Some Bones to Pick...

Horny in Paris! Photo: Associated Press/AFP/Miguel Medina

As if it weren't a joyous enough occasion to celebrate this weekend's opening of the 21st Century's first primordial magnum opus 10,000 BC on movie screens across America on lo, this, the very week of my birthday, I must also note the news in

in Paris, where the skeleton of the 65-million-year-old Triceratops horridus is now on the auction block, the first such specimen in 11 years (remember the T. rex Sue?).

So, if anyone's looking for the appropriate gift for me, look no further. It would like mighty fine in my back yard.

Birthday girl, fellow Pisces, cartoonist extraordinaire and Center for Cartoon Studies anchor and faculty member Robyn Chapman has launched a new blog, beginning humbly here (click on this link). Check it out, stay tuned and enjoy!

And speaking of CCSers, birthdays aside just for the moment,

check out CCS pioneer class alumni Alexis Frederick-Frost's latest, now previewed on the First Second Books site.

But the best birthday gift of all will have to wait until next year, when the Bush Presidency is history. Still, mighty damage must yet be done, and rest assured he's doing it. President Bush's final year in office continues to be characterized by his ongoing attempts (and those of the hardcore Republican supporters remaining) to wriggle out of legal consequences for Bush and Cheney's extraordinary redefinitions of Presidential power, a topic being carefully kept off the table by the Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.

In terms of the ongoing maneuvers to let the phone companies off the hook for selling us all down the river post 9/11,

Stephen Colbert's 'AT&Treason' sums it up nicely.

Further tortured interpretations of US and international law also plague the shameless Presidential justifications for ignoring all standing 20th Century laws of fair treatment of prisoners and 'detainees,'

likewise in the name of national security.

Come what may on those fronts, the Bush legacy will be devastating and long-lasting, a staining beyond

the economic crater that will left behind when Bush continues to refuse to acknowledge the consequences of his disastrous Presidency: the 2007-8 Recession and likely Depression to follow.

We're already reaping the benefits of rampant deregulation and 'free market' forces the GOP has touted since octogenarian Reagan was in office, so what the hell? To quote Bush (in another context, even more foolhardily there), 'Bring it on!'

So what if your home is now worth squat, while property taxes skyrocket to staunch the regional devastation due to Bush domestic policies and tax cuts and the terminal erosion of all previous social support services and networks?

With almost 100,000 jobs cut since December 31 (and note that "450,000 people left the labor force" in the same period), gas costing three times what it cost at the pump when Bush took office, billions squandered every month on ongoing unprovoked pre-emptive war, the national deficit and debt racking up far beyond any historic record previously set, and the gap between the rich and the poor greater than its been since the Robber Barons era of a century ago, Bush is spreading the love and the wealth from sea to shining sea.

So, okay, I'll likely not even end up with this. But I can dream, can't I? Can't I?.

Yippee-ki-yi-ay, motherfuckers!

So, really, if just one of you could see your way clear to buying me that Triceratops skeleton, I reckon Marge and I just might make it through the coming Depression. Then I could really embrace extinction -- or at least climb onto those glorious skeletal shoulders and wave my hat and cry out, "Yippee-ki-yi-ay!" while my mental faculties completely disintegrate.

Barring that, I reckon I'll have to make due this year with a token gift from my old home town -- a symbolic gift, really. I'm absolutely delighted to note that Marge's and my old home town, Marlboro VT, joined neighboring Brattleboro VT this past Tuesday on Town Meeting Day

passing an article calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their horrendous abuses of power.

Now, I know it'll never happen -- I mean, after all, Bush hasn't even visited Vermont once his entire Presidency.
But that would be one hell of a birthday gift.

And on that happy note of no doubt vain but voiced rebellion, I bid you all adieu for the day.

And A Fine Tuesday AM It 'Tis, Too.

Here, we've gotten some sweet snow overnight and it's now sunny and cold. Nice.

Yesterday was our closing on the sale of our Marlboro home, which any regular reader of this blog is likely sick to death of hearing anything about. Well, this is it -- and it went beautifully, could not have gone better. Our beloved Marlboro home now has two new owners, really good folks who are already being welcomed into the Marlboro community with open arms -- and they're overjoyed to now be part of it. We graced the new owners with a bottle of champagne for them to celebrate with later in the day, and I gifted our attorney Richard Coutant with a hardcover copy of Frank Miller's 300, which he'd expressed keen interest in a year or so ago.

