Subject: Weekend Update: April 11-13, 2003
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 11:17:30 -0400

Art Oakes pastors a church in Worcester, MA.  We worked
together last summer at Junior High Camp as Head Counselors.
I invited him then to come and stay for a respite from his
labors.  It took eight months but he was glad that I
remembered, saying that he and Diane were just talking
about a short getaway; so they accepted an invitation
to the Metcalfe Manor Bed and Breakfast.  We have a motto
stenciled over one of our doors that reads "Happiness is
not perfected until it is shared" and this was one of
our happy weekends.

They arrived in the afternoon and Emily showed them to the
guestroom where they promptly collapsed and took a nap.
When I got home that evening, they were still resting. I
made plans to take them out to dinner while Joy and Miranda
went to the church to attend a baby shower for Tammy (Xayachack)
Higgins.  Andrew hitched a ride with friends to a movie,
and Emily went somewhere to baby-sit.  In the morning, I made
them my "Heart Stopper" breakfast of eggs and bacon, and home
fries made in bacon grease. It's "Mmmm Mmmm, gack choke ahhh, good!"
The Oakes didn't stay long and headed out to shop before
returning home, taking advantage of being free of their boy,
Nathan and Jason. =20

Richard Gonzalez also came over on Saturday to pick up Miranda's
car so that he and his brother Frankie could install an automatic
starter that we bought for Miranda as a Christmas present.  (It
was too cold to install it before now.  I know, it is ironic.)
Carless Miranda borrowed my car to meet some friends in Quincy
for some personal birthday celebration.  Mandy often comes home
after we've gone to bed so it wasn't until the next morning that
we discovered her friends' gift to her was a new hair style of
shoulder-length hair that sort of flips more on one side of the
head.  That doesn't describe well how nice the "do" looks.

Andrew and I assembled a dethatcher to drag behind the lawn mower,
and save Joy from a lot of raking. By mid-afternoon, the skies were
clearing and the sun was warming and drying things out. Joy and I
conscripted the younguns to labor, digging up the yew stumps
and picking up more tree trash for the burn pile.  I am itching
to torch the thing but the necessary set of events have not
come to coincide.  We also dethatched the lawn, running over
and over the brown grass areas.

Wedding plans continue and will quicken in pace now that we are
about two months away.  Andrew and I will soon get fitted for
suits (Tux for Andrew).  Other activities are ongoing.

Lent is drawing to a close as we enter Holy Week.  Joy commented
to me yesterday that Lent has taught her an understanding of
smokers.  One might think that giving up something for six
weeks would create less of a desire for the item of discipline,
but she and I have desired Diet Coke and Coke more in the=20
final weeks than in the first weeks.  Now, she says, she knows
a little bit of what it must be like for people who are bound
to greater addictions, and how the desire to smoke remains
even after weeks and weeks of disciplined abstinence.  We can
better sympathize with weakness.  It has been a good Lenten
season, distracted as it has been with the War in Iraq.

Mark