horrible, old, musty and irrelevant non-fiction collection; Thursday I go to Canton to the Regional Automation Committee meeting; Friday I have to go to Akwesasne (The Reservation) to a training workshop for our member library directors. I always greet these travels with mixed feelings: great to get out, hate to leave my work because no one does it while I'm gone. Fall is traditionally a really busy travel time because everyone in the region wants to get as many workshops/meetings/training sessions in before the snow flies. Anyway, I can't believe next week is the end of September.

The weather here isn't helping convince me that it's autumn. It's been so warm that the leaves are refusing to turn. Still lots and lots of green, very little red in the soft maples (the first to turn)--barely a hint. Jenica pointed out the faintest hint of red in my favorite maple, which is next to my driveway. It hasn't progressed much in the past week. We had heavy rain over the weekend, which usually results in loss of leaves this time of year, but nothing came down but the rain.

I had Friday off--National Day of Prayer. What a great contract we have! Every time a former President dies we get a day off, or, in this case, hurricane victims. When the President declares a N.D. of P. we get the day off. I had intended to clean my bedroom, prepping for winter, but instead tidied up in a general way, stacked firewood, watched tv, did not a whole lot in particular. Did enough to feel I was productive, though. I read like a fiend all weekend, finally finishing Wicked, the September book choice for our Book Group. It's the biography of the Wicked Witch of the West. The discussion was yesterday and man it was a really good one. I didn't much like the book going into the discussion, but we had such a good discussion that by the end of it I saw the value of the book and had a whole different perspective and appreciation of it. It was really interesting to me that two people in the group really, really liked the book. I truly enjoyed our conversation about the book, about good and evil, about characters in the book, etc. And of course, the next two hours we spent talking and enjoying each others' company. This is an exceptionally nice group of women and we are seeing each other through pregnancy, divorce, motherhood of young children and life in general. I really like these people.

Saturday I had high hopes of spending the day on my deck in the sun, reading, but it rained so hard Fri. night that there was residual cloudiness all day. I took massive amounts of newspapers and magazines to the dump in the morning (in the morning--unheard of for me to visit the dump before 3:00 p.m. on the weekend! I discovered that Young Brown Girl has been peeing on the pile of newspapers for a while, presumably since she's been taking Prednisone for her ragweed allergy. Now the back of the house smells like female dog urine (as opposed to the male dog urine smell it used to have when Jackson would pee there). DOGS! Anyway, I did sit on my deck and read, after I stacked the requisite daily 6 wheelbarrow loads of firewood. Ken came by to inspect my newly completed deck and we had a drink together while sitting on the deck, enjoying each other's company and admiring Steve's good work. While I was doing that my cousin's took out the docks at camp, including the boat house dock, sigh.

Saturday night I went across the lake to my cousins' camp for dinner. My favorites, "the boys," who are now approaching 30, were both there. One of them had his wife and son (the cutest, happiest, most joyful child on The Planet) with him. I really like that family unit, they are probably the best in my extended family, the most stable, calmest and most cohesive. Nicholas, the son, is now 3 and is truly a happy and well-adjusted child, ready to face the world. My first cousin, who is NOT one of my favorite relatives, was also there, but I was polite to him even though he has committed unspeakably rude acts against my mother.

Sunday was busy: Sunday dinner until 2:30, then Book Group in Wilmington from 3:30 until about 6:30. So much socialization in 2 days! Good for me I suppose.

And on the way to work this morning I spilled 16 oz. of triple caffeinated coffee on my lap and all over my car after taking just one sip. Responses from two males on the staff were completely negative: "It ruined your whole day, didn't it," and "Might as well trade the car in now." Men are funny. Responses from women on the staff were totally different, sympathetic and encouraging. Gender differences are funny. Jenica's blog entry about the fraternity t-shirt really struck a chord with me. When I was in college (during the early 70's) feminism was relatively young and I was relatively angry. No one would have dared put something like that on a t-shirt. It makes me very sad to think that members of either gender would think it appropriate to express that sentiment. Like racism, sexism hasn't gone away or even, apparently diminished in this country. Yes, they're young and learning, but this is something they really should have learned about before now: it's not ok to think these things about women OR sex.

And today I need to catalog goodness knows what. Audio books I think, new stuff, so it will at least seem relevant to the reading interests of the public.

