A Good Day

I got up at 6 (more or less) and had a lovely worship time, though I keep having such weird "images" during my listening to God stretch that I'm sure I keep almost falling asleep.

Then I enjoyed breakfast and the newspaper. Made a healthy lunch and even cleaned up the kitchen and chatted with my roommate before heading off to work. I was on time and didn't fret about traffic.

I worked well and accomplished a decent amount, although there's always more to do! Then I drove north to Lake Forest for a story on rain gardens and then, miracle of miracles, it rained! And rained and rained. It was wonderful. It was the first real soaking rain we've had in the worst drought on record and the hottest summer since 1928. My only downfall was buying a bag of Fritos and a Diet Coke with lime and consuming much of both while driving, but they were good so I am not remorseful.

After work I stopped by the Doos' house to take Abby out for a run. The family is on vacation in England and I promised to look in on the dog ("my" puppy) since the current lodger, Ollie, is a renter and it's not really his responsibility, though he promised to take care of her. As I pulled up, Ollie was walking up with Abby on her leash as it was starting to rain, so I went in and as we chatted and waited for the rain to stop, I decided, for old times sake, to start cleaning the house. Ollie called his girlfriend in England and then told her, in amazement, "And there's an ex-housemate here who's cleaning my floor!" Soon he was helping me, and we did a tolerable job of cleaning up the main floor while Abby wandered about, happy as can be to have me there while the rain poured down. The rain didn't show any signs of stopping, so I decided to take Abby out in it. Unfortunately, during the car switch, as Ollie pulled the van forward and I opened the gate, the gate blew back in the wind and smashed against the bumper and blew off. It was horrible! But he's hoping to get it fixed very soon. The other nasty thing was that when I took out the trash to the garbage can, I saw the plastic bag where I'd tied up the wild rabbit that I'd found completely and inexplicably dead on the driveway on Sunday, and there were maggots crawling all over the inside of the sealed bag. How did they get in there? That poor creature. Well, so that was unpleasant.

But, then, I took Abby for a very exhilirating run and she was happy and I was happy, and then I came home and made a healthy dinner and Kim's boyfriend Dave was here working and kept me company while I listened to the new Corrs album (more pop than Celtic, but still very lyrical and catchy). Then I did more work, editing an engineering paper for a graduate student, very boring but a good source of extra income.

And now I am getting ready to read and then sleep.

All in all, a good day. Not momentous, just ... good.

-except for the maggot part. I have *got* to forget about that. It's making the memory of the fresh cherries I just ate seem very unappetizing.