Elsie Ray

It's hot, but it's supposed to break tonight, and be cool for a couple of days anyway.  We love air conditioning.

And so do a lot of people, including Grandma.  Whom I saw a couple of times last week, on trips up and back from Pittsfield.  She complained of lack of energy, and I couldn't even persuade her to go to Dairy Queen.  Didn't stop me though, as I enjoyed a Blizzard, Reese's Pieces variety.  Life is pretty good.  What's your favorite blizzard?  I saw it's the 25th anniversary of that delight, and I only found out about it in the last couple of years.  Got some catching up to do.

First, though, I have to work out before I earn one of those calorie boosters.  Last week it was finishing up the work on the master bedroom walls including insulating and the dirty work of tearing down the ceilings.  Fell on top of me.  John came over and helped move radiators and an outdoor faucet, and Marilyn gave her interior design sense to the situating of closets.  There are lots of mysteries in tearing down walls.  This week's had to do with seeing if the wall we want to remove between two small bedrooms is a load-bearing wall.  Underneath the ceilings are some very old, large wooden beams.

On the trip north, Peter came over for lunch with Grandma, having had his court appearance for the day cancelled.  He said he and Janet had gone to reunions and danced the night away!

Mary finishes school this week, and after a short visit with Peter and Janet for their annual ( we hope) crab break, we are off to points north and west for the summer.

Joe was in San Francisco last week for a short vacation.  He's still waiting to hear from his future employers (USAID) and has some imminent decisions to make, but that all depends on hearing from USAID.  He is a little frustrated .

Margaret's big news had to do with her car.  She was able to convince a judge to drop the fines for tickets she got for not registering her car, but had yet another setback in the actual registration process.  She needed my signature.  So on Saturday, we met at the DMV in DC and finally got the license plates.  Quite an ordeal, lasting over a year.

Annie is planning her hiking trip and is looking to take an on-line English teaching course to get ready for her move to China.

But the really big news belongs to Maura Boyle Smith, Dan's daughter, who had a baby this week, and is now home with her daughter, Elsie Ray.  Congratulations!

Love from down here.