For those not interested in reading my long but amazingly exhilarating and
insightful report of how Darleen and I spent last weekend, I'll provide a
brief summary: Darleen, Lady, my brother, and I piled into our car, drove
north to my parents' house, spent the night, then Leen and I continued on
to the suburbs of Montreal to visit Wolf. Wolf turned out to be at least as
sweet and wonderful as she is here online; we had a lot of fun; we bought
stuff, visited the Bio-Dome in Montreal, ate a scrumptious (and, for us,
exotic) dinner, took a tour of Wolf's even more exotic refrigerator, caught
Iron Chef (our first viewing) at night followed by Drunken Master II, slept,
and woke up. I cooked breakfast, which was cooked as I like it but probably
not how anyone else likes it. We chatted, set Wolf up with AIM, chatted more,
left reluctantly, and spent the most grueling, nerve-wracking nine hours I've
ever spent on the road driving home. Mid-way, of course, we stopped at my
parents' again to pick up Lady, but we left my brother there -- he came up
to pick up his new car and will drive back himself today. We got home late
at night, had barely enough energy to check our email, then went to bed.

So here are the details that actually make the story interesting. On the drive
up to my parents' house on Friday, I realized I had no idea if we were insured
to drive in Canada. Upon our arrival, I talked about it with my parents, who
have the same insurance company we do, and we figured out that we *are* covered
in Canada but that we lacked the card that serves as proof of insurance
coverage in Canada. (You have to ask them for that specially, I guess.) So
instead of taking our car to Canada, we took my parents' truck. On Saturday
morning, Darleen and I left bright and early -- 6:10am, normally a time I see
more often before I've gone to bed rather than after (and not much at all these
days) -- and headed north. It was exciting and a bit nostalgic for me to be
crossing an international border again. When my father was in the army and
we were stationed overseas, it was a matter of routine to cross international
boundaries and visit other countries, and I sort of miss that. Here in the
U.S., where we only border two countries and are large enough that we can be
out of comfortable driving distance of either, we tend not to realize, beyond
an intellectual level, that there are other countries in the world that are
actual places you can actually visit and that have cultures and mindsets that
are more different from our own that surpass encapsulation in "fun facts." We
know this intellectually. The first thing one notices when crossing into
Canada is the complete change in road signs. They're in French -- well, in
Quebec, they are. The arrows that mark sharp turns are red and white instead
of yellow and black. Stop signs are "Arret" or "Arret / Stop" signs. Yield
signs don't have the word "yield" written in them, and speed limit signs don't
have the words "speed limit" on them. "Bridge freezes before road" is a game
of pictionary: a car slipping on the road, followed by a thermometer with low
mercury, followed by "0'C" (with a little degree symbol instead of an
apostrophe). Everything's measured in kilometers there, so the mile markers
are actually kilometer miles, and the speed limit is in km/h instead of mph.
The first speed limit sign we hit said "100" on it, and there was another
sign beneath it of the same shape that said "60" on it -- so I figured they
posted the speed limit in miles per hour, too, but no -- when we got closer,
the "60" had "minimum" written beneath it, and the "100" had "maximum" written
above it. The exit numbers aren't sequential: the exit number corresponds with
the kilometer marker, so an exit number at marker 20 would be exit 20, and the
next exit might be 35 or something. Although I knew that everything was
metric up there beforehand, one thing did throw me was this: while still in
Vermont, on I-91, we passed a sign that said "Montreal......92" but then,
after crossing the border and travelling a ways, we passed a sign that
said "Montreal......136" -- and I couldn't figure out how we had made negative
progress when I *knew* we were following our directions correctly. "136!?!?"
I said. "Kilometers!" Leen said after a moment. And we laughed.
The traffic lights are crazy, and I wasn't prepared for that, because in
Europe, pretty much every country we went to had the same shape and scheme for
the traffic lights. (The exception being that between when the light changes
from red to green, there's a couple seconds where the red and yellow lights
are both on, which means, I guess, "Get ready to go.") In Quebec, the lights
are arranged horizontally, and if there is a canonical order in which the
individual lights are arranged, I didn't figure it out. The red lights are
always square shaped, the yellow lights are always diamond shaped, and the
green lights are always round. On one set of lights, you can have three to
five or so different lights -- the leftmost might be a green left turn arrow,
and sometimes there are two red lights, presumably for emphasis. The road
lines are a little more thorough. When an on-ramp merges with a highway, the
white dotted line between the rightmost and center lanes becomes a double
white line, solid on the left and dotted on the right -- to prevent people
already on the highway from switching lanes and knocking into the cars
merging. In downtown Montreal, there are places where the leftmost lane is
set off from the others with a double yellow dotted line, something I had to
ask to decipher. That means that the left lane, during daytime weekday hours,
is a lane reserved for busses, and they travel in the *opposite* direction.
Other hours of the day, it can be used by cars travelling in the normal
direction as another highway lane. Why they have this arrangement, I don't
know, but it makes why there is a double yellow dotted line in the
street make sense. Gas at the pumps is priced in Canadian dollars per liter.
I didn't even try to convert this to U.S. dollars per gallon. It was fun
spotting little things like this that are different from what we have in
the U.S.

