Catching up

Enrico started his new job today, after taking a five-day weekend between jobs. He referred to it as having four Saturdays, and one Sunday. Very civilized. I took a three-day weekend myself - it takes discipline to ignore work for three whole days when you're self-employed, with work just sitting there in the extra bedroom, on the same computer where you check for movie times and trail conditions - so we had a lovely combination of fun and house-cleaning. Not that housecleaning is fun, per se, but our stuff was starting to get the better of us and it's satisfying to purge. Enrico also did a dust-and-mold-busting campaign, which always makes me breathe easier - literally.

Tomorrow I head off to Portland for the rest of the week, on the train. I love taking the train to Portland, it's such a civilized way to travel. The dogs will be very pissed at me though, after all this togetherness we've had lately.

I am in contact with various and sundry distant relatives about the family history, which is quite exciting. Several boxes of family papers have been located in the far North, including, allegedly, a journal dating from the 1880s from my great-great-aunt, long sought after by family and academic researchers alike. I'm arranging a trip up to stay with very distant cousins to look over the material before they place it into archives.

I've also connected with a great-grandson of The Famous One, the long-ago uncle with stuff named after him, whose clan may have answers to some of the great family mysteries. This distant cousin turns out to be a well-known radio reporter working overseas - a relative distant not only genealogically but geographically.

Meanwhile, we've started receiving our weekly food deliveries from the local organic farm we subscribed to for the summer. We pick up our bag at the local farmer's market on Wednesdays. It's a lot of greens right now, and radishes, plus we get a half-dozen fresh eggs each week. Last week we got the best strawberries I have ever tasted, ever, and the salad greens had edible flowers mixed in. We should have done this years ago.