Howie and I have arrived in Naples, Florida at Dad and Helena's safely and soundly after a long day of work and travel. Happily it appears I have an Internet connection from their apartment, so that makes it easy to stay in touch with the universe. Worked this morning, getting payroll submitted, after getting the boys off to school and walking the dogs and trying to spend some time with Jackie. A usual work-a-day morning. Wanted to leave work by 10, ended up getting home a little before 11 am. Woke up a little stressed, traveling day, work day, and Jackie and I are desperate for time together, but our lives keep getting pulled away from each other, but we did talk today and that was really good I think for both of us. Hopefully this will be a mellow week for me in Florida with Grandpa and Howie. Time to think, time to read, time to gather thoughts, time to write, time to spend with my Dad and my youngest son.

Left Big Sky for the airport at around 12:15 pm. Everything went smoothly, checking in, security, boarding. The plane rides both were very easy. Howie and I read books, played cards, casino, war and gin rummy. Howie took a math test and did some Sudoku. I never took my computer out, just read a book, The Zookeepers Wife by Diane Ackerman. It's 1 am here, 2 hours earlier in Montana. Howie and I were standing at the food court at Minneapolis Airport staring at the pizza and this guy comes up to me and says, "here, use these, I can't use them." He looked like an airline employee, handed me 2 $5 food vouchers, so I took them, said thank you and saved $10 on food I would have spent anyway. Got Howie a free slice of pizza and I used mine for one of those Wolfgang Puck Chinese Salads, my dinner staple on travel days... Ended up using the savings to let Howie buy a Sudoku book. He completed the first puzzle while we waited for our second flight and the second as we took off.

My math wizard.

Other thoughts: I haven't been writing consistently at all. I did a bunch of skiing this past week, cross country, skate and downhill. My knee seems to handle it all very well as long as I have the brace on. Feeling stronger, and enjoying the skiing. Our friends Harry and Emannuella from Athens, Greece who we originally met our first winter in Big Sky were in Big Sky for their annual January visit. We skied with them on Friday and Saturday and had them over for dinner on Saturday night. It was really nice as always to see them and catch up and ski! Harry is a very fast skier, but miraculously I attempted to keep up with him and though not totally succeeding did a pretty good job just the same.

Howie has become addicted (obsessed) with making chocolate desserts out of The Golden Book of Chocolate that Micah got for Christmas... so either Micah and Howie or Jackie and Howie have made 3 or 4 different recipes out of the book kind of in the style of Julia and Julia...

And so I have added some pictures, caught myself up and need to go to bed...