Back to normal - or as normal as it gets - around here. Mary and MJ left yesterday a.m. It was a busy week - mostly running after him. I tried to toddler proof this place but I didn't do a very good job. Worst part was him finding a fire ant hill at Bluebeard's. Poor little guy. I think I got as many bites stripping his clothes off. I am enjoying the peace and quiet this a.m.

Been carrying around the paperback edition of Sharon M. Draper's The Battle of Jericho in my purse for weeks and finally finished it. It is very clear why this is a Coretta Scott King award book. Jericho and his cousin Josh want to become members of the Warriors of Distinction, a club that Josh's Dad had been in years before and one that was highly thought of by the community. Jericho has finally gotten the attention of Arielle, the girl of his dreams, and she is attending pledge functions with his, such as the afternoon of sorting and wrapping gifts for the kids. But the deeper into the club Jericho gets the more he questions their credibility. The demand to do anything asked of them includes stealing Christmas ornaments. The pledge activities extend beyond humiliation to down right dangerous. They all think Dana, the only female pledge, is the one in danger but it turns out to be Josh who pays the price of the Warriors' pledge activities. Superb book that exposes hazing and the consequences.

Off to my last full day at Montessori for the year.

Steve was sweet and let me sleep in this a.m. instead of getting up and taking him to work. He will be here in a bit to pick me up so I can get to the airport by 3:30 to pick up Mary and MJ. I hope she didn't have too bad of a time in Miami. She was changing airlines and that airport is huge. I've walked 20 minutes between gates. A toddler in a stroller and a rolling carry on couldn't be easy to deal with.

Not having to get up at 6 a.m. was heavenly. I didn't even hear Steve leave. Been cleaning and moving things up higher and further back on the dressers and desks. MJ is very tall for not quite two and has the reach of an octopus! He is going to have a field day in this apt. since it certainly is far from toddler proof, even after a morning of closing up and moving things. Bought a car seat, a booster highchair you can strap to a regular chair, a toddler size deck chair, a truck for the beach and a bag of beach toys (pail, bucket, etc.) and diapers. It has been awhile since I've had these things around my house. Can't believe Mary will be 26 next month. But, I do love being a gramma. :-)

There are some writers who just have a style of writing that flows as smoothly as silk. One of them is Janet Taylor Lisle. Afternoon of the Elves was my favorite Lisle book until I finished The Crying Rocks this week. I have heard the Native American legends of how you can hear crying where the mothers leave their handicapped children at birth - it is in the wind that whips up from no where and swirls about you. The Inuit had a similar story in Alaska. The Crying Rocks is the location where the Narragansett women threw their handicapped newborns into the swamp below to die. Their grieving cries causes the hair on your neck to stand on end and your feet to begin running before you brain knows it! When Carlos tells the story to Joelle and tells her she looks like the girls in the Narragansett mural in the library she becomes obsessed with the mural and with finding out more about the tribe and herself. Against his better judgment Carlos takes Joelle to the Crying Rocks and what they see and hear scares them silly. They know that this is more than a story - what Joelle finds in the mud confirms that. When an unexpected death occurs Joelle learns who she is and why she feels as if someone is walking behind her, in her tracks. She discovers who her birth family is and how she came to live with Aunt Mary Louise, who tells her stories of how she arrived on a freight train when she was but 5 years old.

Not surprising - this is a Richard Jackson book from Simon & Schuster. Hardback came out in 2003, but I read it in paperback. The cover illustration of a young girl looking down is very visually appealing. I picked it up for that reason and read it because it is a Lisle book. A must have for all MS collections.

Happy Father's Day! We decided to celebrate Gramma's and Grampa's Days since we now have little grandkids. One of them will be here on Weds. and the other in August. We decided we are really are getting old because Dave Mason looks like an old guy on the DVD I gave Steve. :-)

A box of Simon & Schuster books came in yesterday and it felt like Christmas. The first one I grabbed to read is Sandpiper by Ellen Wittlinger. She is one of my favorite YA authors as Ellen writes it like it is - she doesn't pull any punches about what teens are like. My favorites are Hard Love and Leo and Bree. She certainly doesn't pull any punches in Sandpiper. She addresses an issue that we are all concerned about with today's teens - their views of oral sex as not really being sex at all. Girls "hook up" as they call it with guys they aren't even that crazy about just for the attention. This is the case with Sandpiper. She and her girlfriends learned this was a way to get guys when they were in 8th grade. The other two girls have moved on to "real" relationships with guys but Sandpiper is still hooking up, over 10 guys by her sophomore year, and is considered a slut by most teens in their small town. Knowing she needs to stop this self destructive behavior Sandpiper has sworn off guys, much to Derek's frustration. Derek's anger turns to stalking and threats toward Sandpiper's 13-year-old sister Daisy. Knowing she can't talk to her about to be remarried mother or her womanizer father about what is going on, she turns to the loner who the town has taken to called the Walker since no one knows who he is. The two teens are together when Derek decides it is time to give Sandpiper what she deserves. Every teenager girl ages 12 and up should read this book but due to the subject matter I am sure there will be libraries that will choose not to include it in their collections. What a lose if that is the case. Wittlinger has cut to the chase and told the story of a teenager girl who has gotten herself in over her head.

Tile floors are very hard on the feet when you are on them all day. I spent yesterday shifting books from a bookcase on one side of the livingroom to the other side. Then unpacked about 10 more boxes of books. It isn't that I "use" all of them - they are my comfort level of home. No separate office here so the bookcases are in the livingroom. MJ will have more children's books to crawl up into my lap with then he knows what to do with. I have a shelf set aside for him. This gramma is getting excited - they will be here next Weds. Still haven't gotten the extra bedroom squared away for them but I still have a few days.

The Booklist review is dead on the money with the comment of "capturing teen angst with wit and poignancy" about Dyan Sheldon's My Perfect Life, the sequel to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. I hope I didn't talk about My Perfect Life already - I looked back a bit in my entries and didn't see it. If so, I apologize. Ella is the quiet one of the pair and drama queen Lola has coerced her into running for school president, with the school bad boy as vice president. Carla Santini, the most popular and rich girl in school, is Ella's main competition and Carla wants Ella as her Vice President candidate to eliminate her as competition. Carla's attempt to "buy" votes with a party at her huge house turns against her when her drunk father comes on to Lola, who he thinks is Ella's mom in costume. You can't help but laugh out loud while reading about Carla and Lola trying to out do each other with over the top antics. The election results remind me of past U.S. presidential elections when people didn't vote for someone, but against someone. A fun read and it was nice to see quiet Ella come into her own.

Off to work and an Appreciation Luncheon for the Montessori staff members who have been at the school 30+ years.

Finally - a bit of sunshine. There are still clouds, but the sun is peeking out. I opened the bedroom blinds this a.m. to see 7 white sails headed out from Charlotte Amalie - what a beautiful sight. Smiled at the thought of all the tourists having a great day on the charter catamaran that was in the lead. I like this being one bay over from town. We can see Water Island off to the right - lots of homes on the island and they have to take a boat back and forth to St. Thomas to work. We were going to look into an apt. on Water Island that included a boat, but I was still working at UVI at the time and not too keen on being in a small boat every day in my work clothes. I envisioned getting drenched by the wake of a larger boat going by. Besides I am not a morning person and having to get up even earlier was not my cup of tea.

I have an avid football fan at Montessori who has read all of the football books we have so when I got my package of books from Orca I had to first read Juice by Eric Walters. The cover art is superb - a group of football player's hands in a pyramid. It is an Orca Soundings title so I knew it would be a quick read. Excellent book about Michael, AKA Moose, a football player who has been named MVP at the end of the season. The new coach comes in and he is a slick one - more like a used car salesman is Michael's mom's impression of him. Before you know it the team has a new weight room and Tony, a trainer who makes special shakes for the guys. They are bulking up faster than they should, but they are under the coach's spell. Then the coach pulls Moose in for a chat about how he is the lead on the team and he needs more than his natural ability to bulk up. Agreeing that he will do anything to ensure a winning team Moose agrees to take steroids even though he knows that not only are they are dangerous health wise, this is unethical. But, it is just for 12 weeks, with maybe another round of them if they make the play offs. This book should be in every HS boys' locker room and in every high school library. The guys, football players or not, will relate to Moose's desire to be the best and do what the coach wants, no matter the cost to himself. A 101 page cautionary tale! :-)

Now to design a floor plan of what I want the Montessori Library to look like after we add a few book cases, a new circulation desk and move tables around. :-)

No sign of the sun yet today. With this cloud cover you can see the outline of St. Croix clearly in the distance beyond Buck Island, which is just outside the bay. Hopefully we won't get more rain. We are mopping up water in one corner of the living room because one of the cisterns is right behind our kitchen and when it is too full it leaks. Guess we need to take more showers and wash more clothes! Not a typical situation in the islands - usually is it worries about using too much water. I'll have to run home at lunch today to mop again as my bookcases are in that corner.

I read Pat Lowery Collins' The Fattening Hut last night. It is a quick read due to the large amount of white space on the pages and the free verse style, bit it is not a story you will forget. Helen is the middle daughter and it is time for her to join her older sister, who is nursing her first child, in the fattening hut. Her sister's stomach now rests of her thighs when she sits cross legged - she is voluptuously beautiful. Helen, on the other hand, is scrawny from chasing around the island with her best friend Ashani. Her time of being a little girl is over - she has been promised to a much older man in their tropical village and she is to be fattened up and "prepared" for marriage. Scared of what will come Helen is not able to keep down the food that is brought to her in huge amounts. Helen's fear escalates when she realizes what will be done to her after reading a passage her Aunt Margaret has written and insists her older sister tell her about how she will be cut and then sewn closed. Helen escapes the fattening hut and runs away, suffering hunger and thirst as she searches for the plane Ashani has once shown her. Helen is not found by the search parties from her village but the Fattening Hut awaits the other young women of Helen's village as it does for many in Nigeria and other countries in the world. Although the setting of this story is fictitious, the practice of female circumcision is not. The details of the brutal "surgery" are not detailed, but it is clear what happens to the girls. Collins has written a sparse but beautiful novel that needs to be in YA collections. The appealing cover illustration will catch the teen's attention and Collins' writing will hold them to the last page.

Off to another day of weeding and sweating.

Gee - I had daydreams of paying off bills and my daughter's car with my lotto winnings! Don't you just love those online come ons that make you think you won something? Watch out for one with a kitty.com email address. Supposedly I won a million dollars!

I have been working on a "wish list" for the library at Montessori - such fun to spend someone else's money. I know some of it will be purchased - like the new fans to help with the heat, but much of it will have to wait. Will finish that up this afternoon. Can't wait for the IT person to get the Destiny software loaded so I can starting setting up the patron accounts, etc. for next year.

Stunning is the first word to come to mind when describing Tim Bowler's Firmament. It was published in England in 2002 and in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster in 2004. It had been on my "to read" shelf and I kept moving past it because of the strong music/piano element. I am not a big classical music fan and I knew from reading the blurb that the main character, Luke, is a music genius. I am so glad I finally opened it up and began reading. I feel in love with Luke and with Bowler's writing. He had me from the the first few lines: "He didn't see her; but he heard her voice. It came whispering on the dusk like a dark dreamy echo: a young girls voice, so light it was like hearing the voice of a spirit in the trees of Buckland Forest behind him..."

What Luke is hearing is a blind little girl crying for her mother and her father. Her grief is as deep as his own in relation to his father's death. Luke is still at the anger stage of grieving and has gotten himself hooked up with the wrong gang and doesn't know how to break away without having every bone in his body broken in the process. The gang leader, Skin, is not someone to cross - when he says he'll kill you he isn't joking. Luke breaks into the old woman's house as Skin insists. What he finds there is not money or jewels, but is just as unforgettable - an old bitter ugly woman and a beautiful little girl - blind and mentally handicapped - terrified and lost in stream or tears. Luke begins to play the piano to sooth the little girl and becomes her "funny ears" - a boy she can touch but cannot see; who she trusts because of what his fingers can do on the keyboard. Through all of this Luke can hear the elements of nature singing to him - the trees, the grass, the music. Notes have colors of their own and Luke is overwhelmed with what he hears and sees inside of his head. Answers will be found in Buckland Forest, but not before Luke's career as a pianist is almost taken away from him.

