Happy Thanksgiving, or "Are you kidding?"

We're certainly having an eventful Thanksgiving. We got up this morning to drive to New Jersey, to be with Jonathan's family. We got off about 11:30 after only minor delays: packing clothes and my laptop which has been in rather ill health, cleaning the mouse cage, cleaning the bathroom after cleaning the mouse cage, etc. Merry was quite tame and let Jonathan apply vitamin E to her damaged ear. We had a good drive up, too. Traffic was quite reasonable, except for the lunatics going eighty or ninety in a fifty-five zone. But still.

We arrived quite happily, and started to unload the car. Jonathan pulled Merry's cage out of the backseat. "Merry, honey, that's not funny."

I looked. She was curled up in her food dish. "What?"

"Merry?" He joggled the cage. "She's not moving."

"Are you kidding?"

But - it was true. She wasn't moving. Somewhere along the road, our sweet mousie had passed on.

"Well, Jonathan," his mom called, "Go ahead and bring the cage inside. We'll take care of her after dinner." So Jonathan started to take in the deceased mousie, and his brother offered to help me haul in the luggage. So I called Jonathan back to borrow his key to pop the trunk. I popped it...

"Jonathan?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Did you put in the suitcase?"

There was silence. "Are you kidding? I thought you put it in."

After dinner we ran to Target, just on the off chance they'd be open and have certain necessaries. They weren't. Ah well, we'll just have to hold on till tomorrow and... go... shopping... on Black Friday.

So we came back, and I thought I'd do a spot of laptop resuscitation. I plugged it into an external monitor -- and it worked!! So I started trying to backup some files. And the touchpad mouse was doing bizarre quivery things so I couldn't focus on an icon to click it. I tried borrowing Jonathan's mouse, but the USB port was mangled. I tried borrowing Mama B's mouse. That worked, especially after I closed down the touchpad. Then I started burning files to CD.

Then the CD drive refused to open. We got that solved, but I'm kind of nervous. It's not eight-thirty yet.

And we've got Maraschino arranged in a very pretty little box, ready for her interment in the morning. It's a sad night.