Thursday was marked by a downpour that I (accurately or inaccurately)
thought of as the first major rainfall of the season. The following day
was sunny, though I carried my umbrella out of fear of getting wet. The
variability in the weather is exhilarating. Having grown up in northern
Ontario, I still find it hard to believe that December has arrived just
from looking outside. But the last month of the year is here. It is a
busy, busy, busy time.

When people ask me how I've been, I reflexively respond "Oh, busy".
Now, I'm beyond busy. There's just so much to do in the two weeks
before Laura and I travel east to visit family. So why am I sitting in
our living room wrestling with words rather than the Ikea furniture
that needs to be assembled? Although thinking is often procrastination
for me, I suspect that my running around -- as productive as it has
been -- is for the moment a hinderance to internal work of disciplined
thought, prayer, and quiet that I've been avoiding. Writing is hard
work. Prayer is often hard work. The results often seem so meager given
the effort. Yet I need to do that work.

Writing the previous two paragraphs has centered me so that I can tell
you more about the things that we've been up to and things that still
need to get done. I wish I could string together a coherent
supper-narrative that weaves all of what I want to say into a neat
package. Instead, I give you a list of vignettes:

On Friday night, Laura and I had a late-night dinner at Daimo, my
curent favorite local purveyor of Cantonese food. We ran into Victor, a
former neighbor of mine who is also a Ph.D. student in chemistry. He
told me that he had recently purchased some chemistry texts that I had
donated to the Berkeley Public Library-Friends of the Library. I was delighted. I've written previously about how I desired to give away my books to someone who can make use of them but then turned to selling books on half.com.
I had to find a way to pare down my book collection in a hurry. The
Berkeley Public Library takes books in good condition en masse. I've
donated 8 boxes of books with three more on the way. I was concerned
that donating advanced science texts to the BPL bookstore would not get
my books to the right people. Last night's news was a little answer to
prayer.

Last week, Laura and I bought a Toyota 2006 Corolla to replace our
stolen car. We're still getting used to it. Even though it is Toyota's
entry level car (with some options added), it is certainly more car
than either has ever had. We learned to negotiate a price that we were
happy with and have enjoyed dealing with our seller, Hanlees Hilltop
Toyota in Richmond, CA.. What we did: we signed up for Consumer Reports Ratings and recommendations available at ConsumerReports.org
for a month, paid for a price report for the Toyota Corolla to get a
breakdown of the wholesale prices, followed the advice on the Consumer
Reports site, called around to get some quotes, decided beforehand what
we we were willing to pay and when we would walk away, and stuck to our
guns. It's also useful to have two people involved in the negotiation.
Although I did most of the talking, Laura picked up on important points
that I missed.