Jeff, Lynne, Sarah and Pat
View Larger image

Lilly, Dan and surprise guest, Matthew.
View Larger image

Helga* called to say how much fun she’s having with Trixie* and Beyonce*. The food in the French restaurant is delicious, the work at the conference, and especially the power networking is hard, but rewarding. Tonight, after the conference ends, the three will explore highly recommended areas of downtown Atlanta. Need I say it? Yes, that probably will be the last anyone ever sees of them.

I”ll pick them up tomorrow at Logan (late morning), and sometime in the afternoon, the Miller family and Flo will drive north to visit the Finlays. A full day indeed.

*Nicknames given to the theraputic three by the girls on their unit. We know them as, Diane, Pat, and Nicole.

Tomorrow: A look back.

Lorna, Andrew (LIn’s sibs) and Barbara (Andrew’s wife), Arthur and Barbara (Lin’s father and step-mother), Dan and Linda, Griff (Lorna’s husband) Sarah and Pat, Margery, daughter of Harriet with sisters Margo and Polly, Becca, Ben (son of Lorna and Griff), and his wife.

View larger image

Dan & his sister Lilly. In the background, Lin’s brother, Andrew, his wife, Barbara and Griff, Linda’s brother-in-law.
View larger image

A photograph scanned from the current issue of The New Yorker magazine.

Dan & his sister Lilly. In the background, Lin’s brother, Andrew, his wife, Barbara and Griff, Linda’s brother-in-law.
View larger image

A photograph scanned from the current issue of The New Yorker magazine.

Rachel and Rebecca
View larger image

Non Sequitur is one of the Boston Globe’s better comic strips, but for some reason I don’t always read it. Thanks to Adam for alerting me to Monday’s cartoon.

Linda, Dan, Sarah and Pat
View Larger image

You might have to be related, or you might have to have been there, or you might have to be in the mood we were in yesterday, to find these funny. So be it.

Cell phone call to Matt.

“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

ëWhere are you?”

“In the Garment District.”

I hung up and turned to Diane. “The Garment District? In Boston? Where is that?” Give the boy a car and you never know where he’ll go. It wasn’t until Matt and friends arrived home late last night, and Hil Burgin walked in wearing a satin red jacket with pink sunglasses, that I learned the Garment District is a store that sells clothes from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

We visited with Kate and her parents yesterday. Kate had been to a Taco Bell and, still hungry, was in search of another. Maybe a rumbling stomach reminded her, “Oh my gosh, I have to write a paper about being digested.”

We drove home, had our dinner and then stopped by to see Flo, who continues to chafe at her new lifestyle.

“I was talking to Lois today. I asked her, ëWhat do they call us?’ “
Flo could hardly end the sentence, she was laughing so hard, and she almost couldn’t get the punch line out.

Diane and I were both thinking, “residents.”

“Lois said, ëInmates.’ “

View larger image
There are more wedding photos to come, but I have to finish with Emily Hopkins’s wedding pics.

Matt, Daryl and I worked yesterday to change the front pads on Matt’s Honda. We broke loose the impossibly tight, rusted bolts holding the calipers to the rotor, pulled the old pads off, but found the new ones wouldn’t fit. As in, they were a different shape. I thought about using my grinder to customize a fit, and Daryl thought about removing old parts of the caliper that were in the way, but maybe we both heard Matt’s thoughts, “Hey, don’t be fu*king with my brakes.”

We put the old pads back on, promised to get together next Saturday to finish the job with the correct pads, and then I took the Honda out for a screeching skid test. Just to be sure we put them back on correctly. They are, after all, my son’s fu*king brakes, and he was about to drive all the way to the Garment District.

View larger image

View larger image

View larger image

We were standing with Adam, waiting for a table at Travis’s favorite sushi restaurant, Fugaku.

“I’ve got a good one for you, Adam. Cheezits seem to be the snack food of choice lately, and we’re all eating out of this one box from our nifty food cupboard. However, I know I am the last one to have any, and I’m thinking to myself as I bite down, darn these things are soggy, which makes no sense given how quickly they’re consumed.

Two days after my last Cheezit, Diane pulls the box out of the cupboard, and then the wax paper-like bag out of the box, and plops it on the counter. I’m standing a few feet away and I glance back at the bag and see something small and dark nestled among the orange. My brain begs to process the small and dark as something, anything, other than a dead mouse, but fails. Of course Diane then asks the question I didn’t want to hear, ëWhat killed the mouse?’ I figure that’s what’s going to kill me.”

Adam sensing my anxiety, charitably responds, “We know what the mouse died from. He caught old-age from Mike.”

Matt’s new G5 iMac was delivered yesterday by Fedex. Yes, only in Acton, would they leave a computer in a bright white box, graphics on both sides, and convenient carrying handle on top, sitting exposed on the front porch.

Vice President Dick Cheney told viewers Tuesday night they could verify his claims from the vice-presidential debate at an independent Web site — factcheck.com — but visitors to the site found a searing anti-Bush message. Cheney accidentally said “.com” instead of “.org” during the televised debate. Internet surfers who visited factcheck.com were redirected to the home page of billionaire anti-Bush activist George Soros, with the statement “Why we must not re-elect President Bush” at the top of the screen.

Snowbanks North of the House

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six
feet from the house …
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more
books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no
more bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a
party, and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls
leaving the church.
It will not come closer
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch
nothing, and are safe.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
room where the coffin stands.
He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on
through the unattached heavens alone.

The toe of the shoe pivots
in the dust …
And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back
down the hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,
and did not climb the hill.

Robert Bly