What's my big excitement today? Lots and lots of laundry. I'm going to be washing almost everything that needs washing: clothes, bed sheets, towels, and bathroom rugs, all of which I've schlepped out to my parents' house so I don't have to pay to use the washer and dryer in my building's basement, or clobber that thing for half of the day. No one's here this afternoon other than me, so no one will mind.

My Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bill Weare were here earlier today; they're staging out of here while darting and jumping across the mainland U.S. to take care of bunches of errands. (They're the ones who live in Guam.) Today and tomorrow they're in Eugene, watching the Pac-10 Track and Field Championships at Hayward Field and doing Mother's Day stuff with Sally Weare from Bill's side of the family. When they get back there'll be a little gift for the both of them waiting, along with a note so they know it was me who left it. (I really do try not to be mysterious...) I stopped at a particular stand at Portland Saturday Market to find it.

I'm surrounded at this desk by slides. Mom and Dad are digging through their slide collection, preserved '70s images of my family pre-me (i.e. pre-1973); I just saw a slide from January 1972 of my brother T.J. crying, and written on the border of the slide are the words "So help me I'm going to strangle him." (It's 2006 now, and T.J. is alive and well and dodging twin 4-year-old boys, so you can be glad to know that he never was strangled.) There are also slides from Athens, Greece, where the three of them rendezvoused during one of Dad's aircraft carrier tours. Neat. But I'm not going to touch the others and risk getting anything out of order while these all get sorted...

Almost time to put one load in the dryer and another in the washer. More later.