We’re back from our little trip. On Saturday we stopped in Fenton and picked up my last load (hopefully) of stuff from my parent’s old house. Including our famous family camel pictured above. It was stuffed in my Subaru overnight at the motel.

My parents brought this camel back from one of their trips to Europe.  It has been designated as an specific inheritance for one of my children. (No, not you, Sarah or Elizabeth. Heh) If accepted, it will involve shipping this sucker. Not sure how that will work. In the meantime I like the thing myself and like seeing it in my shabby cluttered life.

Also picked up slides, many possibly from the same trip my parents purchased the camel. I look forward to getting these slides into a usable form.

Good to be home. I played through couple of movements of  the A major Schubert piano sonata last night. Then listened to it as Eileen tromped me at Scrabble. Got up this morning and continued analyzing Art of Fugue by Bach. In between I listened to the BBC radio dramatization of William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition.” [link to stream]

I don’t really recognize the plot even though I was pretty sure I have read this. I follow Gibson on Twitter [link]. He recently linked in (with his stamp of approval) this article about the main character in this book:

“Cayce Pollard Units: The Ne Plus Ultra of Anti-Fashion, So Awesome You Can’t Even See Her” by Kat  [link to blog post]

Cayce Pollard, the main character in “Pattern Recognition”, has an extreme physical allergy to advertising logos. In order to not be ill she must remove all identifying brand marks from her clothes. Of course, she makes her living by using her revulsion to help corporations find the most effective branding. Very funny.

Planning to continue to vacate as much as possible this week. Eileen goes back to work tomorrow. I have to give a talk this evening to a woman’s organization at church. This should be pretty easy.

Eileen and I made a last trip to Trader Joe’s in Ann Arbor before returning home yesterday.

I was amazed that not only do they have cool groceries, many items are actually less expensive than the local Meijer’s grocery store here in Holy Old Holland Michigan. O Trader Joe, won’t you open a store in Western Michigan?