After the closing, Marge and I attended to the various banking chores (momentarily free of mortgage and debt!), and I closed my venerable Wilmington, VT post office box of 26 years. That's where all my Swamp Thing years, SpiderBaby Grafix efforts, and oh so much more sifted in and out of my studio and life. We savored a delicious lunch at my/our fave Wilmington diner -- Dot's Diner, downtown, right by the only stoplight in town, where routes 9 and 100 meet -- and then bid Wilmington farewell.

Hereafter, if we visit Marlboro and Wilmington, we're just tourists.

OK, much CCS work ahead. I've pretty well spruced up my office; hours of file organizing and unpacking ahead, but I've got a pretty good handle on that, too. With the Vt Dept. of Education arriving Thursday, it's a big week for all of us at CCS, beyond the 'big week' factor of this being the start of the new semester -- wish us luck.

More later, as time permits...

Putting on the Ritz

Spent the day yesterday -- and will spending today -- at last getting my CCS office set up and functional.

First, though, I tidied up the senior's studio, which meant picking up lots of empty beverage containers; I don't drink coffee, but if I did, the cup of calcified and molded Jo I removed from the computer workstation would have done me in on that. It was like Green Acres coffee: a solid mass. Tried to dump it down a restroom sink, but no go -- fungoid solids don't flow. Into the garbage it went; the rest of the beverage containers went into recycling after I rinsed them out. I used to handle returnables in my dad's store (Bissette's Market), from age six to 21: nothing grosses me out in the returnable bottles and cans department, I've seen and handled it all. Still, new studio rule: End of every workday, guys and gals, you clean up all empties!

Though most had neatened up their work and drawing tables sufficiently, the floors in a few stations were keeping feets warm with slagheaps of paper, lost art tools, and the occasional organic matter (hmmm, is this a chewed up pretzel?). I swept that all up and out; paper, particularly with drawings, went on to the top of the respective drawing area; the rest, recycled or into the trash. Took about an hour or so, then I set up the Critique area, which was last semester a loosy-goosey set up: not this semester. The wall is clear and ready for the students's thesis work to be posted, eighteen chairs (all black) set up and ready for our first crit session. All in all, it wasn't bad. I mean, these are cartoonists, folks. Young cartoonists. Their work stations will never hold a candle to the descriptions Tom Sutton used to give me of his studio.

Then, on to my shitheap in the office. I've been pretty lenient on cleanup issues thus far because I've not set any kind of respectable example -- well, that's no longer the case.

First off, dig, throughout the move -- from the first day Marge and I decided we were moving closer to CCS -- I hauled various and sundry boxes and items to my CCS office, and did my best to keep them neatly stacked and organized. But they were, after all, boxes, full of books and very odds & ends. Many of my art tools made the pilgrimage, too, ahead of our move. And my desk became the repository for all CCS paperwork and files I'd had loosely organized in my then-pretty-new Marlboro office/studio space; in short, a moveable shitheap, shifted around on the desk as necessary to make room for each week's pressure-cooker, two-day work stint. Time to organize at last! Set it up! Get it up!

Despite the warning posted on one of two pipes running throught the far wall (Danger - Asbestos - Cancer Risk - Avoid Creating Dust -- the insulating wraps on the pipes are indeed asbestos; I give 'em wide berth, and otherwise spend minimal time in the windowless office), it is a nice work space. I've at last hung up mucho art, all my various comics industry and horror writers awards (my son Dan always wished I'd hung this stuff up in my home studio, but I never had the wall space), my graduation diploma and letter of recommendation from The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, Inc., some family items, etc.; emptied boxes of paleontology, zoology, and various photo reference books and racked them in a trio of bookcases (bringing in one more bookcase this morning, to shelf the oversized paleo, Zdenak Burian and science books); and finished placing the stacks of 'textbooks' and back issues of my work in the two metal cabinets in the office. The latter are also now homes for my bizarre and beloved magnet collection (including a batch of vintage '50s sf miniature movie posters I bought from me old pal G. Michael Dobbs from his management tenure at the Tower Theaters down in Massachusetts; Mike's concession stand sold the coolest movie collectibles and best movie popcorn ever!), and some of my fossil collection and coolest toys grace the tops of the filing cabinets.

