What I did today

Today seemed like a long, dreary, drifty day.  Don't like those kind of days!   So let me list here what I actually did get accomplished instead of what didn't happen:

1.  Watched two more lectures in my History of English lecture series.  Learned about Noam Chomsky.  Have heard about him for years but never really knew who he was.  Interesting.  Only one more lecture to go and I'm done with the series.

2.  Hired a guy to weed my garden.  My garden had gotten completely out of hand.  My arm has been hurting me lately and I've started seeing a chiropracter.  Every time I'd look at the garden and see all the work that needed to be done I felt defeated and unable to deal with it.  So a guy knocked at my door looking for work and I hired him, even though I have able bodied teens who SHOULD do the work.  But they hate it as much as I do. . . . Anyway, this guy was great.  He's coming back tomorrow to finish the job.  He even trimmed the trees and cleaned out the gutters!

3.  Read more of The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

4. Took Josh shopping.  Got him a suit and new pants, shirts and shoes and ties.  Bought Rick a couple ties also.

5.  Did a lot of thinking and planning about Sean.  Decided that he needed more structure and challenge.  Typed up a potential schedule for him for next fall.  Showed it to him.  He read it all and then said it sounded good!

6.  Got Sean and Josh to put their clothes away.  Been nagging them for days.

7.  Got rid of 64 books yesterday, so what did I do?  Bought more books while at the mall.  Got another Bryson, a book called The Founding Brothers which I overheard two friends of mine raving about and got a book by John McWorter on English.  Also bought a paperback verision of To Kill a Mockingbird.

8.  Cleaned the kitchen and got the trash out.  Getting the trash out was a big deal because 1) we'd missed the 4th of July pick up so our trash bins were completely full.  And 2) I had cleaned out Becky's room and had 4 bags of trash just from there.

9.  Rick finally sent the email to Berklee dealing with our little problem of lack of state documentation.  Hopefully things will be resolved.

10.  We started listening to Story of the World Volume II during dinner.  Listened to Intro and then most of Ch. 1.

11.  Read a chapter of David Copperfield

12. Rafael (or is it Raphael??  Keep forgetting!) went into DC today with Rick and Hannah.  He took in more of the American History Museum and then the Art museums and bought lots of little presents for his family. Came home and played more wii.  He is very happy to spend his time on the wii or watching movies.  He said he dioesn't watch many movies in Austria because where he lives there just aren't any theaters close to him.  So far he's watched Phantom of the Opera, March of the Penguins and A Beautiful Mind.  He's also watching a lot of Monk which apparently is popular in Austria!