My sister is arriving in half an hour from Seattle. We've been pushing as much of the squalor as we can into out of the way corners. In one of those corners we found a photo album that we got when my mom died. It contains pictures of the family before they moved to Anchorage and I was born. They looked so happy I don't know why they ever had another child.

[deleted] That's why I have a blog. So I can tell you about the little irritations I have. Last night we went to a potluck/bike clinic. Incidentally, it was held in a beautiful house that was featured in a 1967 Life Magazine. At the bike clinic, the speaker showed us how pumps can be switched back and forth to inflate Presta or Schraeder tubes. I have both types, so I was excited to try it this afternoon. I switched it and it didn't work on the Presta, so I switched it back and it didn't work on the Schraeder any more and then I started switching it back and forth, and then suddenly I realized that when I started switching I thought I had two pieces, but now, I was just turning one piece around and around. In the process, I let the air out of the tires on both bikes, and ruined the pump I would need to inflate them.I crawled around on the garage floor for twenty minutes looking for a piece that may or may not have existed. I never found it.