OK, so that was a long nap.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle now. (But refreshed! Very refreshed!)

Actually, my time in the last little while has been consumed with the business of moving. We are now partially ensconced in our new place in the Puget Sound area of Washington, with boxes yet to be unpacked -- but now that the computers are back in one piece and we have Internet access, HELLO WORLD! (It may or may not provide insight into our characters to note that, although we were wired up for Internet access as soon as possible, we won't actually get telephone service until early next week. Yep, we're geeks.)

This evening provided one of those small warm-fuzzy moments when I wandered into the local supermarket. As I strolled around looking for leeks and yogurt and hair conditioner, I began to notice that my fellow shoppers hailed from all over the world -- India, Mexico, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Korea and China; I counted at least five different languages other than English being spoken. The checker who helped me was fluent in both English and Spanish, and the teenager who bagged my groceries had originally come from Russia. It strongly reminded me of my childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there were so many people from so many different places, with so many different traditions and beliefs and creeds, that it was impossible to single anyone out for being "different." And yet we did have one thing in common -- whether by birth or by choice, we were all Americans.

It was beautiful out tonight -- cool, with a fine mist of rain falling. All the cherry trees are in bloom. There's nothing like the scent of a spring cherry tree in the midst of a rainy night.