Which leads me to today's task: filing. I've tons of CCS paper already in file folders, but it's time at last to centralize and collate the filing system, get them organized in the file cabinets, and today's the day.

One huge liability in the office, though, other than the lung-cancer-inducing asbestos: the radio doesn't pick up the local NPR stations. I shouldered through yesterday listening to local crap-rock broadcasts. Today, audio cassettes of music I love or can at least stomach: Doc Watson, Captain Beefheart, Patty Smith, Ennio Morricone, Charlie Poole, Tom Waites -- get me through the day.

It's sunny, spectacular even, outside -- I've also got some drawing to do at fellow CCS faculty Peter Money's house, for a secret assignment -- so, off to the CCS Verizon Building office now so I can savor some of today's sweet weather!

_______________

Marge said her goodbyes to our Marlboro house yesterday, en route home from a birthday lunch date with her sister Pat Lambert (who is an amazing artist and photographer; hello, Pat!). Marge and our neighbor Arlene Hanson spent a little time in the now-empty home we rebuilt (it was a gutted shell when we bought it in December 2001), were wed in (April 2002), and lived in ever since. She came home and said pretty much what I have felt for some time now: she will forever love our Marlboro house, it was good to us, but this Windsor house is our home. It feels like home, and our connection with the Marlboro digs has been severed completely. Odd feeling, but there it is. The closing is tomorrow morning, and we're both ready to see this end. Emotionally, we're already past it.

_________________

Followup to my time at Cole Odell's Middlebury College class: Hey, Cole, get some photos of your class, I'll post 'em here. I'm also going to post some CCS photos this semester; time to dress up this tired old blog with some up-and-coming students! It's their generation's world, we just get to live here.

That said, I've also begun to come across a lot of vintage photos from my old convention days/daze, and once the new computers are set up and I have a functional computer-and-scanner work station in place, I'll start posting those, too.

Followup to Dave Booz's comment yesterday: Hey, Dave, drove through Killington this week en route to Middlebury, and passed the road to your place. Hey, there's snow at last! Not a lot, but snow, baby! You guys coming up?

Have a great Sunday, one and all.

Saturday Musings

Well, the move is over -- tried to post an announcement here yesterday afternoon, but for some reason it wouldn't go through. Maybe it'll post this AM.

Apologies for missing two daily posts this week. The move, the move -- and the down-to-the-wire Center for Cartoon Studies tasks (the move derailed my administrative paperwork chores terribly) -- kept me preoccupied.

_______________

There was also Thursday's trip to Middlebury College, to speak to Cole Odell's excellent comics class, among the missing time blog-wise -- Cole was a gracious and attentive host, we had some fun, and his class was great, a remarkable mix of students. If I had a photo of the group, I'd post it, because they really were a lively and engaging group; their questions were insightful, it made for a solid session.

I was invited to join the group for lunch after our session in the classroom, and we were joined by two professors (one of whom, Don Mitchell, I knew from my Breadloaf Young Writers Conference days and was overjoyed to see, though we didn't get to talk much) and I shamelessly showboated, answering any and all questions.

The drive to and from Middlebury was a treat, too, though loooooooong: having moved over an hour "closer" to Middlebury, I still had the same duration drive I used to have from Marlboro! Such is the "ya can't get thar from heyar" nature of roadways in Vermont, especially midstate. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, I was told -- that said, I gave myself extra time and made it to Middlebury with time to spare. Two pancakes and two sausage patties worth of time, in fact.

The drive to was ravishing: it was two degrees outside and crystal clear; the air was so cold that the running rivers were steaming (a procession of uncanny, non-moving vapor wisps that hung over the water, which was and is churning too fast to freeze) and the vegetation on the immediate banks were bristling with whiskers of frost. Stunning, eerie, beautiful.

The ride home meant taking another route (I'm exploring this part of my home state every chance I get, having a fresh geographic orientation now to all points), which involved a steep climb up Route 125 from Ripton, a route I chose for sentimental reasons: it takes me right by the old Breadloaf Campus. I love that place.

Cooler still, though, were the deep-frozen brooks and streams along 125, which were spectacular; the play of light and shadow midday, with the sky just easing into overcast with the occasional peek of sun, was mesmerizing. I stopped at one point and pulled on my boots to wander down by the brookside and savor the frosty tableaus. Winter, at last.

