Good evening, My Love,

The only things I can remember about yesterday are a couple of trips around the block with Max, lots of TV, and I went to the bathroom a couple of times. Oh, and I ate lunch. That’s about it. Oh, and Lydia returned safely from her trip out of the country around midnight. I believe I mentioned that she and Jered went to North Carolina to meet an old school friend of his. It was a spontaneous trip, and they had a great time. I think Lydia’s favorite thing about the trip was visiting BB-55, the USS North Carolina. They got to go all over the ship and she took a bunch of photos. She also got me a Mini Lego kit of the ship. The pieces are incredibly tiny and really hard to pick up. I took the pieces out of their packages today so I have to work on it continually to get them all in the proper places so they won’t get lost.

Lydia didn’t get up until noon today due to yesterday being a travel day. Doug came over for a visit while she slept so we had to talk softly to keep from waking her. We had a nice visit anyway, the first one we’ve had in a long time. He doesn’t come down from his mountain very often, so it was great to see him.

I forgot to share with you that when Jennie came over to watch the Ducks the smoke alarm in the hallway by our bedroom was chirping for randomly for a while so I changed the battery. Then it chirped some more then sounded the alarm. Not seeing, or smelling any smoke we agreed that the smoke alarm must be failing so I just took the battery out of it. A little while later Jennie went into the kitchen and discovered that one of the stoves burners was on low and had melted the silicon mat. That had to have been the source of burning the alarm detected. I must have bumped the burner control when I was busy sweeping fir needles up. Those things are everywhere. Arter that little episode, and previous ones we had, I think I might have to get a different stove with controls either on top, or toward the back of the stove. As it is, we have a hazard in the house. A simpler solution would be to not put anything over the burners. Kind of a scary situation, don’t you think?

You’re probably wondering how I could forget to share this with you right after it happened. Me too. We may never know how lucky we are to have a smoke alarm that works even when there’s no smoke even though the source of the alarm’s distress was discovered by the good observational abilities of your daughter.

I promise to be more careful in the kitchen going forward. I suppose I could simply turn off the stove breaker and just use the micro from now on. That would work.

Now I’m stopping. Max is asking for permission to go to bed. It’s 2230 and time to follow Max’s lead. Probably a good idea. I’ll leave you with a fun memory we made in Orlando once upon a time.

I love your smile.

G’nite.

Me.