Day 105 - 06/05/2007

I went to the gym today and got in a good workout. Well, not as good as I had wanted as I didn't want to get that great of a sweat going so I skipped the 40 minutes on the bike and instead did an easy 20. The reason being was that they were working on one of the water fountains, so they had to turn the water off for the entire gym. Therefore I couldn't shower and without the possibility of a shower, I couldn't sweat as much as I usually do. So, like I said, I took it light.

I got a call from D this afternoon indicating that N had left the basement door open and Smokey was hiding in the back basement somewhere. They looked high and low for him, but couldn't find him. When I got home, I went down and looked for him and, after searching for a few minutes in places I would hide if I was a cat (dark and out of the way), I found him hiding in one of the car seats we had in the yard-sale pile. I had just picked him up when both N and M erupted with joy for me having found him. Startled, he clawed his way out of my arms and went back into hiding. I found him behind the paint this time, but it was time for dinner, so I left him for later. After dinner, I found him back in the car seat. This time I was able to get him out and I put him back in the bathroom for the night.

D's cousin Aaron is in town for a class for his job so we invited him out for dinner. (He's a civil engineer with the Illinois Department of Transportation in Springfield, IL.) D and the kids picked him up from Vienna and I took him back to his hotel after dinner. His class is a train-the-trainer type of class, where he's learning all sorts of newly-discovered techniques for managing various road-types. He'll then take his new found knowledge back to Illinois and relay what he's learned to whosoever is interested in learning it. D made barbecue chicken with the requisite sides (fruit salad -- a staple in our house from May until September) and corn on the cob, along with a green salad. We ate on the deck and enjoyed our visit with him. After dinner we played a quick game of Skipbo before N and I took him back to his hotel.