Me, Apparently

Gainesville

Couple of 15-minute stints yesterday and today, and I cleared an entire shelf in the small closet pantry. It was almost all carb stuff: every kind of grain known to man (various rices, bulgers, barleys, kashas, quinoas, etc) plus multiple boxes of every kind of cracker, quite a few never opened. I opened every single box, dumped the stuff into a giant garbage bag, then flattened all the boxes. Most of this stuff was from before I started dating things (about five years ago), but I found one thing Bill had written a date on: 4/92!! Can you imagine? That was before we were living together, so that thing got moved twice. I am resolved not to continue this kind of clutter -- a holdover from wartime hording behavior translated into disaster/ hurricane preparations. It's a very bad form of craziness.

I finished Sixty Days this afternoon. I can't wait to see what Robinson will tackle next. Whatever, it's bound to interesting and well written. Meanwhile, I got back to the first Jane Austen mystery. Almost done with that. Think I forgot to mention that during one of the breaks at the conference on Sunday, I checked out the books on tape at the downtown public library where it was held. I was happy to see that they had 3-4 of the series (lots of other stuff too) and was going to check one out, when I realized I didn't have my library card with me. Not surprising, since I haven't used it in about 15 years... Must look into that. It's the solution to my dilemma of buying tapes vs CD's: Borrow! (Duh.)

Mom, the ONLY way to set up computer-based record keeping is the extreme KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Everyone gets caught in this trap of setting up something so elaborate that keeping up with it is self-defeating. I suggest three columns: What it is, how much (plus or minus) and a total. Then, when that gets established, see what other info is needed, and add it very. slowly. Baby steps. A system that you don't keep up with, no matter how elegant, is a total waste of time and effort. Worse than worthless. And how do I know this? Much bitter experience, Grasshopper. Don't go there.

Weather here is drop-deadly beautiful. Too bad it's so dry-- it should be green and bursting into life, but the blooming is set against a backdrop of brown instead of green. Until the rains come, it's a tinder box waiting to happen.

That self-interview I was pressured into doing last fall is finally going to be published and they wanted a picture. Bill got drafted into taking one. Here is what I looked like yesterday, apparently: