Well

The meeting WAS on Saturday. it started at 9:30 and I must have missed the setters up by about five minutes. They had no signs anywhere on campus, except, I hear, inside an anthro lab. I was bummed (and even more on Sunday morning, when I wasted a corresponding amount of time until finally a human appeared who told me it had been the day before). On Saturday I went and saw the Hitch-hiker's Guide movie. Read the book by all means, and then rent the cheap BBC production. It was much better than the movie, about which the best thing I can say was that it was better than the weather.

Sunday I got home in time to help Doug finish sanding the floor and we varnished a second coat of gloss. It looked really good. On Monday Paul and I steel-wooled it and and yesterday I put what I hoped would be a final coat of satin, or maybe a penultimate coat but one that would not need any sanding or steel-wooling. It has bubbled all to hell and will need serious sanding before any more varnish can be applied. I am having a little trouble retaining my equanimity. (Nor are the wall-bits and window trims done.)

I did spend Tuesday tearing out bittersweet in preparation for planting a couple of deciduous azaleas (and vacuuming the daylights out of the steel-fluff encrusted room).

Yesterday I gave Paul an obscene mount of money so he can do serious earthmoving working on the 0.2 mile long driveway, which has not really been maintained for a long time. Long enough that the drainage dtiches are entirely silted up and the four to six inches of fill in front of the house has slumped to one side. We are hoping he has enough time to make a terrace with the machine on the precipitous slope in front and to take away the badly installed chain link fence from the back yard.

On a cheerier front, Sarah's chicks arrived. They are a dozen Araucanas we hope will be hens.