We arrived in Pointe-Claire, in the southwestern part of Montreal island, at
10:30am. We had no trouble with the directions. Wolf gave me very descriptive
directions and a street map of Pointe-Claire, and I printed out an assortment
of Yahoo maps of the area leading up to it for good measure. They live in a
quite pleasant, quiet suburban neighborhood. We caught Wolf's husband Dave's
parents (did that make sense?) on the way out, then met Wolf and Dave. Looking
back, I realize I wasn't the least bit self-conscious. I was terribly
self-conscious for the first few minutes when meeting Issachar, and
also, though to a lesser extreme, when meeting famous, but meeting Wolf just
seemed quite natural. Maybe it was because we've known each other online for
upwards of eight years now; maybe it was because we were exhausted from the
drive and simply thankful to have arrived; maybe it was because I've done
enough meetings with online people to be more comfortable with it. Probably
all of the above.

The four of us talked briefly before Dave had to run off to his nephew's
birthday party. Leen and I lounged in their amazingly comfortable living
room seating. As I might have predicted, had I thought of it, their home is
beautifully but not overly lavishly decorated. The furniture is all classy
and elegant, and there are some truly interesting plants, including a woven
umbrella tree, that add color and atmosphere. (Our home consists of boxy
furniture, except for the conspicuously scattered elegant items we've received
as presents over the years. And there's not a plant to be found, because we
tend to kill them.) At some point we met Pixel, the self-appointed queen of
the household. Pixel, whose name, as you may know, was the subject of a
Reader Poll question, is a great little eight month old cat, and we had a lot
of fun playing with her over the weekend. (In particular, she liked toying
with a one of those gift wrap bows, partially shredded -- I'd dangle it in
front of her or above her, and she'd paw at it and pounce on it. Darleen
gave her an empty film can later on, and she'd bat that thing all the way
across the room.) At some point during our initial idle chatter, Dave turned
to Wolf and said, "Well, they're not axe murderers." I said he should give
us time. If he was nervous about meeting us, we either calmed him right from
the beginning, or he was good at hiding it. He seems like the kind of guy
that would say, "I'm very nervous," in the most calm and relaxed manner
imaginable.

While Dave was at the birthday party, the three of us talked more, got a tour
of the house, took a walk downtown, and browsed around in a bookstore. Books
written in French and English were mixed up together on the shelves. Before we
left, Wolf gave us a present -- a copy of the British edition of "Harry Potter
and the Philosopher's Stone." (If you'll recall, I posted about recent
diatribe against the baleful practice of changing around words in British
books for consumption by mass American audiences and said that I'd like to
read the "correct" versions of the Harry Potter books when I get to reading
them.) So while we were at the bookstore, I picked up the "correct" editions
of the other Harry Potter books, including the new one that went on sale just
that day. There was a Toys R Us next door -- one of the few stores in the
shopping plaza with an English name. Apparently if your store name is English,
you get harassed by the government for it, so only big rich stores like Toys R
Us stick it out. (Further west, English turns up more and more, and by the
time you hit Vancouver, the bias is nearly as strong against French. The whole
thing is pretty stupid -- what's wrong with being content to be a bilingual
country? Wolf assured me that even the French in Montreal think the bias is
stupid, and only the government actively keeps the tension aflame.) We stepped
into Toys R Us to see if they carried any of the model horses Darleen works
with, but they didn't have any Breyers or Peter Stones, just cheapy, poorly
sculpted toys. The Toys R Us in our area only carries them off and on, so it
wasn't surprising, but it wasn't a total loss -- I picked up some playing cards
while we were there. I collect playing card decks, especially souvenir decks
from specific areas.

Dinner that night was an adventure. If you don't know already, Darleen and I
have extremely simple tastes in food. We like things that take maybe ten
minutes and an optional period in the oven to prepare. We eat things that
involve dumping ingredients into a casserole pan and baking. Spaghetti is
pushing things, because cooking that involves TWO pans. Our idea of exotic
spicing is to put a little honey-barbecue sauce on our cheeseburgers.

So when Wolf gave us a tour of her cupboards and refrigerator, and the only
thing we recognized was a jar of mayonnaise -- when, in fact, the mayonnaise
was one of a minority of items that was labeled with words made up of the 26
letters western civilization knows and loves -- well, if you can figure out
what emotion includes both "enticed" and "scared" at the same time, that's the
one that would describe our anticipation of the impending meal. I don't
remember what most of the jars contained, because many of them were things that
don't even grow in this side of the world. There were two cartons of something
called "Soy Chocolate," and I actually tried that and liked it, because it
tasted like chocolate milk, but Wolf was disappointed with it, because it
only tasted like chocolate milk. So I don't know how that's supposed to taste.

Come to find out, the meal was amazingly wonderfully amazing and wonderful.
Pork ribs cooked in some kind of delicious juice sauce stuff (maybe Wolf can
fill in the details, because I never did catch what was in it), duck, curried
rice (spicy to us, not at all to them), Shanghai cabbage, red peppers. And
salad, which, now that I think about it, I forgot to take some of, and now I'm
really mad, because, dang, that salad looked *awesome*. Shoot. Gah.

The pork and duck were GREAT. Fantastic. The rice took me a bit by surprise
because of how strongly it was flavored, but I did like it very much. Red
peppers I'm not typically fond of anyway, but they were prepared exactly the
way I would have them -- cooked, but not so much they're mushy. The Shanghai
cabbage was cool. It's about five inches long, and looks, but does not taste,
like a broad, thin celery at the base, then gets narrower and ends in a
spinach-like leaf. I ate the leaf part first, and I think I insulted Wolf by
comparing the taste to spinach. Well, the leaf part seemed to taste like it to
me, except that it's not all slimy and floppy like spinach is. I don't really
like spinach, but this was really good. The stalk part of the Shanghai
cabbage I am less able to describe. It has the texture (but not taste) of
celery, except not so hard and brittle and not stringy at all and a bit more
watery inside. So, basically not much like celery. The taste is even harder
to describe, but it's a pretty pleasant green vegetable kind of thing. Uh.
Anyway.

Oddly enough, we caught an episode of Iron Chef on the Food Network shortly
after the meal was cleaned up, and the secret ingredient was none other than
Shanghai cabbage. It was neat to see what could be done with it immediately
after having tasted it for the first time. Neither Leen nor I had ever seen
that show before -- we don't get that channel -- but after reading Issachar's
excited ravings about the show, Wolf decided they had to get that channel to
see it, and they ended up liking the show so much they have several episodes
on tape. She made a point to have us see it, and I have to say, that was one
cool show, and I wish we could see it at home. It's amazing what these people
can prepare at a moment's notice, and the competitive aspect adds an important
extra level of interest. I've never even liked any cooking shows before, but
I'd love to be able to see that one regularly.

