Dateline Washington DC

Down here in Simon's town for the weekend. We just saw him a couple of weeks ago but he has grown so much in such a short period of time. More words, more coordination, more memories.

It's also Margaret and Andrew's town. And Jeff and Melodie's. And Joe is in town too. He came up from Brazil this week for work. And we were all supposed to go to a Nationals game this evening. We'll see. I think the remnants of Ian may have a different idea. It seemed like a good idea a week ago.

It was easy to get tickets. Go figure. The Nationals have the second worst record in baseball. And they won the World Series just a couple of years ago. Looks like they finished the fight and then just gave up.

Speaking of Ian, John and Marilyn missed the brunt of the storm. They evacuated but a week earlier to England for a long-planned trip. (Haven't heard yet of their theatre or queen's funeral experiences.). They got back to Daytona just on the tail end of the storm, and the photo is the view from their front door. Luckily, no water inside. And lucky their flight home wasn't affected.

We hosted Annie and Sankar last week. Annie had come out for work on the east coast and Sankar is on his six month sabbatical. We took advantage of their visit to spend a night at the summit of Mt Greylock. Something we always wanted to do. There's an old CCC lodge up there and we enjoyed a talk on boreal forests, dinner, and a comfortable evening with a roaring fire in the large Pomfret-like fireplace. The room next to ours had two bunk beds. Hmm. I wonder who would like to sleep in the bunk beds. I get the top. We had gone for a walk on the mountain as well, hence the photo here. I also gave Sankar a quick tour of Shaker Village, but don't tell anyone it was after hours and we snuck on the grounds. I felt like a teenager again.

Other travel? Jeff went up to Fairport we learned when we sent birthday wishes to Paula.

Medical news from Illinois. Billy had his hip replaced. He's too young for that but you never know. Anyway, we hear the recovery is good and he'll soon be back running the 440 high hurdles.

And another birthday shout out to Paula and tomorrow to Johanna!

Here's a mystery. The critters attacking our garden I call groundhogs. Pop called them woodchucks. Huh? The final photo is from my sketchbook when I attempted a woodchuck. Just a long way to say I'm still accepting sketches of Pops Weekly Letter scenes.

Love from down here.