You are a Self-Discoverer

You're not religious, but you've created your own kind of spirituality. Introspective and thoughtful, you tend to look inward for the divine. You are distrusting of all forms of organized religion. You especially dislike religious gurus and leaders, who you feel are charlatans.

What's Your Religious Philosophy?

This is no surprise, no surprise at all. Except for the spiritual part.

I like Maureen Dowd. Here's what she had to say today:

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward.

I've got my life back
I love my friends and I love summer, but I breathe a sigh of relief when the last person leaves in September. Last night I got to go straight home, take care of details in my house and have an evening of domestic bliss with my dogs. They liked it, I liked it, and it was what normal (for me) life is like. Wednesday night I'll cook dinner with Ken, but last night and tonight are for me.

It's hot here, too hot for September according to most people. I'd like to have cooler weather, temps in the 60's so I could stack firewood without getting hot & sweaty. I do not like to sweat, it's one of my concessions to girly-girlness. I know I talk endlessly about stacking firewood but it's an obsession here in the North Country for those of us who burn wood, especially this time of year. I like handling my wood, I like seeing the progress when the size of the wood pile diminishes and the stack of wood grows. I like counting the number of wheelbarrow loads it takes to move wood from one place to another. It's all very satisfying, like putting money in the bank, only it's money that can only be spent in one place.

I'm trading an old wood stove that I have for some grapes. I hope the stove is still good, it's been lying on its side next to my driveway for many years now. It's rusty but since it's iron it should be all right. My friend Julie has an oil furnace and wants to put a wood stove in her kitchen. I mentioned that I had one I'd love to have removed from my property. Bingo, a deal was struck. She has some delicious grapes on her arbor that the mother of the previous owner brought from France (the Coneheads, in unison "We're from France"). So it looks as if I'll be making grape jelly this week. Haven't made jelly in a few years, will feel good to get back to that I think. It's fun to make, watch the natural jelling of fruit. I'll use a few apples from my trees for the pectin to help it gel. Some people use commercial pectin, but the flavor is much richer if you don't. Takes a lot longer, but tastes better. And that's my cooking tip for today.

Speaking of cooking, I wrote my first review for Library Journal recently and got an email from the editor saying she was doing the final editing. The book is The storm gourmet and is really a hoot. It's supposed to be recipes you can use when you've been caught in a storm and you're without power, living off of the contents of your pantry. One task assigned in the book is to pick up the grapefruits and avocados that fell from the trees during the storm. Another funny thing about the book is that a key ingredient in some of the recipes is rose water. Which we all keep in our pantries, right? But I gave the book a half-decent review, because some of the recipes were ok, and it's probably my nature to say something nice ("If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," thank you Mother). I did mention that many of the recipes would be of limited use to those of us in the REST of the world.

I have tons of green tomatoes on my plants. I only grew cherry tomatoes this year, I've given up on regular tomatoes. The dogs have discovered the plants and bury their heads in the plants, chomp chomp chomp. I've always had dogs who love tomatoes fresh off the vine. I yell to them "Stop it! Those are MINE!" and they'll stop, but as soon as I turn my head Tess is back in the bush. On Sunday Jenica said "I hate to tell you this but there's a big tomato branch in the middle of your yard." In the MIDDLE of my yard? That's not where the plants are.

Steve finished my deck on Saturday. This is a monumental event. It's beautiful and huge. No bigger than the previous one, but does not have all the crap on it that the other one did. Looks wonderful and hopefully my retroactive raise money will be enough to pay off the rest of what I owe him for it. I think the total cost will be about $1100-1200. More than I'd intended. Of course, there's $75 in there for repairs to his saw, which I ran over with my car.

Sunday Jenica and I had a really nice dinner at Linda's with Bill, Ken, Fred and Bill's "ward," a 21-year old from his neighborhood who has 4 children and does work for Bill (we call him "the boy from the 'hood"). As usual, it was a good meal and lots of fun. The only problem was that it was an hour later than usual and Linda, Erdvilas and I were invited to a big meal next door at Roger Douglas', which was supposed to start at 4. Less than 2 hours after we finished our meal at Linda's. It was painful. We didn't go to Roger's until 4:30, but Linda and I were struggling. Erdvilas, apparently can eat any amount of anything at any time. There was wild boar sausage, deep fried turkey injected with Cajun seasoning and deep fried roast beef from the cow that Roger bought, which was injected with some kind of seasoning, and lots of other stuff. Dessert was two kinds of apple pie and cheesecake. I drank a lot of beer but didn't get drunk for some reason. It was actually a really nice party with people I don't usually socialize with. Roger's sister Laura and her husband were there, as were some people from up the lake (who aren't generally very sociable to me). Roger and Laura are the children of the lake's villain, who pillages and plunders the lakefront with plans for development, cottage rentals and his campsites. Roger, however, has a completely different attitude about the future of the lake and hates what his father is doing. I adore Roger, think he's the cutest thing in the world. He's my plow man and neighbor. He gets a kick out of me and takes very good care of me as well. He's Linda's caretaker.

