Sunday morning, 14 September, Lucy cooked eggs scrambled
with kale and bell peppers. You wouldn't think of that combination for
breakfast, but it was delicious. I've since tried it on my teenagers, and they
like it, too.

I left Burnsville in time to partake of morning coffee in Boone with Kaye Barley. Kaye is an avid reader, particularly
of mysteries, and a gracious reviewer. After "meeting" her on the
Dorothy-L discussion list for mysteries, she and I had corresponded through
email for more than a year before this opportunity arose for us to meet in
person. What a pleasure to finally put a face and voice to the name. And Boone
wasn't swallowed in fog this time, so I got to see the lovely university town
and its surrounding mountains.

Home in Raleigh around 2:00 p.m., where I hit the Internet
to find out what Hurricane Ike had done to Galveston, Houston, and the gas
supply. My sons arrived home soon after me. They'd been hiking part of the
Appalachian Trail in Virginia with their Boy Scout troop. Their adventures were
somewhat hairier than mine: ran out of water, encountered a timber rattlesnake,
got paced by a bear, and serenaded by a cougar's yowl all night. We exchanged
stories most of the afternoon. Be it ever so humble…

Grasshopper thanks Kaye Barley for the coffee-break company
and is grateful for a successful tour!

Next up: "The Family War" presentation for
the North Carolina Museum of History 27 September.