When the show got over, it was 11pm, and I was tired, but I wanted to see
Drunken Master II, a movie Wolf has been recommending to me for quite some time
but which I haven't been able to find here in the U.S. It was widescreen
(yeah!), but had subtitles that were very difficult to read. Normally I
prefer subtitles on foreign movies, but when it's a Jackie Chan movie, I like
to have my eyes free to watch the action instead of the words. That turned
out not to be much of a problem with this one, because there isn't much
talking during the action, but, as I said, the subtitles were difficult to read,
and I was getting really tired. Bottom line: I *loved* the movie, but I know
I didn't pick up on everything in it, so I am eager now to see it again when
I'm more awake and can refine my opinion of it. The fight scenes were quite
spectacular. My current favorite Jackie Chan movies are "Who Am I?", "Shanghai
Noon," and "Project A"; I think this one joins their ranks.

After the movie, Leen and I conked out in the sofa bed and slept wonderfully.
I woke up to Pixel gnawing on my toes. She then walked all over Leen, put
her face in Leen's, and that's how Leen woke up. That cat *rules*.

In the morning, after the usual morning rituals, I stepped into the kitchen,
and Wolf was already there, and she was wearing this really cool...uh...thing.
I don't know what it was called. I should have figured her wardrobe would be
exotically cool, too; Leen and I both thought she wore some really beautiful
stuff. We said our good mornings, and she said she needed my help cooking
breakfast. "You need my help?" I said. I was only too willing, but a bit
surprised. She said she didn't know how to cook breakfast stuff. I could
scarcely believe it. I don't think I do. In my determined if
inexperienced opinion, I think she can probably cook anything in the
world and have it come out perfectly, but she said Dave is the one
that usually cooks the breakfast type stuff and usually she just has fruit
anyway. So, ok, if I can cook anything, it's breakfast stuff, so she put some
eggs, bacon, and ham in front of me, and we assembled the necessary pans and
utensils, and I started cutting up some ham for the Canadian bacon and mixing
some eggs, milk, and fresh grated Romano for the scrambled eggs. And started
cooking. Now, the thing about breakfast is, try as I might to do otherwise,
I appear to be only capable of cooking bacon the way I like it -- nice and
crispy. Not hard as a rock crispy, but if you can bend a strip of bacon and
it doesn't snap, I don't really like it. Leen likes it somewhere between
bendy and crispy -- a little of both -- and once in a great while, with great
effort, I am able to cook it that way, but I don't appear to be able to cook
it that way consistently, nor learn how to do it so successive attempts get
easier. (We feel the same about other meats, too, now that I think about it.
When ordering steak or burgers from a restaurant, Leen likes hers medium and
I like mine on the far end of medium well.) So the bacon and the Canadian
bacon both came out cooked to a turn the way I like it, but I suspect it was
too well done for everybody else. They were polite about it. Oh, also, not
thinking, I used a knife to transfer a slice of bacon from the cast iron to
the teflon pan, and I think I gave Wolf a heart attack. She was polite about
that, too. Sorry about that, Wolf -- I think the knife only hit the teflon
once, and it just kind of poked it. Erm. If I ruined it, I'll send you an
official RinkWorks teflon pan in the mail or something. Uh.

So anyway, after I finished thrashing the kitchen and breakfast was over, we
chatted some more, and I installed AIM 4.0 for Wolf. Their ADSL company
appears to block a lot of stuff, including voice communication, apparently
because they're also a phone company, so we couldn't get the voice
communication to work. (Nyperold was on, so we tried talking to him.) But
the rest of AIM seems to work fine. AOL's name registration engine was doing
weird things, though, so she wasn't able to get a username registered.

Then we snapped a few rounds of pictures, and suddenly we had to leave. :-(
It was a very short visit, alas, and it didn't at all feel like enough time for
us to hang out together. We learned a lot about each other, of course,
seeing each other in person, but I left at least as curious to know her
better as a friend as I came.

And then we were on our way home. Words cannot express how angering,
frustrating, frightening, and infuriating it was. It was the worst nine
hours I've ever spent on the road.

