One of the big old houses along the street I take to and from work every day seems to lose one of its fragile ancient trees with every storm. Isabel took down one that was cut into chunks and loaded into a truck today. The small front end loader lifted a half dozen pieces of wood and dropped them on top of the already-overflowing truck bed, threatening to spill the contents onto the road. The front end loader then trundled back over the pachysandra to the back yard for what looked like the last load of wood. I didn't hang around to see if it could be wedged into the truck. (In searching for a picture of a front end loader to make sure that I was using the correct term, and that it wasn't a bulldozer or some other type of construction equipment, the first site Google sent me to was one of a group of people who acquired a bunch of old appliances so that they could shoot them. The front end loader was presumably used to cart them off to the loony bin after the shooting.)

Movies: The Rundown. Despite the presence of a row of extremely loud and unruly adolescents behind us (one of which was my very own dear Rebecca), the movie was amusing, the action was brutally intense and the jungles (allegedly South America, but filmed in Hawaii) were suitably exotic. There was an audible intake of breath from the 12 and 13 year old girls when The Rock took off his shirt.

Cats: Caitlin claims we need to adopt a kitten for Tabitha so that she won't feel so threatened by the other evil cats. I don't quite follow the logic of that. We checked at the SPCA over the weekend to see if they had any small, non-shedding dogs, but they had only big, mean-looking pit bulls, dalmations and a few other very large dogs who looked as if they would each shed about five pounds of fur a day.