Obviously, when you do something major to screw up your appearance, such as oh, I don't know, say dye your hair A Putrid Shade That Makes You Want To Puke, the preferred thing to do is to crawl into a dark cave and not see a living soul until you've had a chance to repair the damage as much as possible.

So of course yesterday, Day One of me trying to adjust to my Puke-a-riffic New Hair Colour was the day that one of my three loyal readers showed up with her family, one of my neighbours brought a friend to see the gardens, AND my daughter bought six friends down from Montreal to crash here for a few days.

Whenever the universe deigns to pay even the slightest attention to me, that attention appears to mostly consist of a very loud THHHHPPPPPPPTTTTTT.

Fine.

The spousal unit has always been very ambivalent about this writing on-line bidness. He is somewhat concerned that a creepy internet stalker will one day show up at our door and heaven only knows what could happen then. Maybe they'd break into our house, drink all our beer and leave rude, anti-cat graffiti on our walls. As he often tells me, There Are Scary People Out There.

Meeting Nacwolin and her family bolstered my argument that most folks writing on-line are not internet personas or scary stalker folk. She and her spousal unit were exactly the folk in her diary, and her kids were a joy to have around. PLUS the kids were fanatic rock collectors which meant that we finally lightened this place of a few of the endless rocks around here.

As they were leaving, I considered sneaking a boulder or two into the back of their car, but they were watching it too closely.

Drat.

Originally, the daughter's plan was to come down with just one other couple so when she showed up with extra, bonus people I was a bit surprised. Fortunately, she had the great good sense to stop at an amazing hole-in-the-wall Jamaican restaurant near where she lives in Montreal and bring me some curried beef and jerk chicken (which has NOTHING to do with "choking the chicken" so get your mind out of the gutter RIGHT NOW).

I am so easily bribed that it is truly pitiful. Two take-out containers of spicy Caribbean food and All Was Forgiven.

THREE containers and I probably would have signed over my share of the house.

I must admit that I was a bit bemused when I saw the size of the daughter's posse. We love to have her visit, but we live in a house only slightly bigger that your average shoe box and seeing all those people made me wonder how we'd cope.

My fears proved unfounded. Not only have they been camping outside and cooking for themselves, they also clean up afterwards! This is actually less work than when the offspring and her sweetie show up.

The spousal unit wants to sit the daughter down and tell her that she and her sweetie can never show up here again without these extremely useful people in tow. Can you imagine? Men are so insensitive.

Personally, I think we can handle one visit a year without the posse, eh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 348.96 miles (561.6 kilometers)
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers