mia_mcdavid and I are not doing anything special for New Year’s Eve, but we will be busy both the day before and the day after. Tomorrow is Tom’s 18^th birthday. We will be having him over for dinner, cake, and presents, and he will stay the night. New Year’s Day is colgaffneyis First Footing, a progressive dinner for which we will be hosting the dessert course.

With these two events we have been doing quite a bit of housecleaning. A lot of this has to be done by Mia–her spinning and other fiber projects have taken over the public areas on both floors. But I did quite a bit as well. I cleared some of the living room clutter. Much of this was Mia’s so I just tossed it into her office, which is beginning to be stratified like an archaeological site. I also cleaned up my office (a corner of the basement), clearing my drafting table and my desk, and picking up debris from the floor.

In the course of this I found the parts from two broken Pelikan fountain pens. This evening I put some of these together to see if I could one that works and does not leak. I also replaced the hard disk on Antrim (my basement computer) and reinstalled Linux there. Then I installed SQL Server 2005 Management Studio on the work computer I have at home. While doing these software installations (a process that is mostly sitting and waiting), I watched an on-line episode of The Woodwright’s Shop. A pleasant evening.