I promised myself that I'd make a point of blogging at least once a week, and I don't want to break that promise so soon. Tonight I'm working on the most belated of my book reviews, but it's starting to look doubtful that I'll finish by midnight.

It's hard to believe it's been a week already. Time flies. It seems like barely yesterday that I was finishing up the last book review.

I'm working six days a week now until tax season is over — or rather I'm attempting to do so. After so many years of living like a bohemian, even an ordinary work week is a difficult adjustment for me, and even with the Saturdays added, my weekly hours are still hovering just over 35.

The evenings seem to fill up with an endless series of minor household crises to solve, plus family obligations and attempting to keep domestic bliss alive. My weekend is reduced to Sunday, and Sunday is also the only opportunity to take care of some necessary errands. The definition of "necessary" adapts to fit what we can handle. Now that the move is finally mostly settled (the final headache, an astonishing string of bureaucratic bumbling between Earthlink and Comcast that delayed my high-speed Internet connection for nearly a month, was finally resolved this week), wedding planning has resumed

This morning, I went out registering for the first time — the whole bit with scanning barcodes with the special registry gun. It was the third time for Ericka, but the first one when I tagged along, and it was more pleasant than I expected.

My feelings about gift giving are not unlike how as a child I felt about bicycling on hills. I hated having to pedal up them, and being able to race down them was no consolation because I didn't enjoy that either. Similarly, I don't much care to be on either side of the gift-giving equation.

In order to get along with this particular wedding tradition (which Ericka does like) I have to keep reminding myself that the true purpose is not to make me happy nor even to make Ericka happy, but to make the giver happy. Baffling as it is to me, some people just aren't satisfied if they can't give a gift. When I remember that the point of registering is to help satisfy them, it's easier to pick things.

Even though my actual informational input was negligible, I did have an occasional opinion, and it felt nice to see what was going on. Also, it's about the only chance Ericka and I get to go out together these days. Even so, I'm sure it was terribly husbandly of me that my primary amusement was to pretend I was compiling an anti-registry: Instead of identifying the items we most wanted, I would identify the items we most didn't want. "Hmmm, I kind of don't want that, and I don't much want that either, but — oh! I really don't want that! It goes on the list!"

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