then she appeared

Wednesday already?! Ack!

Vacations need to be three times as long, I think. Unless I am traveling I spend the first couple days doing nothing, then I get busy, then I go back to nothing, then I run out of time.

So far:

Friday I left work early, went to have dinner with Stephen, then we went to see Neil Gaiman speak at MIT. I've seen him two other times, and he's always entertaining and charming. This was no exception. Alas, they were making a DVD of the lecture series, so no flash was allowed. Pictures not good.

Turn to the Left!!	Turn to the Right!!	Fashion!!*

Other pix in my Flickr photostream. Came home, watched losing baseball. Read.

Saturday I slept late, bought lunch for Mom and I (breakfast food, yum!), then went out to dinner and Indiana Jones with P. Read before bed. Watched losing baseball.

Sunday I slept late, poked around on the computer, opened windows in house, sniffed the pretty air. Read a lot of the day. Watched losing baseball.

Monday I had lunch with P, came home and took the cat outside for a couple hours, poked around with various pictures/blog entries/etc. Read a lot of the day. Wrote long review of Kindle. Not finished. Watched winning baseball.

Tuesday I did chores. Dragged all recycleables off to city yard, picked up Rx for Mom, had lunch, returned cans, cleaned out car, washed car, went to Jiffy Lube, dropped off glasses for new lenses, went to Target, went to food store. At home, made dinner, plugged in fan, read the internet, sorted out receipts, took tags off clothes bought earlier in week and put away. Read a small amount of the day. Had to call Amazon because price on Kindle went down (it's $359 now) and I missed 30 day price guarantee by 3 days. Arg! Was denied. Wrote snippy email. Will see what happens. Watched losing baseball. Life is hard. Manny got home run #499 — just one more and we can go back to normal.

Upcoming?
Chores! Many chores! Clean house. Entire house. All laundry. Have to do in the next 4 days, because early Sunday will drive to Provincetown to spend 2 days with S & V. They have rented a gorgeous place right on the water and I want to take pix and hang out with them. I took the wrong week off, so I can only spend Sunday night there, as Tuesday I need to be at work. So it'll be most of Sunday, Sunday night, then all day Monday til I poop out (or they get sick of me -- so maybe early Sunday afternoon!). Here's hoping the weather is good Sunday and Monday.

*I was debating "stand up, sit down, fight fight fight", but I went Bowie instead.

So I've made some progress on my To Do list. and now I'm going to set myself a goal for completion: I want to have 85% of what's on the list done before I go on vacation August 17th. I don't want to spend my whole vacation doing dumb things. I've got about 44% of the list done now. That's been two weeks or so since I started, and there's two weeks til vacation. I've been adding to it quite a bit, so I'll probably add more before I'm done, but right now there are about 60 things on the list. I've completed approximately 25 things, more or less.

I think this weekend will contain kitchen & bathroom & floors day! That will knock off almost everything Mom-related.

Here's what I probably won't do: most of the book reading (just aren't enough hours between now and then! plus, need something to do vacation week), going to the doctor,  getting a second job, renewing my passport, looking at a car, and finally completing the images database at work (because seriously? it's been two years). To hit my 85% goal, though, I have to finish almost everything else. Yeesh.

EDITED TO ADD: New list posted here (a reorg!)

I haven't done an obsessive list recently, so naturally I'm due.

Instead of crowing about how damned productive I have been, this time I need to whine about all the things I really need to do and haven't:
 
There. My brain is now empty and I can sleep.