At this party there were 3 pugs, 1 golden retriever, my dog Tess, 1 German shorthaired pointer, 1 shit zhu and 6 children. We closed the gates on the deck so the dogs wouldn't run away. Not everyone there was crazy about dogs but they were very tolerant. I got to talk with Roger and another person about hummingbirds and when you should stop feeding them (never: they'll leave on their own--it's a myth that, if you don't stop feeding them they won't leave), the white fawn I've seen twice (it's doomed, according to Roger, but he won't shoot it because it's bad luck), the number of wild turkeys in the neighborhood ("There must be 250 turkeys within a 2 mile radius"--an exaggeration, to be sure, but there are TONS of them around), and the mallards that someone has tamed enough to eat bread out of your hand (they waddled all the way up the hill to where Jerry was working on his camp, to quack at him to feed them. Jerry and Roger both said the ducks will migrate in spite of being tamed. I still have my doubts about that.). I had a really nice time but felt totally sick to my stomach from the food.

Our new director starts soon. We all agree that the Old Director (OD) is taking the approach that if you're of no use to her you're ripe for abuse by her. I spent the day with her at a systemwide meeting and she was charming and presented a wealth of information. There are some things she knows a great deal about (including emotional torture). New director arrives in the area next week but doesn't officially start until 10/2. Boy oh boy that day can't arrive soon enough!

It's amazing to me how busy Labor Day Weekend is at Silver Lake. I was busy from Friday night right through last night. Friday I went out for dinner with Linda and Erdvilas, to one of their favorite restaurants in Wilmington. We had a nice time, the food was ok but I had an absolutely undrinkable drink. This pleased Erdvilas a lot, and me, since I could compliment him on his bartending acumen even more. After dinner I had a GOOD drink at Linda's camp and toddled on home.

Saturday was a beautiful day. I spent the morning doing road clean up with the Hawkeye Conservationists. We got a lot of garbage and had a successful time doing it. It was sunny and bright. There were enough volunteers to cover the nearly-6-mile stretch of roadway we are committed to, and we filled several garbage bags. I got "caught" picking up garbage in a friend's driveway: he told me later that he saw someone with a garbage bag in his driveway, but as soon as he recognized me he went back to his breakfast. I visited with Annie in the afternoon--she and Rush were here for the weekend (since Congress was in recess). Steve was at my house all day, working on the deck. It's almost finished, all that's left is the small bit that will tie in the side door and the front deck, plus the little deck in front of the side door. Of course, this could take weeks at his pace. Anyway he got a lot done on Saturday, less after I ran over his circular saw. My friend Ann from Baltimore came for a quick visit as well, since she and Kathy left on Sunday.

Saturday night was the Main Event: a Vodka Tasting Party at Linda's. This really was an amazing thing. It was Bill's idea and he brought his 3 close friends from work. Erdvilas had lined up 7 small glasses in front of each of the 8 chairs around the table. First we tasted 7 different vodkas at room temperature, then we tasted each of them straight from the freezer (the way vodka is meant to be consumed). It was a blind test, even E. didn't know which was which. We discussed odor (vodka is not supposed to have any odor), flavor, smoothness and overall impression. Everyone had a favorite. Prices ranged from $12 a bottle to $40 a bottle. We had food with the frozen round, the type of food that E. had ordained to be appropriate to accompany vodka (smoked trout, salmon pate, tapenade, etc.). Much discussion, a great time. Small sips, not enough to get anyone drunk. The final determination was that the most expensive vodkas, Grey Goose, Plantation and the new French vodka made from grapes (inexcusable, according to E.) were no one's favorites. The cheapest (Smirnoff) also no one's favorite. His favorite, the harsh Stoli, no one else liked. Bill and his friends all preferred Absolut. I preferred a Polish potato vodka that costs $13 a bottle. Mostly I'm not a big vodka fan but over the years E. has taught me to appreciate it. He then made us 2 martinis to pass around, one gin and one vodka. I do NOT like gin martinis but am developing a taste for vodka martinis. As usual a slave to fashion.

