Busy Day

Started out early–well, nine a.m. is early for some of us–digging trenches next to our front walk to facilitate drainage. Had a mostly-sunny and warm day here, but the rains are due to come back this evening and we were getting small lakes in the front courtyard. I may put in French drains; I installed five-inch pipes before, but they were completely clogged. Get a fair amount of mud-flow out there. We need to put in some plants.


Problem was, the ground was so muddy, every shovelful stuck to the blade and had to be thumped off by banging the shovel onto the ground. Deeper than a few inches, the ditch started to fill with water. Nasty work, and a half-assed job–I'll have to wait until it dries out a little more to finish it. 


Maybe by June the rain will slack off enough to do that ...


Had lunch downtown with an old friend, a well-known writer. He gets up every day and goes to his office near Pioneer Square, writes, then goes home. Obviously works for him, given his sales and advances, but my office is twenty feet down the hall from my bed, and that is way better in my mind. I wouldn't swap lives with him.


He was on a tour or doing research back east when the local loon tried to put a car bomb next to the square during the Christmas tree lighting. (The FBI was onto him, and had supplied fake explosives to see how far he'd go. He pushed the button, intending to kill or injure as many people as he could. Nice.) 


My buddy said, he was reading the paper and opened it to a picture of where the bomber had parked the car–right in front of his office's building ...


Came home, finished some sample chapters for a ghost-writting project I'm considering doing, took the dogs for a long walk in the sunshine, and came home to vacuum the house. 


I'm all done now. I might have to go take a nap ...