Wednesday

Last night I stayed up all night in a hare-brained scheme to, one) learn to wake up in the morning while we are entertaining our guest over the next two weeks; and two) eke out a little more time to get work done around the house. "One" didn't work out so well, since I spent most of today nodding off if I sat too still for more than a few minutes in a row. But this scheme has had a tremendous impact on the subject of "two". I can now say, at long last, that there's no project remaining around our house besides living here. Since I had a whole morning to fidget away today--mornings are not normal for me on most days--I arranged to have building maintenance come up to the apartment and hang all of our pictures. Letting maintenance in is an incredible phenomenon, as I have mentioned before. Two guys showed up to hang my stuff, and three showed up to drop canvas all over the dining room table and floor before then disassembling that room's air conditioner down to the rivets holding it to the wall. This is just as well because the unit was actually broken and peeing all over the floor right in front of our bookcase. Of course, amidst all of these parts and ladders and framed pictures and shoeless legs is Vui, the poor woman who most usually comes to clean our rooms. Today she came with her monthly inspector, too: a house keeping supervisor with a checklist for overseeing the job she's doing. Along with me, that was quite a crowd to keep me awake today. In the end it was worth it, and the place looks better--and more ours, somehow--than it ever has before. [Cavin]