Well, I did go to bed early Thursday night. Before I had fallen asleep, Berck called. He and Sydney were stuck in traffic because of a wreck up ahead, and Berck had to pee. So he didn’t talk to me very long before throwing shame to the wind and stepping out of the car and into the bushes to do what the whole line of cars watching him knew he would be doing. (Perhaps with a little envy).

An hour later or so, I was sound asleep when my phone rang again. It was Sydney this time, asking if I could give them some directions. The wreck had actually been a guy locked in his car with a gun, threatening to commit suicide. A wreck could have been moved out of the way, but this was blocking traffic for hours. So everyone headed off the interstate and onto county roads.

The problem with county roads is that they often don’t show up on road atlases. Berck’s laptop had given up the ghost earlier in the day. So Berck contacted his navigator, who happened to be at home asleep in bed. My computer was turned off, too, and I can only use the mouse on his. While I was booting up, they lost signal, which gave me a little time to wake up and try to figure out where they were (a certain interstate exit in eastern North Dakota; do you know how difficult it is to figure out exit numbers in Mapquest?)

After getting connected and disconnected a couple of times, we finally determined that they were heading the right direction and would get back to the interstate soon. Berck took the phone then and thanked me.

“Uh huh.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m just sleepy.”

But then, of course, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

Today he called again. Sydney’s friend’s friend wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy some ammo for his Glock. Berck drove him into town so he could call me. It sounds like they’re having a fun time.

But it’s really cold. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.

The weather here is beautiful. It gets down into the forties at night, then the sun shines all day and it warms up to shirt sleeve weather.