Back into the routine

Getting back home does require a lot of work. John went to the Rowing Center - something that always makes him happy. I went to Wal-Mart - something that I do under duress. Oh, well..... By suppertime, I had finished the four loads of wash. We went to our usual Thursday lunch, with the crazy bunch of artists and political people. We got our badly-needed haircuts. And we picked up and went through the mail. Now, I'm sort of listening to the way-too-early Democratic Candidate Debate.

I hope everybody watched the Bill Moyers Special last night on PBS. We have surely missed him since he left NOW a couple of years ago. I'm delighted that he is starting a new weekly show - Bill Moyers' Journal. We get two PBS stations - it's on Friday nights on one, and Sunday afternoons on the other.

We've gotten rain off and on today. So we really made a good decision to come on home in the sunshine yesterday.

Does anybody play games on road trips any more? Adults, that is. We got started with one on our long, boring, interstate trips to the beach. We watch for the combinations of names of towns on the exit signs, using them to name the characters in a florid/purple prose/Southern/bodice-ripper novel. And we invent a persona to go with the name. Some examples from East Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi yesterday (these are real road signs):

Thurber Mingus: the villain of our piece - what a despicable rotter he is!

Ada Taylor: the heroine, a school teacher, a town favorite

Choudrant Silbey: the parish priest, lovingly nicknamed "Papa Chou"

Tallulah Vidlia: the town slut, always suspected of running a house of ill repute

Bovina Jackson: the dear old "mammy" (remember, this is the South); nobody could raise a child better, or make better biscuits and fried chicken

Flora Edwards: the church secretary

Morton Puckett: the fly-by-night preacher who seduced dear Flora

Chunky Meridian: the town bully, haunted forever by his grade-school nickname

Share some with us that you come up with as you travel.

Today picture is some of the amazing stone construction from the Lowrey Pueblo, part of the Hovenweep National Monument in CO.