Reading: Into the Forest, by Jean Hegland. Or, re-reading actually, as I first read this novel a year or two ago. Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is about two orphaned teenaged sisters' struggle to survive in the isolation of the Northern California forest after the country's social structure collapses. What can I say: I have a weakness for post-Apocalyptic novels: this book joins A Canticle for Liebowitz and Earth Abides as one of my favorite examples of this genre.

Weather: Absolutely gorgeous! Sunny, blue skies and cool weather with high temperatures in the low 70s.

Bug's Life Cars

Floyd is gone, but the aftermath continues. There are three major roads between here and Princeton, and two of them were closed due to flooding, causing horrendous traffic jams all day. Many businesses were closed today, and the university had a delayed opening, but that didn't seem to reduce the volume of traffic by much. Fortunately, we know a route to Princeton via country back roads so we didn't get stuck in traffic. Tab heard tales from others in his office, however, whose normal commuting time of 25 minutes had increased to two hours or longer.

On the local news stations, the streets of Bound Brook, New Jersey looked like Venice with Coast Guard motorboats traveling up and down the flooded streets. Just around the corner from us, some folks had to be rescued from their homes last night when the Assunpink creek flooded. A surprising number of those residents quoted in the paper this morning said they planned to return to their homes, even though the Assunpink overflows its banks whenever we have a lot of heavy rain.

For some reason the twins have taken it into their heads that Tab is going to buy them Bug's Life cars at a yard sale. Now, as far as I know, there are no such toys as Bug's Life cars, but I can't convince them of that. They have even started to argue about how many they each will get.

"I will have five, and you will have three, Matthew."

"No, Reno!" Apparently, Matthew's math skills are sophisticated enough to know that he was getting the worse end of that deal.

"OK, we'll both have four."

That matter was settled for the time being. Later they drew Daniel into their fantasy.

"We're going to get Bug's Life cars, Daniel!" Stephen told him.

"Bug's Life cars?"

"Yeah, Daddy's going to get them at yard sales!"

"Cool. Stephen and I will have the Flik cars and Matthew will have the Princess Atta cars," Daniel decided.

"No!" Matthew objected.

It's amazing how they can manage to get into arguments over toys that don't even exist.

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