In which he speaks no more of the dead. At least not much.

[captainsblog]

For those overwhelmed with Flist-spam and don't catch it on the prior entry where I just added it:

A very touching tribute from his co-workers.

My nieces continued their wonderfulness throughout the weekend. Nicole, especially, who shared her own rendition of LeAnn Rimes's "Remember Me," which she'd had professionally recorded as a Christmas present for her Dad.

Once I finished with the needs of family, I turned to the other pressing one- not getting home driving a three-legged stool of a car.  Replacing a tire on a holiday weekend is not as easy as you might think, and ultimately I got a tentative promise from Manny, Moe and Jack of a new tire- but only after a three-hour wait.

No laptop, no books, not bloody much to do in Hicksville (yes, that's really the town, four or five over from where I was staying by the time I found anyone who could do it), but I did grab an early Sunday paper and found one of those stories that restores your faith in the one thing I associate most with growing up down there:

Abject stupidity.

By 4:45 p.m., Carolann Bertocci was panicked.

Her 11-year-old daughter, Lauren, a seventh-grader who usually returns home from Huntington Station by 4:10, had not yet arrived.

It wasn't until after 5 on Thursday that Carolann, 45, who lives in a section of Wantagh that lies in the Levittown school district, found out what had happened to her daughter.

The bus driver had gotten lost, she learned in a phone call from the distict.

Lauren got home at 5:42, but her mother said the situation was pure anguish. "It was horrendous," she said.

I did edit out one identifying detail from that: Lauren is a student at the Long Island School for the Gifted. A bus full of brainiacs who can't tell the driver how to get them home.

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I think I made Manny nervous staring at him like an overweight fixed male cat, so he got the move on and the car was done in half the promised time. Yesterday was church with old friends, visiting of various forms on the way home with older and newer ones, and the best night of sleep I may have had in a year.  Today is a puttering day, with work-type things to resume their usual states tomorrow.

It's good to be home.