The tasting was followed by a delicious dinner and lots of good conversation. A really nice group of people.

Sunday morning, another beautiful day, I got to spend relaxing at my house before Sunday dinner. I hosted Sunday dinner on the boat house porch, with Bill providing the food. Cold chicken, potato salad and cole slaw. Rush and Annie were at my house visiting in the morning and helped me make brownies and set up the b.house. We had a great time with everyone, L & E, Bill, Ken, Rush & A. Jim (cousin) stopped by and had tea with us all after dinner. He was there to see cousin Elsa next door.

After dinner Elsa insisted on having a dog play date with my dogs and the 13-week old choc. Lab puppy her visiting friend had brought, so we walked to my house with Janis Joplin the Puppy and Elsa's awful Jack Russell terrier mix Midget. My dogs were first more interested in eating apples from the wild apple trees, but eventually got really interested in Janis and played long and hard while Midge made awful barking and growling sounds. I finally had to ask Elsa to leave, I had dinner plans at 5.

Sunday night I had 3 dinner invitations and accepted one with good friends I don't often get to see. He's a glass blower from the Finger Lakes region, she's a nurse/teacher. They have 2 camps; hers is one of the cabins from the girls' camp, his belonged to his parents. I had a a great time with them. His 2 adult children were there, along with 2 friends of theirs. We ate, laughed a lot and sat around a huge campfire for a really long time. I got home around 11:30. A really successful day but exhausting.

Yesterday was peaceful. I spent most of it by myself. Some time at home, watching morning news of the New Orleans situation. Rush's sister Jane lives in New Orleans and is still in her house, with no water or power and struggling to get by. She will be evacuated probably today or tomorrow and will fly to NJ to live with Rush and Annie until she can return to her house. Her neighborhood was not flooded. Anyway, I got to spend some time on the dock in the warm autumn sun yesterday, and swam in the still-warm lake water. It was heavenly. There are hardly any boats on the lake now and it was almost silent. Just the loons. My dogs were peaceful and I read Wicked, the biography of the Wicked Witch, the book our book group is now reading. Others will perhaps enjoy it more than I am but I'm working on it.

Last night I ate with L & E and E. cooked a wonderful meal. We had filet mignon cooked to perfection, with Bernaise sauce and wild mushrooms picked by Linda. I drank vodka martinis. We sat around the campfire after dinner and enjoyed each other and the moment immensely.

Today I am back at work and my life is returning to normal. I have only one dinner invitation for the week (so far) and will be able to spend time at my house. I have a lot, lot, lot of firewood to stack and I should be working hard getting things ready for winter. There is something wrong with the pump/water system at camp and I must report this to Jim. I spent hours watching news of New Orleans voraciously over the weekend, nearly all the time at my house was spent in front of the television worrying about displaced and dying people, fretting about their futures. And, I must admit, feeling fortunate that hurricanes are not natural disasters I have to worry about.

I'm by myself in my department today, one of my favorite times. I've spent the morning cataloging stuff for the Champlain library. Nothing very interesting, and it's about to get less interesting as I dive into their videos. Only a few dozen, though, not a big collection. I've been watching videos of New Orleans, looking at satellite images of the city, reading news stories in between my work. Still incredible. And amazing that the authorities didn't think of the 100,000 people who didn't have cars or other transportation to get out of the city when everyone else could be evacuated. America is such a class-oriented society.

I spend a lot of time cleaning up our data base, making sure all the subject headings are spelled right and are uniform. This morning I changed all the subdivisions relating to Egypt so they match are are correct. Some of the B.C.'s had spaces between them, which results in the computer filing them in a different place, thus separating them from the rest of the pack. I need to do work like this for every author and subject heading in our data base but there is no methodical way to do it, so I do is as I come across the problem, one by one. In some ways it's the most rewarding part of my job, like herding little ducklings back to the rest of their flock.

I love being surrounded by my friends, my very good friends, and having my own house and my own boat house to retreat to. My bubble, my space, when the visiting is over. I had a great time last night with the 6 people at dinner, really nice conversation, jokes, good food, catching up, political discussion, and I saw Rush on the way home, but when I got home--there I was, in my own space, alone and quiet. I like that very much. Tonight I will make at least 2 stops on my way home, one to deliver the NY Times to Linda and one to deliver some books I promised I would pick out for the hostess from last night. She likes having me be her personal librarian and I don't like the pressure but do like testing my readers advisory ability.

