I am going to begin this post with a journal I started writing daily while Abner and I were on our trip to the Outer Banks over Thanksgiving. I'll fill in the blanks after the following which is kind of stream of consciousness.

Driving out to Nags Head for the beginning of my vacation on the Outer Banks (aka the OBX), I became aware that a large portion of the State of North Carolina is quite beautiful. I had driven from Asheville as far as the outskirts of Durham earlier this year when Abner and I went to Washington and New York on a road trip, but had never ventured any further east. The land is very gently rolling as you approach Durham and Raleigh from the west, but flattens out considerably when you get into the low country east of Raleigh.

We left I-40 on the East side of Raleigh and headed east on US highway 64 all the way to Nags Head. In spite of road maps that indicated that much of this road is two-lane and passes through a bunch of small towns, in truth it is a beautiful, relatively new 4 lane highway most of the way and passes through some really lovely areas. Even the town of Rocky Mount (the only one of any size between Raleigh and the OBX) where Abner and I took a rest stop to have lunch and take a walk, turned out to have a beautiful park along the Tar River with a paved bikeway/path that meanders for miles through the woods beside the water.

Including three stops, it took us 7-1/2 hours from my house to the hotel in Nags Head. I should have known that the hotel was going to be interesting from the moment I saw the marquis sign at the entrance that said “Welcome NRA”. As it turned out, the NRA guys were actually pretty pleasant and were curious about Abner. We never did get into any political discussions and at no point did I mention either Michael Moore or Charleton Heston.

We checked into a room that, while adequate, certainly shouldn’t have been rated with the 3 diamonds with which AAA had graced it. Lights had short circuits and needed a lot of fiddling to turn on. The door to the beach walkway required a key to lock or unlock the badly rusted hardware and the rooms now have card locks so there was no way to go directly to the beach even though I had access unless I was willing to leave the room unlocked. The bathroom had a hole in the wall where a baseboard coving used to be that someone had stuffed with toilet paper. The drapes couldn’t be opened more than about 1/3 of the width of the window because of a track that had been so mangled that the little hooks couldn’t move in it.

The worst thing though was that this hotel, which promotes itself as pet friendly has only 3 rooms where they allow dogs (out of more than 100 rooms) and they are all side by side on the 2nd floor. At one end is the electronic arcade room where the tweens and teens seem to like to hang out and at the other end are the beach access hallway, the breakfast room, and the meeting rooms. My room was the middle one, so I got to hear all the noise generated by the surrounding facilities and everything that went on in the room between mine and the arcade room. That mattered because the occupants not only came with their dog (who was the quietest one in the room) but also with their two young and very loud and busy children who apparently stay up past midnight on a regular basis in spite of being probably 3 and 5 years old.

The first night I was treated to all manner of conversations including the singing of happy birthday to one of the kids and a lengthy discussion of where dinner the following night would be celebrated. This occurred at about 10 minutes past midnight, roughly an hour and a half after I had tried to go to bed. I eventually gave up when Abner, who was pretty cranked up not only by the sounds emanating from the room, but apparently from the scent of their dog which he could get from under the connecting door. I got up, and dressed in sweats and headed down to the lobby with Abner to take him for a very late night walk. I also asked the desk person if he could do something about the noise in the room next to mine.

When I returned, he assured me that they weren’t doing anything and had suggested that perhaps I had heard their TV set. Yeah, right. The TV sang happy birthday to their kid and talked with him about where his birthday dinner would be. Some TV. In any case, it was a lot quieter when I returned to my room and I finally got to sleep. The next night was almost as bad only this time the man and wife had a big ugly fight over what dosage of aspirin to give the little boy (probably 3 years old) who sounded like he was coughing up a lung. The argument was quite a doozy but ended by about 11:30 so this time I didn’t complain. Besides, the school kids from Virginia Beach who had come to town for a swim meet were making as much noise running in the halls and chatting with one another as the neighbors had made the night before.

