Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 10:30:17 -0400
Subject: Weekend Update: Columbus Day Weekend (October 5-8, 2001)

I first started going to Maine for summer vacation when I was
6-years old. I first started going to the Reed's Cabin in Maine
for every Columbus Day weekend (with perhaps two exceptions) in
1981; Miranda was an infant. You can guess how much the family
was looking forward to the weekend. The Magnusons have been our
companions for many of those years. Tim White has tagged along
in recent years.  Coordinating this year's rendezvous was a challenge.

I got a ride to work on Friday morning. I work only 2 miles
from the Magnuson home.  Joy was to pack the van and meet me
at Cadence at the end of the day and then we would go to the
Magnusons to pick up Ryan and Michael.  Eric and Linda would
follow the next day because they had to attend Jennifer Babbitt's
wedding (Linda's niece).

Come time to pick me up and the van would not start.  (Why do
these things happen with such precision timing?)  Joy called a
local garage to jump start the car.  The battery had seen the
last mile.  I instructed her to come to Cadence and pick me up, while 
Eric helped out by buying me a fresh battery that we swapped out at his
place while we packed the boys into the van.  We were off schedule by
less than an hour.  Meanwhile, Miranda, Jessica, and Andrew Magnuson
were setting out from Eastern Nazarene College.  I thought I might meet
them on the road or at an agreed-upon food stop, but leaf-peeper traffic
through Boston and to Maine put them farther behind us than we thought.
Nevertheless, the first two carloads arrived safely Friday night for the
beginning of our treasured long weekend during the peak foliage of
the Maine woods.

On Saturday, the weather was changable (read: no canoeing that day)
so I took Joy, Miranda, and Jessica for a ride through the Maine
countryside. The sky turned blue by the time we'd gone too far and
the brightness of the autumn leaves brightened our spirits as well.
On the way back to the cabin, I pulled into a breeder's store for
Maine Coon Cats that we visited last year, because Joy has been
thinking about getting a companion around the house.  They oohed and
ahhhed over these rascals with their large paws (Maine Coon cats have
extra digits on their paws) but we left after a while because we had
ice cream that we had to get back to the cabin before too much longer.

On Sunday, some of us attended the Sebago church, and I was asked
to sing.  I came prepared because Dr. Reed asked me to do so.  I sang
"My Heavenly Father Watches Me" after telling the congregation that my
grandfather was a song evangelist many years ago and other words of
introduction.  It is an interesting experience to stand before total
strangers and yet feel comfortably at home.

There was a window of calm weather early Sunday into the afternoon
so the kids took their annual canoe trip to Razzleflabbin Island (named
by the kids themselves; it is actually Squirrel Island).  The adults went
for a walk around the loop (about 4 miles! with hills!).  As the kids
tell it, they intended to play a game of Hag (a combination of Hide and
Go Seek and Tag) on the Island, when some of the litter thought to steal
both canoes and paddle around the island.  The canoes were recovered and
were  stolen by the others in turn to a nearby smaller island, and 
leaving Ryan Magnuson and Tim White stranded on the island.  Undeterred
and unfettered from any common sense, these two dumped a small platform
into the water, which miraculously floated even with them on it, and
were paddling (with their hands, I believe) for the nearby island and
the canoes.  Fortunately, no adults were present because we could never
allow such dangerous lapses in judgment.  We arrived at the beach
as the wind began to blow and dark clouds began to pass over.  We could
only watch as two canoes strained to cross the distance from island to
shore (one canoe Captained by more experienced paddlers than the other).
We had the same number of kids come back as went out, and they thought
nothing about their potential peril as they delighted in recounting
this year's adventure.

On Monday, after breakfast, Joy and I and three of our four children,
went back to the breeder's store.  We had thought about buying one of
the cats since Saturday and decided that if the cat of choice was
comfortable with us, then we'd bring her home.  Who'd have thunk it
that *I* would ever own a cat, but the only way around this is to
rationalize that the cat we packed into a box with holes is Joy's cat,
not mine.  But this is a handsome animal.  (Apologies to those with cat
allergies; consider this email as a warning!)

Bonnie Blue (Joy wants to call her Belle) is an adolescent female
Maine Coon Cat, about two years old.  She was going to be bred but 
didn't reach the size that the breeder wanted.  So Belle was spayed
and put up for adoption at one-quarter the price of the kittens in the
window.  The cat is a solid gray (or gray-blue) with white paws and
bib.  She is 4-wheel drive (4WD) indicating that she has extra digits
on both the front and rear paws.  At two-years old, she still has some
growing to do.

Why did I do it?  Admittedly, I was the holdout on any pet other
than the Cocatiel.  I told Joy that the cat would be like the pool
to me; I would enjoy it, but I wouldn't have to take care of it.
And I know that Joy would enjoy the companionship of a pet when I
am away during the day and on business trips.  Joy's happiness is
my primary motivation for buying this feline.  I asked her to reassure
me that I'd still be Number 1 on her affection list.  (I've seen how
some pets can usurp a spouse at times!)  She assured me that I would
always be her Number 1.  That's good enough for me!

Mark
-- 
+---_-----------+ Mark Metcalfe, metcalfe@cadence.com
| c a d e n c e | Cadence Design Systems, Inc.    Phone: (978) 446-6451
+---------------+ PCB Systems Division, Technical Communications Manager