Now it really is Saturday. After traveling for 2 days and experiencing Friday twice, I had to double check the day/date today! It seemed so weird to wake up to Morning Edition reporting news about Chechnya that Alex had told me on the way to the airport. And finding out that the Red Sox are only 2 1/2 games out of the wildcard slot... And Hurricane Eduoard is making its way up the east coast so Rhode Island is battening down...

I slept for about 4 hours this morning and woke up at 5:55 to find Wilbur clamped to my arm, claws of all four feet dug in and his teeth around my thumb not deep enough to break the skin but enough that I couldn't get away from him without drawing blood. I guess he missed me! He's been following me around the house since I got back. Whatever room I'm in, he's in. I did manage to extricate myself, but not without a few scratches, and go to Andover to drop off the laundry, drop off some of my pics to be developed at CVS 1-hour photo (the Kodak print film only - the Fuji Velvia pro slide film I sent out and it won't be back til Wednesday because of the Labor Day holiday), get a decent cup of coffee (the coffee in Vladivostok was, umm, well, Russian...), mail some letters for Alex (it's faster for me to hand carry them and mail them here than for him to mail them in Russia), pick up the pics...

My body still thinks it's in Vladivostok so I'm about ready to go to sleep but I want to stay up (it's only 11:21AM here) to go over to Rita's for more coffee and to see how she's feeling after surgery on Thursday. I told her I'd bring over some of the Vladivostok pics. Then on to Mom's house for the family gathering to commune with Bobby of Bosnia on his way to Las Vegas. He's arriving at 3:00. Dinner is at 5:30. He'll be on Bosnia time. I'm on Vladivostok time. The rest of the family is presumably on Eastern Daylight Time, but with my family you never know. I'm reminded of a line from The Winds of War: "[Our family] have become as tumbleweeds blown apart by the winds of war" - only we seem to be blown around by the winds of peace.