When I was a kid, the Pines Elementary School library was as frequent a haunt as I could make it.  There was this one book that I remember reading, but don’t remember the title.  It wasn’t so much a reading book, as it was a presentation book, but it was the presentation that drew me in.  A Circus in the Fog was the basic idea, and may have even been the title.  Page upon page of thin tracing paper represented the fog, and pulled back one at a time to reveal more of the book’s illustrations.  This was the mid-seventies, and I’m sure the book was very fragile with all the gauzy paper, so I don’t think many survived to this day, but the book will be forever stored in my head.  All this was resurrected as the Blue Ridge mountains remained shrouded in fog for most of the trip- the picture above is by far the most scenic one of the lot.

(Since the original post, the book title has been discovered.  It’s Bruno Munari’s Circus in the Mist.  Rare and hard to find and not pay extravagant prices for it.  It’s in Marissa’s Amazon wish list now, so maybe for Christmas.)

Marissa did fine for most of the trip without altering the seizure schedule or severity at all- the true test will be today and tomorrow as we settle back into the routine.  She was a sleepy girl yesterday evening- we got her on her sofa as soon as we could, she said hello to her Auntie who was doing laundry at the house, and she promptly fell asleep at 3PM for about 4 hours.  Normally, this would be an ominous presage of the night.  Different story, though- the 8PM bathtime was all she needed to sleep fairly soundly through the night.  Well, soundly other than her new habit of talking in her sleep, that is.  We assumed that the babble at 2AM was her waking, then falling back asleep- now, we’re not so sure.  As with all things, we’ll see, though.

Following the success of the painted donkeys and elephants in DC a few years ago, other areas have picked up on the local artisan sculpture concept.  Virginia Tech and Blacksburg is no exception.  A fair amount has changed since we were there the last time- the Blacksburg shootings took place in the interim, and it appears that the surrounding community has embraced the university even more than before.  That’s always a good thing.

This upcoming weekend is a very minor expedition for us.  If the biblical rain stops, our destination is the Smithsonian museum of Natural History.  Should the bad weather persist (it is Autumn, after all), then we’re off to Udvar Hazy Air and Space on the outskirts of the Dulles airport.

Fairfax Sighting

One of the mailed Fairfax warren spent some time on Cape Cod recently- thanks for the excellent pictures!