Cutting down Route 100 -- the road I grew up on and know so well -- I saw a sign saying "Bethel: 18 miles" and thought, "Huh, that'll cut me over to interstate 89 in no time!" Sure enough, where 100 and 107 meet/split (depending which way you're headed) in Stockbridge, I cut up over to Bethel (driving by the ever-alluring Advanced Animations sign; it's not an animation studio, but a remote VT business that builds all the life-size animatronic creatures and dinosaurs that tour the world, including the popular museum "Dinomation" exhibits) and was on 89 South in record time.

Home again in a little over 90 minutes -- a faster route to Middlebury, when it isn't storming! Cool!

Once home, I was scrambling: Dave Gabriel and his brother Mike were working here (wait until you see the shelving work they've done -- photos, soon!) and we were scheduled to complete the platform and assemble the flat file before they headed home. That meant ripping into Windsor and picking up some last-minute supplies needed for the task, which I did, and before Dave and Mike were out the door, my flat file was assembled in the basement atop its new platform (in case the basement ever floods) and ready at last.

This means I can now file my artwork, all of it, and clear my small studio room -- and bring in my drawing board and light table. This means this week, amid all first-week-of-the-new-semester CCS hubbub, I'll be able to chip away at finally setting up one portion of my new home. It's been weeks; I'm eager to get into it.

__________________

With the conclusion of the movers work at Marlboro yesterday afternoon, I took a few moments after the truck pulled away to wander the house, say goodbye to one of the sweetest homes I've ever lived in: the first I've owned, too. It was indeed kind to us, and we were kind as we could be to the house, rebuilding it from the shell it was when we first saw it. The new owners are excited, the closing is on Monday -- they have heady plans for further reworking the house, making it into the home they need and want. Ah, I love change, transition: it's always an agonizing process, but necessary to life.

I took my last walk through the house, seeing the rooms empty, completely empty and open for a new family, for the first time. It's never been completed as a house and empty before, in our experience. We were moving in as the work was being completed back in December 2001 to April 2002, so I'd never seen the house empty, clean, free of the clutter of our lives (and, ahem, my enormous quantities of shit). I went outside and walked around, took one last, lingering look from the back yard across mid-Marlboro, and then I was off. Met the movers in Ascutney, we unloaded (into my rented storage space), and that was that.

Then, back to work at home. All in all, a most eventful couple of days.

I finally wrapped up my syllabus work this AM, and Marge offered to help me set up my CCS office space in White River Jct., which must be done by Monday night -- so, with that, I'm off. Got bookcases to pick up from the storage space, work to do in my Verizon Building office at CCS -- see ya here tomorrow.

The move...

...is over.

At last!

(January 19th, final move with Dartmouth Moving & Storage and last of my hauls in my Toyota to our Windsor home; said goodbye to the Marlboro house and hit the road after locking up. Closing on the sale Monday AM, the same day CCS's new semester begins.)

Another Day, Another Load --

-- and at last, the end is in sight for this move!

Yesterday, three of the CCS crew still here during vacation break -- Jon-Mikel, Bryan and Joe -- accepted some cash, lunch, beverages and dedicated their day to helping me pack books and comics and zines down in Marlboro.

This utterly bizarre winter weather meant we drove to Marlboro in almost 70 degree comfort and arrived to find -- mud season. I'm a seasoned vet mud driver, but we still scraped bottom for a stretch and the mire almost sucked the Toyota to a dead halt at one point, but we got through and to the old hacienda. I think it threw the trio with me, but better this muck then three feet of snow, drifts and below-zero weather for the move. This completely screwy winter thus far is unnerving and scary, but has been an unexpected and unpredictable boon for Marge and I and the demands of the move. I'm counting our blessings, folks.

We got a lot done, and I think with the additional time I put in later this week and one more push with three more folks next weekend, we'll at last be done. (I'm pretty fried, though, so likely I'll scrape up the dough for professional movers to move the boxes in one shot thereafter -- I have to complete this process, and soon.)

Still, the new owners-to-be are excited and have been great to work with. They've enjoyed popping in at the house, which we encourage, and are already measuring and making their plans for their soon-to-be new home. We close the sale before the last week in January, and they're eager to move in -- just as eager as I am to be out! Marge, bless her, is done with her part of the move, and has made our new Windsor home just that -- a home.

When Jon, Joe, Bryan and I got back to Windsor last night, Bryan and Joe's wives Amanda and Becca were here, and Marge had a delicious supper waiting for one and all.

