We had a lovely weekend at the Mountain, a UU retreat center in North Carolina. Most of the time when I come home from a trip, I am glad to be back. I usually want to stay longer at the Mountain, though. There is a cottage you can rent where I could live for a few months and write my novel, walking around the mountain top and having people cook for me.

On Saturday, we hiked down the Mountain and up Mt. Chinquapin, with several others from our group. It was a couple hours and I was pretty much out of breath, but we did it! We also spent three hours working on music for choir performances later this year. We are singing two pieces from a Requiem by Clif Hardin. They are very beautiful and difficult, with high notes. I just cried and cried. We also started work on our holiday music. This year it is jazzy stuff from the Peanuts Christmas shows. It will be Dec. 16 and I hope my children will be there. They are fun to sing.

The other thing that is nice about staying there is I never have to think about what we are going to eat for dinner or do any work to prepare it. The food this time seemed better than previously, although like all instittutional food, it was a little heavy on the starches. I hope the exercise I got balanced out the cake and pasta I ate. The new head of the kitchen staff is Brian. He used to be a lawyer and a judge, but now he prefers to prepare delicious healthy food for us. Lee is the interim director and he is delightful. He engaged Ray in discussions about a new well having to be dug.

We managed to squeeze in some Boggle and Scrabble games and a bonfire, as well as an awesome folk singer named Lee Knight, who grew up in the Adirondacks and now lives in the mountains of North Carolina. My Dad would have lived to hear him and meet him, but he was here taking care of our home and animals. I think he enjoyed it. There was food residue on the coffee table.

Now to get back to preparations for class.