The Kissing Bridge

I mentioned that work will be taking me on some road trips in future. On Thursday I was in Carleton County, one of the prettiest areas of the province. I've written about this region before. I was in Woodstock (very near the Maine border), then took a little side-trip to Hartland, home of the World's Longest Covered Bridge.

They're doing work on the bridge now (preservation and repair work on the interior) which means that there was a flag woman at each end. However, to the best of my recollection, this bridge always operates on one-way traffic at a time; you drive up, peek in, and if there's something coming the other way, you wait until they come through before starting in. Or maybe the locals pass each other inside, I dunno.

The repairs also meant that as I drove through the bridge, there were contractors busily working on either side of my car, making it feel a bit like a drive through a very old factory.

Some of you may already know that these bridges were also called "kissing bridges" because they afforded a rare chance for privacy as a couple passed through in their horse and carriage.

It's really long! (390 metres [1,282 feet]!)

I continued on for meetings in Florenceville which, if not the prettiest little town in New Brunswick, is on the top ten.

I didn't have much time to stop for photos but did want to share a couple of the Saint John River, which bisects Florenceville, as it looks from Main Street. The river is narrow, calm and idyllic here, as if it's in no hurry to leave the little town behind and continue its headlong rush to Saint John and the Bay of Fundy.

Next week? I'm headed off to my old nemesis, Moncton. Hopefully no snowstorms, slippery streets and -30 temperatures this time!

ronnie

Blogging Halifax

Last week marked my one-year appointment at the Hearing and Speech Center, and I thought I'd bring you along for a fast overnight trip to the city from our home base in Fredericton.



Yvette is a great car, and we love her. But she's 17. And it's a long drive for an old gal. So renting something more comfortable is a must. And renting something more fun is a big plus. Enter the PT Cruiser.


The drive mostly looks like a whole lot of this...


...Except for the construction.



There are a handful of places where a rest-stop break is not only necessary, but absolutely mandatory. So it is with the town of Oxford, NS, the self-proclaimed "Blueberry Capital of Canada", and its gas station/Subway/Tim Horton's/Giant Blueberry combo rest stop. What more could the weary traveler possibly want?


Then it's back on the road - and did I mention the construction?



This is Mastodon Ridge, near Stewiacke, NS, and that is the world's last know living mastodon , right there. Okay, actually it's a gigantic (life-sized, in fact) fiberglas mastadon designed to lure tourists into the cheesy fast-food joints and gift shops that have been built on the ridge to capitalize on the fact that a nicely-preserved mastodon skeleton was unearthed there in 1991. Well, not actually there. Nearby. In a gypsum mine in Milford. So it is, in fact, a testament to the small-town willingness and ability to capitalize on anything at all that makes them unique in order to keep the local economy chugging along. Kind of noble, really.

But theoretically, with DNA and cloning, we can look forward to the day when mastodon once again run wild between Truro and Stewiacke, pausing only to play miniature golf and eat at Dairy Queen on the way.



Finally, post-blueberry, post-mastodon, and even finally post-construction, we're approaching the city. We always enter via the Dartmouth bridge which takes us directly downtown while avoiding most of the traffic. Of course, technically it does involve driving through Dartmouth, which is to Halifax as New Jersey is to New York. No mind; perverse as ever, Husband and I have grown quite fond of Dartmouth with its notoriously rough edges. I kid because I love.


The MacDonald Bridge, which arcs over Halifax Harbour to connect Dartmouth with the downtown of Halifax proper.



This is the view from the bridge. It's quite interesting, really - naval vessels, pleasure craft, often gigantic cruise ships. Of course, given the success of this shot you'll have to take my word for it.



We usually get in town just exactly in time to rush uptown to Spring Garden Road and make it to my appointment. There is a point to these trips, after all...


...a cochlear implant tune-up. My scores in the booth this time (They put on a CD of someone saying sentences - they say a sentence, I repeat it ) were 100% without interference and 94% with (background noise simulating street noise, while they gradually turn down the speaker's volume). The error that caused the 94% was when I misinterpreted "The dog growled at the people" as "The dog wowed the people". Hey, he could've.

