In the continuing saga of suburban life, the route for today:
1. Drive to pick up Caitlin at her friend's house. Ring the bell. No dogs respond, which is unusual. No person responds either. Ring the bell again. Press ear the glass panel at the side of the door and realize the bell is not working. Knock on the door. Still no dogs or humans. Knock more forcefully on the glass panel. Start to walk back to car, to call Caitlin on her cell phone and ask for her GPS coordinates, since I may not have remembered which friend I dropped her off at last night. Friend's father finally appears at the door, having snuck in the back entrance. Caitlin is retrieved.
2. Drive home, drop her off, pick up library books, go to library, get new books, drive home.
3. Take Caitlin to karate lessons, which have been inexplicably cancelled. Maybe it's some karate holiday.
4. Drive home, drop her off, do not leave car, go out to lunch by myself, for approximately 38 minutes of not sitting in the car.
5. Have hair cut, drive home.
6. Start to clean out garage (see below).
7. Take Rebecca to football game, drive home.
8. Continue cleaning out garage. Drive to garden center to buy mums, get rained on, drive home.
9. Pick up Rebecca from football game (this is about to happen in 20 minutes).
10. Realize I've logged over 150 miles on the car since yesterday. Collapse again.

I've rationalized living in this area of the suburbs because "everything is convenient". I've realized that my definition of convenient has little to do with distance - I don't mind driving long distances - as it depends on a lack of traffic. This region is fairly built-out, but there are surprisingly few traffic problems. Never having to wait longer than one red light to make it through the intersection is an important criteria in whether I will take a particular route.

Overhead at lunch today while I was pretending to read: Woman is reading a sex advice column to her male companion. "Q: I don't like to give blow jobs because I can't stand the taste of penis. Is there any cream or lotion I can put on it to improve the taste? A: Frequent application of soap and water is the best remedy for bad penis taste." I was wondering what stage of their relationship this couple was at that would allow reading of this material in public.

Exercise: Cleaned out the garage. Long overdue - it had leaves in it from two autumns ago. Brought most of the outside furniture into the newly clean garage (which has a tiny fieldmouse living in it, whom I spied in the headlights last night). The overflow furniture got tucked into an alcove in the back of the house and wrapped with a tarp that will surely blow off in the first sizable storm.

Books: Critical Injuries, by Joan Barfoot. This called out to me from the library shelf today and I'm interspersing chapters of the Witching Hour with this, which is not turning out to be much lighter fare.

Movies: Eddie Izzard, Circle. Not his best effort, although the small documentary about the tour this was taken from provided a good backstage glimpse. He was confronted by a man who wanted him to autograph two copies of a videotape that had been sent out to the Emmy awards committee. The man had been talking with the crowd who was waiting for autographs and had told them of his intent to sell the copies on eBay. When Eddie was asking the man about what he was going to do with these, someone in the crowd shouted out that they were destined for eBay. The sleazy autograph seeker quickly backpedaled and claimed that one was for his personal collection. Eddie reluctantly agreed to sign only one. I'm willing to bet it was on eBay the next day.

Dreams: The phrase from last night's dreams included "She needed to put a lubricant on her foot to get out of bed". I used to use a moisturizer on my feet called Foot Fetiche, but cannot imagine how that would have tunneled its way into my dreams.