WHAT I'M DOING

I've begun looking into how to research a very interesting topic that I am pretty sure would make a good novel. It's very preliminary and it will be difficult. We shall see. I may be entirely too lazy to continue pursuing it, but at the moment I'm hyped up about it and have every good intention of following through. How's that for a tentative and reticent and easily abandoned plan?

We're also still unpacking boxes. We hope to have our storage garage cleared out by the end of the month. Fortunately, the garage is close to our house, and we're bringing over a few boxes and other things at a time. Last night we hit a milestone: We found the guest-room bed! I knew there was one hiding there.

WHAT I'LL BE DOING LATER THIS SUMMER

I've already mentioned my 30-year high school reunion July 20-21 in Bismarck, ND, to which I will be dragging Kip and Andrew, who are, of course, both sleepless with anticipation at the idea of seeing Bismarck. A couple of nights ago my lovely tepfather-in-law offered us his weeklong timeshare in a resort in northern
Minnesota at the beginning of August. I'm so excited -- I've always wanted to be one of those numerous Minnesotans who spends a week "at the lake" during the summer. Here is the resort's Web site.

Please level all your future sympathy at my co-workers and anyone else who comes in contact with me for having to put up with me talking tiresomely and at great length about my lake vacation. Thank you.

And of course there's the odd concert we're going to on July 28: the Stray Cats, ZZ Top, the Gin Blossoms and the Pretenders. How can you resist *that* lineup?

TEACHER GIFTS

Today is Andrew's last day of kindergarten. We gave his teacher a B&N gift certificate attached to a small box of Godiva chocolates, and a copy of "Up the Down Staircase." I don't know if she's read it, and I imagine it's not particularly applicable to kindergarten, but it's the best (and funniest) book I know about teaching, so I hope she'll like it. I found a lovely trade paperback edition on the shelf at B&N yesterday.

Andrew will be going to his old day care starting Monday, and he's going only Mondays through Thursdays all summer because his mother managed to convince her bosses that she is not invaluable enough that her presence will be required in the office on summer Fridays. I did promise to check in on the Web site on Friday mornings and make sure it hasn't been hijacked by pornographers or online drugstores or increase-the-length-of-your-penis hucksters. Although if it has, I'm not sure I'd know how to fix it. Or if I'd want to. It would undoubtedly be far more interesting than reading about industrial fabrics. (Don't tell anyone I said that.)

WHAT I'M READING

"Sister Mine" by Tawni O'Dell. I've never read anything else by her and I like the book. (Do you think someone named Tawni might have trouble being taken seriously? That is my thought.) Also "Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough" by Isabel Sharpe, which is amusing but forgettable chick lit. And "Mortified: Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic" by David Nadelberg, a compilation of excerpts of actual journals and letters that people wrote in their teens. It's funny in a squirmy, uncomfortable way (mainly because it makes me remember all the fervent journals and letters full of purple prose that *I* wrote as a teenager).

WHAT I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO READING

"Certain Girls" by Jennifer Weiner, which alas, doesn't come out until the fall. And "Home to Holly Springs" by Jan Karon, which doesn't come out until even later than the fall. And "Little Stalker" by Jennifer Belle, which I started reading at B&N one day last week and which I found greatly amusing. Also "Second Chance" by Jane Green and "Still Summer" by Jacquelyn Mitchard (whose books sometimes annoy me, but I keep reading them). And of course "Three Bags Full" by Leonie Swann, which will be the first (adult) book I've ever read about a group of sheep solving a mystery.

MY LATEST FAVORITE WEB SITES

Weird Translations. From this site I learned that the the title of "The Producers" was translated in Italian to "Please, Do Not Touch the Old Women."

Also this one. If your sense of humor is like mine, do not begin reading the content on that site if you are eating or drinking anything.

THE DEFINITIVE ANSWER TO WHETHER BIRDS ARE AFRAID OF PHONY-LOOKING PLASTIC OWLS

They are not. Thanks for asking.