I also had a final session with a speech pathologist who consulted on my case so that she could "discharge" me and close my file, and I scored 100% with her too. The clinic has also asked me to get in touch with another person who is a candidate for the implant, to talk to her about my experiences; and they want me to participate in a study with a student who'll be traveling to New Brunswick to do research with NB implant recipients.



With the formalities out of the way, we had a little while to enjoy our home away from home. The route to the hotel took us past the Citadel.


The suites at our favourite hotel are quite comfy although my photography doesn't do them justice... there's a living room, a kitchenette with a fridge and micro...


...a bedroom and a big bath, and so we're comfy as two bugs in a rug. No kitties though. You'd think such a nice place would have overnight kitties but you just try going down there inquiring about where you could find some overnight pussies. The concierge gives you the dirtiest looks.


This time the room had a flag right outside the window. How patriotic! Apparently they make quite a lot of noise all night. According to Husband. :)


Where was I? Oh yeah - now that we'd checked in, it was time to hit as many of our favourite spots as we could in our Halifax overnight. There's Reflections Cabaret, the venerable old "alternative" club (yes, that is "Easter Drag Show" third down on the "coming attractions" sign). Maybe we'll get back there later tonight but for now there's shopping to be done, and we're only in town overnight!


Venus Envy is a very nice book and... novelty store for grown-ups in the heart of downtown Halifax.


I was amused to note that with their limited shelf space they managed to carry Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks" collection.


This is Freak Lunchbox, a simply outstanding candy and notions store... they're hard to categorize but sell what can best be described as "a bunch of neat shit" plus all sorts of candy. I swear you'll find candy and candy bars in here from your childhood that you didn't even think they made anymore, and that's because they only make them in Atlanta, GA, and ship them to Atlanta and Savannah, and Freak Lunchbox will find them and get them in.

Yes, the painting on the window does say "Lucy Liu spent $2.36 here". Halifax is a significant presence in the "Hollywood North" scene, and spotting celebrities is a bit of a pastime here.

"Blitz" sells music and skater clothes, and I couldn't be bothered to go inside. But I love it unreservedly for the mural outside which features a portrait of Mike Smith as his character (my favourite) Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys.

All funned out the next morning, there's nothing to do the next day but head over the bridge back to Dartmouth and head for home.



This is the windmill at the Petro-Can station just on the Nova Scotia side of the border. It was spinning like a right son-of-a-bitch this day. So I excitedly snapped a pic to share with you. Neglecting to take into account that you wouldn't be able to see that.

This is the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border, snapped on our way back home. Note the three proud, bright Nova Scotia flags standing proudly in the stiff breeze. Note the three sad, tattered New Brunswick flags behind them, the middle of which is essentially a tattered rag clinging to its flagpole.

Sadly, this is a startlingly apt metaphor for the state of tourism marketing and promotion in New Brunswick, in relation not only to Nova Scotia (although NS in general and Halifax in particular are simply masters of tourism who manage to make every summer visitor to the province feel like they've been doing nothing but sitting around waiting for you to arrive so they can fuss over you) but PEI and Newfoundland as well. Sigh.

Right over the NS border as you enter (or in our case re-enter) NB are the Tantramar Marshes. Through a combination of location and geography (they're very flat and very large) they are also the home of Radio-Canada International. (That's the RCI sign to the left there, and there is a forest of antennae much too large for me to capture with my wee cell cam). So if you've ever listened to Radio-Canada International anywhere in the world, you've been listening to a signal that was born right here.

And from there it's home again, home again, jiggidy-jig. :)

ronnie

Snow Day

We're getting our share of the general queer winter weather here in Freddie. Up until Christmas it was unseasonably warm. The last few days saw a nasty cold snap that brought temperatures as low as -29c.

Today sees the first really heavy snowfall of the winter. Schools are closed, dozens of meetings and events cancelled. This photo was taken minutes ago by the Lighthouse Adventure Center webcam. (The bridge in the distance is the Westmoreland Street Bridge connecting the north and south sides of Fredericton, which is bisected by the Saint John River. As you can see, the river is has finally frozen and is snow-covered. The larger dark shapes in the river closer to the camera are the piers left from an older bridge, since dismantled.)

Husband says driving is treacherous. Yet I just ran some errands and people are in a great mood, laughing and smiling everywhere you looked.

It revealed something to me about the nature of Canadians and our ambivalence towards our dominant season. We hate cold. But we love snow!

ronnie

Pendant le deluge

It's springtime in Fredericton... and that means flooding.