When the late Peter Sellers visited America for the first time, to film a
movie, he overheard someone reporting his arrival by saying, "The property
has arrived." Peter Sellers was a very sensitive, fragile man, and being
referred to as "property" both hurt him and angered him enough that he vowed
never to visit America again. If memory serves, he never did. When I first
heard that story, I remember thinking how sad it was that he could be so
affected by insensitivity like that -- we live, after all, in a world where
such insensitivity runs rampant. I get quite angered when I'm slighted, but
usually I forget and/or forgive such incidents fairly quickly, so I couldn't
identify with how it could feel to be affected by a cruel remark so much as
never to want to visit the country of its originator again. On the drive home
from Montreal, I understood a little of how he felt.

It's odd, because the drive up was fairly efficient and uneventful, but on the
way back, still in the spaghetti maze of highways cruising through the city,
this guy changed lanes and cut so close in front of me, that I had to swerve
a bit in the breakdown lane to keep his back end from hitting my front end.
I honked and got steamed, and Leen and I shook our heads and rolled our eyes
and each other, and we continued on. Then, after we were out of the city but
not so far out that there wasn't still a moderate level of traffic, somebody
ELSE did that to me. It's not like there wasn't room to pull ahead and then
change lanes. Don't they teach people up there that you don't change lanes
until you can see both headlights of the car behind in your rear view mirror?
(Actually, I guess they don't. Getting a driver's license in Canada, I was
told, requires that you take a series of tests but NOT that you take a
driver's ed class.) And then, as if that weren't enough, the car immediately
behind that one did the SAME THING. Only he came MUCH closer. The other two
probably wouldn't have hit me if I hadn't swerved out of the way -- there was
probably an inch of clearance or so. This guy most definitely WOULD have hit
me if I hadn't swerved out of his way. So I'm infuriated, but not irreversibly
so, and we're driving along, and I'm glaring at the guy ahead of me, and I
notice him slowing down to around 90 km/h from 120, and I'm irritated all the
more. It's bad enough when people pass you rudely, but worse when they slow
down once they get ahead. So I move to pass. The guy changes lanes. I move
back. He changes lanes again, but we were approaching a third car, and it
looked like he was just passing that. After he passed the third car, he
changed lanes again, so I figured he was going to stay in the slow lane. So
I pass the third car too, then speed up to pass the moron also. He changes
lanes back to mine. So now it's obvious he's being a snot on purpose. We
continue to cruise around. Other cars pass him, so I figure I'd ride their
wake, but that didn't work. We were on an uphill slope, and the vehicle didn't
have much pick-up, so I couldn't get by. He changes lanes, I change again, he
changes again, then *slams* on his brakes. By now I'm livid -- madder than I
ever remember being -- and Darleen is unnerved both by the moron and by me and
my lost temper and shouting of doom. We decided to pull over into the slow
lane and slow down. I dropped to 90 km/h or so, and he didn't want to go that
slow, so he quickly got ahead. I took the next exit, stopped at a Dunkin'
Donuts, bought a half dozen fat pills, and took a moment to relax.

It is at times like this when I think again how fortunate it is that I am not
God. It is good that the God we have is a loving and just God, one that may
get angry but never loses his temper, takes petty revenge, never does
anything he regrets, never forgets his infinite love and compassion
he has for us all, and always acts in a just and righteous manner. Because,
I am humbled to say, were I God, I'd have taken sick delight in fabricating
a shot gun, blowing out his tires, and shooting off key limbs. Well, I *say*
I would. I doubt I *actually* would, but I have no doubt that I would have
nothing but hate for him and eagerly await his untimely demise. And I would
probably regret it after a few skillion years thinking about it. Thank God
that God is God and not me.

Clearly, the guy was mentally unbalanced, sick in the head. It's a sad
realization that we have such scum in the world -- people who are jerks AND
idiots. I pray that God would help me see even the possibility that there is
anything worth salvaging in such people. He does, but all I see is this
repulsive sort of vile, diseased slime one is careful not to touch for fear of
infection. I curse my blind eyes, cold heart, and ignorance that I can't see
beyond that and my haughty spirit that feelings of superiority over another
human being come so naturally. Then again, maybe the schmuck wasn't human
after all.

