We're still experiencing the aftermath of Isabel. The little bookstore-music store-cafe I visit while Caitlin is at karate was closed, presumably because they chose not to serve spoiled food. I wonder what happens to the fish tank while the power is out? How long can they live without their filter running? Is their water heated? Will poisson de électricité défaillance be on the menu? (I made up that phrase, not knowing a lick of French, by cobbling together words from an English-French dictionary - it probably has some enormously rude meaning.)

Music: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road by Lucinda Williams. I never thought she'd record a finer set of songs. Then I heard Essence and knew I had been wrong.

Movies: Blow Dry. A not-over-the-top comedy about the British Hairdressing Championships. Alan Rickman is sarcastically wonderful.

Dreams: I was traveling with my family (my mother in the dream looked inexplicably like Condoleeza Rice) in a big old station wagon. We pulled up to a convenience store and went in to get something to drink, preferably water. I tried to pay with change, but had too many Canadian coins mixed in with the US ones so I had to use a bill. There was a woman in the store who was talking with great disgust about someone having left a piece of pie (I think it was one of those Mrs. Smith's cherry pies with the too-perfect whipped cream-like topping) in the microwave. I had the distinct sense she was talking about me. When I went back out the car, I realized I hadn't been invited to a co-worker's 50th birthday party. Everyone in my "family" was dressed in black evening attire - my mother had on a sleeveless black velvet dress and my little sister (about 5 years old in the dream) was dressed only in a black pleated school uniform skirt. A little more work-related paranoia? (I wrote this dream down immediately after I woke up this morning, otherwise I would not have recalled any of it).