Husband and I took some time to stroll along the river - which was a walk considerably farther south of where it would've been a week ago - and take some pictures.



This is Fredericton's famous "underwater rugby/soccer pitch". Underwater for a couple of weeks of the year, anyway. I've circled the goalposts.

No, we don't play much soccer here this time of year.



This is one of a number of small sheds the city has here and there along "the green" - the strip of green between the river and town where people jog, bike, stroll, hang out. Normally the river is, obviously, a hundred metres or more below this point!



Most of the ramps onto, and off of, the bridge across the river that unites the two sides of town were closed. What you see in this picture - St. Anne's Point Drive - is usually an extremely busy 4-lane divided highway. (The pale blue bridge you see in the photo is a pedestrian overpass that spans the Drive.) Today, with the boulevard closed, there was a sort of holiday atmosphere as it became a venue for family strolls.

I've posted some more pics of the flooding here.

Half the city was downtown today, it seemed, taking photos and videos of the flooding. And not because this year is particularly unusual - this is just 'high-average' flooding. No, it's more that it's part of the ritual of spring - the turn of the year - an annual nuisance, annoyance and, for some, expense that, for some reason, we regard with something almost like affection.

ronnie

Odd lovely gems

Today work found me in Florenceville, NB. What a remarkable little town. It never ceases to amuse and impress me, and of all the communities I regulary visit in support of our member organizations, this one, along with Bathurst and Miramichi, is the most interesting.

It's tiny - a population of just 762 souls, nestled in the Upper Saint John River Valley, God's Country, which in New Brunswick means Potato Country. It looks more like a Norman Rockwell painting than anything else, with a distinctive New Brunswick bent; the covered bridge, the Loyalist-era mansions, the placid river winding through the town proper, feeding the mighty Saint John, sheltered by weeping willow trees.

This throwback to the idyllic days of pre-Loyalist New Brunswick, which actually began life as a garrison set up to guard against American invasion, and which originally had the charming name of "Buttermilk Creek", is also the home of the World Headquarters of McCain Food International.

That's right, that McCain. The frozen pizza in your freezer may or may not be able to trace its origin right to this charming village; the frozen french fries almost certainly may, and both spring from an international frozen food juggernaut that began with the local McCain family's potato farming business - they invented the frozen french fry, brothers and sisters, I kid you not - and which still has its roots, and its international headquarters, here.

(An interesting side note worth mentioning is that the founding family - the McCain family, which still owns the business - are highly-respected philanthropists with a history of public service to their province. They are considered to be "good people", if you know what I mean. They've reinvested their success in their province and their community - which helps explain why McCains' World Headquarters is still in Florenceville, pop. 762.)

McCain brings top talent from around the globe to run their operations from Florenceville. This has the remarkable effect of making this small village and the surrounding villages and towns by far the most ethnically diverse and multicultural part of the province per capita. It's a charming and fascinating effect - Norman Rockwell's version of small-town Canada as if Rockwell's own dreams of ethnic diversity and integration had come to full fruition.

The mix of people I know and work with there are amazing. Moroccan, Chinese, Cuban, Venezuelan, Dutch, Japanese, Indian, British, Honduran, Korean, Argentinian... and more. And more every day.

The village, and the surrounding villages, in response to this dichotomy of tiny, homogenous communities finding themselves hotbeds of local immigration, have responded with creativity, compassion and warmth. Some of their programs and policies should be - and have been - models for the rest of the province. They should be models for the rest of the country.

We're workin' on that.

ronnie

A country drive

As noted above (and in spite of any of my Yankee readers' protestations to the contrary ;) )The first Monday in October is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

Mom O. decided to have a full turkey dinner with all the fixings on Sunday, rather than Monday, and a near-full contingent of the New Brunswick family turned out to devour it, along with its accompanying stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, squash, corn, broccoli, carrots, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Whew!

As you can imagine, then, much of Monday was spent recovering from that. However, we felt spry enough by early afternoon to take a drive - it was such a beautiful day - through the autumn foliage, which is absolutely at the height of its colour and breathtaking right now. The photos, of course, don't do it justice, but I thought I'd share a peek with you.


