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No major mega-drives today, no major mega-traffic either. This is good. As far as the drive yesterday, I drove from the hotel to Pendleton, Mom drove to Ontario, I drove to Jerome, Mom drove to a rest area near Massacre Rocks, and I drove the rest of the way home. That drive is much easier when you've got someone to trade off with. It was about 17:00 local time when we got to Boise, and I was half-expecting my mom to want to stop, but she didn't. She explained that she wanted to be able to sleep in one day before going back to work on Tuesday. For her, sleeping in means 10:00 am or 11:00 am. For me, sleeping in means 7:00 am or 8:00 am. *shrugs*

First thing I did after getting home last night was to check on Dovienya and the kittens. They seemed to be okay. The kittens were a bit fussy about being handled, after a week of being left with their mom, but they're slowly adjusting. Incidentally, I seem to have miscounted males and females. There are 3 females and 2 males. Either I counted the black male twice several times, or one of the black females was a bit swollen in, er... you figure it out. Anyway, the black male I'm calling Howler. He's really noisy. The grey female has a somewhat exotic look to her. I'm thinking something like Malta or Shanghai would be a good name for her. And, no, I don't plan to keep them all, but they might as well have names as long as they're in my care.

I took Dovi and the kittens outside while I hoed the garden this morning. Mostly of elm trees. *sighs* The corn has nearly all come up. Two of the pumpkins are up (planted right in among the corn as I once heard the pilgrims did). Two is plenty. The peas mostly need to be replanted, and still may not do well unless it cools down significantly. Peas don't like hot hot weather. Some of the nasturtium are up, enough that I'm not going to replant. The herbs...mostly don't seem to have done anything. I think I'll try again in a semi-box with fresh soil. The peppers all survived, as did the tomato and the zucchini.

I brought the kitties back inside after I was done with the hoeing and ate breakfast, then went to check on Dovi and she was meowing plaintively, asking for something. I wasn't sure what, but I tried opening the back door and following her out. That wasn't quite it. I took a guess and picked up the kittens in their box and brought it back out. That stopped the meowing/begging. Apparently she liked it out there. I'll leave them out as long as the shade holds. It's still going to be too hot in the afternoon. I'll probably start working on a solution for that soon. It's got to be thick enough to absorb the sun without transferring the heat into the sheltered part.

And...Don. There was no taiji class the Saturday before I left. I got a call from Don's wife Jill around 6:15 am, explaining that he had come down with a case of the flu and wasn't feeling well. Mid-week, I got an e-mail from Mark indicating that there probably wouldn't be class on the following Saturday either, as Don was now in the hospital and showed every indication of staying there for quite a while. Apparently they've taken him off of all non-essential medications, including his arthritis medicine, have him doped up on morphine, and are running every test they can think of to figure out what's going on. They do know he has bacterial pneumonia, but apparently that's not the only problem. They're apparently testing him for lung cancer, most likely because they know he's a smoker. He has consistently annoyed his doctor by having the lung capacity of an athlete despite smoking for most of his life. He credits this to practice of the breathing exercises. So... And so it goes.