About 45 minutes before I sign my new lease. (You've got to understand - it's been 17 years since I last moved.) I'm drinking tea and have the Dubai World Cup on tv. The announcers are British. They just pronounced Mario Gutierrez's name in such a bizarre way that I could never copy it. They didn't even pronounce "Mario" in a normal way. They had better luck with Jose Valdivia. (They just said Mario's name again - much, much better.)

Are you moving on the first? I'm glad you found a place to have a new lease on!

It's all grey here today, supposed tone thunderstorms tomorrow. Excellent reason to put off mowing my lawn just a little longer.

I'm moving as soon as I sign my lease!

I really want to be out of here by Sunday night. We'll see if that can be managed.

Good luck on the signing and the move, sumi!

I don't want to do anything today. I wish it were raining. For the first time ever, I made myself coffee at home.

So here's a lovely story: A young woman who was one of my niece's best childhood friends went to MIT on full scholarship, and met a young man from Detroit, and fell in love. I have known her since she was about 8 years old, and last weekend she eloped and got married on a beach in Oregon.

That might be the most gorgeous set of wedding photos I have EVER seen. If their marriage is anything as lovely, they will have wonderful lives.

Those are lovely photos, Consuela. I love the contrast of the foofy dress and the woods.

I especially love the distance shot with her feet off the ground. Really gorgeous pictures.

Yay sumi! 17 years seems a long time... but then I reflect that I've been in my "new" house for, um, 12 years.

Buying a house was so complicated that I'm astounded sometimes that anyone, ever, voluntarily buys another.

I especially love the distance shot with her feet off the ground. Really gorgeous pictures.

Yeah, that one really got me. I'm so happy for them. Nice very smart kids.

Such sweet photos!

I just sent off the list of prize winners for the writing contest I'm running this year. Eight kids, $6000 in total prizes. Seems like a lot of money, right? And I'm really happy because one of the winners is a kid I know well, and he's just such a great guy and he's done such great work for me over the years. And his father just died. Winning would be a nice bright spot for him in what must have been a really really crappy month.

I love the idea of photographers having elopement packages. And I love the bride's shoes. I've never been to a wedding with broom-jumping, probably because I haven't been to a black people's wedding that wasn't second generation Jamaican, and that's not particularly one of our traditions--the bougies didn't grab it like American black families did.

I figure that no matter how unique and special your pictures are for you, there are standard dos and don'ts for the photographers--some pictures they make sure they have to get, for instance. I think I would make sure I had a picture like this. It's easy, it's sentimental, I like.

So I'm pissed at my sister's friend to whom I sent megabytes of art and hasn't replied. "She doesn't reply to email" my sister's explanations starts. What? You mean she doesn't know how to act? If you have an email address, and you encourage people to communicate with you that way, you should have some way planned to follow up--if typing into a computer freaks you out, write a damned postcard. Do something. She specifically asked for this stuff. I'm not even asking for "thank you", I'm asking for "I got it" since it was large enough I didn't know if her email host would bounce it.

But the end of my sister's explanation is "...plus her husband just got into an accident where his truck was totalled (he's okay, but the other guy died)."

Oh. Okay. Clearly I should usefully have been irritated a week ago, but I pretty much have to write this off as never gonna hear back, period. Yikes. I can't even imagine the sort of space they're in right now--my sister didn't say who was at fault in the accident. I...that doesn't come off in the wash. Whoa.