It's an ugly day in Maine: rain and sleet and snow petering into ice and slush and mud. Tom is making kitchen cabinets in his shop, Ruckus has packed himself into a small box, and meanwhile Paul and I are drinking tea and studying maps and contemplating the college-visit road trip we'll be embarking on at the end of February: a whirlwind tour through the theater programs of Amherst, Bennington, Bard, Vassar, and Wesleyan.

I am trying not to think of this as a week of driving around in bad weather in places I have never been, punctuated only by brief stops for french fry lunches and the repetitive speeches of admissions officers.