After reminiscing with my brother by phone this weekend, I am engaging in my own personal musical nostalgia trip today. Currently playing on iTunes � Bronski Beat. I am instantly transported to the summer I spent in Philadelphia being an energetic young intern by day and dancing �til dawn at Revival (a former night club in an old bank building � I�m sure I�m dating myself here!) by night.

It seems like a lifetime ago. Now I spend my nights craving sleep. And the one night I actually got some this week, I apparently slept through an earthquake. How could I sleep through an earthquake? I know it was a small one, but I am such a light sleeper that I would have thought I would have been awake. I wish I had been, if only to observe its passing.

I am still trying to finish up my final report in order to get it into the mail today. I�ve been rather disorganized about this one � there is a section I need someone in my department to sign, and I won�t be able to take care of that until tomorrow. It will be late and mailed separately. But it�s hard for me to be too worried about all of this when, in fact, the lateness is largely their fault (seeing as I didn�t get the forms until yesterday). Besides which, I am not eligible for a renewal, nor do I have another check coming my way. There is not a lot of incentive to make this perfect.

Today is K.�s long day, so I have plenty of time to get it done. I was kind of sad to leave AJ this morning, who was being so entertaining. He was holding many mock phone conversations with his toy phone today. He called his uncle to wish him happy birthday, his cousin to ask her to play Frisbee, and Elmo, because who wouldn�t want to call Elmo? We also ran around the yard for a little while in the early morning sun. The plan had been to haul out the baseball equipment and play a rousing game of Knock Charlie Brown�s Socks Off (This involves AJ being Charlie Brown and pitching to me, Lucy. When I hit the ball, he falls down and yells, �You knocked my socks off!� while I run around the bases yelling �Aaaarrgghh!!�). But we were distracted by the lawn. AJ is fascinated with the mushrooms that have cropped up in our grass in the wake of the most recent wave of storms and cool weather. He pokes at them with his fat little fingers. �I like them. They�re so SQUISHY.�

My day is not looking particularly squishy, alas. I have bills to pay, laundry to do, and errands to run in preparation for an afternoon at my university and an evening at my book group tomorrow. I have to renew about 50 library books, so I guess I�ll be taking the car. I�m hoping to do a little library work and possibly attend a lecture on cultural theory. I hate driving down there, though. It�s a big, fat pain in the ass. Give me the train any day.

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