Back to the memoirs.

I had a little business in Palm Beach Gardens last week, a conference for environmental professionals. It's always a pleasure to connect with other nerds.

I brought my Toshiba netbook and used OneNote for taking notes - I really like it.

The fun part was that we finished at lunch time on Friday, and having no particular place I had to be at any particular time, I took the scenic route coming home. It was about a 3-hour drive going down on Tuesday, with only a brief pause for supper, but coming back I just drifted along the coast. Didn't worry about staying on the highway. I kept the sun more or less on my left and stopped four or five times at various public beach access spots, and got a nice sunburn on my shoulders from my boat-neck blouse. Rolled my pants up so I could walk in the edge of the water, and of course they got wet above my knees because I can't stay out of the ocean! I got to Melbourne about 5:00 or so, called F in Kissimmee, and met her for dinner at about 6:30, and eventually came on home. What a relaxing afternoon that was. There's actually no reason why we can't do that sort of thing on any weekend. And I have to go back anyway, to get F's picture with the sign at this beach before "On Stranger Tides" comes out.

We are thinking hard about buying the house we are currently renting. The floor plan is kind of different but we've gotten used to it. The cats like it. The swimming pool both terrifies and fascinates them. The previous owner's relatives kind of cleaned it out after she died, including whatever light fixture was over the dining area; they left the chain and wiring dangling from the ceiling, which looked kind of stark. We finally took care of that this past weekend, with this whimsical thing (Home Depot had it for less). We've talked a bit about other plans, should we buy the place - there are only two bedrooms with carpet and I'd like to pull all of it out. The master bedroom has doors that open directly onto the pool deck, so it's stupid to have carpet in there. Well, we'll see what happens.