It's being a day

Yesterday I printed calendar pages for September and October because I can't keep track of everything we have planned and I foolishly neglected to put them into my PDA. I wrote in the events I could remember and before breakfast this morning remembered to look for the replacement tickets we had to get for Stagecrafters' first play of the 2009/2010 season. (We traditionally got opening night, but this year that conflicted with The Bridge Walk). The tickets weren't where they should have been, so I ended up flipping through piles of unopened snail mail. Which is when I discovered I hadn't bought a new license plate tab for Gabe's car. Which means he's been driving around on expired plates. Oops. I gave him the checkbook and the paperwork; he's going to stop at the secretary of state after our dentists gives him his new crown this morning.

I found the tickets, btw. Naturally, this resulted in a conflict -- Little Women is the same night as ladyinfidel's birthday party. We're going to try to do both anyway, even though it will mean a really long day and that'll we'll be exhausted the next day, in which we will again be trying to cram two events.

I also went around the house grabbing the various boxes and bags and stacks of old mail. I now have a 14x10x6 (inch) box stuffed with things I need to process. I try to get rid of the sales circulars as soon as they enter the house, but the ones hidden between the pages of the local newspapers or stuffed in with the bills are a different story. I've found checks we haven't deposited (I got a new ATM card and mislaid the new PIN number. The PIN number reappeared during the search for the tickets, but I don't know where the new ATM card is. Hopefully it's in one of the letters I haven't gone through yet. If not, I'll just have to go to the credit union when they're open and see an actually bank teller.

Another thing that surfaced this morning is the little newsletter the Royal Oak School sends out. Not having human children, I usually glance through the publication and add it to the recycling. One of the headlines caught my eye: ROHS Students File for Patent On SEEKER Robot. Three ROHS sophomores invented SEEKER -- an autonomous robot that detects and marks the location of land mines with fluorescent dye. What I found particularly wonderful is that the team built their robot for only $148. I know land mines are an ongoing problem in many of the poorer parts of the world, so I'm hopeful that SEEKER will be an affordable solution to the problem.

Books

What with not having time to read the mail, you'd think I'd know better than to be a member of the QPB (Quality Paperback Book club). No, I'm not that smart. Fortunately for me, I rarely order books and usually don't do more than read the descriptions. Plus I usually check the books I want to read against the holdings of our Public Library so that I don't buy what I not only can read for free, but would have to figure out how to store if I had made a purchase.

Books that caught my eye in the current mailer were the excellently titled "My Word is My Bond," by Sir Roger Moore (I don't have a burning desire to read it, but I do love the title), and "Animals Make Us Human" by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson. I've known of Temple Grandin for a long time, but I have yet to read one of her books. Someday, I hope.

In the true crime category, I found "Who Killed Katie Autry?" concerning the May 2003 murder in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The description refers to it as "a richly reported crime story in the tradition of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and since I loved Midnight and crime stories in general, this one's being added to my list of books I want to read.

And I just now noticed the blurb for "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" by Kate Summerscale ("the true story of the murder that shocked 1860s England... that reads like a Victorian thriller").

I also saved blurbs for Absinthe & Flamethrowers by William Gurstelle. ("This combination of science, history, and DIY projects explains why taking risks and living dangerously can be good for you") and Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent ("My year lost and found in the Loony Bin"). I'm not sure I want to read this one, but I did end up curious about her previous book, Self-Made Man, which describes the 18 months she spent living as a man (and which resulted in such severe depression she hospitalized herself).

Lastly there's Scratch Beginnings by Alan Adam Shepard, which I saved less for the blurb ("a college grad starts over from scratch in order to prove that the American Dream isn't dead in this inspiring memoir") than because I want to read the subtitle and I can't make it out in the picture. Only now that I'm staring at it again, I think it reads "Me, $25, and the search for the American Dream." Maybe if the library has a copy and I've cleared the higher priority items on my to-be-read list...

Are you in Oakland County with a bicycle you no longer want?

One more thing from the mail stack:

No Bikes Left Behind accepts bicycle donations to refurbish and recycle back into the community through churches and crisis agencies. To donate a used bicycle, contact Jerry at (248)-343-0167 or visit the website at www.nobikesleftbehind.com