Rhinovirus 1, Hakkarainen 0.

As I decide to home from work or not, I have one more factor to consider these days - how much will this cost me? If I don't go to work, I don't get paid, which is the reality for most workers around the world. The folks who are living paycheck to paycheck have to worry about this a lot more (http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=9717&poem=119763).

So, yesterday I stayed home from work and spent the day in my red, flannel pajamas (you needed that image, right?) and mostly slept. It was a busy household. A visiting nurse came to see Sandra's mother. Sandra and her father prepared us for the snow, bringing in wood, getting the shovels and scrapers from the back shed. It's a bustling enterprise here on Fridays.

The snow was about as predicted, two to three inches of fluffy stuff. This morning I'll get the bird feeders filled up. The cardinals are stunning against the white landscape.

In Flanders Fields - by John Macrae

With the baseball season over, most excellent that it was, it's time to resume my grandparental training. Last night I watched SpongeBob SquarePants. I also eagerly await the movie. The younger generation calls me Iso, short for Isoisä, Finnish for grandfather (old father, really). Sandra is known as Buppy, aka the Bupster. Lily used to call us buppyandiso, even when talking to us individually.

Lately I've wrestled with software problems that ought to take about 15 seconds and, instead, use up the better part of a day. Some of it is my own doing as I resist the most obvious solution - uninstall and reinstall the software. If we had to take out the engine and put it back when our car wouldn't start, we might get more than a little upset. Imagine if doctors treated us that way when we came in with a headache. With software, however, we have an incredible tolerance for bad design and worse support.

Friend T. finished the New York Marathon this past Sunday, her second time running New York and third marathon overall.

The weather forecast for Friday afternoon are suggesting that we might get our first substantial snow of the season. Our snowblower is still in the back yard. Last year I had to pour gasoline into the carburetor to get it started. My commute is much shorter than in years past, but there are still plenty of opportunities for adventure in the season's first snow.

Sandra's mother and father returned from the Cape yesterday morning. Her doctor has scheduled some follow-up evaluations.

Whenever we discuss someone else's life, particularly someone's health, we walk up to the line of privacy and may occasionally step over it. The challenge is to keep family and friends informed while respecting the privacy that each person deserves. We may make mistakes, but they're always in the spirit of trying to be helpful.

I had a nice chat with Beverly at the Cardigan PEI post office. I'd called to find more about continuing to have their mail forwarded down here. "And how is Woody?" she asked. Cardigan is a town of 200 on the east coast of the island.

We had a few snow flurries last night, just enough to remind us who is in charge.

This morning Mozilla released its 1.0 version of Firefox, an excellent web browser. It has better security that Internet Explorer and some nice features, such as tabbed browsing. It also supports a number of extensions, add-on utilities that make web browsing easier and more fun. I've used early versions since June and quickly made it my default browser. If you're interested, you can find out more at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. A note of caution, though - the servers are apt to be very busy today because of the new release.

Sandra's mother was hospitalized briefly at the Cape yesterday. She seems to be doing ok and is coming home this morning. Woody has canceled a planned trip with Adam to Prince Edward Island to finish the winter preparations.

Cell phones have become a key part of lives, haven't they? Sandra and I were at the camp when her sister, Barbara, called to tell us that their mother wasn't well. We don't have a landline phone there and so rely on the cell phone as our link to the outside world. In turn we were able to keep in touch with others in the family, even though no one was at home.

Although the pace of the Always On life has slowed a good bit since I changed jobs, I and we spend a lot of our day electronically connected. The phone is always there, email, instant messaging, and the Web often. My father likes to remind us that, when he was a kid, commercial radio didn't exist.

The leaves are down in the woods, letting sunlight shine on the camp road. For the warmer months, the camp road is a tunnel, but now we drive through sun and shadows. The mice at the camp are getting ready for winter. They found a package of peanuts and had themselves a fine feast. We've put the other edible goodies into the refrigerator.

Baby Cassandra hasn't been sleeping much. Mike and Lynn have remarkable endurance and reservoirs of good humor.

One of the best things for that which ails you is to watch a group of six-year-olds play soccer on a cool fall afternoon. There aren't lines of offense and defense so much as there are clouds of probability around the ball, energy barely contained. "Kick it with your left foot," the coach said. "No, the other left." The final score was something like 8-8. They played without goalies.

With the leaves down, you can see a lot further in November, but there's not as much to look at.

We'll go to the camp today to continue to close up the place. We'll also go to our favorite apple farm (http://www.redapplefarm.com) and then go to my father's. He seems to have things pretty well under control these days, but there are the occasional heavy-lifting chores that require some help.

Did you know that you can buy motorcycle insurance through the AARP?

Got Mouse? The Meow Mix Cafe - http://www.meowmix.com/newsevents/meowcafe.asp - is the first restaurant for cats.

It's been said that one of the keys to serenity and clear thinking is gratitude. There isn't a day that passes that I don't say, to myself always and to others often, "I work hard, but this isn't hard work."