While our ground thumpers are keeping the moles away, we spotted a gopher yesterday. Shirley and Cooper both investigated but quickly lost interest.

We toured the Magic Hat brewery, sampled the wares and brought some beer home.

We can only get one local paper delivered daily. It contains mostly reprints of AP articles with a few good local columnists, a terrible anonymous speakout section, where people rant, and of course obituaries.

Perhaps it’s a function of my age, but I am becoming my mother.  I read the obituaries. This week had two interesting ones. The first was comical. The widower was referred to as irritating, the cat was annoying and there was a snail,  two extra spouses and a lover mentioned.

In general, I’ve been encouraged by how long people live here and young deaths are less common. Yesterday, there was an obituary for a man in his 40’s. In reading it, I learned that he was predeceased by his wife. In my mind, I thought perhaps he was so distraught by her death he committed suicide.

I was partly right. Today’s paper had an article about the murder – suicide that led to his death. He was predeceased by his wife.

The rusting remains of heavy equipment always surprises me in the woods.  I think this is more of an oxidative process than natural decay.  We’ve seen snow cats, wash machines, cars, trucks in various stages of decay. Acid rain accelerates the rusting and decay process.  Maybe these rusting implements can become a marker for acid rain levels just like the lakes and sea birds.

We snowshoed Hoffman Notch from Loch Mueller in cement like snow.  There were still ice walls and frozen streams, which was lucky since we seemed to cross streams every five minutes or so.  I was really impressed by how long it took us to drive from one end of the trail to the other.  We covered a lot of ground.

I was on the road, by car, snowshoe and skis a lot last week.  I took a trip to Long Island and watched Lost with Cooper, Liz and her family.  I guess I could add sideways time travel to my events last week.

I was surprised to be able to watch TV at the gas pump!!

Well we did it.   We moved to the Adirondacks and we’re dealing with all the fun that comes with a move — where is the…?  After several lovely days anchored in the unnavigable waters of the Sand Hole at Caumsett State Park, we headed east to Setauket and Port Jefferson.  The night before we were to move off the boat, a gale moved in.  I didn’t sleep too well because I kept waking and chanting, “gale go away”.  it didn’t and there we were with the last of our stuff, 6 bags, and the two cat carriers.  The harbor was too rough to get ashore in our beloved port a boat and we had to be rescued by a sea tow launch.  Very embarrassing and a little unsafe.  We knew weather was coming and employed mystical thinking – bad idea.  But we made it ashore.

This could be the view from our front porch…but it’s not

Cats Looking for the boat