Another day-long meeting at work. Both the kids were sick again today and because this illness just will not go away, we took them to the doctor tonight. We still go to a pediatrician who's near where we lived when Caitlin was born. Because he's known both girls since they were born, he usually fits them in when we call for an appointment, no matter how busy he is. There's also never any waiting in his office, despite the fact that he always has a full schedule and he never rushes you out the door (a model for doctors everywhere). He tested them both for strep throat, since they seem to develop that fairly often, and both tested positive. The argument on the way home was whose test results were more positive and which results appeared on the test strip first. Everything is a competition in the sibling rivalry games. Now my throat is starting to feel sore.

Things I’ve done that might have been on my “list of things I want to do at least once in my life” if I ever had such a list (which I did not) but did not live up to their hype and probably influenced the fact that I don’t want to do the things on the guilt list posted yesterday:

1. Visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Money has always been able to finance a lot of craziness. This might have also been influenced by the fact that we visited in July on a stupifyingly hot day and the Winchester heiress built a lot of rooms, but none with air conditioning.

2. Travel to Turkey and Argentina. Actually, neither location would ever have been on any list of desirable destinations, but they were probably on someone’s list. Turkey was filthy, impoverished and lacking that certain Disneyesque quality to its tourist attractions that I have grown to expect. Argentina did have jacaranda trees in bloom, but was a pretty depressing city otherwise. And, boy, do they like to eat beef.

3. See the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. Crowded, hot and uninspiring. I was, however, 10 at the time which might have had something to do with my lack of positive reaction. I also didn’t know what Grand Tetons meant so that I could snicker about it.

4. Visit the Prado. Big ass museum visited on the trip to Spain mentioned above. You really can’t appreciate anything when you’re 17. Well, almost nothing. But that's another story.