It was a great way to cap a busy day, and a real treat to entertain in our new digs. Good food, great company, good conversation and the highly entertaining feline hi-jinks of Tuco and Lizzie (Amanda had 'em both leaping like they were in a circus arena, playing with the cats and their new toys) made for a memorable evening. Thanks, one and all!

I finally fell down around 10:30, after everyone had headed back to White River Jct., and slept soundly till 6:30 this morning, which is late for me these days. Then I was up and out for one more packing stretch and carload haul -- before the weather turns nasty tonight. Sigh.

Time to get back to painting the viewing room -- hopefully, sometime soon, I can begin my own process of "nesting" (as Marge calls it). I'm looking forward to it -- maybe soon...

Have a great Sunday, all.

Back in the Saddle Again...

It's amazing how completely life has changed in the past week, marking 2007 as a genuine New Year from Day One. Marge and I live in a new home, and though I'll be preoccupied with the final dregs of the move for another couple of weeks (including clean-up), we do have buyers for our Marlboro home (the closing is before the end of the month) and all is well. The great financial risk paid off, and the move that made so much logical and logistical sense, personally and in terms of social responsibility (Marge has barely gone through a half-a-tank of gas in over a week, where we used to both fill up multiple times per week; we'll be consuming far less gas once the move is truly behind us), is remapping our emotional landscape in unforeseen ways.

Windsor itself is a very cool town -- though, like all towns, it has its underbelly, which is apparent, too. We've been gravitating here now since mid-October, when our house-hunting began in earnest, and the sense of this potentially being "home" has matured into this being home in a remarkably brief interim. Windsor is nestled just north of Mount Ascutney, a lone mountain strangely apart from the Green Mountain chain here on the eastern edge of the state, and that mountain now plucks a pleasant nerve whenever I see it.

Growing up in northern VT, my formative years and teen years were landmarked by Camel's Hump, that beautiful mountain in North Duxbury that's visible from interstate 89 from a variety of views. My heart still flutters when I first see the Hump en route north, and it remains one of those geographic life anchors one never outgrows and forever finds surprisingly, profoundly moving with every encounter in an uncanny, primal way. I hiked the Hump many times each year from age 12 to 22, and knew much of the mountain well. For the first third of my life, Camel's Hump was the center of my universe, such as it was.

Since 1980, Wilmington and Marlboro have been my home -- where Marlene and I lived through our married life together, where my daughter Maia and son Daniel were born (at home) and raised and grew into adulthood -- and the mountains there (Haystack and especially Hogback) became orientation landmarks with their own gravitational pull. I lived in their orbit for a little over two decades, and hiked Haystack a number of times. Though I never grew as intimate or connected to those mountains as I did to the Hump in Duxbury, they're nevertheless sights and climbs (whether via car or foot; Route 9, which I drove daily, cuts up over Hogback, embracing a positively breathtaking 100+ mile view from the roadside) which never fail to move me.

Since the decision to move from the area really took hold this past fall, that drive moves me differently than ever before, the sights of both mountains pluck different nerves: I'm saying "goodbye" to the mountains that sheltered my family, in which I realized my life goals (in comics) and then changed my life completely, where met my new soulmate (Marge), which I shared with her as we fell in love and bonded (we used to drive to the top of one of Wilmington's back roads and watch the sun set behind Haystack), which nurtured my children until they left the mountains to move to the town and begin their own adult years.

Now, Mount Ascutney is the center of a new orbit, a new life phase. As I drive every other day from Windsor to Marlboro and back again -- down with an empty car, back with a full car -- my heart lifts a bit when I first see Ascutney just north of Springfield.

"I'm almost home!" I think, and it's true.

Almost home.

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A very, very good, funny, dear man I had the rare pleasure of working with at First Run Video before my departure from that employ two years ago is on his death bed in Townshend, VT. He was diagnosed with cancer this summer, and is now in his final weeks (perhaps days), discharged from the hospital and at home with his wife. In the end, they could do nothing for him.

It's heartbreaking -- why do monsters like our Vice President live so long, do so much harm (oh, excuse me, "service for their country"), while humble, productive, responsible, forever upbeat men like this fellow die? There's no reason to or for it; that's life. That's death.