We did enjoy seeing the northern stretch of the OBX though. We went to Kill Devil Hills to visit the Wright Brothers Memorial and that is something I strongly recommend. Like most of the Outer Banks it is run by the National Park Service and is very interesting and quite beautiful. Despite all the development of the surrounding areas, the landscape within the grounds of the memorial is much as it was when the Wrights had a camp there in 1901 through the end of 03 when they finally made the first successful flights. Kill Devil Hill itself no longer shifts with the wind since the park service has planted grass to hold it in one spot, but the woods and the shape of the dunes are still there and very impressive. The monument itself sits at the top of the hill from which the Wright brothers did their glider flights to learn how to control their flyer prior to putting a motor and propellers on it. It was built to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the flights and is done in classic art deco architecture. When the 100th anniversary celebration was mounted 3 years ago, a wonderful bronze replica of the Wright Flyer with Orville at the controls and standing bronzes of the crew and photographer was erected south of the monument and hill. On the north side of the hill is the actual site where the first 4 successful powered flights took place. The monorail on which the Flyer was guided for take off is in the grass and there are 4 granite markers showing the distances of the first 4 flights. The first, Orville’s official first successful powered flight, was only 120 feet long and took 12 seconds. Most of the planes we fly in today are longer than that from nose to tail.

Inside the Visitor Center, besides an accurate full-sized replica of both the Wright Flyer and the glider that preceded it, there are exhibits about flight and a short talk given by one of the park rangers. One of the amazing things that he points out in his lecture is how little time elapsed from this first flight to man walking on the moon. In fact, 66 years or roughly 3 generations was all that it took to progress that far in flight.

If you find yourself on the Outer Banks, don’t miss this fascinating site.

We drove all the way up to Corolla, the northernmost town on the OBX that you can reach by road. There are a few very small developments north of Corolla leading up to the Virginia border that are reachable only by water or by 4-wheel drive vehicle on the beach but we didn’t go there. Corolla and Duck, both of which are north of Kitty Hawk, are formerly small villages with cute little town centers that have had explosive development in the last decade. The dunes are crammed with enormous houses (some with enough bedrooms that they advertise capacities of 32 guests in their online rental promos). These houses are, for the most part, insufferably boring suburban architecture on a grand but painfully banal scale. They are virtually indistinguishable from each other. They don’t particularly relate to their environment other than the fact that most have their first floor high enough above the ground that a storm surge of 15 feet or so could pass underneath them without damaging the body of the house. Unfortunately in the competition for water views, whether facing the sound or the ocean, each tries to reach above the adjacent houses to grasp a little more view. Most are at least 3 stories high above the first level, which is empty other than for parking, and some storage. Many are now 4 stories plus the stilted first level and some have even put decks and “widows walks” above that. Consequently, some of these places are probably between 60 and 75 feet tall to the peak of their roofs. It is really a pity because it is clear in the few undeveloped areas, that these used to be beautiful rolling sand dunes with fragile native vegetation. One woman, a gallery owner in Duck, was telling me that when she first arrived there 25 years ago, she came on an grey and overcast day that she said looked like one of the most beautiful black and white photos she had ever seen. She immediately decided to move there.

Now, of course, if you decide to move to Duck, you’d better have at least $1.5 million to spend on a house and a whole lot of patience if you want to build, remodel, or add on. The town councils of these places are now apparently so freaked out about what has happened that it takes (according to the gallery owner) an act of God just to get a permit to install a new fridge. Too little, to late.

As you head south from Nags Head though, everything changes. The remainder of Bodie Island (on which Nags Head is situated) has one road of houses facing the ocean for about half the distance from town to Oregon Inlet, which separates Bodie Island from Hatteras Island. There is a bridge across the Inlet (built in 1964. . .prior to which the only way to get to Hatteras was by undependable ferry service), which deposits you at the North end of the island where the first 20 miles or so of this beautiful sand dune is the Pea Island National Wildlife Preserve. Other than a single headquarters building, you see nothing but unspoiled sand dunes and birds as you navigate this stretch. It was fascinating to see the flocks of birds flying in the same direction I was driving because I was driving between 55 and 60 MPH for much of the time, and they frequently were going faster.

