Book completed

Blanche on the Lam, by Barbara Neely. I read this for book club; it's the first in a series I'd never heard of. Blanche is an African-American woman in rural North Carolina who got arrested for passing a temporarily bad check, and she found herself slipping out the door of the jail when no one was looking, then later the same day found herself becoming the temporary housekeeper for a strange wealthy family that was going to stay at their vacation home, Mysteries ensue. I enjoyed it!

Day 268: Useful things

This afternoon I raked/swept most of the leaves off my driveway, adding them to my big pile in the street (which is still trivial compared with houses that have multiple native oaks). I kept singing bits of "King of the Road" to myself, the part about "two hours of pushin' broom buys an 8x12, four-bit room."

Then, since the sky was partly cloudy, I got J. to come on a walk with me to see the sunset. We didn't get an early-enough start, so it was already well underway, and we didn't want to face a different direction than the sunset, which left us walking west, up the hill and into the cemetery, where the sunset was progressively more and more blocked by trees. Oh well. We may try again tomorrow, and if we do, we'll get an early enough start that we can go east to the elementary school, with the nice sweeping view to the west. After tomorrow we expect a week or more of rain.

On our way back, we saw our neighbors: T, walking her dogs, and M, arriving home in his car from somewhere (I think visiting his step-mother - hm, she must be pretty elderly, as he's in his mid-60s). M is a great chatter, and we talked with them quite a long time. I reminded him that my friend DM has chronic fatigue syndrome, as his teenage son has, and this time he was eager to make the connection with her (I'd mentioned it before and he hadn't followed up). So later in the evening I called DM, and we chatted on the phone for more than half an hour (once she realized I was not her niece L., as she has me in her phone just by my first name and assumed I was the niece at first). The reason I'd called her was because she was in the Stanford program, which is very advanced in the field, and because a drug she's been taking has been quite helpful. I wrote up all the information for M, including DM's contact info, so they can also connect directly. I hope it will make a difference!

I spent the evening at J's, as usual, then came home and congratulated D. on finishing fall term. He had two finals and a last assignment all due today, so he worked hard. I told him I'd talked with DM, who's the mom of one of his friends, and also told him that M's son is about to start at the university and was recently ranked very, very high on Hearthstone, so D. found some info about the university's esports program, which I also sent to M.

So, although I didn't get much work done, I think I was both useful and helpful today.