This season's second week of outdoor school is drawing to a close. Once again I have a pretty good group of kids. Sure, some of them don't listen...

The phone just rang - it was my stepmother in law (is that a real term?) calling from the freeway about 200 miles from Dallas. She's been on the road with Jen's dad since about seven this morning Pacific time, part of the stream of evacuees heading north from Houston to avoid the landfall of Hurricane Rita. That's over fifteen hours in the car so far. It looks like they might beat my record of 23 non-stop hours of driving. Of course, when I did it, it wasn't in bumper to bumper traffic. I hope their home weathers the storm okay. I hope nobody dies this time. We can all hope, can't we?

Anyway, as I was saying before the phone call, my week went well, with no abnormal problems. One of the other field instructors had a girl tumble down a hill during the night hike last night. Luckily she was okay. I think we all worry about that happening. As for my night hike, we got to watch bats darting around in the late evening glow, catching insects. Very nice.

This week did come with one mystery though. Somebody paid for an upgrade to my Flickr account so I can basically upload as many photos per month as I want. If you are that mystery benefactor, I thank you. That was very nice of you. I'll try to upload lots of interesting photos for your perusal.

Jen is out with her mom seeing a play. The kids all stayed up too late, like they always do when she isn't here. The good thing about that is that when they finally do conk out, they do it without arguing. Sophie is asleep in front of the TV wearing a Halloween costume. Willow fell asleep in my arms, which was nice. The boys stayed up late dawdling over their homework, and fell asleep almost instantly when they hit the pillows. There are all sorts of things I could be doing right now instead of typing, but I'm tired too, so I'm typing.

Maybe I'll stop now though, because now I'm typing about typing. That's boring.