Hatteras does have a few small villages and some of them have very large new developments although nothing like the development at the north end of the OBX. At this time of year, it is very quiet in these areas so even with the amount of housing you see, one encounters very few people. At Buxton we visited the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the most famous of the 4 that have protected ships and boats navigating what is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic since the 1700s. Abner and I actually got to see all four of them. Currituck light, in Corolla, was built in 1872, is unpainted brick, and has lovely Victorian detailing below the lantern itself. Bodie lighthouse, also from the Victorian era but more isolated now south of Whalebone and all the housing, is also brick but painted in black and white horizontal stripes. Hatteras light is the tallest at 243 feet in height and is painted in spiraling black and white stripes. On Ocracoke, we have visited the diminutive Ocracoke Light, which was built in 1820 and is only about 80 feet tall. It replaced a lighthouse from the late 1700s that actually stood out in Ocracoke Inlet but was inaccessible whenever the weather was bad enough that the lighthouse was critical for navigation. As such the replacement was built, like the others, a couple hundred yards inland. Ocracoke is the oldest lighthouse in continuous use on the Eastern Seaboard.

Anyway, when we reached Hatteras, the tiny burg at the south end of Hatteras Island, we drove up to the ferry and had to wait all of 3 minutes before driving on and promptly departing for Ocracoke. The crossing takes 40 minutes but mostly because of the treacherous shoals that have to be avoided in the circuitous channel that has to be constantly dredged for the ferries. Hatteras Inlet itself was, for many years, not considered navigable due to these shoals, but was dredged in the early 20th century. When it was opened up, Ocracoke became less important since Hatteras provided access for ships into Pamlico Sound and routes to the major ports and Harbors along the North Carolina coast.

The islands of the Outer Banks are considerably further out to sea than the other barrier islands of the Atlantic and, as such presented a real navigation problem for shipping. There are over 1500 known shipwrecks along the outer banks and countless that are uncharted and unrecorded. For wreck divers in North America, it is Mecca. Because the sand shifts constantly, wrecks can reappear that have been concealed for centuries. Since the Outer Banks were home to hordes of pirates in the Colonial era, and since some of the ships were loaded with treasures Spanish and British explorers had looted from the Americas, most real treasure divers eventually end up in these islands looking for ancient booty. From time to time they find a new and rich wreck, which just enhances the lure of the place. Blackbeard called Ocracoke home and many of these treasure hunters are still on the lookout for his alleged fortune, which was never located after his violent death in the 1718 at the hands of the British Military.

Driving the length of Ocracoke from the ferry terminal at the North end to Ocracoke Village near the South, you see an island that is mostly frozen in time. On Ocracoke, building on beachfront is prohibited. All the commercial and residential structures on the island are concentrated in the village itself, which forms a C around a small harbor on the Southwest edge of the island facing the Pamlico Sound. The sound itself is wide enough that you cannot see land on the other side, so your sense of being isolated out at sea is quite intense. The village, which dates from around 1715, went through periods of importance when Ocracoke Inlet was the major route ships took to the port of Wilmington (at Cape Fear) and other Colonial outposts on the coast. Ocracoke was officially incorporated in 1823 after the new lighthouse opened.

Portsmouth Island to the immediate south of Ocracoke Inlet was also important to shipping and navigation and once had a population of 700 people. Ocracoke now has only about 800 year round residents (swelling to 8,000 during the height of the summer tourist season) and Portsmouth is completely deserted. In fact, Portsmouth Village, the last of whose occupants left in the early 70s, is the only ghost town East of the Mississippi River and is now managed by the National Park Service. I am hoping to get over to see it one day this week if the weather cooperates.

Ocracoke village is appealing in a way that none of the rest of the OBX towns is. It is old and funky and seems intent on remaining so. Most of the houses here are old and relatively modest. Most have a seaside architecture of shingle siding and are raised up 5 or 6 feet to protect them from storm surges. They are generally on tiny lots and almost all have covered front porches that are often screened so people can sit outside, chat with passersby and be protected from the mosquito population that plagues these islands during the summer.

Abner and I are staying in a small, very funky place called Sawbones Surf Shack. It is a converted A-frame that belongs to a family from Nags Head one of whose sons is apparently a famous surfer. There is a video here called “Noah’s Arc” which, according to some notes left by the owners, is a feature about the superstar surfer son Noah. Since I am not exactly into surfing, I will probably pass on watching it. The house is in a wonderful location a short walk from the harbor and across the street from houses facing the sound. I can see the water from the decks of the upstairs bedroom that I am using as my office, and the elevated bar/game area that is part of the great room. There is no central heating although the wall heater seems to be doing the trick. The kitchen is tiny and pretty minimally equipped but I think I will get by.

