A BRIEF UPDATE

It has been a busy time for me these past few weeks. We made our annual pilgrimage to Maine which takes us about two weeks and we no sooner got home then we hit the road to drive 340 miles for my uncles' birthday. He lives near the old family homestead and we were invited and it was the first larger family reunion since the funeral of my grandmother several years ago.

All five of the greatest generation were there to help celebrate their brothers' birthday and betweem they had mustered 11 of the second generation (a number couldn't make it). They brought their third generation along in some number and it was a great party for two days and a nice trip. Nary a firework of any kind was seen which may have something to do with how many of those present were MD's and mothers. Still, it was a wonderful celebration for one uncle born on the 3rd and the other on the 4th of July.

The cousins traveled in from Newfoundland, Vancouver, Honduras, Argentina and various states. I'm very glad we had the time to go. It's rather difficult to get them together and just about impossible to bump into them, not that we ever did. There was a 100th birthday we celebrated with a women who knew at a glance the name of every single one of the more than 100 people there who were descended from her or married to one of her descendants. It was a wonderful chance to get all together at last but over the years prior to that we would bump into each other on visits to her house at Christmas or Thanksgiving or summer vacations.

The trip there was marked by the heaviest traffic enforcement I have ever seen and it was going on in both states we drove through. There were literally scores of police cars with motorists pulled over for speeding and 3 or 4 lurking about waiting like sharks for the prey to come within range. As a side note, I couldn't believe drivers would fail to note the enormous number of police vehicles enforcing the 70mph speed limit or 55 in work zones and try to keep it reasonable. I'm pretty sure the cops were only pulling over the stupid ones running more than 5mph over the limit. As a second side note, on our return journey today we saw a grand total of 4 police vehicles and only one was making somebody pay. The rest were in cover looking for idiots. It renewed my faith in the Penna Turnpike.

I stopped taking my computer along on road trips, the previous one being a visit to see my daughter on the west coast when we traveled by train and drove back. That was in May and one of the unexpected side effects was that I pretty much maxed out my iphone, ipad and ipod memories and didn't realize it. It's hard to compose a post (for me) on anything without a keyboard. I bought a blue tooth one years ago but keep forgetting to pack it.

Tonight we had no sooner gotten home than my wife's brother called and told us he was in town and asked us to dinner and so off we went.

I plan to resume my responsible thoughtful posts any minute now.... after I mow the yard, weedwack, find out what's going on in my name at the library and mail my daughter's birthday presents.