Quality friends
Sometimes I'm just so impressed with the friends I have, it makes me feel wonderful. Last night I had dinner with Annie's (of Rush & Annie) brother, his wife, their son and two of their friends. Neil's wife works for HUD and has for a long time, as did one of the friends. The husband friend lives in Fresno, CA and the wife works out of Washington D.C. Neil & Sharman's son John is a hedge fund manager on Wall Street. Such high fallutin' friends I have! Anyway I sort of didn't want to go but I had the best time. They are really wonderful and special people. We laughed a lot and talked politics a lot (I love being surrounded with liberals) and made jokes at dead Ken Lay's expense. Randy, the husband from Fresno grilled me on what it's like to live here year-round. That got a little tiresome but I'm often a freak show to people so I'm used to it. We talked about logging and the differences between California practices & Adirondack practices (he teaches vo-tech type stuff so was really interested in how loggers hire out here). That was interesting.

They made homemade ice cream that was maybe the best ice cream I've ever tasted--caramel ice cream (which I noticed I pronounce car-mell and they all pronounce care-a-mell). It should taste good, it had 4 pints of heavy cream, between the ice cream and the caramel mixtures in it. Man it was good. Anyway I stayed way later than I'd planned but really enjoyed myself.

Then I was good and went to bed at a civilized hour so I woke with my alarm this morning, showered, packed up the garbage and made it to the dump early enough to get to work early as well. A proud accomplishment these days. I feel better today, more cheerful and less troubled. I don't like these rapid transformations but I'm increasing the dose of the new med gradually so maybe good things will be in my future. I'm taking tomorrow off (last minute decision) partly because I need to clean the boat house for my mother's visit and partly because it's supposed to be a beautiful day. This naturally cheers me up. The weekend is supposed to be really nice, 80 and sunny. I'll be busy, too busy for dock time.

Last night I searched for a blank journal to use to record my dreams. I found a journal I kept during the time Jamie left. Man was that a dreary time. It was interesting to read about the things he said. Back & forth he went about why he left & what he wanted. Jerk. All he really wanted was to sleep with his secretary, if he'd only admitted that in the beginning he could have spared everyone a lot of grief. Anyway the journal is a good record of how wonderful my sister and friends were to me during the whole thing. And it's the beginning of my relationship with Dr. Rubin. 1996--wow, we've been working together for a long time.

So today I start working on the Robert Louis Stevenson collection from Saranac Lake. It's old stuff, will require a lot of concentration and typing but is a challenge. Time for me to be challenged I think. Stevenson spent time in Sar. Lake and had a cottage there, I think to cure his tuberculosis. This is a rare book collection dealing with him as well as works by him. Rare eds, etc. I'll be working from shelf-list cards. oh boy.