I saw LaMarca today and let her know that she's missed here. She and her husband have been without electricity for the last 4-1/2 days (having had the misfortune to live on the one block in the neighborhood that really got schnockered by the recent ice storm). They've survived well (and so has their geriatric cat), and the power went back on earlier today.

One of the reasons for intimacy on Mudcat is that many of us also have off-line friendships with one another. And while I'm not likely to bump into the bunch of you who live upside down in Australia or other distant places (unless any of you want to visit Maryland or Washington, DC--in which case, the welcome mat is out), I do bump into a significant number of mudcatters (and non-mudcat folkies as well) on a regular basis. This network of ongoing overlapping off-line relationships supplements all the on-line relationships and keeps us civil (at the least) and good friends (at best).

--Charlie Baum