This is a gotta read in my opinion and now I want to read his Carnegie winning River Boy, as well as Storm Catchers and Midget. I shame-facedly admit I am late to discovering Bowler, but he's got a new fan! Where is that charge card to buy them on B&N? :-)

Last day of school day for the kids - only a 1/2 day. Yesterday was our Upper Elementary and MS graduation. It was a very neat ceremony with graduates from years before attending as well as Miss Virgin Islands, who is an alum. Montessori has been on the island since 1964 and has a wonderful committed group of parents and teachers. The 8th graders looked so grown up in their hats.

I finally did get my VI drivers license yesterday. Got a 90% on the test - about 1/2 of the group of 15 who took it with me didn't pass it. It is quite an unusual test so I knew to study the book and look for trick questions - which there were a lot of. The guy giving the test was not having a good day and let loose some profanity when one of the people waiting to take the test made a comment about the process. One of the other women and I looked at each other and almost got the giggles. I was worried he would swear at me and kick me out or fail me on the test if I made a sound so I stifled it and was more than polite to him. We were put in a small room with 15 chairs of various types crammed in next to each other and were given zerox copies of the test, pencils, and pads of paper to use as "desks" in our laps. When we came out there were 15 more people standing in line to take the test.

I'm listening to John Marsden's While I Live, the latest book in the Tomorrow Series about 17-year-old Ellie and her group of Australian friends who fight against an invading force that takes over their town, beginning with Tomorrow, When the War Began. In the latest novel Ellie's parents have been murdered and she and young profoundly deaf Gavin are trying to keep the farm going while working with a secret group that makes raids across the border to rescue prisoners. I am thoroughly enjoying the listening experience and now want to go back and read the other novels in the set. I read Tomorrow... years ago and loved it. Marsden is a good author and I also enjoyed his Letters from the Inside about two teenage pen pals, one of them in a maximum security prison.

Off to work and hugs good bye from the kids. :-)

I am amazed how quiet it is here - all I am hearing is birds out in the bushes in front of the porch. Yesterday Steve and I left for work to the sounds of breaking glass. Someone is gutting an ocean front house right below us and they were throwing out old windows. On the days I work from home I often hear their music - they like 80s rock so I am not complaining. Most of the houses on this road, including the one we are in, were built back in the 70s and people are beginning to remodel them. Wish I owned one to remodel! But, I am happy just to be living in such a beautiful area. It has taken me a year to feel comfortable on the island - I wonder if it would have taken me so long if we had moved to a quiet neighborhood initially.

I just looked through the critical and reader reviews for Flavor of the Week by Tucker Shaw. The hardback came out in 2003 but I just read the Hyperion paperback edition. I have to say I enjoyed the book and was enchanted with Cyril, the chubby Cyrano de Bergerac type character in this recipe laden story of a teenage love triangle. Cyril loves hippy/vegetarian Rose, who in turn loves Cyril's best friend Nick. Cyril is a natural in the kitchen and hopes to be a chef one day and agrees to make a romantic dinner for Nick and Rose, with Rose thinking Nick is the cook. Of course, the truth comes out and Rose realizes where her affections truly belong. I think I gained weight just reading the ingredients in the rich and delicious sounding recipes. Although the narrator is a guy, this is a book girls will enjoy reading, evident by all but one of the reader reviews on B&N. A wide audience with teenager girls and a limited audience with teenage guys. Offer it to the girls who loved Cherry Wytock's hilarious novels about Angela Cookson Potts - My Cup Runneth Over and My Scrumptious Scottish Dumplings, which also include recipes.

Now to unpack some more boxes.

As I type this a barge is going by, headed to Crown Bay to unload. This is the low season so there won't be as many ships, cruise or otherwise. Because of insurance the luxury boats are headed south or north for the summer, out of the hurricane zone, so Crown Bay Marina is about empty. This is hurricane season and the locals say it is going to be a stormy one because it has been so hot.

Read Carl Deuker's Runner - a Houghton Mifflin novel I picked it up because of the cool cover. Black background with red lettering for the title and the silhouette of a runner. Set in the Seattle area, 17-year-old Chance lives on a small sailboat with his alcoholic father. Stressed over his dad losing job after job and the fear that they won't be able to pay the moorage fees and have to sell the boat Chance agrees to become the runner for a smuggler. It is easy money and soon Chance is paying all the bills and even has a few dollars in his pocket to spend on Melissa, a future reporter who begins asking Chance way too many questions. Things get out of control when the types of packages change and Chance wants out. The relatively short chapters and thriller style plot will keep even reluctant readers involved in this one. A gotta have for a YA collection, just like the other Deuker titles such as Painting the Black and Night Hoops.