Should I sleep in the boat house tonight? One of these nights I have to spray the huge wasps' nest hanging on the side door of my house so that Steve can attach the side to the front deck. It wasn't cold enough this morning, they were already busy flying around when I got up this morning. It has to be 50, I think, or maybe just night time. Last night when I walked past my apple tree I heard something moving in the brush. Shined my flashlight and there about 3 feet from me was a huge porcupine eating apples on the ground. We communicated for a while before he loped away. "Stay away from my dogs!" was pretty much all I said, besides "Eat all the apples you want." He was cute, as porcupines go, but boy was he a big one. A little too comfortable around me, maybe. The wildlife in my neighborhood has become very relaxed around people. The deer are not so afraid of cars anymore, which is not a good thing. I see does and fawns almost every day, next to or near the road.

Chances has been eating the sugar during the day. Don't know why suddenly it appeals to her so much. After the first time she did it I refilled the sugar bowl but now I think I won't do that again. She lost the 25 mg Prednisone pills that Tess needs to take for her ragweed allergy so I'll have to go to the vet's on Monday and explain that one. Lots of luck getting them to believe me. I can't find the small white envelope ANYWHERE. I spent about an hour looking in the kitchen and living room yesterday, then vacuumed them both, to no avail. I still have the 5 mg pills that she gets weaned down to eventually, but there were a lot of pills in that envelope. Hard enough keeping track of my own meds, don't need problems with the dogs' as well!

It's another beautiful sunny day here and is supposed to be nice for the next few days. I'm seeing more maples with color, though, so it's a matter of time. My wood was delivered and is screaming at me every time I walk past it. Must mow lawn, must stack wood. Get to it, girl!

Why do people say things that aren't true? And why do they say things about other people that aren't true? I'm caught in something unpleasant right now that's due to someone's apparent desire to create a problem for me. This is not unusual in my life but is usually limited to my work situation. Now it's happening in my personal life, which is most upsetting, and it's messing with my family. I need to find peace at least somewhere!

I have great peace and happiness in my social life, full of good friends and much activity. This is the time of year when there are many people, many invitations, lots of good times. Last night I had dinner with Linda and Erdvilas, who had invited two artists I really like. Sue & Terry have a gallery and used to sell my baskets, were in fact the first I ever asked to sell my baskets for me, and were always very nice and encouraging about it. They had their kids with them, who are no longer kids but are now in high school and are very nice people. I really enjoyed the evening and wasn't even the last to leave, as I usually am. Linda asked me to get the wine, which is a huge amount of pressure to put on me because E. knows so very much about wine and is terribly critical of others' wine choices. She said to get something Italian, so I did, and he was very pleased with my choices. I got a red from Sicily and a white from somewhere else that was a different type of wine I'd never had before. Whew!

Tonight I'm having dinner with a couple from California. He's written (and published) several young adult novels and is very quiet. She's very nice and is a former camper. Her brother owns the camp where they're staying and is one of "The Boys." Ken and Bill will also be there as well as the women from Baltimore. I actually turned down a dinner invitation the other night, retreating to my home for some privacy. Saturday night there's a dinner and vodka tasting at Linda's with some of Bill's friends. Sunday is Sunday dinner at Linda's and a pig roast at a friend's house. I'd like to skip the pig roast but it's a woman from my book group and we try to be supportive of each other so I should go. We'll see.

My friends the Holts may come this weekend and may stay with me. I haven't heard back from them, but they left a message a few days ago saying they were coming and needed a place to stay. I left a message saying they were welcome to stay with me and they can stay in the boat house. Now I have to figure out something about the food. I don't know who, if anyone will be in camp. I don't have much money for groceries but will have to get supplies enough for breakfast and lunch, and will need to figure out something about dinners. Would be nice to know how many meals and which ones, wouldn't it? Or even if they're really coming.

I've been watching videos on my computer here at work about the mess in New Orleans--BBC has the best, I think, and it's incredibly discouraging and awful. Truly amazing that America is having a tragedy like this. Caught unprepared, not believing that something like this would ever happen to us. Meanwhile, the price of gas on my way home ranged from $2.95 to $3.25 last night. This game of "How high can it go" is getting pretty tiresome.