Friday Chillout

And it really is, too -- the temp feels as if it's in the high sixties right now, and the sky's cloudless and bleu. This is gorgeous weather. Last night, instead of the AC, we ran the house fan for a while. What a terrific feeling to have the air rushing through the room. When we have the room put in over the garage, extending from the current bedroom, one of the absolute standards for it will be cross-ventilation -- windows on either side (unlike our current bedroom, which has just the one window). In fact, before we had the idea of putting in the room, one thought was simply to add windows to the far wall -- casement, most likely, as the view would have been of the garage roof. Not too pretty. But this will be nice - elevator from the storage room up into the current bedroom, which will take up about a fifth of the room, perhaps less; then two walk-in closets, and a closet extension in that room but connected to the next bedroom (my daughter heard about this, said 'More closet space for me! Go for it!'), and then, in the far wall (which makes it sound oh-so-many miles away; no, its just a 13x15 room), the doorway into the new room. There's a lot of details that we need to work out, but thats the plan. Going to be nice.

I hear the trash guys. I don't imagine that their job can ever be fun, but on days like this, with this weather, I imagine its not too bad. I occasionally think of going out there on a hot day with something cool for them to drink. Never do it though -- by the time that the thought has formed, they're already off to the next set of houses.

Last night my daughter called me into her room so that she could read me a user-written story she'd found. I stood there, studiously ignoring the disaster area around her bed, while she read it to me, because though neatness and order is something I value, her taking the time to share stuff with me is important, too. I'll mention the clutter today -- or perhaps tomorrow. She has a plan to move her desk into her room (its currently in the living room), putting it where her guinea pig's cage had been. That's fine with me, but she also wants to move the in-the-wall shelves. Not too sure about that -- its a fair amount of work. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to show her how to do it -- and let her do it. I'm a big believer in exposing girls to that kind of thing. When I was growing up, girls didn't routinely get exposed to working with their hands. I know they do now -- her Tech Ed classes showed me that -- but still, I like to encourage it. Though I have to enlarge her horizons carefully -- the other day I mentioned to my daughter that there are web sites where you can look for urban myths -- she'd gotten forwarded an email with one -- and I barely got the statement out before she was stopping me. Its a balancing act. I find that with my daughter, it works best --- usually --- to just mention the idea, and let her pick up on it if she's interested.

Got some of the challah dough thawing on the counter -- I've been asked for a remake. And in a week, on one day, I will be making both two trays of mac and cheese, and three dozen (!) cookies for band camp. I saw the list of people baking for it -- and I'm the only guy on the list. Odd feeling.

And thats it for now, I think.