To all of you who have been sending well wishes and prayers my way, I would like to announce that for this day, at least, I had air-conditioning in my office! I was practically giddy with relief. Now, by late afternoon, I did feel a trifle warm again. However, I am thinking positive at the moment.

I had a meeting this morning with a web designer and a web developer. I prefer to use one-stop shopping when it comes to redesigning websites, but this was a meeting set up prior to my arrival. The meeting was to learn about Joomla. Frankly, in the research I did to prepare for the meeting and now after the presentation, I believe this is not the product to use. I would like to pursue Contribute. Joomla is a true content management system, more of a development orientated approach. Contribute is a content editor with drag and drop features and photos editing (tweaking) capabilities. More investigation is needed...

My Second Cousin D (as opposed to my Cousin D or my Third Cousin D whom I don't really know), his wife, and his daughter had a surprise visit to DC this week (I am a bit surprised they didn't book a room in my Basement B&B). He up and called me to get together with all sorts of plans to go to the Kennedy Center. As tired as I have been, I just cannot go out and socialize after work. I called my Cousin D when I first got Second Cousin D's message because I was worried that he would want to do just such a thing and I didn't want him to think I didn't want to see him and his family when I declined. Cousin D thought things would be fine, so I suggested to Second Cousin D that he and his family come over to this rather fantastic Thai place by my home.

Now Second Cousin D's wife SM is from Malaysia, so it was a bit of a risk suggesting the restaurant. However, I truly believe it has a rather remarkable menu. I am fairly pleased to report that she found the food to be some the of best she has had. That's saying a lot! Cousin D had liked the Massaman (sp?) Curry, so they tried it with two other dishes, ordering everything super hot. I stuck to my favorites, mild but savory.

Afterwards, we finally broke in a gift card that I received for Cold Stone Creamery. I know someone who terms the place her therapy. She gave me the card for as a thank you for some work with her daughter. I had asked B to share it with me, but strangely enough three times we failed to do so. Oh, my, it was so very tasty. I had cake filling icing with graham cracker crust and Reese's peanut butter cups hand-folded into the ice cream. And...there is enough for three more trips to the wicked place even after treating my relatives.

They stopped by my home after our long evening meal. SM needed to use the computer for a bit since she is still working though on vacation. Second Cousin D and his daughter K looked at my old family photos from that collection I scanned and archived a while ago. All of them also admired my moss gardens...after only a little prompting and without even laughing at me!

K, a sophomore in high school, happens to like fantasy books, and I happen to have an extra copy of the most wonderful books ever, Dragonology, so I passed it on to her. She will be lost for days working her way through it. My writing student K gave me my copy a while ago as a gift, one that ranks up there pretty high on the all-time-best-gifts-received-in-my-life. Some of the other gifts on that list are: a home-made card from B, a tin box container that looks like a book (a free gift J passed on to me because she was thinking of me and rather unselfishly did not keep it for herself although she would have been happy to do so), Kashi (my graduation gift to myself), Uncle D's unexpected donation to my Italy trip fund, a timely loan from D, and...yes...my Dallas Cowboy lounge pants from W.

I ended up driving them back to their hotel because it would be a much shorter trip than the Metro at night and the neighborhood they picked is not the greatest for a night-time walk from the nearest station. We all laughed that they have a Magellan, too, and call theirs "Maggie" as well. Even with Maggie's help, I had several wrong turns there. Having three other folks in the car to interpret was most helpful.

Worried about getting home, I called and woke up my friend DB (I added a second letter because frankly there are a lot of D's in my life). He's the one who drives me to Sugarland concerts in other cities even though he does not particularly care for their music. Though sleepy, he was obliging as my "escort." I arrived home without a single wrong turn.

Kashi's in a bit of snit because I was gone so long today. I am utterly exhausted, especially since I talked a mile a minute having company around. [To be honest, I do get rather lonely.] Although I need to be in bed, I am watching some of The Abyss on television (even though I own the movie and could skip the commercials). Fancy needs some Momma Flock time and Kashi some Alpha Dog time. [Can you guess which I am, Momma Flock or Alpha Dog?]

You know, my dearest puppy dog will be 13 years old in just a month...Why cannot dogs live a human lifetime????????????

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NOTE: I have noticed that lately, sometimes, eating ice cream has started to make me cough. Tonight, I quickly popped my cough pills. Since the cough was lingering a bit, I added two puffs of my emergency inhaler when I got home. Now, could I be becoming allergic to ice cream (what could possibly be different in there from all the milk I drink?) or could the cough be from the fact that I am consuming something so very cold when cold is one of my asthma triggers? Neither one of those answers is a good one for me because both imply that I should not be eating ice cream.