Alarm went off at 4:30 this morning as we have to bring T's truck out of town to get a brake-line job, and then he has to bring me home and then borrow my car to go to work, and all of this driving around cuts into his get-ready-for-work time, so voila. 4:30. Blah.

At least I got the coffee made. And I have a couple of seconds to sit here on the couch with it, before I have to clump up the stairs to get dressed.

Yesterday I wrote up some class plans and did some editing. I went for a walk with my neighbor, and I worked outside, cleaning up the stick pile, weeding the vegetable-garden beds. And then I noticed that, two houses up, there were police cars parked outside, a crime-scene van, a firetruck. Something was going on at Ray's house. Turns out he was dead.

So that was an unsettling end to the day. Apparently he'd died in the house, and not very recently. He lived alone, and I saw him often, tinkering with his cars. But I didn't see him every day, certainly not since we'd been on vacation. He could have been in there a while.