Albany --

Dave writes: Isabel and I stayed up rather late last night, trying to get a comb through Isabel's hair (which is still suffering somewhat from two- or three-times-a-day swimming this summer) while simultaneously working on solving the first six chess problems out of a book of over 5000 board positions. We got through that first page pretty well. Maybe by the time we get to the ones that I can't figure out how to do, a few hundred pages farther down, Isabel will be able to solve them for me.

In spite of the late night, we all got up together for a bowl of oatmeal with raisins early this morning, and Isabel got to school ten or fifteen minutes early, instead of the usual just-barely-on-time. Here's hoping it's the start of a new trend! We're going to try the school breakfast some of the time now, so that I can get to work earlier (and much more important, come home earlier as a result.)