Off to Montessori. This is our last week with students.

An overcast Monday morning - it is going to be a hot and still day I think. Had breakfast out on the porch while reading the local newspaper. The VIPD is going to crack down on the dark window tints so many of the island cars have. Our crime rate is pretty high so it is a safety issue for the officers pulling over cars. Also read about the evening pray memorial for the 17-year-old girl who drove her car off of the wharf and drowned. The passenger was able to escape but the driver couldn't get her seat belt off. She would have graduated from All Saints, a private Catholic School on the island.

Remember the Archie comics from years ago? Well, the characters seem to be popular again. It is funny how the clothes they wore are trendy again. We call now them capris, my mom called them pedal pushers. Wish I had kept my old platform sandals from the 70s! Anyway, Hyperion has a really cute paperback called Betty & Veronica Best Friends Forever by Jasmine Jones. It is a short and sweet guide on friendship and how to treat old and new friends. I am recommending it to the 4-6 grade teacher at Montessori. At $4.99 this classroom needs several copies! This group has lots of little cliques and I get to hear their spats as there is a little pond with a bench right between their classroom and the library. One of the suggestions for making new friends is to start a book club so how could a librarian not like this guide? :-)

Now to start unpacking boxes of books. Steve anchored and leveled my bookcases yesterday. We have uneven tile floors so he had to use shims to level them out, but now I can get my books sorted and decide on which ones I want to include in the 2nd ed. of HS Tantalizing Tidbits.

It is breezy and overcast but we still headed for the ice water when we got back from our walk down to Bluebeards to see if the little gift shop has the local newspaper. They weren't open but it was a wonderful walk. We stopped and wandered about a lot where clearly a hurricane had taken out the entire house. About all that was left was the pool filled with nasty water and some of the concrete posts. It would be a great building site - maybe someday.

I have been in and out from sitting on the porch reading due to the attack wasps - they are Jack Spaniel wasps - one of the most venomous from what the locals tell me. All I can say is when I got stung three times in a row, by the same dang wasp, my leg swelled up and each sting felt like a match was being held to it. They built a nest under the table and I made the mistake of sitting at it! Steve says he is buying a case of wasp spray to take care of the problem before the grandkids get here.

What I was reading is a book I found in my son's things. I had forgotten about giving it to him back in the mid 90s when he was working on his degree in Philosophy. At the time Amador by Fernando Savater was a bestseller in Spain. The subtitle: "in which a father addresses his son on questions of ethics - that is, the options and values of freedom - and attempts to show him how to have a good life..." Each chapter is an essay with quotes at the end from writers as varied as Fromm, Aristotle, Thomas More, and Seneca. This is no easy light read, but well worth the experience. If it is still in print I plan on giving a copy to my grandson when he a teenager. There are no pat answers here on how to live a good life - rather lots of examples and questions to help a teenager begin to develop a philosophy of life, and to enjoy life as a member of the world society.

Now we are off to town for a Shipwreck burger for lunch and to pick up the ingredients so I can make oatmeal coconut cookies. I have been promising Steve I would make them for weeks and now that I have a kitchen I enjoy being in I will do just that.

A cloudy morning but the birds are singing. I broke down and bought a pair of capri length jeans. Steve is teasing me as I swore I never would - but they make sense down here. I will be climbing and crawling around shelves weeding out old books today so I needed something comfortable.

I was still in such a good mood yesterday after my excellent errand running morning that I got the whole apt. set up for company this evening. Steve is making his secret recipe (Gates sauce from KC!) bbq chicken for friends tonight. Couldn't even see the table, let alone eat on it, so I got that taken care of and set up the living room area into two seating areas. One to watch TV and and other so you can sit and look out at the ocean through the patio doors. Looks good but we still have a lot of unpacking to do. The boxes of my books are piled in the corners. :-)

Another Hyperion title I couldn't wait to read was Patricia McCormick's My Brother's Keeper. I was expecting something as edgy as her first novel, Cut, but it isn't. However, it is a very poignant MS novel about a 13-year-old trying to keep his older brother's drug addition hidden from his over stressed single mom and his blanket and kitty loving little brother. The dad left for California over a year ago and they had to move into a smaller place and money is tight and home life is less than happy. Toby finds solace in collecting baseball cards and spending time with the elderly Mr. D who owns the baseball card shop. This reminded me a bit of Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Haddix - the sibling trying to take care of the brother and hide from everyone what is going on. No matter how much you try to hide these situations, sooner or later the truth comes out. This is a must have in a MS library.