My biggest problem is the bathroom. It is so small that when I sit on the toilet (which is a necessity from time to time) my knees hit the side of the tub. If I am reading and leaning forward to look at my book, my head actually touches the shower curtain. The most frightening part of this room though is the rotting of the floor. There is a bath mat in the shape of a flower (very 60s) that apparently is intended to prevent you from noticing a rather disturbing hole in the floor. I am just hoping it doesn’t collapse completely while I am here since I don’t want to be held responsible for repairing it.

Today we drove to the beach. That is, we drove to and on the beach. A number of the beaches in the Outer Banks allow people to drive on them during certain periods. Here I think it is pretty much year round. The numbers of people who do it aren’t that bad though. The island is something in the neighborhood of 15 miles long and the entire Atlantic shore is beach and low dunes. The sand is fine and incredibly clean. The dunes are off limits except at designated points where you can cut through them. Since my car has full time all-wheel drive I thought it was worth a try. As it turned out, it was really fun. I never went faster than about 25 mph and in the drier parts of the sand, sometimes there was a slight bit of whatever the sand version of hydroplaning is called but even that was kind of fun. Unfortunately, it was a little too windy to just sit on a beach towel and read so Abner and I contented ourselves with a 30-minute walk. Almost all the other people on the beach today were fishermen (and women). I guess this is a particularly popular time of year for beach fishing and most of these guys seem to take it pretty seriously. They have these elaborate rigs mounted on the fronts of their huge trucks and SUVs that hold as many as 12 fishing rods and equipment. Most also have huge tackle boxes and coolers built onto large cantilevered structures in front of the truck’s engine. The amazing thing is that with 4 feet or so of extra stuff in front of these things, and a dozen fishing rods flailing around in the wind, these guys can still see when they drive down the road.

When we got back to town we did a little shopping and drove around to check out the areas we hadn’t already explored on foot. In the process we met a guy from Philadelphia with an 18-month-old Bernese Mountain Dog who is bigger than Abner. He also was so exuberant that Abner essentially snubbed him. Poor dog just was so excited to be around another young big dog and he really wanted to play but Abner just stood there and looked the opposite direction. The dog’s dad and I exchanged info about where we are staying and may try taking them both to the beach together if the weather improves later in the week to see if Abner is more amenable to playing off leash on a big beach. We’ll see.

We are, at this point, 4 days into this vacation and according to the weather channels, will probably be trapped indoors for the remainder of the trip. While they are prone to exaggerate, they are predicting 40 mile per hour winds and rain for at least the next two days and then calmer warmer rainy days after that until Sunday when we are due to leave. It’s a good thing I have a bunch of books. I really don’t know what to do to keep Abner entertained. I guess if it really is that dreary, we can leave a day or so early and head home. Somehow, I think if I am going to be bored and trapped in a house, I would rather be trapped in my own house than at the Sawbones Surf Shack.

Well Tuesday morning arrived and Abner and I went for a walk fairly early in strong gusty winds. It was a good thing too. By about 9:30 in the morning I received a call from the rental company suggesting that I move my car to higher ground. It seems that the wind and rain were combining to create a situation where portions of Ocracoke could flood and the house we are in is included in one of those areas. So with a back spasm bothering me and the wind and slight rain picking up, I drove my car to a parking lot near the ferry building about a 10-minute walk from here. On the walk back I encountered flooding on the only street leading into this area and now it is raining heavily. The wind is apparently the bigger problem. With the Pamlico Sound right across the street, the wind can blow tidal surge right over this area. I asked the rental agent how bad it could get and she said that as far as she knows, the house has never been under water but it certainly could be completely surrounded by water several feet deep. I presume that if that happens, I will be stuck here for a few days. I do have an 11-pound turkey that I can cook as long as the power doesn’t fail. This is getting exciting.

The house is a modified a-frame and, as such, presents a high profile. The wind is causing it to shake quite a bit. . . . not like it is going to cause any damage, but it is like being in a continuous earthquake. Abner seems largely untroubled by the whole situation and sleeps most of the time. I am watching an Eleanor Powell film festival on TCM. Boredom is setting in though so I will probably revert to reading soon.

