Well, I have the majority of work done on the Books section of my website. Things don’t look much different, but I’m hoping that the file sizes will be smaller, and that might make the load times faster.

Might.

The other house cleaning was cleaning the actual house. Specifically the basement. We filled about 10 half-empty paint cans with kitty litter to put them out in the trash, Michael threw away the vast majority of stuff his mother dumped on him (we’re not having kids, so we really don’t need his christening outfit) and generally got rid of a LOT of stuff that had been shoved into corners and not so much in the corners but more in the way from the work we did on the basement in the fall.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to actually move around without constantly running into boxes and cans and bags all full of junk.

Of course we also have a pile of stuff to go to the computer recycling center, to the everything else recycling center, to Christian Help, and to the used bookstore. It never fails to astound me, how much crap we accumulate. Three boxes of journal articles and class notes went out. Old text books from undergraduate school (though for some reason I kept the organic chemistry model kit). I’ve still got an entire box of craft supplies that I’m wondering why I kept, except that it’s all usable. (Anyone want a box of craft supplies? I don’t have the space to either sew or do crafty things right now.)

So my vacation hasn’t been overly relaxing so far, but I did get to spend the better part of two days with my aunt and uncle, which was very nice. There’s a huge difference for family visits centered around family events (weddings, birthdays, etc) versus nothing planned and you can just sit around and talk. As much as I like weddings and birthday parties, I prefer the later kind of visit.