maeve, I'm on the point of changing my Internet provider, to get better speed to compensate for having dropped the satellite dish. We're using HD converter boxes for local viewing and get films (2 at a time) via Netflix, but they also have a lot of programs you can watch on demand. In the end, I'll be paying a little more for the Internet but a lot less for the entertainment (a luxury). If I dropped Netflix then I'd be going to the library for all of my videos and DVDs, but that's reasonable (except that they're cutting funds to the library and recreation centers drastically this year--parks and libraries, who needs them if everyone is losing money in the community, right? But hire more police to deal with all of the people who now don't have anyplace to go and can't afford their old entertainment forms at home. . . off my soap box)

I happily de-cluttered my garden this morning of three spectacularly beautiful eggplants (I've been picking them for weeks, and they're all beautiful, but two of these were hidden so were a complete surprise), banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, and tomatoes. Since I have to keep cleaning and clearing for friends over for dinner on Wednesday I'll use as much of this produce in the meal. I am going to smoke some chicken breasts or grill them and make chicken fajitas with the peppers, and I'll roast a couple of eggplant and make baba ganoush as a dip for an appetizer.

I'm going to try to avoid stuffing things in spare rooms out of sight as I prepare for dinner. I'm going to keep filing and sorting and clear space without making the problem worse in other areas.

Kat, I have a variety of organization systems around here, and I like those little plastic holders for business cards. I have to pick some up one of these days, because I think I'll create a space next to the phone with those cards and my list of family and neighborhood and local business numbers. For now, the notebook I'm taping them into is a way to capture information I don't want to lose. It can be rearranged later, but to thumb through and look isn't difficult, either. I found a lot of interesting information about how we organize information when I was researching the lead article in this newsletter. I had saved a Malcolm Gladwell review from The New Yorker a couple of years ago and was able to use it as a segue into my topic. (It's a PDF) The gist of the Gladwell section, if you don't want to download 1.something meg, is that our stacks of paper are not just so much compost, it is a system. (The article itself is about restoring and preserving paper.)

SRS