And a very belated thank you for all your kind wisehs! I spent my birthday in the Badlands (of South Dakota) .. that sounds like the title of a song. My wife Ruth and I left for Wisconsin on June 1st and had a wonderful week there, celebrating my mother's 97th birthday (almost 97 times.) Then we took a bus out to Rapid City, South Dakota, rented a car and explored the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, the aforementioned Badlands, Deadwood, Wall Drug and the Crazy Horse Monument. Then, we drove off to Wyoming, went to Devil's Tower, then west over the Big Horn Mountain Range (and got caught in a snowstorm)
We spent a 12 hour day in Yellowstone before heading back to the Midwest, and finally arrived back here a few minutes ago in Connecticut. I had 92 e-mails awaiting me, which led me to find out from c-flat and Jeff that this thread was here.

All the while we were on the trip, I was wondering what was going on with all you folkks, and thought the best way to find out was to start a thread of my own to get caught up. Think I'll do that before I collapse. I have a couple of thread ideas percolatingtoo, that I'll add tomorrow.

It's good to be back.

(I still have a very unco-operative computer, trying to type messages in chat rooms.. It will type two or three letters and then stop, and I have to click the space to enter the message to type another two or three letters before it does it again. Icome in when I'm feeling particularly obstinate and have the patiend to stumble my way through short answers. I miss the chat cats... maybe I'll just plow my way through again tomorrow night.

Love to all..

Jerry