There is trouble brewing downstate, and I hesitate to talk about it because I predicted it would happen. It would be better if it didn’t happen, if I was wrong, and it’s hard to talk about it objectively. Penelope and Maude are not getting along, or so it would seem. There have been phone calls between people that have not been assigned nicknames — Maude’s daughter and the wife of Penelope’s uncle — and questions have arisen as to whether Penelope could find accommodations elsewhere. It would seem that things are progressing along the lines of the worst-case scenario, wherein Penelope and Maude (who is eight-five years old) do not get along at all and this poisons our relationship with Maude.

I really like Maude. She’s a sweet old lady with strongly held opinions who is used to living alone and doing things her way. She never seemed like a good match for an opinionated nineteen-year-old who is strong-willed and used to getting her way. I don’t know how this thing is going to unfold, but I can see Penelope being forced to move out, which means moving back in with us, which means bringing all that hostility and resentment back home. And all this is after only two weeks. But I don’t know anything first-hand, so it’s all speculation. Penelope still hasn’t spoken to me, which isn’t unusual, so whatever I know is whatever I hear.

And that brings us back to Day Three of the grand project. I still have plans. It’s Saturday, for all that means, and there’s less of a schedule to work around. That should mean more time for me, more time for the grand project, but it also means that there’s more time to be sidetracked. I am about a half-day behind on the Java project, maybe a little less, and I haven’t gotten anywhere on that book other than to plot it out a little more in my head. I’ll probably get further with that project if I commit some of it to paper — or, more accurately, to the hard drive — where it has less of a chance of evaporating. But there’s still so much around here to sidetrack me. The office still isn’t done, and there are boxes all over the place, boxes which — ironically enough — I have been using to organize everything. I am, in effect, drowning in the chaos wrought by my organization.

I still mean to find that picture of myself from twenty-something years ago and scan it in and put it in a place that will help it serve as a reminder of what it is I’m up to. Everybody says that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but none of them were there to witness the birth of Rome. None of them know what they’re talking about when you come right down to it. I just might decide to start saying that Rome was built in a day, but it was pretty small back then. And I think that’s really the case. Somebody was traveling and stopped there. They — or he or she — decided that it was a pretty good place and maybe they’d stay there, so they constructed some kind of a shelter and bam, presto, Rome was born. Now, if that saying is meant to suggest that all of Rome that we see today, Rome in its entirety, wasn’t built in a day… well, that might have some merit and, indeed, it would be accurate to say that Rome is still not built. It’s still evolving.

Change is said to be constant, but that might depend on your perspective.

I’m looking around for my book and I can’t find it. It should be somewhere in my office; it should be in some three-ring binder, neatly organized and ready for edits, but I don’t see the appropriate three-ring binder anywhere. That will add another half hour to the day. I’ll spend at least that long looking for it, and somewhere along the way I’ll find twenty more things to do. That’s the way things work. I hereby resolve to create a checklist for each day and to work off that checklist. Maybe I’ll even buy that book — The Checklist Manifesto? — and read it. I should put that on a list somewhere, maybe a list with boxes that I can check after I’ve completed each item. I’ll do that, just as soon as I can find my clipboard, but I’ll probably have to straighten up a bit so I can put the clipboard somewhere once I find it, and that means I’ll have to do something with those boxes.