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[furtech]

I've been away from the computer for the last week: I made a trip up north to visit my dad and help out a little with the family business. Since I was going to be up there for about a week, I drove up (with a disgruntled husky in the back seat). Breakfast on the drive up was at Harris Ranch--they have the *best* corned beef and hash!

I had hoped to spend time visiting some of the BArea folk, but I was pretty busy from the moment I got there. I enjoyed spending some quality time with dad: it's been a while since I've been up for more than a day: we watched some baseball, talked a lot and tried to sort out some family politics. Frieda, at least, was reasonably happy: at least this was a place she was quite familiar with (and she had little competition for attention). I thought about staying an extra day or so to socialize, but between the wet weather and the heater at the house, I managed to get a faux-cold-- so I wanted to rush back to avoid having to drive down when/if it got worse.

The drive back was mostly uneventful: I left 3 hours late because I was trying to get the web-browsing on my cell phone to work (literally spent all that time with customer service/tech support). Fortunately, traffic was light (and I got all the secret, traffic-bypassing tricks from my sister). Stopped at Casa de Fruta to grab a huge bag of dried apricots to munch on (slight miscalculation: absently munching on dried fruit on a five-hour drive can lead to bloat). The return trip could have been called, "The Creaky Husky Tour," as we stopped at nearly every rest stop for a leg-stretching break: she'd start to whine every 1+ hours, so I'd pull in to the nearest public rest stop for a quick walk and potty-break.


Mass-apologies for spotty replies to posts: I finally read through them but most replies I would have posted were made somewhat moot by time. Is it my imagination or is 2005 actually turning out to be worse than 2004?? So many sad posts about life and death and not being where we want to be...