I came in to work this morning and was greeted with the sound of raucous laughter and loud radio blaring from the office next door. Whoever it is who is going to be renting that space has been sending in crews of people to work on the space, knocking down walls, rewiring, painting, and ripping up the carpet. Over all, it's noisy work, and the walls between our office and theirs are hollow and block almost none of the noise. As before I popped my head in to let the workers know that we can hear everything so to just keep that in mind (I do this because of previous conversations overhead by the pair of electricians who came in a week or two ago). The rest of the day was interspersed with loud bangs and thumps, with the occasional slamming door.

I know that when our neighbors do finally move in they are not likely to be demolishing their office on a daily basis. Still, I am not necessarily looking forward to their occupancy, if only because the noise is starting to get to me. I'm having a hard enough time concentrating on the project I'm neck deep in right now without the added distraction of demolition crashes and bangs.

It's still hot out - 105 today and not a bit of wind. I had the air conditioning on last night but even though it feels cold in the house, I still have a hard time sleeping. I'm so used to being able to open the windows and let the night air in that the house starts to feel and smell stuffy and stale after 24 hours with no outside ventilation.

When I got home I was restless - probably from the heat - so I forced myself to do a quick tour of the house, picking things up, going through the mail, and clearing away all the clutter that somehow collects in untidy piles on the kitchen counters and the breakfast nook table. I sorted and paid all the bills and I also gathered up all the dragons and assorted stuffed things and took them back downstairs. This means that the threshold of feline noise has increased slightly, as Rosemary has already begun the careful task of bringing every one of the dozen or so dragons and owls and assorted critters back up the stairs, one at a time, singing quietly to herself the whole way.

On the way home I stopped by the grocery store to stock up on white peaches and broccoli (which will not come anywhere near any asparagus this week if I can help it) and two different kinds of melon. Richard is down in Fullerton doing his best to stick to the healthy eating plan, and despite the temptation to eat pop tarts and ice cream for dinner every night this week and not touch a single vegetable, I am determined to be good as well.

Richard is 600 miles away, learning all sorts of fascinating things about information retrieval, and staying in a hotel that he says is extremely pink. I suppose I could be a little bit jealous of the fact that his hotel room comes with a huge jacuzzi tub, but I think I will just eat the rest of the peach yogurt pie that is in the freezer instead. I can feel justified in this since I just finished a disgustingly healthy (and low-point) dinner of stir-fried shrimp and vegetables that was so peppery I was gulping water the entire meal.

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