We drove up the Saint John River Valley towards Woodstock. We took pains to stay off the highway, toodling down every little country lane that caught our curiosity or interest.

We crossed the river at the Nackawick Bridge and began to return home along the north side of the river. Before that return, however, we just had to stop at the World's Largest Axe in Nackawick. Placed in commemoration of the importance of forestry to Nackawick's past (and future - there is still a mill there), it is, um, one big axe. (That is Husband you can't see standing next to the blade. Only you can see him, a bit, if you click on the image.)

It seemed like half of New Brunswick was doing something similar. We passed dozens of motorcycles and convertibles, exotics and antique vehicles, as everyone took advantage of one more beautiful autumn day before it is time for their babies to be put to bed for the winter.

Then when we got home, there was an e-card from my cousin in Nashville wishing me Happy Canadian Thanksgiving. (BIG SHOUT-OUT TO MY ROCK STAR CUZ!) Husband rejoined his Mom and brothers and their families for hot turkey sandwiches for supper. I was all turkeyed and tuckered out so I had some couscous and snoozed with the kitties, then wrote my letters to my MP, Andy Scott, and to PM Stephen Harper, registering my objection to the recent spending cut announcements. Participatory democracy. Having my say.

Family, food, fun, freedom. If there is a better way to spend a weekend in order to really feel thankful for where you live and what you have, I can't think of it.

ronnie

Ask not for whom the bridge trolls...

...it trolls for a couple of acid-soaked dudes who decided to raise money to buy a lighter for their giant spliff by charging joggers and cyclists to cross a footbridge.

Including a sherrif's deputy whose self-identification only made these billy goats gruffer.

This is your brain on drugs :)

Don't miss the video for added details.

ronnie

The Island

Where to start? With a messed-up work schedule keeping us close to home this vacation, Husband and I were kind of at a loss to figure out any getaway plans at all. Then he said, "You know, I've never been to PEI except on business. I've never seen the beaches..."

Well, neither had I. While I'd flown in and out of Charlottetown for meetings, I knew as little about the tiny island-province of Prince Edward Island as - well, as anywhere. And it's only a couple of hours' drive away.

The Confederation Bridge, one of the wonders of the modern world, was completed in 1997 and connects PEI with New Brunswick. Driving over it can be a daunting prospect. I'd never driven it, having only flown onto or off of the Island. Husband had driven it a couple of times and I was genuinely excited about experiencing the 12.9-km long wonder. It is actually a freakier feeling than I expected. The realization of where you are can be quite acute. (Actually, looking at the photo of it on the linked website just gave me another "Ulp - I drove over that??" moment.)

Our first night was spent in Souris (pronounced "SurEE") on a very French part of the Island. I had spent some time investigating the Island's "Romantic Getaways" packages looking for something unique and fun, and we found this lighthouse accommodation right on the beach. The whole lighthouse was ours - housekeeping unit downstairs, bedroom and whirlpool bath upstairs, and the whole thing surrounded by a huge balcony that overlooked a very beautiful and private beach.











(Private in the sense of "no-one around"... as the young lady told Husband on the phone when he asked her if the nearby beach was public, "Sir, ALL the beaches in PEI are public beaches!" Apparently the idea of private ownership of a beach quite horrified her.)









We also got to check out the surrounding villages, which included some interesting architecture. This was a Roman Catholic Church. I have no idea what that architectural style is called... "Seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Mosque" perhaps?









The second day we spent some time in Charlottetown (the first thing you realize when you drive PEI is that the whole province is so tiny you can pretty much go anywhere within it in under 2 hours - it's only 280K from tip to tip of the crescent island). Husband got to visit Great Hobbies - the largest hobby centre in Atlantic Canada and, according to its website, "Canada's leading supplier of radio controlled models and related hobby supplies" - where he bought a whole crapload of cool stuff.

Then we headed to our second nights' accommodations in Brackley Beach. The Brackley Beach North Winds exceeded our expectations with a huge luxury suite (and of course another whirlpool bath! yum!), and the package also included a pass to the PEI National Park at Brackley Beach.


These dunes, environmentally fragile and vulnerable to the erosion of the water and wind, are protected national treasures.











The beach was absolutely gorgeous and we had a wonderful fish dinner right on the wharf. The fish we ate both days was unbelievably fresh - I haven't had fish that fresh or delicious since I was last in Newfoundland.








