I left Dover-Foxcroft at 6:30 a.m. yesterday, got into Portland at 9, drove to South Portland to pay for the violin pickup we'd been trying out at band practice, drove back to Portland to the new house, and painted trim for 5 hours, went to two grocery stores in the pouring rain, returned to the apartment, cooked dinner, and tried to fall asleep as soon as possible but ended up being restless and awake for most of the night.

I'm coming down with a cold, which is no surprise, given how tired I am. The living room trim is an awful task . . . well, more specifically, the balusters on the open stairway are an awful task, involving little tiny brushes and upside-down crouching and all kinds of cutting in around un-tapable bits and pieces of woodwork. Next up is bathroom trim, which will be blessedly straightforward. The worst thing about the bathroom was the filth, and I think I've got that under control. But yuck.

In non-house-related news:

* My sudden spate of submissions resulted in three sudden acceptances. So that's something.

* I'm beginning to think that John Le Carre, like Raymond Chandler, belongs in that rare class of writers who both define and exceed the restrictions of their genres.

* This violin pickup I just bought will allow me to use an effects pedal to manipulate the sound. And now I've got a borrowed pedal to play with, so my family will be entertaining ourselves with "Violin Sounds like Stevie Ray Vaughn" and "Violin Sounds like Bootsy Collins" during the slow hours of turkey cooking next week.

* Sometimes I wonder why people even own cats. Especially people who really, really need to sleep.