Phillip and I had gone to the opening day celebration for the rebuilt Central Seattle Library. We had gone to the opening day celebrations for the rebuilt Capitol Hill Branch Library. Today, we went to the opening day celebrations for the rebuilt Montlake Branch Library. I had gotten to know the old Montlake library when the Capitol Hill library was being built. It was the smallest library in Seattle, I'm sure. It had been set up in the space of a former drugstore. Now it has its own building - as the mayor pointed out, it's the first time that the Montlake neighborhood has had a library in a building built to be a library. It's a very nice, airy little building (I especially liked the outdoor deck). But I'm sure it's still the smallest library in Seattle. Phillip and I listened to speeches, pushed our way through the crowds, and in less than a half hour, we felt we'd seen all there was to see.

Phillip and I went out to Red Robin for my birthday dinner this evening. I've written a little of the Council Minutes. I've done a little reading. I have been terribly unmotivated for several days.

I should have called in sick from the Church Council meeting last night. I thought I was recovered, but I wasn't. I should have called in sick from work today. By noon, all I wanted to do was take a nap. I stuck it out, though, and went to bed as soon as I got home. I fell asleep as soon as I hit the bed. I woke up at some unknown time, took some aspirin, and went back to sleep. I woke up a little after eight. I'm feeling a whole lot better.

If I had called in sick from work today, though, I would have missed seeing my sister, who was at the hospital, on an assignment for her job as an ASL interpreter, and had decided to find out where I work.

It's looking as if our latest geocache - "The Vampires' Request" - will be approved, but not until the construction site across the street reaches a point at which the reviewer feels is safe. So, it's on hold for the moment. (I don't agree with the safety issue, but I don't feel it's worth arguing about.) It also looks as if our ulterior motive for the cache may work the way we'd planned, also - more on that, later.

I called in sick from work yesterday. I spent the day sleeping, surfing the internet, playing Diablo II, and eating a lot of fruit (leftover from Writers' Group). Then I went to the Church Council meeting. I thought it was important that I go to the meeting, because we'd be making arrangement for the council retreat the weekend after next. (I'm taking that Friday off, but Phillip has asked for the car, so I'd need to ride with someone.)

There were five council members (out of twelve) absent last night. One of the absent was the Council Secretary, so I volunteered to take the minutes. Then the Council President decided that arrangements for the retreat will be made over email, and not at the meeting. (Yeah, whatever.) I went to bed as soon as I got home last night.

I was typing this morning's post, and I looked at the clock, and it was 9:30. I still had over an hour before I should leave for church. Then I remembered that it's the summer schedule and church starts at 10:00 - not 11:00. I hadn't showered yet. I hadn't prepared the fruit for the Writers' Group "indoor picnic." I thought about skipping church and meeting up at Barbara and Don's house. I thought about meeting Barbara, and whatever writers who might be there, at coffee hour after church. Instead, I decided to go to church late. I wonder why I did.

I left our apartment sometime after 10 and walked up to church. (Phillip did his first solo geocaching trip today, so he needed the car.) On Broadway, I ran into one of my favorite patients from our clinic. We stopped and chatted for a while. I walked into church at 10:45, just as Communion was ending. I rode with Barbara over to her house right after church.

Writers' Group was fun, as always. We did more talking than reading, as always. I got a candle on my slice of cake, and everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to me. (My birthday is the 10th.) My story went over very well. Barbara, Don, Bernice, and Russ were there, and out of the group, Barbara and I were the only two who had gone to church.

Phillip looked for five geocaches on his own today. He found three, decided that one cache was just too crowded with muggles to search for, and Did Not Find another one. Our find count is now 333. "The Vampires' Request" had not been approved yet.

In a couple of hours, I'll be going to Writers' Group. I've been writing a story in my head all week, but with Spanish class, dinner with Snowwolf and Kite Lady, and yoga class, I just hadn't found the time or energy to type it out. I decided to start writing Friday night, after yoga, but when the time came, I was just too sleepy to type. Yesterday morning, before I picked up the SUV, I started typing, and kept typing for about two hours, and got the piece finished. I like it. It's a small story about a regular patient in my clinic - it's actually a composite of four patients and combines three different occurrences, so I don't think there's any breach of confidentiality. I think it came out well.

After dropping off the SUV, Phillip and I went out and hid our tenth geocache. It's called "The Vampires' Request." We submitted it for approval, it hasn't been approved yet, and we're not sure it will be approved - for reasons I won't go into yet. It's Phillip's geocache, mostly - he thought it up, he named it, and he wrote the cache description. An odd thing happened when I was making the "First To Find" certificate: neither Phillip nor I could remember how many caches we'd hidden before this one, and when we tried to name them all, we couldn't do that, either. We had to look them up. How did that happen?

For the record, here are our nine geocache hides, in the order we hid them: "1st Hill, 1st Cache," "Get Christie, Love," "I Can See The Dawghouse From Here!" "U.T." "The Girls," "White Noise," "Blankety Blank Blank," "1-976-DIAL-A-CACHE," and "A Japanese Post."

Phillip brought an interesting DVD home from the library this week. It's from Studio Ghibli. The film is called "Whisper of the Heart." Phillip knew nothing about the film when he put it on hold. (I hadn't heard of it, either.) We are both huge fans of Studio Ghibli, however. "Whisper of the Heart" turned out to be a rather different Studio Ghibli film. I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed it a whole lot more than Phillip did. Unlike "Spirited Away" or "Howl's Moving Castle" or "Princess Mononoke," "Whisper of the Heart" is firmly grounded in reality. There are a few fantasy sequences, but they are clearly the daydreams of a young writer. The plot of the film is a slice-of-life story of a young girl in a city close to (or part of - I'm not sure) Toyko. The girl is in junior high school, and loves books, loves writing, but is in the middle of the exams for high school - and she's also discovering that a boy likes her. As with all Studio Ghibli films that I've seen, the animation is stunning - even scenes in what would be an "ordinary" part of town look amazing because of the animators' attention to detail, light, and texture.

I've watched "Whisper of the Heart" twice now - first in the Disney dubbed version, and then in the original Japanese with subtitles. I think it's because the film is so essentially Japanese that I prefer the subtitled version. The combination of Japanese people speaking Japanese, with subtitles so obviously translated, seems to fit the feel of the story better.