The sinus ache is a cold and a nasty one. I finally slept last night for 10 hours which was great but I don't feel like I'm getting any better. I had a headache most of the day. I finally perked up around 6pm -- same yesterday. I baked two pies as well (don't worry, didn't breathe on them.) I baked one last night for Brian and Bree's going away party at Karen's and then another this morning for the writers. Both pies turned out great and I got endless raves. This morning I bragged: "I'm the best pie maker in my writer's group." I think I figured out my crust problem or else got lucky two days in a row. Either way, I was pleased with the results and almost took pictures. But I didn't. Still haven't figured out what to do with my High Sierra photos yet. Maybe I'll throw some up now.

I haven't mentioned Angel in several days -- you might be asking yourself, what happened? This is the second weekend in a row with no Angel disks. Bob and I just updated our queue and Angel is next and we just moved Freaks and Geeks disc #2 to the top of the list. I'm ready for some Angel.

We must have done the world's fasted dishwasher purchase yesterday. I'm embarrassed to admit we did almost no homework. We walked in with a budget. We knew Kenmore was a good brand. There was one, under our maximum, on sale with a rebate that would cover the installation. One swipe and signature and we were out of there within 30 minutes. That includes a side trip to look at refrigerators. We almost bought a new one of those too. Such boring grownup stuff to buy but I can't WAIT to get a working dishwasher again.

When I got my computer cart I was thrilled to have my desk back so I could do things like write in my notebook or balance my checkbook on my desk rather than on the floor or at the kitchen table. Since then, I managed to pile all sorts of random crap, papers, magazines, projects, bills, statements, notebooks -- all over every bit of free space. The desk is worthless other than a staging area for extra junk. I should have seen this coming.

My last item for today has to do with giving out my phone # and address information which I am pathologically stingy about handing out. This is probably ironic considering I'm keeping a weblog but we won't get into that. For years I have managed to stay off of UCSB's alum radar and this week I got a call from them. The first thing I said was, "I've managed to ditch you guys for years, how did you finally find me?" She didn't reply but instead started telling me they wanted to confirm my information and I said I wanted to be on the no call list. "Are you sure?" she asked. Did she not hear the very first thing I said when I found out who was calling? Does anyone want to be bothered at home by random phone calls? The Alumni association only calls for money. It's not like they want to do anything for you. This call along with the variety of political type people asking us to help with campaigns or put signs on our lawn has led to me to suspect that when I exercised my fantastic right to participate in the political process and went to the democratic nominating caucus and filled out that forking piece of paper -- that I consigned myself to the mailing and phone pit of hell. All my careful work guarding my contact info, undone in a morning.