Saturday afternoon, coming out of Target, finishing up Christmas shopping, I get a call from G, "Come on out to the island, hon, it's gorgeous!"

With the kids out on the island with their Dad, I had planned a solitary weekend catching up on laundry, wrapping presents, and diving into my pile of books. I tried to beg off, having no change of clothes or books with me, but he insisted. I tried several excuses to run back to the house to grab some reading material, the clothes being relatively unimportant, but he didn't want to waste a minute and was adamant that I come right then. It was hard to resist running back into Target and grabbing at least a magazine to accompany me, but I headed off to the marina.

He was right. It was spectacular out there. Luckily for me, I found The Underground History of American Education on the bookshelf and kept my nose buried in that, while enjoying the beautiful weather, of course.