New tidbits: I had a chance to upload more photos, so the Quilt Gallery is open for your viewing pleasure (or pain, depending on your tastes), and I added an entry for May 5th .

Even though this has been short week due to the holiday on Monday, I’m more glad than usual that it’s Friday. I’m tired and my head hurts and it’s hot and muggy inside as well as outside because the thermostat at this end of the hall is broken and the repair guy can’t come until Monday and all I want to do is go home and work on my quilt and read my new books and listen to my new music that UPS delivered from amazon.com today but I still have a half a day to work after this lunch break.

What I can do now is open my amazon.com box and look at the new stuff. That will cheer me up a little, I think, like getting a present, even if this one is from me, and I know what it is already.

There are three books, all of which I ordered because I’m hoping they will help me achieve my goals for this year. First, there’s Your Best Year Yet: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever, which comes highly recommended by a friend who’s really good at setting goals and then following through. I hope it will still work even though I’ve only got ten months left in my goal year. Next is Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, which I heard about over at The Usual Suspects. Consulting a big, serious, hardcover book is not something I’ve tried before in my efforts to keep the house clean between the times we have people over to visit, and I’m hopeful that this approach will yield better results. Last is Checklists for Life: 104 Lists to Help You Get Organized, Save Time, and Unclutter Your Life, which I got because I’m a sucker for lists and books that promise to help me organize and declutter. I didn’t even have this one on my list until amazon.com recommended it; I am also sometimes a sucker for their “we care about you and think you might like this” scheme.

There’s a video, The Firm: Total Body – Maximum Body Shaping, which I bought because it’s the third one in a three-volume set that we have the other two of. I’ve been trying to get this on eBay for months, but it always seems to sell for more than I could buy it new, so I finally gave up and did just that. I really would have preferred to get the earlier release of this, so it would match the two we already have in cover design. Yes, I realize that’s a little nutty, worrying about the covers coordinating. I have my dad to thank for those types of traits, I think. He really liked complete sets of things and paid attention to detail and through nature or nurture passed those compulsions on to me. It’s not by accident that I found accounting appealing when choosing my first career—it was very orderly then, not all full of shredding and obstructing justice and setting up offshore consulting arms.

Back from my tangent, I see the four CD’s in the box. My first ever Bonnie Raitt, her newest, Silver Lining, which I bought because I heard her interviewed on NPR one recent Saturday morning driving to work and it brought tears to my eyes. Next is Harry Belafonte, Live in Concert at the Carnegie Hall, which I have on vinyl, too, but have never taken the time to transfer to a listening-in-the-car-friendly medium. Harry and I go back at least as far as college; I can remember singing along to o Day O with my roommates freshman year (we were the good kids, living on the honors floor, so we had to do something for fun other than underage drinking). After Harry is Journey, Trial By Fire, their 1996 comeback album that I totally missed when it was released but am reminded of every time I see their Behind the Music on VH1. It’s probably exceedingly lame to admit to liking Journey, but I do. They had their hey day when I was in high school and college, so hearing certain of their songs brings back memories of good times in my life, when Mr. Karen and I were falling in love and deciding to spend our lives together. Sappy, but true. Lastly, there’s my first ever Barenaked Ladies purchase, Gordon. I realize that all the cool kids stopped listening to them a long time ago, but If I had $1000000 lodged in some part of my brain the first time I heard it and never left, so I finally gave in and bought the album. The hard part is going to be deciding which one to listen to first when I get in my car in about 4 hours. Of course, if I’d bought those headphones I’ve been pondering, I could start listening now.