When Andy touched up my crew-do Friday, he told me that Josh had been at the shop the day before for a haircut. That's a first for me, I think. We haven't seen him this week, and probably won't see him much this weekend when he heads ninety miles downriver to Lawrence for another sailing competition with KU. Hearing of the eldest kid through a third party when he's been out of touch so long is a new phenomenon to me.

Friday was a day off for me, and although I have slippery stacks of student work to review by Tuesday, I took a day off from grading to take care of some errands and to run the daily kid shuttle. Shuffling O and T to and from their activities � school, sports practices, music lessons, orthodontist � really breaks up the day and wears a parent down. Such days are filled with busy-ness, offering little sense of accomplishment at the end of a single day, but it's a life built by accretion, drips and drabs of daily life until you have an adult. Or a stalagmite.

Attending the assembly at T's school was the high point of my Friday. It gave me a chance to snap a picture of that cheeky kindergartener in today's photo, and a chance to applaud T for winning the school fitness award. Again he holds the school record for pull-ups (easy to do when you weigh like seventeen pounds with a soggy Oreo doublestuff cookie in each hand), but this year as a fourth grader he won the overall fitness award as well. Life and stalagmitehood proceed apace for him.

I needed a break from routine last night, so after the other members of the household had settled into their television programs, I surfed the news of Yugoslavia and visited a few online friends before heading to bed early. Hmm. Online friends. That 'online' distinction is quickly becoming unnecessary, I think. The main difference between folks I know online and those I know in 3-D is that online friends don't ask to borrow books or power tools.

Anyway, I was saying that after visiting briefly online, I headed to bed early to huddle under the covers with Sobin's The Fly-truffler until I fell blissfully asleep about fifty pages later at about 9:30 PM. I've now been awake for about an hour (the time is about 6:30 AM) and I am more eager to see if this little book (about 150 pages) is as good as I thought it was last night than I am to persist here. So, adieu to yieu!

Reading:
Gustaf Sobin, The Fly-truffler

Weathering:
Cold. Three blankets worth of cold.

Watching:
Nothing

Listening:
"Moon River" from the tires of the Metro. It must be time to replace them.

Later today, I'll listen to the KSU-KU football game.