Subject: Weekend Update: October 18-21, 2002
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 16:45:55 -0400

This was homecoming weekend at North Middlesex High School
and Eastern Nazarene College.  Miranda represented the Metcalfe
ENC alumni in Quincy, heading south on Friday to spend the weekend.
Emily was playing in the marching band for the North Middlesex
Patriot Varsity Football Team on Friday evening at the homecoming
game.  Andrew left early with  friends to be part of the festivities.
Joy and I followed on a little later. 

Joy bought a couple of padded stadium seats at a yard sale for
a couple of bucks a piece and they were a godsend on aluminum
benches because the weather was quite frosty on Friday night. 
I can't imagine my tush on those metal seats, which would
explain why many people were standing.  It was not an exciting
game.  At the end of the third quarter, the score was 35-0 against
the home team.  We decided that we had enough of the rosy cheeks
and frozen feet and left as the fourth quarter started.  Apparently
we missed the best part of the game because the opposing team was
held scoreless for the rest of the game.  The score remained 35-0,
however.

On Saturday, I shut off the water to the outside and hooked up
my leaf blower to a spigot to winterize (blow out) the outside pipes.
As I was putting the hoses away, I discovered an extra canteloupe
that had grown from the garden compost pile. Most everything else
in the garden has finished.  We have even begun our burn pile in
the middle of the corn crib.

Joy, Emily, and Andrew were busy finishing off the wood pile that
was still dumped in our driveway.  By noon, we laid in all the wood
on the deck and stapled a plastic sheet over top of it; a job well
done.  To celebrate our work, Emily drove us to 7-11 for dad to
buy Coke slurpees for everyone.  Yum!

We took the rest of the afternoon off, playing video games in
the barn.  I got lucky last week when a friend of mine gave me
a free Toshiba 40" 16:9 HD-compatible projection TV in near-perfect
condition.  It has a minor picture defect that the maufacturer
could not fix, so they gave my friend a new TV. (On lighter
backgrounds, three 3-inch colored vertical streaks appear on
the screen but for the most part is unobstrusive.)  Tweeter, Etc.
was going to charge him $50 for its removal so I volunteered to
take it off his hands.  I figured that Jess and Dave could use
it when they started their new home in 8 months.  Andrew and I
set it up in the barn with the game system to check it out.
All of a suddden, Andrew felt generosity welling up in his heart
because he wanted to donate the spare TV he has up in his room
to Jess and Dave (so that he could keep a 40" game set).  I
admit also that I wouldn't mind holding the TV for them until
they get married but I suspect that they will want to use it
at college.

On Saturday evening, Dave and Paula Bickom were going someplace
important enough to come out to Pepperell and retrieve Emily to
babysit.  And yes, she is woirth the trip.  The four of us were
able to share a pizza before she left.  Later, we invited Mark
and Joyce Hamlin over for some ice cream and watched Monsters, Inc.
with them.

Hope and Tom arrived on Sunday afternoon for a visit and were not
surprised to find us playing Dr. Mario; after all, it was a buy week
for the New England Patriots.  We went for a walk along a wilderness
trail, while the sun was up and bright, and then to the Pepperell
Cemetery where I took a bunch of fall foliage pictures.  Cemeteries
are excellent photo opportunities for foliage because the trees there
are ancient, huge, and often lone-standing.  I do pause, however, to
view a number of the stones.  (I stopped at Jack Cove's grave on
Sunday morning before church!)  Back at the house, we stoked
the fire and settled in for a cozy evening.

Today, Lazarus was taken away to his final resting place.  Jessica
called the Salvation Army to donate the vehicle.  It was sad for
Jessica to say goodbye to her first, quirky car but it gave us
very good service for several years.  I choose to remember the
good times, like using a belt sander with heavy grit to scrape the
paint off the roof and spray painting it with rust proofer. The
Salvation Army may yet give Lazarus another life, but not in our
family.

Mark