I'm putting in some battery-operated under-cabinet lighting, Laura. Have installed one of three lights already and it's not bad. Meanwhile it looks like one tube of the overhead four I swear I just recently replaced has burnt out and that means none of them will light up and that is sapping my will to even go into the kitchen today.

I went for a run this morning, which felt good (although my pace was still very slow), ate up the last of the kale in an omeletty-type thing, then cleaned the house a bit, did some laundry, then spent an hour or so planting bulbs along the fenceline and pulling weeds.

Oh my aching back.

Oh, and I finished the book for book club (which is tomorrow).

Now I should probably go make pie crusts. I have a thing at work on Wednesday and I won't have time to make anything tomorrow night or Tuesday night. So I figured I can make pie crusts today and freeze them, and then Tuesday night I can fill one (or both) and bake them, which shouldn't be too hard.

What I should be doing now is going over the music for choir tomorrow, but meh.

I meant to do a lot of things this morning, but none of those things happened. I did manage to donate two bags of clothes and some shoes this afternoon, so at least I got something out of the house.

I've checked in for my flight tomorrow. I need to pay some bills and do laundry and pack.

I slipped into a nearly-3 hour nap, woke convinced it was the next day. Good thing, too, because I have to go over the Hour of Code tutorials I'll be doing with the grammar school kiddos tomorrow morning. Mind you, it's stuff like "make the robot turn right when it hits a wall" level of coding, but it's nice to be prepared because I'll possibly be the only one there who has ever written a program at all, so.

Well, I took out the garbage and recycling and have laundry going, so my productivity is slightly higher than it might have been. Maybe I'll make some soup, that doesn't take much effort.

OK, what should I get my mother for Christmas? I am feeling uninspired, at least until I remembered that she's become a total Benedict Cumberbatch fangirl. Surely there must be some silly Cumberbatchy things for sale somewhere, right?

Surely there must be some silly Cumberbatchy things for sale somewhere, right?

[link]

Maybe not this though: [link] Or maybe! I don't know your mother.

I had a terrible slow start to the day thanks to staying up way too late upgrading my os (and the sad part is, I'm only halfway done.) But I got moving and made it to lisah's parade party and saw the whole parade! Honestly, I think the drum lines and dancer teams are my fav. One, incredible display of talent and athleticism;two, they're homegrown Baltimore; three, clearly a multigenerational family thing. Older parents acting as marshals and gear-carriers, the teens and early 20 something dancer gals and guys, the drummers ranging in ages, followed by Tweens down to teeny little 3-4 year olds rocking out. And there's the complicated bit about how they're a black Baltimore institution marching through what was historically a white Baltimore hood, and it's awesome that they were most likely to get the crowd cheering along (not counting the floats that gave candy and made the kids scream) and how you could write a book about all of this.