Have you ever looked around in a restaurant, after a late dinner, and realized yours was the only remaining occupied table? Have you ever peeked up after picking at the last scrumptious scraps, and noticed chairs turned upside down on other tables ? Yeah, you’re nodding your head up and down, but how about this. Have you ever peered down the length of that restaurant, to the adjoining bar, and seen your waitress sitting on a stool, watching the last college football game of the day and pulling on a longneck Budweiser?

Emma’s cowgirl Halloween costume.

Photo of Joe Barbato found on my camera and presumably taken by Matthew.

Finally, a brief glimpse of sun.
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Adam leaves for Italy tomorrow. His constant blog presence will be missed, but I’m hoping he’ll entertain us all with mini-travelogues.

Monday mornings I slog through paperwork. I sort sales receipts, I send out Word.doc invoices, and this morning I chucked those endless pieces of paper with numbers and names that no longer apply to anything. One of those odd scraps of paper contained the name and phone number of Matt’s compadre, Debbie. I hadn’t tossed it because on the other side was a note from Roland with the name of his ship’s commander.

As I put it back down on a pile of desk clutter, Matt, Joe and Robbie walked in the side door looking for lunch.

“Hey, Matt, whose number is 264-3215?” I asked

“How should I know?”

“It’s a local number?”

“So what?”

Later on, Joe meandered into the office.

“Hi, Mr. Miller.”

“Joe, whose number is 264-3215?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

Last night, after dinner, I again asked Matt whose number it was.

“Why do you keep asking me that? How should I know?” he grumbled, “But I’ll call it if you want.”

“That’s a fine idea. Do that.” I felt the hook set in the fleshy part of his cheek.

He thought for a moment and began to waffle. “It’s a house number, not a cell phone. If it were a cell phone you’d have less chance of getting someone.”

I thought to myself if it were a cell phone number you’d know whose it was.

“Ask for Ann or someone and see if you can tell by the voice who it is.”

He flipped open his phone, dialed the number and asked, “Is Sara there?”

I could tell by his pronunciation it was Sara without the “h.”

I could also tell by the look on his face that while he may not have recognized the person who answered the phone, that person sure recognized him. It was Debbie’s mom.

“Yeah, I mean, Debbie.” He fumbled

That’s right, now I’m doubled over.

“Hi Debbie. It’s me, and my father is an Asshole.”

I could tell by the way he said it, it was asshole with a capital “A.”

Sally is Patti’s closest friend. They grew up together; not from grade school, but during those late adolescent spread-your-wings-and-those-whose-feathers-are-ruffled-be-damned times until they were both married. Sally met her husband at a party at Patti’s mom’s house in New City.

“Flo must have been in Arizona. He walked in the door and I said, ‘You’re mine.’ ”

Sally is about 5’5” and has long brown hair which frames a round, youthful face. She invites conversation, punctuating her stories with smiles, but you can sense the hard take-it-or-leave-it edge that lives within. In Sally you can feel those early bar-hopping days with Patti. Her favorite musician is Jorma Kaukonen and if you ask, she’ll tell you a really funny tale about a recent concert at a small club.

Sally lives and works in New York, and when Peter asked her to come up and help she walked into her boss’s office and said, “You know my friend in New Hampshire; she’s not doing too well. I need to go up there and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Her boss – they’ve been together for more years than one can count – said, “Then why are you still here? There are more important things in life than landscaping.”

Sally replied, “You’ll notice I didn’t ask.”

Stepping Stones
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Wednesday night’s poker game. From left: Stu, Bryan, me, Ernie (Rob’s father-in-law), Rob and Dwight. Missing from the phot0 – Dave.

View from our “beach.”
The requested view .
Same view, not so close.

We all (Matt and Debbie) went to the MFA last night to see the Ansel Adam’s exhibit. As I was walking out I heard some guy asking his girlfriend, “Why couldn’t Adams make just one album in color?” As we neared our car, Diane said, “That was a lot of black and white.” This morning I woke up and thought, maybe I should experiment more with black and white.
I also wondered what Adam thinks of Ansel, given that Mr Adams would squirrel his photographic plates off to the darkroom and return with finished prints of what he felt he saw, rather than what he saw.

The utter stillness of Rainbow Lake was punctuated by loons chattering away. We heard all four typical calls, which inspired two of us to chatter back. Though I didn’t record the lake loons, I did capture the camp loons. The first voice you hear is mine encouraging Mark to engage the water fowl.
Compare those sounds to these .
Okay, I goofed. I uploaded a movie with dependent files and I should have uploaded the full version. The best thing to do is play it a second time (provided that it loads), because it’s a large file that might stutter initially. I hope it’s worth the wait. I laugh everytime I hear it, but then I’m way too familiar with the characters involved.
Rak, is this large enough?

Got Graeters? Of course, although I did have to wait an hour in Worthington, Ohio, until they opened at noon.
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The return home was very casual. I snapped photos in Worthington , stopped for hot soup in Erie, and put my sleepy head down in Syracuse for the night (after watching the Predator and the Alien kill each other). I made my first work call this afternoon on the way home, and I even thought about Adam and rakkity’s upcoming stories.
Nuggets from this trip:
1. No one makes better Deviled Eggs than Diane.
2. “From where all blessings come.” Helen’s response to my shopping bag full of food from Idylewilde.