Sunday

My sister Leslie is remodeling her bathroom so yesterday Steffi and I went over for a visit and to see how things were progressing. We also played with Leslie's golden doodle Lucy (above) who will be 1 at the end of September. There is lots of dust, but it looks promising. A wall has been moved and the shower area looks like it will be a shower one day. The tub is in. The walls look ready to be textured and painted. The cabinets are in boxes in the garage ready to be installed. It's been 4 weeks since this destruction started and they are in the homestretch. Possibly in the next 2 weeks they will finish the painting, do the tile work, install the cabinets, countertops and light fixtures and be pretty much done. Right now, she is living in her guest room and the floor protectors look pretty permanent. I can't wait to go back in a couple of weeks and see the finished room.

My crystal ball was right the other day - there was more shopping in my future.

Steffi has been playing piano since she was 7, I think. There was lots of begging back then to take lessons and I finally relented and signed her up. I had big doubts that she would practice as much as she should or really stick with it after the initial excitement of a new activity waned. We initially purchased a small digital piano with weighted keys for a few hundred dollars. Without knowing whether this was going to last it was hard to make an investment in a real piano at the time. Well, I was wrong about that 7 year old. She really loved playing and in all the years she took lessons I cannot remember once having to remind her to practice. Not once. It didn't take long to see her passion, so we bought her a real piano to play and I have never regretted that. Now Steffi is away at school and while she probably won't take lessons, she would like to continue to play. I would like her to be able to play too, it has always been such a nice way to relax. She has room in her apartment for a keyboard, so I splurged on a digital weighted-key piano keyboard yesterday. It is portable, 30 lbs (you wouldn't want to carry it somewhere every day) so she will be able to take it with her throughout college and early career life before she settles down and can re-claim her real piano. It has a headphone jack so she can play silently - important for apartment dwellers. Happy early-birthday, Steffi!

Duncan has a similar passion for video games. And he is really good at them, I hear. It is not like there are any lessons and recitals; what Duncan does is self taught or learned over time by watching others who are more advanced. Recently he has been doing his own consumer research to find a really good monitor with the kind of graphics he needs for his games and he found one at Costco. Only he doesn't have a Costco card. I do, so yesterday afternoon I met him up at Costco and we purchased his dream monitor. It is HD and can be connected to his computer as well as used to watch cable TV. It is everything he has wanted and he has been saving up to buy it for several weeks. He is a very happy camper now. And while he wanted to pay for it himself, I offered to buy it for him.

Because I can. And I wanted to. It is worth it to see him beaming. Happy late-Birthday, Duncan!