tiggy, much health- & recovery-ma to your aunt & cousin.

sj, we got the shelves at IKEA. They are the Billy style shelves.

Brackets to all who need them - I just got to the end of the thread and now I have to go run and take a shower.

Having a nice vacation so far. It's an Imagination Vacation, staying at home!

Just back from shopping in the Plaka. Several observations:

A dog in every doorway. All the stores had their doors open, and the stray dogs were laying in the air conditioning. If I'd had a camera I would've done a photo series.

When wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt, shopping at Sephora or MAC is almost as bad as wearing that outfit in a beauty salon. I kept having to explain that I didn't work there.

Different goals for little girls. One store had things for little girls, like pencil cases or notebooks or little purses, with Hello Kitty or Pucca or...the Playboy bunny.

The last extended conversation I had with my father wasn't so much a conversation as it was me listening to him muse befuddledly at people's inabilities to grasp such a simple concept as different sizes of infinities.

I'm on board with that. It's not a hard concept, really. What's the problem? Until I start thinking about it too hard, at which point I suddenly can no longer remember how one number gets to be bigger than another and it's the math version of that bit in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead about the word "chair".

sending out the health and strenght ma~~~ tiggy. So sorry to hear the news.

Back in Seattle. I think you could tell the returning residents on our plane from the visitors by whether they said "Ahhh!" or "Brrrr!" in response to the 62-degree air on the jetway. (While we were in Alabama, I'm not sure it dropped below 75 at night, was in the mid 90's every day, and was so muggy my glasses fogged up every time I stepped outside.)

There is an obviously sick cat in our front yard. We don't know who it belongs to, but we recognize it as one of the neighborhood pets. As soon as it's a bit past 8:00, I'm going to go to our next-door neighbor and see if she knows, since she's a bit more social on the block than we are. Poor kitty.

I think we picked the right time to come home, though I do wish there was more I could do for Mom long-distance. But my ability to let things ride and not pick fights over the usual political issues was starting to wear off, so it's as well I got away when I did. And, well, it's good to be home, and I'm looking forward to settling back in to my usual routine.

Welcome home, Susan. Glad you feel like it was good timing.

The cat is gone now. I hope its owner found it and took it away, because it didn't look to be in good shape at all.

Tep, I see the insomnia fairy was in MD and OH last night. She was raging hardcore. I finally fell asleep at 5:30 and the frelling alarm went off at 6:30. There is not enough caffeine in the world for this morning.

I didn't fall asleep until sometime after 4:00. When the alarm went off, I just picked up the phone and called in to work. No way in hell could I function on 3 hours of sleep. (Though now I feel like a slacker now that I know you got only 1 hour.)

Ugh, Steph. Calling in seems wise.