I love it when I'm fooled by the weather. When it turned colder last night, I was convinced we'd wake up to a world of white - again; but it didn't happen! And then the forecast yesterday had cold weather returning for the weekend after a brief warm up today, Friday. The warm up happened, and today was quite nice, at least in Littleton. Tonight the forecast for the weekend looks much better - rain and warmer, even thunder showers predicted. I like that much better than snow.

Today was the second day in a row Fred and I had been to Littleton, New Hampshire. Yesterday was to take his computer to Staples to see if they could cure it; today was a belated birthday celebration with our friends, Elizabeth and Louise. Today, like yesterday, the sun was nice in Littleton. A little brisk here when we left late in the a.m., but much nicer as time went on and by the time we got back to West Danville, it was quite nice. Fred got some pictures of the dam on Joe's Brook.

Yesterday was a bit stressful. Actually, life around here has been anything but normal for several days. What has happened is that Fred's computer has serious problems. After several days trying to diagnose and fix it using the advice of technicians from far and wide, since some of them were probably in India or at least on the west coast, a last resort seemed to be to try to reinstall something or other using a disk that Fred didn't have, so rather than order it on line and wait for it to be delivered, he decided to try Staples. They have some pretty savvy techies there and sometimes they can help in situations like this.

I had an appointment in St. Johnsbury in the morning, and afterward we went to Littleton with the hard drive. Of course it had to be left there, so we grabbed a bite at McDonald's and got home just in time to pack up Woody (our cat) who had a follow-up appointment with his vet, and I had an appointment with my dentist, so we all headed back to St. Johnsbury. But all the traveling wasn't the most stressful part. That was a.) Fred not having his computer that he spends literally hours at every day, and b.) my having to share my computer that I spend hours on every day. I'm actually very willing to share - it's pretty nice not being computer-bound for hours at a stretch (I even made a big pot of vegetable soup with dumplings for supper last night while Fred was busy on line), but this has made us realize just how much time we do spend at our computers. What with the web site that Fred must keep current and the stuff I'm involved in for the historical society, plus keeping up with our individual e-mail correspondence, we are very often both on our computers at the same time, and pretty much schedule our lives around the work we do on them.

So with one computer out of the picture for a week or so, we should have time to devote to other tasks, like organizing closets, or like today - going to lunch with friends. On the other hand, when I got home this afternoon, the e-mail had piled up . . . so if you contact me and don't get a response right away, now you'll know why.

As you can see from the pictures above, there isn't much foliage left on the trees. Those are bushes in the foreground. The only trees showing much color are the tamaracks and the oaks. We don't have lots of oaks right in this vicinity, but a few miles in any direction you'll see masses of burnished red along the hillsides that are the oaks. And then there's the gold of the tamaracks. We have lots of tamaracks, though, and they are very nice right now. Tomorrow I'll try to get some pictures in between rain showers.

I bumped into an old friend in Littleton today. Jack Byrne. Some of you will remember that Jack had a cottage here at Joe's Pond for several years - now owned by Dana and Joanne Comstock. Jack worked at WTWN (now WSTJ) in St. Johnsbury when I did, and later on was at the Caledonian Record when I was a free lance writer for them. I hadn't seen him in a long time, so it was very nice to
meet him and his wife, Kay, and introduce them to Fred. Jack hasn't changed much - still has an infectious chuckle and a twinkle in his eye.