Tired of only seeing some relatives at funerals,

we've planned some road trips. The south loop was earlier this year. We just finished the central-east trip. In retrospect, it was probably wise to not include Florida as part of the plan. Of course we dropped the North Carolina leg--I'm not in the finest shape to help out.

Gas mileage through West Virginia wasn't quite nice. Minivans... As we ate our snacks at a rest stop there, a young lady drove up in a car leaking some kind of fluid from the front, who promptly got on the phone. I asked if she was OK--she'd hit a deer, and apparently it went under her car. I'd not thought of that damage vector before. (We didn't see any deer.)

I listened a lot, and learned some things about building airports and dog training for deer hunting and building garden hardware, and about family I'd not been in close contact with for a while--some things joyful and some sad.