On Thursday evening and again on Friday morning we stopped in at The Dunes at Brackley Beach, an absolutely jaw-dropping complex of galleries, water and flower gardens, unique furniture, jewelry, fashion and art and an haute-cuisine cafe and restaurant. If you go - and if you go to PEI, by all means, go - give yourself two hours to just roam around. It is an experience unto itself, thousands of beautiful things, very reasonably priced. I bought my "treat souvenir" there - a beautiful beaded necklace - and Husband bought an outstanding bottle opener souvenir to add to his impressive collection of girlie art and kitsch. (That's a penny next to her, for scale. Isn't she magnificent????)

While we spent some time in the part of the Island known as "Anne's Land", where Avonlea and the famous green-gabled house are located, we didn't visit the site on this trip. A bit too kitschy for us, I'm afraid - and besides, we'll be back again. Husband, who didn't know much about this classic of adolescent girls' literature, got quite an education in Anne while we were there. One of the things I enjoyed most was sharing with him why certain things were named as they were ("Matthew's Carriage Rides", "Lake of Shining Waters Water Park", "Red Pigtails This and That") and the significance of some of the memorabilia for sale (like straw hats with green ribbons).

Something that isn't awfully well known outside Atlantic Canada is that Green Gables has become a huge destination for Japanese tourists, particularly young Japanese girls, attracting tens of thousands on organized tours and individual visits every year. Some tourist literature contains Japanese translations along with English and French, and a number of ads and tourist photos I saw there feature Japanese models. (The tourism department even has a Japanese website.) Many Japanese girls even plan and have their dream wedding in PEI. Why the appeal?

Anne is a self-described "free spirit"; an orphan girl who was a disappointment to her adoptive parents (who were expecting a valuable boy to work on their farm and got a red-headed, scatterbrained female chatterbox instead); she was born into a world of strict social conventions and tightly-constrained roles, which she constantly blundered through and tripped over. Irrepressible, fanciful and imaginative, she succeeds in changing the people and town around her, rather than succumbing to the pressure to conform that they try to impose on her. The attraction of the character to young Japanese ladies is hardly difficult to understand.

It was a wonderful, wonderful, much-deserved holiday. We had so much fun.

ronnie

Turning the damned thing on; or, what kind of Mickey Mouse setup is this anyway?

Driving across the MacDonald Bridge to the activation appointment, Husband and I confessed to each other that we were both hella nervous. More nervous than before the surgery. Or nervous in a different place, anyway.

It took quite a while to unpack all the basic compontents, which each come separately packaged, and about which more later. 'Helen', the audiologist I will be working with from now in, showed me how to put the basic unit together and then she put it on. I was almost surprised to discover there really is a magnet under my skin and the headpiece really does attach!

Helen handed me a card with a range of comfort levels on it - from "inaudible" through "barely audible", "very soft", on through "comfortable" "loud but comfortable", up to "painfully loud".

"You're going to hear a series of beeps," she said (I was part-lipreading, part reading notes Husband was writing for me). "When you do, I want you to indicate on the card how loud they are and we will adjust them."

I swear, as God is my witness, when she said "You are going to hear a series of beeps," my internal response was, "Yeah, right!!!" I just could not let my guard down and believe this was going to work.

She turned to her computer - which my CI was plugged into - and I grabbed Husband's hand.

And then, I heard a beep.

It was deep inside my head... as if that "silent voice" that you hear in your mind suddenly vocalized to you. I was astonished. I jumped in my chair and my head snapped involuntarily. I gripped Husband's hand. There were more beeps now, and I was struggling to calm myself down enough to remember what we were supposed to be doing.

"Uh...uh... s-soft... soft, I would call that," I stuttered, jabbing at the "soft" level on the card. "Okay, I'm going to turn it up," Helen said. I heard what she said and understood it. She turned the sound up. "Yes, now, now it's louder. That's, uh, comfortable." I looked over at Husband and burst into tears.

"Ahh," Helen said, reaching for a box on her shelf. "This is where we get out the tissues."

I sobbed into the tissue. "I don't think I let myself believe it was going to work," I said. I looked up and Husband was crying into a Kleenex as well. And so, I realized, was Helen. "You have the best job in the world," I blurted out.

