I know Gerhard liked Susan Sarandon. He also loved Bull Durham, a movie I loathed. He also revered that Married With Children episode where Santa Claus died sky-diving into a mall. Gerhard was a mystery to us all.---Pagan

The three-hour difference meant we are working with 6 AM minds in the middle of the morning. Hence, I saw these glasses of stuff and thought they were orange juice. Yummmm.... ick. It's waffle batter for the machine. Well, drink a waffle before breakfast, and your day can only go uphill.

I checked with the desk to be sure the Internet calls were actually local calls. Then I couldn't get it to work. It turns out you have to dial the area code as well as the number. OK. Now it works beautifully! I had 44 email messages, of which only 5 were of any interest.

So, off to see Rich's mother!

She tells us "starosh nieradosh" (Old age is no fun). Her hip has been bothering her.

We walked over to Robin Hill Park nearby, where they were having a Harvest Fair. The last time we were here they were having a Victorian Christmas fair. We entered all the raffles. They call the kind of raffle where you buy a lot of tickets and then put them in whatever bowl you want them in, a "Chinese auction." I've never heard the term before.

There's a diaper-changing apron called "daddy's lube and oil kit." Someone had painted signs that said "this pad was clean yesterday, sorry you missed it." (A frog, of course.) Also, "you may visit our dust but please don't write in it." I liked the little cloth "booboo bunnies" which are to hold the ice cubes if you fall down and go boom. There were a lot of homemade American Girl doll clothes, and I was interested in the Catholic school uniform. It looks like our school's! There was a diaper wreath, too, to greet a newborn. I did pick up one little thing sort of for Alex.

Back at the house, I enjoyed some bird watching. They have a woods in back of the house. Today I saw robins, blue jays, (*real* blue jays, not the scrub jays we have in Sacramento) sparrows, one house finch, and chickadees. Next door there's a huge grapevine, with grapes. I told the wine-drinking brother-in-law that he should stomp his own.

He grilled the most delicious steaks. Yum. Then the bro-in-law who lives in the Rochester area had to leave. We spent a lot of time catching up on family gossip and reading the paper. Bil Keane had his 80th bday yesterday. Pittsburgh is decorating dinos! We MUST come back next year! See how they spell sponsor! One of them is up, though, so we may go see it tomorrow.

Pennsylvania needs to fine tune its Amber Alert. The Forsyte Saga was 33 years ago -- 26 hours in black and white. I hadn't realized that... perhaps because all our TV was B&W the first year or two we were in England. It inspired Masterpiece Theater. Again, I'd thought it WAS an MT presentation.

ObGoe: a "shall issue" law

Hollyweird.