This is a real heartbreaker; I shan't say more, as it's nobody's business but his and his family's, but it's too sad and shaking not to note this morning. This has colored much of the month for me, too, and is really having a devastating impact on those I once worked closely with, daily. A prayer for my friend, please.

___________________

This just in from Molly Bode, beloved wife of Mark Bode, from away off in California. A couple of years ago, Mark and Molly moved back to the West Coast from their 1990s life in Northampton, MA (drawn there, pun intended, by the allure of the Tundra publishing experiment); their now-adult daughter Zara is still in the Northampton area, and making her own kind of music:

"Just sending out a reminder for you not to miss Zara's show THE SWEETBACK SISTERS at:

The Elevens
140 Pleasant Street Northampton
Sunday, January 14
413-586-9155

About The Sweetback Sisters:

The Sweetback Sisters, a group of pie-eyed plunkers, perform an incredible array of old time honky tonk music with sweet girl-on-girl harmonies, sure to warm the hears of any of you. The lavish and lovely voices of Zara Bode and Emily Miller plus an all-star band: Stefan Amidon on drums, West Virginian, Jesse Milnes on guitar and fiddle, Joseph "Joebass" DeJarnette on upright, and last but not least our rolling thunder himself, Ross Bellenoit who highlights the night with electric guitar riffs, mandolin and lap steel guitar.

So get your ass in gear, grab a beer and swoon while we croon the country classics.

Check out

this link

for a taste of the music."

Molly concludes:

"And somebody please videotape it and send it to me!!!!!!"

BTW, there's also a Brattleboro, VT connection: Stefan Amidon is an amazing percussionist, brother of Sam (accomplished musician on many instruments and actor) and son of the Amidons, who are a fixture of the folk music scene in Southern VT. Stefan blew me away years ago while he was still in high school and performing as part of the "Stef and Jeff" percussion duo on the stage of Brattleboro Union High School; he has since performed in a number of bands, including work with his family.

If you're in the Northampton area, check 'em out!

Already in the Thick of 2007...

Hope you all had a great New Year; we did, with friends showing up as planned before the midnight ritual on the 31st and spending the night here as our first-ever house guests. This meant that Marge, miraculous Goddess/woman she is, had actually not only unpacked but had completely set up the living room, kitchen, dining area and guest room/office by the 31st! Amazing.

I, on the other hand, am still struggling with the move's logistics and tasks, with daily (as weather permits) trips between Marlboro and Windsor still necessary as I complete packing and moving of my libraries and collections. Here at our new home, I'm also painting a room (the rest, blessedly, needed no painting), which I've almost completed (two coats on some walls) and prepping the basement for its renovation into the needed library and writing space(s). Thankfully, David Gabriel accepted the contractor job for construction of the shelves and spaces necessary to my master plan, and it's all falling into place -- though this means I'll be staggering around the debris of my collection and library for some time to come until all the work can be completed, moving the boxes from place to place around the work areas until it all takes shape and permits unboxing and shelving. Sigh.

The biggest flaw in my master plan involved my art flat file cabinet, which needs to be mounted on a platform in the basement before I can re-file my 35+ years of artwork. Alas, that plan involved moving the platform constructed in 2002 for the Marlboro basement library/office area -- which I had specifically requested be built to be removed/moved if necessary down the road. Well, now that I'm down that road, damn it but we find on moving day this past Thursday that the platform was constructed fully attached to the wall -- and could not be removed. Shit! Thus, my comfy drawing studio here in Windsor is unusable for the time being, the floor covered with carefully-wrapped-in-plastic and stacked decades of Bissette art and such. Until the new platform and flooring is in place, the flat file is in pieces, not a workable unit, here in our Windsor basement.

So, I've taken to drawing in my sketchbook in the meantime -- so be it. It'll be some time before I can move my drawing board and light table into the new studio room, and that's just how it is.

Luckily, though, my upcoming CCS duties this semester do not require the extensive daily access to my collection/library the fall semester classes absolutely revolve around. I've been pretty good about packing and keeping in reach what I will need for this semester, and thus far haven't found any fatal gaps in my shuffling from one local to the new home as far as my upcoming CCS semester is concerned. Wish me luck on that remaining true...

More later today, as time permits. I've got the long drive to and from Marlboro ahead this morning and at least five hours more of packing/moving ahead, and hear Marge up and about downstairs -- she returns to work today. So, off to the morning rituals and to hit the road myself.

Have a great January 2nd, one and all.