My Day

I intended to spend this afternoon working down the pile of books sitting on my desk to be reviewed -- I've read an even thirty books at this point that I haven't written about, going back to very early this year -- but I discovered new heights of work-avoidance instead.

My mother-in-law took The Wife and my two sons off to go apple picking in the wilds of New Jersey today, leaving me alone for about five hours. (Don't snicker; New Jersey does too have wilds. Even up here in the North. You just need to head in the direction of Pennsylvania until you hear banjo music.) I banged through two movie posts and one book, and then paused to move some books around.

Six hours later, I'd finally put up the bookcase my brother gave me when he moved to Portland back in February. (It's a tall one with glass doors, so it's very front-heavy; I needed to use two straps to attach it to ceiling joists and hammer a few shims under it, too.) And I'd moved a lot of books around to neaten up my office/study/hole in the ground. (I'd even done almost as much vacuuming as the space needed.)

What I hadn't done was to get back to the computer at all, for book reviews or time-wasting or anything else.

I'm going on a long family vacation one week from today -- very similar to the vacation I took at the same time last year, actually -- and I still hope to load up a lot of reviews for the days I'll be incommunicado. But some of them may be bunts, since I don't want to come back from vacation to these big stacks. (I warn you now...)