And on the less exciting side ...

I've been meaning to do a handful of reviews (Ratatouile, Man and Superman, something else I forget, oh yeah duh! HP7) but I keep ending up tired and draggy at the end of the day. I haven't even gone back and finished up the write-up for the invented languages conference. And I promised a guy in Texas that I'd review a class outline he sent me on medieval Welsh bardic competitions and haven't typed up my notes from that either. But here are a few things I have done.

Friday evening I had goldenstag and aastg over for dinner. Not quite managing my not-less-than-one-dinner-party-per-month, but I'm still working on it. We had an appetizer of(  oat-salmon sushi,  )

for the main dish there was ( lamb riblets braised with carrots and dried figs and a side of sausage-stuffed zucchini,  )

and for dessert(  cold cherry soup. )

Yesterday I decided it was a shopping day. Now that I have a queen-size sofa bed I needed to get some queen-sized sheets, and the newspaper ads indicated that Macy's was having a sale on bed linens, so I went out to the Walnut Creek shopping center, picked up a couple of sheet sets, then dropped by my new source for my china pattern and got a couple new pieces. (I used to get my china at Macy's too, but I've pretty much exhausted the items they usually carry.) Then up to the Concord Fry's Electronics to get some replacement dust filters for my vacuum cleaner, and happening to notice a Payless Shoe Source in the same shopping center, I stopped by and got a couple more pairs of the shoes I bought last month which have turned out to be extremely comfortable. (Great shoes are rare enough that when I find them I stock up for the next couple of years.) Back through the tunnel to stop at Poppy Fabrics for its going out of business sale. Not much really grabbed me except a sort of pale-indigo herringbone wool that I'd missed the first time around because callistotoni had it out for cutting. So I promised not to wear it to the same party and took some of that.

Today I'll take the bicycle off to the shop for a tune-up -- it's been having problems with the gear-shift sticking and jumping, which probably just means a lube job. And maybe some relaxing ... nah. Need to find a house project to work on.

Something semi-accomplished

For a house project I tackled the last lump of books that haven't been sifted, shelf-checked, and reorganized: the music books. I got as far as sorting through everything, categorizing it, and organizing it in a logical fashion on the shelves, as well as verifying that all the items that are already in the book catalog are actually present and accounted for. I didn't feel mentally up to sifting through and identifying material for discard -- I figured this out because I found myself not wanting to part with some stuff that really solidly belongs in the category of "I have never used this; I am not using it; I am never likely to use it." I pulled a few items (old issues of Sing Out and a few books on handcrafting musical instruments) and then decided to wait for a time when I'm in a more ruthless mood. I don't want to complete the cataloging until I've done the sifting. And besides which, I need to decide whether I really want to catalog all my sheet music and exercise workbooks. There isn't a bright line dividing the reference books from ths music books, but eventually you get down into the folders of xeroxed sheet music thrown together for a particular performance set and then it starts getting ridiculous.

There was one delightful moment: I discovered that I do still have a copy of the barbershop quartet arrangement of Biotech Fantasy (or as I'm wont to call it: the barbarous shop quartet arrangement. I haven't laid eyes on that for years and was afraid I'd have to try to recreate it from scratch if I ever wanted to use it again.

Didn't manage to get the bike tuned up ... I hauled it all the way up to the shop and succeeded only in getting an appointment to get it tuned up. But the guy did tweak a few things that should lessen the gear skipping problem for the nonce.