Subject: Weekend Update: October 17-18
Date:    Mon 10/19/98  7:53am

If you were in New England over the weekend then you know there won't
be many days as pleasant as Saturday and Sunday.  I was lucky enough
to putter around the house, fixing the spotlights and attaching a bird
feeder to a post for Joy.  She wasn't as lucky, directing a rehearsal
for the Christmas play with grade school children.

Hope and Tom stayed with us overnight on Saturday and joined us for
church and the afternoon repast.  Then they were off to see their
daughter perform as a cat in an operatic play.

Joy and I went on a walk on Sunday, scoping out possible trails to
take off the turkey at Thanksgiving.  We'll see what more we can find
before the hoards gather.

The big news, though, has to do with Miranda, but I'm not permitted to
say much about it.  (Joy told me I shouldn't, so I won't.) What could
I say anyway?  I've never met him!  I suppose in some ways, it doesn't
matter; I trust Miranda.

As I lay on my pillow last night, several disjointed thoughts
connected and flung me back to a moment in time.  Joy and I were young
enough to have only two children at the time and we were headed to New
Jersey to spend time with Mom and Dad Crawford.  The thermostat wasn't
working in my car and it was a frigid night.  (Art Magnuson played a
prank on us that weekend by putting a rotten egg in the air vent, but
the car was too cold for his prank to have effect; frozen eggs don't
smell!)  I didn't know at the time why the car wouldn't warm up.  We
pulled out the sleeping bags that we had brought for the children and
bundled Mandy and Jessie up; their little faces peeked outside of
their hoods that were drawn into a tight circle. That's the moment I
remembered, the four of us, on a cold adventure, as if we might have
been in a horse-drawn sleigh a hundred years ago.  I later got a
bright idea to block off my radiator with cardboard to retain the heat
in the engine, but not before the memory was etched into my mental
scrapbook.

We gain an hour this week.  I wonder what I'll do with mine.

Mark
          ,--,       Mark Metcalfe                    ,--,
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