Sans Chien

We'll get used to it in a while and the time will pass quickly. We'll get used to not stopping on the hill so that we can let Marley run up the camp road. We'll get used eating a whole orange by ourselves. We'll get used to leaving shoes on the hearth and having them still there in the morning.

Sandra's parents reported that Marley went upstairs and all around the house after Sandra and Mike left early on Sunday morning. By then Marley had already had two baths. At the corner of the French Road, there's some mud along the Mitchell River. It's not just ordinary mud, though; it's mud with something dead in it. We're thinking of getting one of those car deodorizers and hanging it on his collar.

On Tuesday he had a ride with Woody and Marian to the Post Office in downtown Cardigan.

Mike and Sandra made excellent time, 10:15, on their return trip. The weather was good and the border crossing quick. It was a good chance for them to talk. When Sandra returned home, she said, "Karl, I'm a metric." After some fiddling with the buttons on the dashboard of her car, we figured out how to change the odometer, thermometer, and other ometers back to English measurements. It was fun to have different adventures and even better to be back home together.

I talked with quite a few people during my college's reunion weekend and hear a lot of anxiety. A lot of very successful people have graduated from there, successful in business, law, medicine, academia, and the performing arts, so it's easy to fall in the trap of comparing performance. Still, it was gratifying to look around the parking lot and see Hondas, Subarus, and Tauruses (Tauri?), to see that the Hyundais outnumbered the Porsches. These were people returning because they'd had a good time in college and wanted to reconnect with friends, faculty, and the campus.

On the ride there, I passed through different words, from Support Our Troops yellow magnetic ribbons on the backs of cars and trucks to Free Tibet bumper stickers. I passed signs that said "I buy houses" in hand-lettering. "No Title 5. No problem." Another place offered used cars and/or sanitation services.

Mount Wachusett still has a few patches of snow and wild turkeys slow traffic on the mountain road.

We bought a new new phone recently. Inside the instruction booklet was a slip of paper, "Need Help? Call Toll Free. 1(800)nnn-nnnn."