Once we all composed ourselves, there was a lot of work to be done. Each of the electrodes had to be individually tuned to a level which was loud enough to hear but not uncomfortably loud. I realized that as long as I was facing Helen or Husband I could hear and understand whole sentences, although everyone's voice sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium. (Interestingly, I could not tell Helen's voice from Husband's initially, although as the appointment progressed he started to sound like his own voice again.) Helen was surprised that I could understand so much so quickly (she'd only had two other patients who could understand complete sentences at activation, she told me - one, an 81-year-old woman) but told me that of course the Mickey Mouse effect was normal and everyone experienced it.

The whole process took about two hours and was pretty intense. I realized how much of this is going to depend on me; Helen can't hear what I hear and relies on feedback from me to tune the device. I, however, don't know what an implant is "supposed" to sound like, so I hope I am making the right choices regarding loudness levels and so on.

Helen asked if mechanical noises - knocking on a desk - sounded different than more variable, organic noises like voices. Oh, yes, I assured her. Very different.

We later saw 'Stacy', the speech language pathologist, who asked me some questions with her mouth covered by a black hand-held screen (so I could not lipread). Although I had to ask her to repeat the first question, I understood all of them and responded correctly.

As we left the clinic the audiologists reminded us that it was going to be difficult in noisy situations, and that it is a "noisy world out there". As we strolled down the sidewalk in Halifax I caught tiny snippits of conversation as people went by - just noise, really, rising and falling as they passed. We walked past an HMV store. I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Music???" I said.

Husband laughed. Yes, they were playing music outside the store to lure in customers. I could tell that it was melodic but couldn't identify what it was or even what genre it might be.

We went out to dinner that night and it was really hard. Everyone in the crowded restaurant sounded as loud as Husband. There's still quite a ways to go to figure out how to understand this thing.

They sent us home with a great big box of manuals and videos and accessories and gadgets, some of which were a complete pleasant surprise because I didn't know they came with the original kit.

The CI itself, for the techno-curious, breaks down into these components, and when not in use, it's pretty much put away broken down this way, too:



You'll note there are three earhooks in this picture; all three came with the CI but each has a different purpose. The standard one is just what the name implies; the t-mic is best for use with telephone and using with t-coils and other assistive listening devices (some people, like me, however, find it gives the best day-to-day results, so it is my usual hook), and the extremely cool direct connect earhook, about which more later.

The whole thing comes together like so:



One of the accessories I wasn't expecting but was really glad to get right away was a direct connect cord. Believe it or not, when I am wearing the direct connect earhook, and plug this cord into that earhook, I can plug an audio device like my discman or my computer directly into the CI and therefore directly into my cochlea. Isn't that amazing? This, for example, is how it connects to my discman.



When I'm wearing this setup, I can hear ambient noise and also whatever I am plugged in to; but an external listener cannot hear the discman or computer. For now, I've managed to listen to some of Husband's music with it (music is MUCH BETTER through direct connect than through the air) and done some computer gaming, but I need a lot more practice before I can interpret such complex things being piped directly into the cochlea.

Well, hearing is all very well and fine, but a girl has to look good, and I was tickled pink that they threw in some of the snap-on covers that let you change the colour of the unit. I don't know how well you'll be able to make this out, but here are the four "blending colours" (designed to blend with hair, obviously)and the four "Sophista metallic (don't you love marketing?) colours" which are dark metallic green, blue, purple and (on the unit) red. Very sharp if I do say so.



Finally, this is what it looks like when I'm wearing it, more or less; normally in daily use my hair would probably cover the headpiece (disc) more because I'd try to get most of it out of the way of the connection between the magnet and my scalp. (At least most of the bald spot is covered now but in order to achieve that, I'm dead shaggy and badly in need of a haircut!)



It's been an absolutely wild two days and there is so much more to talk about but this post is way too long as it is. I will just finish by adding that when I got home I begged Mojo (the vocal one) to meow for me. "Make a noise, Mojey! Come on. Meow! Come on! Make a noise!" No dice. So I made the ASL sign for "hungry".

"MEOW!" he bawled. I hear ya, brother.

THANK YOU for all the comments on the weblog which were just a wonderful and unexpected delight when I got home yesterday. You guys, it goes without saying, are the best.

ronnie