Enfield, CT

Having dropped off Mom and home and Rick at the library, I did something I never did when I actually lived here: I drove around town running errands with 70s pop blaring out of the speakers. Okay, we didn't have CD players back then. But we do now, and "Living For The City" and "Love Is Alive" sound just great that way and will get you from CVS to Starbucks with no stress over traffic. (We didn't have either CVS or Starbucks back then either, which is a good incentive to lighten up.)

Our week here follows five very interesting days in the Washington, DC area, during which Rick attended a conference and I fulfilled a longtime wish to spend multiple days hanging around the Smithsonian museums and National Gallery of Art. (More on this later, maybe, after we get back home.) I also fondly recalled my first visit to Washington (February 1974), during which I sent a postcard of the White House to my Latin teacher back home. "Incola Casae Albae bonus non est." I scrawled on the back of the postcard. At least that's how I think I wrote it, but it's been about 27 years since I last studied Latin, and I actually don't remember whether the adjective is supposed to agree with the gender of the noun or the declension suffix. (Incola, or "inhabitant", is a first declension noun, usually feminine, but can be masculine when referring to a male, as was intended above.) So, if my Latin sucks these days, my apologies. Let's just say, though, that the same feelings were stirred up.