So we're back on the road, calmer but still stewing, and Leen and I are talking
about the incident and bemoaning how arbitrarily meanspirited people can be.
And ANOTHER guy cuts me off and nearly runs me off the road. He didn't stalk
me like the other guy did, which was a good thing, because I don't even *know*
how the essence of my being did not fracture in rage right then. Neither Leen
nor I have ever seen such obnoxious driving, and we've both been to Boston
and New York City, two of the most famous bad driving capitals of the western
world. I mean, it's not like these cars were just taking foolish risks to
weave in and out of traffic. They were all but deliberately running into me
on an OPEN ROAD.

So as pleasant as our stay was with Wolf, not far out of Montreal, Leen and I
couldn't wait to get the heck out of Canada, and neither one of us ever wants
to go back. (I'll get to Toronto for the Toronto Film Festival one of these
days, but I'll get there from south of the lake, not north.) I can't even
describe the relief I felt when we crossed the border. I mean, I know (hope!)
the stalker jerk was a freak occurrence, and it probably could have happened
here as likely as there, but intellectual knowledge has little power over gut
feeling, and I'm content to resent Canadian drivers and get all patriotic
about the good old USA.

But that isn't even the end of horror of the drive home. We got to my
parents' a bit before six, made sure there was a full tank of gas in the
truck when we left it, picked up Lady, and left by 6:30. We figured we'd get
home a bit after 9. It was not to be. It turned out the entire city of
Concord was closed. Or that's what it seemed like. In Concord, we normally
take exit 15E off I-93 to get on I-393, which heads East to where we live.
When we got to Concord, the traffic was quite heavy, and it was dark and
rainy -- the worst possible combination of driving conditions this side of
snow. We passed one of those electronic signs that said that exit 15E was
closed, and we should take exit 16 if we wanted to get on I-393. So, ok, fine,
good thing we saw it -- we got off at exit 16, following the detour signs,
and wound up on a little desolate road with no further directions. No signs
for I-393. No detour signs showing us the rest of the way. I looked at the
map (Leen was driving) and couldn't figure out how you'd even *get* to I-393
from exit 16. Somehow -- I forget how -- we ended up back on 93 south, back
with the clot of traffic. And people are cutting us off (not like they were
in Canada -- by comparison, it was downright polite) and not letting us into
the flow of traffic, and we want to shoot everybody. So I looked at the map
and figured out how we can get where we're going. I noticed that we could
take exit 13 (or 14, maybe, I forget which), and from there we could pick up
Rt. 3, which cuts right up to I-393 with minimal inconvenience. So we stick
it out in the clogged traffic and dark and rain. The traffic is getting slower
and slower, and we're only going 30 or so, and suddenly, out of nowhere, we
see these guys with traffic controlling stick things waving EVERYBODY off
the exit before the one we wanted (14 or 15W, I forget which). We were in
the left lane, almost didn't even see them -- there were now warning signs,
no traffic cones, nothing. So we spot them just in time before we would have
cruised right by, turned off the exit, and we're in the breakdown lane of
the exit ramp, nudged off the road by stupid pushy jerks who aren't letting
us back into the flow of traffic. (It's a good thing we had calmed down since
leaving Canada, but those extra hours made us exhausted and easily irritated,
too. We wanted to shoot lots of people, particularly whoever thought it was
permissible to shut down an interstate and all but the exits they *force* you
to take.) So somehow we didn't die, and we spot a sign saying we could get to
Rt. 3 somewhere up ahead. So we figure we'll just find Rt. 3 from here. We
got to the bottom of the ramp, and we intersected with a somewhat main road,
and there wasn't a sign in sight for what road it might be or what direction
we might want to go. We crossed over into a fast food joint to regroup, but
there weren't any signs anywhere -- and remember, it's dark and rainy. So we
head in the direction that seems right, and soon we see a big sign saying
what roads go in what direction. Rt. 3 was a right turn I *swear* it said.
So we took the right and ended back up on I-93 and the clot of traffic.

