I’m handing out the kudos again.

Dave came up from Eugene to help me with the trim in the bedrooms, and with his generous assistance, we finished about 90 percent of the trim. I’ve got two small pieces to cope and cut tomorrow morning, then it’s done. I can’t begin to tell you what a psychological lift that is. There is now a halfway decent chance that the rooms themselves may be completed before school starts up.

I will be working on the rooms again tomorrow and a little bit on Tuesday. Total props to Dave for his help.

After Jonah got up from a late nap, Erin, Jonah, and I attended a family and friends party thrown by our friend Julie and her mom, Gloria. Gloria’s house is one of the beautiful old Victorians down in historic Salem. The neighborhood itself is of variable quality—there is low-income housing and a halfway house on the block—but the charms of the house itself are undeniable. (Built in the 1920s, it was apparently originally owned by an Oregon Supreme Court justice.)

Jonah did all manner of cute things and, by the goodwill of those assembled, became a center of attention. He is quite frequently a very cute child (said his father), or at least the party attendees seemed to think so. In general I prefer that he not monopolize proceedings to the extent he did this evening, but no one seemed to mind or object so he went off and did adorable things and we didn’t stop him.

I spoke with a fellow Mac enthusiast at the party, and I am happy report several of his software recommendations: First, he prefers a launching utility called QuickSilver to LaunchBar. An initial testing of the software this evening by yours truly yielded a similar conclusion. In the two weeks I’ve fiddled with LaunchBar, I’ve loved it. I believe I may love QuickSilver more. He also recommended Panic’s Unison and Transmit, a Usenet newsreader and an FTP client respectively. I’ve read good things but tried neither. I plan to check both out.

Thanks to Julie and Gloria for the terrific party!