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These new bales rested at the top of Williston Point Road Wednesday night. Well, they rest there still, I suppose. Bales need much rest, evidently.

I should end this waggle here, but I can't.

About a mile from this point, Williston begins its descent to K-18. The mighty Metro coasted through the road's shaded chicanes at the speed it is accustomed to on this road (about 15 mph over the limit), because the road is just too wonderfully twisted to drive only 35 mph on, and this downhill road is the only place that the three-banger Metro feels even remotely mighty.

At the bottom of the hill, in the flats a half mile before the intersection with K-18, two wild turkeys grazed at the roadside edge of an uncut meadow on the right. When I pulled onto the gravel shoulder to stop the car and take a picture, the tires threw too much gravel and the turkeys fled. But seventy-five yards away, at the edge of the meadow just outside the tree line, a doe with a coat the same twilit hue as the bales checked my scent as I got out of the car, and wary of either me or of the flustered turkeys, stepped daintily into the woods and disappeared.

I don't know why I bothered to write any of that, but as Bastion says in his July 20th entry at My Diary, there is "an irresistible urge to say something even if I am the only reader." I know that feeling, so for now I'll go with that explanation for the extended waggles I've been writing lately. These beginnings of late resemble the act of testing a pen point with a John Hancock-like signature instead of with a scribble.

Recapping other news...

University of Maine it is? No, not this week. For reasons that remain very unclear to me, Josh will be enrolling at K-State five blocks away next month. I'm pleased that he'll be around, but we'll move him into a dorm or apartment anyway and let him experience the illusion of self-sufficiency that many other students enjoy. Let him learn to tote his own laundry home and forage for his own food on Sundays when the university dining facilities close. It's a start.

Josh's decision might have resulted from the late-breaking news that he would be unable to take some of the courses he wished to at Maine because (among other things) the school lost the Russian teacher. Being a small school (at about five thousand students, it is one-fourth the size of KSU), Maine was unable to replace the teacher, and so withdrew the Russian class offerings.

But his decision might have something to do with the chronic girlfriend, too. Who knows.

Earlier this month, Owen completed nearly all the requirements for his open-water scuba certification. Early in August, he'll complete the remaining portions of the test.

In Cozumel.

Diving. In Cozumel. For a week.

"How cool is that!" he says. His (maternal) uncle, who is also the dive instructor, has offered to take him to Cozumel to finish the certification. The magnanimity of this gift from Rad should cover him for a lifetime of Christmases and high school graduation.

In the meantime, we are scrambling to assemble the documents Rad will need to get Owney out of the country, and (more importantly) back in.

While Owen has nearly finished his scuba lessons, Taylor has completed his swimming lessons. Starting the season with only two of ten levels to master, he set a goal for himself to finish the lessons this year. Thursday, after swimming three hundred yards of crawl, one hundred yards of backstroke, and one hundred yards of individual medley, he finished. An era of sixteen years -- from the first lesson of the first child to the last lesson of the last -- has ended. There will be no more swimming lessons for any of my progeny. A moment of silence, please, while I age.

And me? I've been grading and degrading student work, preparing to finish another eight-week summer cycle by the end of the month.

Oh, and I've been stalked. And the stalker has found me.

Reading: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets