Subject: Weekend Update: January 17-19, 2003
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 15:48:38 -0500

The Christmas decorations finally came down this past week.
With the late start to Thanksgiving, and this or that company
coming over, Joy finally found the time only last week.  All
the boxes and bins were packed and piled in the basement,
ready for redeployment next November.

Emily went on a retreat with her friends of the local Pepperell
Christian Fellowship.  Joy and I were going out to dinner, so
Emily drove herself to the church Friday evening.  Convenience
is returning to our home with Emily's driver's license, and each
successful trip puts us a little more at ease.  We ate with
Chris and Nina Chronopoulos at Cassabba's, the new italian
restaurant on DW Hwy.  I had a delicious steak; surprise.
We were headed over to Tim and Linda Young's afterward, but
a sore throat in that domicile kept us at bay.  I called Linda
when we got home and scheduled another date for us all.

At home, I continued our VHS-to-DVD transfer of home movies
with 1986, the year that Emily was born.  On the tape,
we came across 8mm movies of Miranda and Jessica from 1980-1983
- our earliest home movies.  We video taped the projection some
years ago (1986, I suppose).  The Shaws were with us giving
a running commentary in the background.  Boy was I skinny back
then!! (I weighed 150 lbs.)  Emily was a very happy baby. She
even woke up from her naps happy.  Her big sisters carried her
around like a doll.

I was commenting to Joy a short while ago that we haven't
really had a cold snap in New England this winter.  I spoke
too soon.  We awoke on Saturday morning and Andrew had already
left on his paper route.  When the radio said it was 1 degree
(farenheit) in Boston, Joy hopped out of our warm bed, got in
the van to look for Andrew.  If it is 1 in Boston, it is below
zero in Pepperell.  She found him about half done with his route
and half frozen.  Andrew said that Joy was "an angel" when he
got in the car.  Sunday morning was even colder.  The thermometer
on the Pepperell Bank showed -6F degrees; Joy did her angelic
duty once again.

The condenser pump on our barn furnace froze so the furnace
wouldn't turn on.  It was colder in the barn than our thermostat
would register.  The good news is that the barn has no plumbing
to ruin.  The problem is that the wood stove heats the barn so
that the furnace doesn't come on, which means the condenser pump
doesn't operate as often, which, when it gets really cold out,
means it freezes up.  A roaring fire and wooly blankets brings
the barn back to livable temperatures.  Imagine living back in
1860 when the house was built; you had to get up in the middle
of the night to keep the fire going or freeze!

Mom and Dad came to visit on Saturday.  Dad has a two-week
stint in the Marlboro, MA pulpit and used it as an excuse to
come for an overnighter.  I demonstrated the DVD home movies
which are really, really cool.  Dad's earliest 8mm home movies
(dating back to about 1956) were transferred last week when
my eldest brother was born.  Earlier than that, I also
transferred old slides onto DVD and patched in Big Band Swing
music to watch them by.  It is a bitter-sweet experience,
however, because while it refreshes precious memories,
it shows each of us how fast time has passed.

And speaking of time passing, Sunday was our church's 100th
birthday.  An all-day event was planned, and quite a number
of folk got into the spirit of the day by dressing as they
might have in 1903: long black skirts and white lacey blouses
for the women, and dark suits and ties for the men.  I even
moussed my own hair to get more into the part.  The program
was also antiquated for effect, singing old, old songs and
choruses. Later there was a large put-luck dinner and then some
reminiscence from people who had been in the church for
76 of those 100 years, as well as some thoughts from newcomers.
My family is somewhere in between, having attended our church
for 18 years.

When we got home as the sun was setting, Emily was already
back from her retreat and beneath a pile of blankets in the
barn, watching TV.  She'd started a fire in the wood stove
but the room was still cool.  She wasn't home long before
she and her sister Miranda planned a trip to Quincy with
Liz Rand and Melissa Christmas, since all were off on
Martin Luther King Day; a day that Cadence does not
celebrate with time off for workers, but the school
system does).  That left Joy and me and the Boy home alone
again, scavenging the fridge for leftovers and watching the
NFL playoffs.

Mark