My Not Done Yet List

I discovered a letter for Margot from the President of OSU this morning. It was with some other letters on the dining room table: otherwise known as purgatory for bills, flyers, car keys, free panty offers from Victoria's Secret, and one rather dusty dried flower arrangement.

I took a picture immediately with my BB and sent it off to Margot via MMS (whatever that is). Immediately after I hit Send I remembered that she was on the West coast and it was 8 AM East coast time. As she has often reminded me, she uses her cell phone as her alarm clock (I have no idea how she does that) so I worried that I had awakened her.

This also reminded me that I received an email some time in the middle of the night last night. I found Candice (the lovely young woman who was Adam's au pair for a year) on Facebook and sent her one of those messages asking her to befriend me virtually, which she did (it must be disturbing if someone refuses to accept your offer) and she also sent a lovely long message. Candice lives in Durban, SA and she probably expected me to have my phone off in the middle of the night. That's a good and a bad thing about the BB, though mostly it's good because I can view the race results immediately.

A very fine man, Dr.Neil Mehta, runs the department I manage. We have weekly meetings with a couple of other people on my team. This week we chatted for a few minutes after our meeting and he volunteered to show me how he and a few others are using Sharepoint to manage their meetings. I told him I was open to all suggestions because my To Do list had become my Not Done Yet list.

So today I sat down at this computer and created a To Do list because I am optimistic about completing it before we leave for China.

During the time it took to write it, I could have been finishing something on the list, but its so soothing to make a nice neat list on the computer and feel that you have accomplished something. Isn't that the way life has changed in the last 15 years? People sit at their computers and chores languish, conversations do not start, groceries remain at the grocery store, wet laundry changes color and scent while waiting to be popped into the dryer.

I could have gone to the drugstore to start filling our first aid kits; dusted off the suitcases and checked the zippers to see if the Italian Cobbler needed to fix them up; purchased the gallon jugs of water Debbie D recommended, or the hot water kettle, or the adapter plugs (or at least checked to see if any of mine will work).

What did I do other than start the list? I talked to Margot who called briefly when she got up and said she slept for about six hours and did not hear my MMS in the middle of the night and didn't receive it today either (so, I think MMS must be something even more esoteric than I think it is). She was not looking forward to the plane ride and said she'd call me later before boarding.

Then I cleaned the counter in my bathroom, went to the eye doctor, and shopped at Stein Mart for lightweight short and tops. Mar called while I was waiting for the eye doctor to check my contacts. She has a book, crossword puzzles, and her iPod and is planning on sleeping at the beginning of the flight. I asked her who she was sitting with and she didn't know. But she is in the row in front of her friend Ken and they are hoping to switch seats because everyone else drives them nuts. Then she said "just kidding," but with her, you never know. Ken is a 2003 Cornell grad who lives in Conn. and won the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials this year for the single sculls. Rowing tip! Sculling means that you row with an oar in each hand. For obvious reasons, when you are the only person in the boat you progress forward more rapidly, and with less vertigo, if you are using two oars.

So she is on her way.

Nate just called and is beginning to stress because he's really busy at the hospital and worried about everything he has to do. So, I sent him my To Do list and hopefully I can check some of his items off for him. He's going to Skype us when the boys wake up so we can talk a bit more and John and I can see the boys. I told my eye doctor (Dr. Tom Kelly, very good eye doctor if you live on the West side of Cleveland and are in the market) about Skype because I was explaining how we could talk to Margot while she's in China, and to Tom back home when we're in China, using Skype rather than our cell phones. It's still hard to believe that its free in the US and I'm not sure if it will be free in China. We'll probably have to pay some surcharge for using the Internet in our room.

BTW, the stuffed onions were not a big hit. I told John I didn't find even the idea appealing and he said, "well, you know, we liked those Blooming Onions at Outback." John's onions were baked/steamed and filled with a rather bland squash mixture (which improved with lots of salt and pepper). Blooming onions are battered and fried and you dip them in ranch dressing. Need I say more?

However, John gets big points for starting dinner for sure. And he has made some interesting meals, including the ever-popular Warrior Stew and Squash soup. I'm going to see if I can talk him into taking me out tonight so we can discuss the Not Done Yet list (alternate method of procrastinating).