Contagious-disease fans should definitely read Pox Americana, about the smallpox epidemic during the American revolution. It is both interesting and very well written.

My boss brought in homemade cookies for a really long meeting. I had two.

5 hours later, I'm still in a bad mood. I just can't do that sort of sweets anymore. I can handle a granola bar (I guess the protein in the nuts helps?) but not 2 measly cookies. Mneh.

Same.damned.kid as last Tuesday puked in the pool 3 laps from being done. They'd better kick him out of lessons for the rest of the session.

And the Baltimore Sun put its weather page behind the paywall. It was a nice, useful page. I'm not paying $100/year for a fucking weather page or science writer (and he's a gem.) They've gotten rid of most of their interesting writers/bloggers, I can follow the crime stuff on twitter, the quality is getting worse and worse, laughably so at times, and they really pissed me off by completely ignoring some pretty shitty things on various candidates in the primary. So fuck the Tribune company.

See? Bad mood.

Flea, which one? Amazon lists two (with different subtitles). Sadly neither is available in kindle it seems. Boo.

This one: [link] I bet your library has it.

Suzi, napping is a solid choice.

Take care of yourself, ita !. Be as gentle as you can.

I came home, walked the dog, put away some clean clothes, did dishes and shined my sink, fed the animals, went to the neighborhood Night Out Against Crime and scooped gelato for a while (kids these days, no manners), came home, put away more clothes, and now I'm going to do more budgety stuff before I walk the dog and go to bed. Yay productivity!

I now have Pox Americana stuck in my head to the tune of Mambo Italiano.

I just made apple crisp with my CSA apples from last week. Yum!!

Stephanie, it kills me that my apple tree is absolutely FILLED with delicious apples and they're all going to waste. Between hotel-hopping and being completely overworked, I have no time to go home and pick them, and even if I did, I have no way of doing anything with them! I've thought of at least trying to organize some kind of "come to my house please and pick a LOT of apples and do something with them!" but I have no extra time.

The flood was on September fucking 10th and I hope to move back into my house on the 24th or 25th. And when I say "move", I mean it. They've emptied every single room except the dining room in order to repair/replace the hardwood floors; I think it's all sitting in a pod in my driveway.

I am beyond irritated but there's nothing I can do except wait it out.

But damn what I wouldn't do to just sit at home eating a home-made apple crisp.

I so wish I could send you some of mine!

I think your whole house disaster is just unbelievable. I mean, when I was reading about it, I seriously couldn't believe a toilet could do all that damage.

(And in nice parenting news, I gave our neighbor boy some of it and he told me it was really good and better than what his grandma makes. And then Ellie chimed in with "my mom is a great cook!" which is semi-true and really sweet of her to say because there's no way she actually knows I"m a good cook because I never cook anymore.)

(And in nice parenting news, I gave our neighbor boy some of it and he told me it was really good and better than what his grandma makes. And then Ellie chimed in with "my mom is a great cook!" which is semi-true and really sweet of her to say because there's no way she actually knows I"m a good cook because I never cook anymore.)

This is so cute. Yay for Ellie being pro-mom's cooking.

Yeah, one toilet. And I've had a really crummy time with other house stuff since then (you don't know fun until your flowerbeds are covered in raw sewage, for instance) but I mostly keep it to very short whiny tweets. It's really all just an expensive inconvenience and part of being a homeowner. I just really didn't need to be "broken-in" this hard less than two months in!

And my job is very difficult these days for a multitude of reasons that I can't go in to. But I just hang in there knowing This Too Shall Pass.

I do miss my dogs, though. But they're really happy staying at Charlie's house because he gives Them All The Treats and All The Walks.