Off to work with an armload of boxes for the discards.

I have had a wonderful morning even though it started out with a trip to the DVI office to find out, yet again, that they are not giving the test. Next week instead. I will try again. But since I was out and about so early the lines at the bank, gas station, and KMart were easy to navigate. I was even second in line to get my oil changed at Western Auto and they were done with it before I got back from picking out Father's Day cards at KMart. People were friendly and in a good mood - not like when you run errands at the end of the day or on Saturday and the lines are long and people are tired. I was back home by 11:00 and had time to chat about cars, again, with Mary. She is going look at the midnight blue PT Cruiser again tonight. My favorite color at least - that's what color my beloved TransAm was - I miss that car! :-(

I finished up listening to The Life of Pi by Yann Martel while I drove around the island running errands. It has received high praise and I can see why, although it was not one of my favorite listening/reading experiences. I found it a bit drawn out and I got bored with the length of the narrative descriptions of his zoological knowledge. The parts about faith and religion were quite enjoyable and the scene where his mentors/leaders from three different religions converge on him at the same time was quite delightful. I initially had problems suspending my disbelief of a lifeboat being able to handle a Bengal tiger, a zebra (with a broken leg), a hyena, a rat, a cockroach, and a sixteen-year-old Indian boy, but I got over that as Martel pulled me into the story. The narrator was quite good too so I often found myself chuckling at Pi's dry sense of humor in the worst of circumstances. Over two hundred days at sea with a tiger he catches and feeds fish to so it won't eat him, as well as landing on an island of carnivorous algae, was easier to belief than the brief blind encounter with the Frenchman adrift in another lifeboat. I am glad I listened to it, rather than read it, as I am not sure I would have stayed with it and it was well worth the effort. I honestly don't see broad YA appeal for this adult novel, but because the character is a teenager searching for himself (as well as land) there are some older teens I would recommend this book to, but not the average teenage reader. I don't think they would stay with it.

Now to get some things done around this apt - I am surrounded by boxes!

Can you hear my whoops of delight all the way to the Mainland? Our DSL is up and working again! I really dislike using Steve's laptop and the phone line Internet connection. Not only is his laptop slower, it gets so darn hot, even on a lap table.

I am home today but haven't gotten anything accomplished yet other than to talk about cars with my daughter Mary. She loves them as much as I do and is looking to buy a new one. She is thinking about a PT Cruiser. I don't care for them but it makes sense with a baby and the boxes she moves around for work. Oh well, I have my little RAV4 for now and drool over the Porsche that is parked in the garage of one of the houses we go by on the way home.

Sophie came in from her wanderings this a.m. with dust bunnies and gold foil stars on her whiskers. Who knows where she found those. She is "speaking" to me again after the fiasco last night. We have a stray cat who the previous owner fed that upsets Sophie. She was letting it know this is her territory, through the patio doors, when Steve turned on the air conditioner near her. It frightened her so bad she left an "offering" on the floor. You can literally scare the crap out of a cat! Well, she thought I had done it as I was standing next to her when it happened and she wouldn't even look at me all night. Steve thought that was hilarious.

My Hyperion review books came in and it was like Christmas. Immediately sat down and read Ann Rinaldi's The Color of Fire last night. Loved it - she has again taken a piece of little known U.S. history and brought it to life. Through the voice of 14-year-old Phoebe, a slave working for a kindly master in NYC, the horrific burnings at the stake and hangings that took place in the 1740s are brought to life. Fear of a slave revolt brought on by fires being set in the city resulted in a Salem Witchcraft Trials mentality. There were thousands of African Americans in NY at the time, both slaves and indentured servants. Imprisoned slaves and indentured servants, both black and white, gave names of innocent people, trying to save themselves, but it did no good. Both groups were hung or burned at the stake if they were not fortunate enough of escape to the "long island" to live with the Native Americans. Would be a great book to use in a U.S. History class as it is a relatively quick read.

Time to find the top of this desk.