DIARY : Sept. 2

I'm off work today, since it's my Saturday rotation tomorrow.

One of my Welsh students, Melvyn, brought over a bag of produce last night. He and his wife belong to one of those organic farm coops that deliver a weekly box of whatever is in season. Usually several families will go in together as there is too much for one. I haven't joined one, because I don't know anyone living near enough to me to share with. So this was a nice treat! He gave me a very large tomato, some interesting peppers, a few carrots, onions, a garlic bulb, a zucchini, a yellow squash, and 6 beets. (I take it they don't like beets, or else there were a lot of them!) Time to get the cookbooks out.

The cats are on a new diet regimen. I've decided Percy is getting too fat, and since he is now 9 years old, he really needs to be on a "senior" diet. That means I will now have to feed Percy and Lily separately. So Percy now has a place to eat in the bathroom, which is the only place with a door that closes. That also means separate cans of food in the refrigerator. It'll be more expensive, but I'm going to have to quit buying the large cans of cat food. Lily doesn't eat much canned and it would just go to waste. My budget is still quite tight, but when the current cat food stash is gone, I'm going to start using a premium brand -- probably Nutro Max and/or Natural Choice which doesn't use meat by-products. I'm hoping that Percy will also throw up less on a better diet.

I learned of the death of an acquaintance yesterday. The funeral is this afternoon, and since I'm off work I am going to go. Rod Macrae was the mover and shaker behind the Celtic Festival at Murphy's Landing that we had for three wonderful years. Rod was the "Chief" and provided quite a bit of his own money to fund it. I was the "Program Chief" under Rod for the first two years, and program advisor for the third year when I turned it over to Audrey. Oh we had fun! We had hoped it would take off and become an annual event, but bad weather, bad turnout, lack of outside funding, and just plain burn out ended it after three years. I think Rod might have tried to revive it, but I guess he has been dealing with cancer these last few years.

There's a full-time job opening for a reference librarian with the Grand Rapids public library. I'm going to apply. It closes Sept. 23. Full-time reference openings are few and far between. I expect there will be keen competition.

Church choir rehearsals resume this next week.

In the news: the devastation across the Gulf Coast and especially in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. I don't have much to give, especially after that car repair pretty much wiped out all my savings, but I'll see what I can spare.