A short way up the road we saw robins picking at the grass. We stopped to watch, and J saw one pull up a worm. Climbing the hill we passed a culvert blocked with sand and debris and another in the ditch with water flowing in from a pipe under a storm drain's cover. Another bird watched us from a wire.

As we passed a house J spotted a neighbor emerging from the door to tend his grill. "Who's that," said J to me, and then, thinking better of it, shouted to the man, "what's your name?" We were introduced, and walked on.

Higher up we discovered that a stream had formed a pond beside a farm. Someone had placed a blue canoe by the water's edge. Rusted metal tanks and farm equipment lay in the grass nearby, and J spotted a huge tractor tire on its side. Pale barkless trunks placed at the bottom of the embankment marked the edge of this farm's meadow. J thought they might be birches, but then spotted some real birches further along. A boulder cut to build the road was pronounced the site of a quarry, and speculation ensued as to the dinosaurs who might have been found there. At the turnaround point we became aware of high ringing sounds from the pond, and I told J about peepers.

Walking back we looked at rocks, mosses, lichen, and new plants starting to grow from beneath last autumn's fallen leaves. Then a group of deer, five or six adults, the first I'd ever seen on our street in more than a year and a half of occupancy. They were feeding on grass in a large lawn and fled to the edge of the woods as we passed, white tails bobbing. We talked about deer being fearful, about deer eating food from gardens and farms, and about people eating deer. J told me that his friend B was the fastest runner, and could certainly catch a deer. Down the hill, the bird still watched from the wire above.

A recognized dog came to bark and greet us, and I cautioned J about calling her out to the road. Further along we stepped off the road to examine some barbed wire, and I explained what this was for and how to be careful of it (the lesson learned, I discovered later, was that barbed wire was to "protect from cows"). Then we were back in our yard. We looked up and J saw the buds in the old tree in our lawn, and in the sky beyond that, the new crescent moon, still a sliver. He told me the moon is usually bigger, but when I told him the moon was like a ball in the sky and asked where it got its light he told me it was lit by the sun, and showed me which side of the moon pointed the way to that source of light.

At home, back inside, for a treat, a bath, stories, and bed, and these experiences to remember. It's taking him a long time to fall asleep.

"That's true, it did sound sort of like talking," I said.

"It had drums, and guitar, and talking," he told me.

I arrived on 42nd Street, up Eighth Ave to 44th, east to Fifth, down to 43rd, and back west to the garage beneath my office building. Then: waiting in line to drop off the car, taking my backpack, my box of books (shouldered), my coffee, and the walk to the elevator as someone's strident car alarm started to go off. From behind I heard the garage attendent shouting to me.

"A rat! A very small rat!," he said.

It was a mouse. Probably a field mouse. It was cowering under my wiper blade in the lee of the car's hood, shivering with what was almost certainly the terror of its hour-long ride into the city in this perch.

I wasn't sure what to do, but I thought if I didn't take action the attendent might, and he might not be the animal-lover I am. So I set out to capture the mouse, which immediately ran up onto the roof of the car. I gingerly approached it, trying to decide whether to catch it up by the base of the tail or to take my chances and cup it in my hands. The mouse took advantage of this hesitation and ran to the other side of the car. I hurried around, telling the attendent "I'll get it; I'll put it in the box or something," then telling the mouse "Ive got you. I won't hurt you. Just don't bite me."

My fingers touched its fur, my hand closing gently around it, but too carefully. The mouse slipped out of my grasp, slid down the passenger side door, and fled across the floor of the garage beneath several parked cars. I made chase, but it disappeared quickly in the wheels and shadows of the urban ground.

I didn't have a plan for the mouse. I knew I'd carry it up to my office in the box, probably re-folding the cardboard to keep it from climbing out the finger-holds. I'd have to clean my friend's books off when I got there. I would have kept it safe all day, offered food and water, possibly even transferred it into some sort of little cage from a pet store. I would have taken it back to New Jersey, but I don't think I'd have tried to keep it. I'd have showed the mouse to my son, perhaps let him carefully touch the mouse, then set it free in the grass of the backyard, from which it had almost certainly come.

But the mouse didn't know this, and humans can't be trusted. It took its chances in the garage, and with luck it will find its way to someplace better. Perhaps it had come from the city all along.

Exhibit A: A teenage girl whose brightly colored shirt happily displayed a tastefully altered Sanrio icon with the text "Hello T*tties."

Exhibit B: A slender woman who proudly bore upon her chest the declaration "THESE are my all-access pass."

Exhibits C and D: Two different men (seen on separate occasions), both rather unassuming looking, unassuming that is apart from their t-shirts which indicated (arrow up) "The Man" and (arrow down) "The Legend."

Exhibit E: An Asian man with thin graying Mr. Rogers hair, wearing board shorts and old running shoes and a T-shirt advertising "The Erogenous Zone: A playground for swingers."

Precisely what kind of doctor feels the need to do this? How can it be worth paying a marketing firm to attract those unfortunate patients who wouldn't see the doctor unless it was free? It's too "Hi, Dr.Nick!" for me, I can tell you that.

This morning we're getting ready to visit a local park where he might ride another carousel. "Do you want to ride on the merry-go-round?," I asked.

But he was in a "yes" mood, so I tested. "Do you want to jump out of an airplane?"

He ignored me and worked on his breakfast. Then his mother said "do you want to take a boat to Alaska?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to paddle around?"

"Yes."

I tried again. "Do you want to ride a motorcycle through a ring of fire?"

"Yes!" He started to climb out of his high chair, while I Johnny Cashed the chorus from "Ring of Fire."

Then our little boy ran into the living room and came back on his tricycle, happily repeating "Bike on fire! Bike on fire! Bike on fire!" I already rue the day.

Update: He did great. Everything went smoothly and by the next day he was acting like himself. Thanks for the good wishes.

So it's been a year and I've done some more homework. It sounds like the newer SiRFstarIII GPS chipset is the way to go. It acquires more satellites more quickly, consumes less power, and for some people at least actually gets a decent fix indoors. Sounds great, and the devices that use this chipset are reasonably priced, but why don't any of them do logging? Am I overlooking something? SiRF III can apparently be built into a tiny little SDIO device along with a decent chunk of flash RAM. It has sophisticated computational power available for calculating position and time from the satellite signals. Surely as long as it's on it wouldn't be too much harder to log a trace in the GPS unit itself. The GPS receivers 10 - 17 hours on their own batteries; it makes much more sense to do the logging there than to carry around a second device (PDA or notebook computer) whose batteries will surely die far sooner. And yes, I am pushing the limits of those batteries. I took the BlueLogger with me on some six- and eight-hour bike rides last year (not counting rest stops).

Can anyone point me to a logging SiRF III (or RFMD) device in the sub-$150 range? The BlueLogger's logging capabilities are a good model of what I'd like: configurable logging based on low and high speed motion, configurable cut-off or wrap-around on reaching the memory limit, logging of ~50,000 data points. I'd be happy to sell the BlueLogger and its software to someone who wants it more. The device does have a following and I'm sure it works very well in other regions, but I'd really like something better suited to my purpose.

This latter change meant that a lot more propane was coming out of the lower end of the burner than the upper end, which actually puffed itself right out a couple of times while I was cooking. Not a big problem at first, as I was just doing hot dogs and half a grill was fine. But a couple of nights ago I was preparing to roast some potatoes as well, and I wanted the whole surface, so I gave the burner an experimental tilt to see if it could easily be made level once more. There was a bit of play, so I gave it some gentle encouragement and was rewarded with a somewhat more even fire. Good news! I left it to heat and went inside to prep me some tubers.

"And what of it?," I wondered. I'm not used to receiving this sort of alert, and imagined she just wanted me to get out there and start cooking, already. But how could she tell how hot it was. "How do you know?"

"The fire's really going." Huh. Had I left the lid open? I hadn't, had I? Not when she and our son were out there playing. Had I?

"Was the lid open?"

"No, but I could see the fire."

"How?"

"I could see it underneath."

Huh. Whatever. Back to the potatoes, which were ready to go a few minutes later. I packed them up in foil and carried them out on a big spatula. I opened up the grill, which was actually smoking a bit (probably all those ashes), and decided it could stand to be turned down a little. I reached for the knobs, and just before I grabbed them I noticed something odd at the edge of my vision. I thought I saw something glowing down there. I looked again, and to my considerable surprise the knob just under my hand was melting, and little tongues of fire were licking through both of the knob mounting holes. What the hell?

I squatted down at the end of the grill and took a look under the front panel, and there I saw it: the burner was still getting plenty of gas, but a fair amount was also emerging at entirely the wrong end of the burner piping, back where it connects to the control valves under the front panel. There was a rich blaze there, let me tell you. I finally had that extra burner I'd been dreaming of, and now I had to snuff it out. Fortunately I could easily get to the valve on the propane cylinder itself and that took care of everything, but now we have no grill.

I'm reasonably sure that I didn't break the pipes by wiggling them; they probably took more abuse on their rides to and from Sears. My best guess is that they were cracked or broken in the fall three months ago, and my attempt to line things up opened them up instead. That freak weather event has robbed me of late spring hamburgers.

Somewhere there's a butterfly flapping its wings, and it owes me a grill. And this time I'm bolting it down.

Certain of the animals are not yet in their outdoor enclosures because hey, it's not supposed to be this warm yet. Zoo admission was free today so this was no problem. But I was surprised to find a new occupant in the little gazebo that usually holds some type of cold-intolerant owl. A large, black occupant who attracted our attention by caw loudly. There was a label on his enclosure, oh yes. A label printed in an office on a sheet of 8½ by 11 inch paper, laminated, which read "Common Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos." I had the sudden feeling that the poor fellow had just flown in there one day and found himself trapped inside, the latest attraction. At least it won him a good food supply for the winter.