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.