Good morning! I had a good night's sleep, it's a pleasant temperature, and we even had a a little rain last night--maybe about a quarter of an inch, but that's still good. My parents are in a motel near the Atlanta airport, getting ready to fly to Seattle to visit my sister's family for a week. Unfortunately, my Dad announced he had a cold a couple days ago--not good for flying and not good for giving to Polly and Jim and their children. I might be getting it too; I'm a little stuffy and my lips are dry, but it may be just a mild one.

It was pretty quiet at work yesterday. I did some bookkeeping and transferred some more old data into the mailing list program. M. asked me to prepare a chart of child care costs, month by month. I did it since January 2009, and you could see it was pretty level, about 5000 a month until last August or so, when it began to climb. I hadn't done anything like that in a long time. I exported the child care costs to Excel, subtotaled them by month, and then figured out how to turn it into a graph.

She went to lunch just before I did--her husband came and got her. Kerri & Greg were visiting the child care centers and McKenzy was alone. Mickey had just locked her keys in the car as I was leaving. Ray and Mutherem and I went to the Last Resort. We had to wait a few minutes for a table and it was as usual very noisy, hard for us to talk to Mutherem and help her understand. But the food was very good. I had a chicken enchilada with some beans and roasted veggies on the side. Ray had the chicken tortilla salad. We traded off near the end. Muhterem had the veggie grill with pasta that I love and have had almost every time. As we were eating, I heard my father's voice and looked up. They had just arrived for lunch before their drive to Atlanta. Introductions ensued.

Ray and I split a piece of cake and then I took them back to UGA and went back to my office. It was closer to 90 minutes than an hour. I felt bad--McKenzy was still alone there. She had called a locksmith and they were going to bill us. Mickey tried several places, but they all wanted money up front, which she didn't have. This place agreed because they had done work for us before. Shortly after I got there, Kerri and Greg arrived and then Jaron. But I didn't see Meredith again before I left at 3. I went by the bank and then picked Ray up (well, I had to wait a few minutes).

We headed home and I spent some quality time with the chickens. Well, it wasn't the best quality time. The weather was  a little warm and humid. The chickens went under the porch and stayed there. We have been talking about whether to staple chicken wire up so they can't get  under there. It is hard to get them out when I want them to go back in the coop. It's possible they will start laying eggs any day now and if they lay them under there, we won't even know--I'm not crawling under there for an egg if I could see it. Mainly, we want them eating grasshoppers and I don't think they are under there. Plus, it's fun to watch them in the grass. When I sit on the porch and they are underneath, I can sometimes hear them making their little chicken noises and scrabbling around. As somebody pointed out, it will begin to smell like chicken shit on our porch.

I puttered around a little, tidying up some things in the yard and garden, picking a few cherry tomatoes and some surprisingly good beans. The plants don't look very good, eaten by bugs and falling over, but there are a lot of excellent beans on them. I sat on the porch some, looking through Mark Bittman's book, until about 5:30, when Ray came out and helped me shoo the chickens home. They are mostly cooperative, once you get them started in the right direction. They all go together; you can't shoo one and then the rest.

We were supposed to have sandwiches for supper--Ray did, but I wasn't hungry. I ate an apple and took along a hunk of bread. We drove downtown and found a parking spot and arrived at the Morton right on time for our singing rehearsal from 6:30 to 7:00. The costume lady wanted me to try something on as we were leaving, but we had to rush to the Fellowship for our choir rehearsal. It was fun, but hard work. The choir seems more unruly lately--could it be Ray's presence is enough to tip the balance? There were several people there that haven't been lately and I felt for Amber. We are singing Sunday and she shouldn't have to be telling them the same things she's been saying for weeks. I was hungry, not surprisingly, and had eaten my bread on the way over. I popped a couple mini-chocolate bars I had been saving. When we got home, I ate ice cream and cookies while watching the Vicar...and went to bed. Only a few pages short of finishing my book, but I couldn't stay awake to do it.