I was in a pinch these last few days because all my contacts, appointments, and homeschool info were on my laptop. After telling Computer Guy that my most important stuff was in Outlook and My Documents, I had a bit of a panic when I realized I had forgotten to include the Homeschool Tracker program. After spending nearly three days entering book titles and dates and all sorts of other nonsense like our school motto*,courses, and subjects, I dreaded repeating my efforts. Fortunately, all the data was recoverable. There wasn't even a real repair necessary. He only had to pull the hard drive and reinsert it and everything was just fine. Hurray for Computer Guy! (Computer Guy: "Hurray for Mechanical Retard!") Not nearly as interesting as having your kid pee on your server.

*The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. -- Plato

I've also been in a slump these last few days, surrounded by hundreds of books with nothing calling out, "Read Me! Read Me!" So what do I do? I force myself to start reading Gods and Generals, a book I know I'll enjoy once I ever get it going and the prelude to The Killer Angels, another book I've been meaning to read for way too long, and end up on Amazon.com making a few more purchases. Home by Design: Transforming Your House Into Home, by Sarah Susanka -- the author of another home design favorite of mine, The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live -- is on the way to help inspire some creative solutions to our current housing obsession. Then today at the homeschool meeting when one of the moms deposited a large load of books, craft supplies, and toys on a table to be given away, I found a few more, from E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge Series, What Your 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Grader Needs to Know.

We made a second offer on the anostos spiti ("ugly house" in Greek) after our first lowball offer was shot down. The seller accepted and we are now into our inspection period. If we chicken out, the house does not seem as big as the square footage claimed on the MLS listing and is in reality a two bedroom with an illegally enclosed garage and a walled off living room, NOT a four bedroom, we will back out of the contract with "misrepresentation" given as the reason. Tonight we are heading over with a measuring tape to investigate our suspicions.

Also under consideration is doing a quick rehab on the house, turning it over, keeping the separately owned boat slip, and beginning the search for a house all over again. What's that saying? The chase is better than the catch?

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Here we are just barely in April and already the annual end-of-year dead notables list is getting pretty full, especially with the additions of the past week or so: Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, Saul Bellow, Prince Rainier, Frank Purdue... I can see the montage now.