It is now Wednesday morning. After an entire day stuck indoors with Abner and cable television to keep me company, last night the power failed at about 5:30 PM. I managed to find 3 candles and a single book of matches courtesy of the tiny LED on a key ring that I had accidentally brought. With only the candles to provide light, reading was out of the question, so Abner and I sat in the dim light and got colder as the night progressed. The other thing I had to do was continually monitor the condition of the road and drive in front of the house to make sure the water didn’t come up to the point where I would no longer own a functioning car. I had retrieved the car from where I stashed it in the morning, because I decided that I wanted to be able to drive out with Abner if I had to rather than wade out without him.

At about 6:30 the people across the street and down two houses who had befriended us a couple days ago when they spotted Abner (they had a Pyr who they had just put down about a month ago) dropped by in their behemoth truck to ask if I wanted to go out to dinner at the only open restaurant. I told them I really appreciated it, but wasn’t comfortable leaving Abner alone in the dark in a storm in a strange house.

Abner and I just hung out together in the living room for a couple hours and around 8:30 the neighbors returned from their dinner. The entire island was without power they said but Howard’s Pub had a generator and was planning to stay open as long as they could. These folks who are visiting from Greensboro, though, really came prepared. They offered me a spare battery and an inverter so I could operate my bipap machine and at least get some sleep. I had already managed to make myself a salad and ate half of a leftover steak cold. . .not my favorite way to eat beef but it was better than starving or letting it rot in the fridge. I fear that my turkey may not make it.

At around 10:00 ish the power came back on and stayed until about 5:15 this morning when it failed again. It has been iffy ever since. I guess all of Hatteras Island and Ocracoke are having problems. The ferry to Hatteras can’t run because the road between Ocracoke Village and the ferry terminal is flooded with seawater. The Cedar Island Ferry and the Swan’s Quarter Ferry, which leave from a terminal relatively close to where our house is, aren’t running because the roads on the mainland side are flooded at both locations. . . no estimate is currently available for them to start again. So it would appear that I am trapped here. The road is flooded about a block and a half away from me and no one seems to know how deep the water is so I haven’t tried driving through it yet, but I probably will try sometime later around low tide.

The biggest consideration, other than packing everything up and making a run for it as soon as one of the ferries is running, is whether or not to start cooking the turkey before it turns into a gelatinous ooze in the occasionally powered fridge. If I were confident that I would have power for 3 hours, I would just cook the goddam thing and get it over with. That way, it won’t spoil as fast and I won’t starve. The problem with that is that I don’t have any reason to believe that I will have power for that long. To make matters worse, it is raining again.

Well, Wednesday eventually turned out to be a really beautiful day. Temps in the mid 60s and sunny weather with almost no wind made for a pretty nice day. I screwed up my courage and headed out initially in the car to get to an area where I could take Abner for a walk of decent length. We also stopped at the rental office to see what we could find out about weather, ferry schedules and whether or not the power was ever going to be fixed. The people there had absolutely no idea about any of these issues. One woman suggested that if I really was uncomfortable yesterday, maybe I should just make a run for it on whatever ferry I could get on. Great advice. Who would be uncomfortable in the dark in a house with no heat, no way to cook, a refrigerator that wasn’t keeping the food fresh, in a driving rain (more than 6 inches in 24 hours) and winds up to 70 mph? I noticed that today the power came on for roughly 2 hours each time and then was off again. A couple times it was only on for a few minutes but that apparently was when they were having problems. It has now, however, been on for about 5 hours. After walking with Abner and having two play dates with a 1-1/2 year old Bernese Mountain Dog named Ivan we came back to the house and the power was still working so I started the oven and put the turkey in. It has been cooking for almost an hour and a half and it is only an 11 pounder, so there is a real possibility that it will get cooked tonight and won’t turn into some gross gooey blob of food poisoning.

The rain has returned, but is pretty light this time. The weather channel which reappeared on the TV about an hour ago, says that the worst of the storm is heading north into Virginia and Maryland and that while we may get some more rain through the night, it shouldn’t have the heavy winds any more and probably will largely be gone by tomorrow. I guess this means I will stick around. Besides, now that Abner has someone to play with, he is having a better time.

Wednesday night was clear and calm so before turning in, Abner and I went for a short P and P walk around the neighborhood. . . basically as far as we could go without having to wade through water deeper than a couple inches. I have purchased a pair of slightly oversized rubber knee boots that seem to have become a necessity. I will probably never use them again, but I was getting tired of being trapped in my rental. Anyway, with the sky clear and the evening calm, Ocracoke is an extraordinary looking place. I had just finished watching the DVD of American Beauty that I had brought with me for entertainment, and was probably more acutely aware of seeing beauty, but here it kind of smacks you in the face.