I'm back at the map. Exit 12 didn't go anywhere helpful that I could see.
Exit 11 was quite a ways further on, and after a toll, but it looked like we
could pick up a later piece of Rt. 3 there and do a quick jaunt over to Rt. 28,
which travels northeast through some small towns, finally crossing Rt. 4, which
is what I-393 is after it ends. (Rt. 4 is the "home free" road, which takes
us out of Concord, the last big town before home, and right across the state
into the cluster of towns we know and love, live in and work in.) Predictably,
traffic slowed to a crawl before the toll booth. We were distraught and
tired beyond belief. Finally we made it through, took exit 11, and put our
fate in the unreliable hands of road sign putter uppers. The trip along all
the small roads to and through Rt. 3 and ultimately to Rt. 28 didn't resemble
what the map said it would be, but we missed a turn only once and backtracked
and took it right off. At times we were out in the middle of the boonies on
a road barely large enough to have a line in the middle of it, and it certainly
didn't *look* like we were going anywhere. Then we ended up on Rt. 28, which
winds through some small towns -- the right ones, fortunately. But it seemed
like every intersection, you had to take a turn to stay on Rt. 28. Rt. 28,
left. Rt. 28, right. Rt. 28, left. "This is ridiculous!" Leen said. It was.
But then, by some miracle, we saw "Junction Rt. 4," and I cheered.

Of course, we still had an hour to go, and the relief of finding ourselves back
in familiar territory did little to alleviate the extreme stress and exhaustion
and frustration that had overcome us. Leen and I were fed up with everything
and just wanted to be home. When you just want to get home and curl up in bed
anyway, there's nothing worse than bushwhacking through unfamiliar roads at
night amidst much traffic and rain.

But it's not all so down. This is where the story takes an upward turn,
and it's why I've spelled out the nastiness of our return trip in such detail.
Lady, through most of this, had been sound asleep in her crate in the backseat.
I will be quite honest. Lady, for those of you that don't know, is our six
month old light brown female cocker spaniel. To be perfectly honest, she is
too often a nuisance because she whines and squeals much too often. We've done
everything from ignoring her (as the experts say to do) to scolding her, but
just when we think she's getting better, she gets worse. Often we can't even
leave the room, or she'll whine for us to return. We never give in to her,
because that makes the problem worse. Never. And yet she hasn't learned that
whining doesn't get her anywhere. So while she is admittedly the cutest AND
softest dog in the world, for an inordinate amount of time Lady
is our least favorite member of the animal kingdom. But when she's good...wow.

Finding ourselves back in familiar territory, and hearing that Lady was being
quiet, I decided to pull Lady out and put her on my lap. She was tired enough
to be "not hyper," which is about as lethargic as she gets. She lay in my
lap, and I pet her side. Then she sat up and looked very attentively out the
windows. Then she lay down again. I kept hugging her, because the stress just
kind of dissolved away. She alternated between looking out the windows,
looking at Leen, and finding bare patches of skin on me to lick. When she
lay down, Leen would look over and say, "Awwww." Finally Lady wanted to walk
over on Leen's lap, and Leen said, "Aww, let her -- I'll be careful."
Normally I wouldn't want her to be in the lap of the driver, but we had
turned off on Rt. 9, a quiet backwoods road with no traffic, and I knew Lady
had already done a world of good for my spirits. So Lady walked over on Leen's
lap, and Leen grinned and laughed as Lady rested her head in the crook in
her elbow and licked her hands, and Leen pet her and hugged her. As I said,
when Lady is good, wow. She pulled through when we were at our wit's end, and
all she did was sit quietly, lick, and look cute. I'm a little jealous. I
can't cheer Leen up so fast and dramatically.

So we made it home safely sometime after 10. We were not only alive, but,
thanks to Lady, mostly sane, too. My faith in humanity is lowered yet a little
more, while my faith in the wonderful little crowd we have here on RinkWorks
is raised. Wolf is fantastic. After meeting Issachar and famous, great
experiences both, our delightful weekend with Wolf makes the score three for
three. If only we all lived closer!

Next weekend, we'll be meeting Dave Parker. I'm nervous about this meeting
most of all. We've been friends for so long -- gone to school together,
hung out in the computer clusters together, written stories together, eaten
pizza together -- what if we meet in person and totally hate each other?

Tune in next week for another episode of:

S "Adventures With" am