I do so much better when I've got a full schedule. When the day is wide open it's so easy for me to just put things off. The two big time eaters are school starting up, and buying a house with Etta and her mom. School's the normal pain in the ass, but with only two semesters left it's easy to be motivated. The house has been cool because I'm learning a bunch.

When my mom and I worked on the Katherine house we kept our changes pretty simple. With Etta's dad, Ron, being a jack-of-all-trades who seems unafraid of any task and Alameda house being in filthy shape--we had to pull up the carpet and sub-flooring to get rid of the dog piss smell--it's been a much more radical undertaking. In addition to the flooring, the kitchen's been gutted, doorways are being moved and we're trying to jack up one corner of the house that settled. But the fun doesn't end there, there's always some new challenge presenting itself, like trying to replace a cracked water line.

And there's still the wedding next summer to think of. Etta and I took a letterpress class at the Independent Publishing Resource Center so we could make our wedding invitations. We had a great time and in the process made some invites for an upcoming dinner party. The IPRC is one of those amazing Portland resources that makes you realize how hard it would be to get used to a lesser city. We're going to get custom plates made at a local engraving company so we can put our own art on the invites. I'm really looking forward to getting to work on our "paperwork" for the wedding.

But, I'm managing to scale back some of my prior commitments: