Tiny Bike

This little "Toy Story" bicycle with training wheels is parked outside our apartment complex, chained to a light pole. It cracks me up -- you don't often see such a tiny bike chained up outside. It's only about as high as a car tire.

I wish I could say that something exciting is happening around here at the moment, but that would be a lie. My head is swimming with issues related to our move. Now that we've submitted our references and they've been checked, we're waiting for our new landlord's final written approval. Then we can pay our deposit and two months' rent, which cleans us out financially, and sign our lease.

Meanwhile, I'm working with realtors hired by our landlords to show the apartment where we currently live. Just yesterday I had to drop off my keys so they could be duplicated, giving the realtors access for showings, and on Monday they're going to be here taking photos, which means I have to get the place spic-and-span and make sure Olga is out of the way.

At work, efforts continue apace to collect overdue materials before summer vacation starts. The current focus of my attention is a teacher who has had two books checked out for three years. I have e-mailed him and spoken to him in person, and he says he'll bring them from home, and then he never does. He couldn't even remember the title of one of them, which suggests to me that he hasn't seen them in some time. All I can do is appeal to his sense of fairness -- pointing out that no one else gets to use those books if he keeps them at his house -- but beyond that, what can I do? We have no fines, no methods of coercion.

It's his failure to address the problem that I find most frustrating. If the books are lost, just tell me that so I can mark them lost in the catalog and we can replace them. If they're not lost, bring them back. I'd even let him check them right out again -- we're pretty lenient with teachers -- as long as I could see that they still exist!