Good days' sleep, and JD got in a good days' work. He cleaned the yard almost completely up, cut down some trees, trimmed the hedges, cleaned a bunch of junk out of the side yard... it looks so good I'll have to try to keep it that way. It shouldn't take more than an hour or two a week now, at least until he comes to visit again...

He had a load of brush in the trailer when I got up, so he and I took it out to Betsy's and dumped it. But we really screwed up: there are millions of chiggers living out there, and we both got in the grass. Then we stopped at Taco Tico on the way home and ate, giving them little buggers time to do their dirty work. JD probably doesn't know it yet, but he will when he wakes up. I got the ER Doc to give me a scrip for Qwell...yeah, the stuff used for head and body lice. Same kinda bugs, they're mites too.

Probably five years ago, JD and Tyler and I were out to Betsy's for a picnic, and we all got eaten up by the chiggers. Then earlier this year, Tyler got out of the boat to get a lure (that he had thrown in a tree!) and got a bunch, just in the minute it took to get the lure. The area by the boat ramp is free of them, I don't know if they spray that area or if there's just not enough grass there to support them. Anyway, I wish that I'd have remembered they were there, we have several cans of repellent.

So, anyway, we've got about a weeks' worth of industrial-strength itching/scratching to do.

Karen and Kim went out last night before JD and I left. When we got home there was a message on the machine from her..."Doug, JD, pick up the phone.... is anybody there? Hello? Hello? Hello!" but no real message. I called her before 22:00 after I was at work and she told me that she'd locked the keys in the van, and was looking for someone to rescue her. She finally called her son Andy and he got the door open with a coathanger. She'd left the window open a little, luckily.

I've joined a couple of mailing lists lately, and I'm getting 15-30 emails a day. It's wonderful! However, I just barely have time to read them all, much less respond. I'd like to respond to all of them, but I wind up just transferring them over into a different folder after I read them just to get them out of my inbox until I can get some time to respond. By then the lists will have moved on to a different topic, it'll be too late!

Speaking of traffic, the hits on this site have gone up a bunch lately, thanx to Open Pages. Almost all of the journals that I read daily participate now, plus a few new ones I need to get better acquainted with. I feel really good about the increased hits, but I don't want to brag about it. I shouldn't even mention it, of course, but I already did. I'm going to be doing a bunch of different stuff here in the next several month, including putting everything into frames (as an alternate... don't want to scare anybody!) and doing some VB animations. I've decided to put the animations on separate pages, so everybody doesn't have to load them if they don't want to.

Speaking of decisions (OK, so we weren't, sue me!), I think I did right not moving my computer room to the basement last week. I had a better idea... I knew I was procrastinating for a reason! I was going to move into a separate room in the basement, not the main room. Now I've decided to move into the main room, and use the other room just for storage! How very clever of me. I can get all of my junk organized and then shut the door, just have pretty stuff(!) to look at. At least I will have when Karen visits me... and I won't be quite so isolated, either. Karen likes the idea better, too.

Busy night at the hospital. Interesting, too. Several fun patients. Several challenging patients. No drunks. I wish all the nights were like this!

JD will be leaving today. I'm going to call Karen and wake her up, then she'll wake him up, then we'll go out to breakfast, pack him up, he'll leave and I'll go to bed. I miss him already, and so will Karen and Lacee. JD always makes a big hit with Lacee... which reminds me, I haven't seen her for a week or so. She was mad at me for some reason last time I saw her. She gets her feelings hurt really easily, just like her mother...

Just got back from breakfast with JD and Karen. JD didn't get to sleep 'til late this morning, and we convinced him to get at least a few more hours of sleep before starting out. For a change, he's taking my advice! I feel like a good Dad now!

Have I mentioned lately that Karen is a wonderful woman? Well, she is!