Since the village has very few lights aside from those inside the occupied houses, there is little light pollution of the night sky. It is truly breathtaking out here. Because we are as far out to sea as we are, there is simply no source of pollution to muck up the view of the stars. It is the kind of sky that reminds you of Carl Sagan’s reference to “billions and billions” of stars and you feel like you can see most of them. I have never been good at astronomy but could identify a number of constellations because they are so clearly visible. If we get another night like that, I am going out with my binoculars to see if I can see anything better.

Today (Thanksgiving) it is blustery again. The wind is nothing like what we endured on Tuesday but is, nonetheless, sufficient to churn up the waves again in Pamlico Sound. The ferries to Cedar Island and Swans Quarter are both operating again. I guess the Hatteras ferry service is still somewhat limited because the road out there is flooded in so many areas. This damned storm apparently keeps moving in a spiral and while it has progressed to the North, we still get the privilege of being revisited by its fringe today.

I cooked the turkey last night because I was afraid that with all the power outages that it had thawed too fast and ran the risk of rotting in the fridge. As it turns out, cooking when you are afraid of a power failure is a good method. I took it out to check the temperature when it had been in the oven for only an hour and 40 minutes and it was already done. Normally I would have set the timer probably for about two hours, (the only timer here is on the microwave and it doesn’t work) and then checked it but since all day the electricity had been pulsing on and off at roughly two hour intervals and I had preheated, there was no guarantee of completion prior to still another shutoff of the power. Well, since I took it out as early as I did, it actually is pretty moist. I guess I will start eating it today. There is little doubt that some of it will head home with us. I don’t think I can get through 11 pounds of turkey in 3 days.

If the weather continues to be like this all day, it looks like this could be another reading day. I am plunging through Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” which is a pretty detailed indictment of the administration and in particular Donald Rumsfeld. Needless to say, I am loving it.

Today the weather was beautiful and we took the dogs to the beach where romping in the sand was the order of the day. Ivan likes to run into the water a little but Abner kind of freaked as soon as his feet got wet and decided not to pursue. On the beach, they both got very playful and cavorted for quite some time. It was really fun to watch them. I find myself wishing Philip and Gretchen lived closer than S.E. Pennsylvania. Ivan would be a wonderful regular playmate for Abner. Oh well.

Our last couple days on Ocracoke were actually pretty nice. The weather got great. . .mid to high 60s and sun with very little wind. We went to the beach every day and Abner got to play with Ivan.

On Sunday, as planned, we headed out early. I had booked a space on the 10:00 AM ferry to Cedar Island. The weather was gorgeous and so warm that on the 2 hour and 15 minute crossing, I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The crossing was really nice. As we left I got some great views of Ocracoke harbor and the island as we slipped away. Since it is about 40 miles out to sea, you don't see land for all but about the last 40 minutes of the voyage. The ferries they use for this crossing are considerably bigger than the Hatteras/Ocracoke ones and are very stable and comfortable. The sound is also pretty calm when not buffetted by 70 mph wind.

I was fearful that the drive home from Cedar Island might be a really difficult one since it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I had to go past or through every major city in North Carolina other than Charlotte. My fear was unfounded. It was an easy drive on perfectly lovely roads most of the way. There was one section going around Greensboro where we hit a clog of traffic that slowed to about 30 but other than that little bit it was an uneventful drive. We had gotten to Cedar Island at 12:15 and I was in my driveway by 7:15.

As much as I enjoyed the trip and am glad I have seen the Outer Banks, I was glad to be home. I doubt that I will become an annual visitor. The barrier islands of South Carolina and Georgia are much closer and easier to get to. I will probably work my way down the coast trying different beach towns unless I fall in love with one.

Now that I am home, I have been leading a fairly quiet life again. I have shown the house quite a bit but no offers yet. Abner and I are back to our daily hikes and my card game is back on track so things are feeling like life has returned to normal I am dealing with some dental dramas but that too shall pass.

Pictures will follow. I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and are surviving the leadup to the next round of holidays.

It occurs to me, by the way, that I need to remind some of you that if you like any of these pictures, you just have to click on them to view them full-sized. If you do post them anywhere else, I would appeciate credit for them.