I spent the last couple of days at our lake house, trying to get it ready to sell. Mostly I mowed. I also did a little pruning. With 100-degree weather, I completely soaked my t-shirt every time I went outside.

The good thing is that I lost the extra five pounds I put on in Chile.

We were originally planning to build a bathroom in the garage. I tore a side off a closet a few years ago to make space for it, and Rebecca built a provisional shower in there, which was only used once or twice. Raccoons fell through the ceiling, so I had screwed up scraps of plywood as a temporary ceiling.

I took the shower apart this time and started rebuilding the ceiling.  I got about 2/3 of the ceiling covered with sheetrock, and left the plywood over the remaining part. Next time I go, I'll finish it and rebuild and insulate and/or panel the walls. (If the buyers want a bathroom there, they can take it apart again.)

The a/c hasn't worked well for a while, so I went into the attic yesterday morning to check on it. Sigh... raccoons again. They love flex-ducts, and had torn up two of them, so most of the air blows into the attic. Another big project for next time. (Plus cleaning accumulated raccoon poop out of the attic.)

So I spent the rest of yesterday morning patching a hole they had torn into the north soffit. The repair looks ugly, but with a little caulk and paint it will be okay. If we keep having trouble, I'll take off the gutters and replace the soffit and fascia on that side of the house like I did on the south side.

I also met with a realtor. He said that, realistically, we can't ask anywhere near what we wanted for the place. It looks like we can probably get out of it what we have in it, but that's it. I just want to be rid of it. It's depressing to think of how much money I've sunk into mortgage payments over the years for a place I don't use.

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On a completely unrelated note, as I was leaving Duncanville this morning, I noticed that my odometer read "111111". So I stopped and took a picture. Someday I may upload it and share it with the world.

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The new goat had her kid the other day. Apparently she was still huge, so they thought she was carrying twins. A neighbor who is a vet cut her open and discovered that the bloating was gas from an infection. So she's on antibiotics, and apparently doing fine now. The kid is also fine, although they had to supplement his mother's milk the first few days because of her ailment. I can't wait to see him.

All three surviving baby bunnies have their eyes open and are doing well.

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I missed the July 8 deadline to submit my name to interpret for another fingerprint course in Chile. Bummer. I did put in for a September conference in Dublin, though. And rumor has it there will be a fingerprint course in Costa Rica in August, but they haven't posted it yet. I'll probably apply again for the big three-week program in Virginia that I did last September when that comes up.

I'd like to get assigned with more experienced interpreters, but so far I've been paired with people who haven't done any more than I have. Most of them had stronger Spanish, but were weaker at the process of interpretation. The interpreter who worked with me in Chile made a lot of mistakes, some of them major. I found myself jumping in to correct him several times each session. But he's totally clueless about it. "Often wrong but seldom in doubt."

The guy who ran the training knows some Spanish and heard a lot of the mistakes himself. He has spoken with the woman who coordinates our travel assignments, and she's supposed to call me today to talk about it. I hate to dime my fellow interpreter out, but we don't currently have a Quality Control program for interpreting, and he'll just keep getting assignments until someone speaks up.