Hey, ~S~

We have put off the move for a while because we don't know how the Kingston gig will develop, and as long as there's a chance Edmund will be posted back to Ottawa (and there is) we would be unspeakably foolish to sell our house. Its value has more than doubled since we bought it and we've paid down half the mortgage. Also, it's in an excellent location within easy walking distance of all kinds of nice things, and on three major bus routes.

The Army has a special arrangement for people in our position, essentially an allowance that covers the posted spouse's rent on a hotel room or a little apartment -- what they call in French a pied-à-terre -- plus mileage (at a rather low rate) for going home on the weekend. We will have to buy a second car, damn it, but the Afghanistan experience has left us bucks up so with any luck we won't have to borrow money for it.

The John Cabot rose is semi-jailed in a six-foot-high pyramidical frame made of copper tubing with a little copper finial on the top. The frame is all that keeps the rose from invading the neighbours' garden and possibly taking us all hostage. By mid-summer the canes extend up to five feet in every direction, snatching at your clothes and thrusting great tresses of red blooms into your face. The neighbours love it; they get the benefit of roses DARNED NEAR ON THEIR BACK STEP without the responsibility of pruning the wicked thing. Of course, they have yet to realize it has a Napoleon complex.