Jordan guided me through the process to download all my photographs from the hard drive of my desktop after dinner last night. In total they took up just short of 100 gigabytes and the memory stick I bought was good for 129 gigabytes. I'm glad it's done and the photos are safely tucked away in a backup. The entire process took just short of seven hours. My trusty old computer is slow, but pretty reliable. Except when it throws a tantrum and goes on strike, its usefulness petering out...and then it goes into self-fix mode.

I left it to its own devices last night, and it just kept chugging away long after we went up to bed. We had chicken paella for dinner and it was fragrant, piquant and delicious. Sliced fresh nectarines made up dessert, and then Jody and I played the boardgame Pictionary while Irving watched some of his British detective series on his mini laptop. He's much better at spontaneous drawing than I am, and our son takes after his father. That leaves me the beneficiary since the game is wholly dependent on notional drawings as its communication system leading to answering revelations. 

My drawings are less than rudimentary. The thing about playing the game is that it gives us ample amusement. Every time I burst into a guffaw, Jackie rushes over to see what's going on, and insists on being noticed. We flout the rules and just have a rollicking good time between us.

I soaked a cup of baby lima beans overnight with the thought in mind of using them instead of pinto beans for a change to prepare a 'baked bean' pot for dinner today. Just for something different. I'm baking cheese croissant to go along with them, and preparing a small vegetable salad. 

Mid-afternoon we drove Jody to the train station for his trip to Montreal. The conferemce he's attending  will be over on Saturday and then he'll fly back to Vancouver. While he was with us he prepared his presentation with the use of some software that left me agoggle. He finished his talk and the accompanying slides just in time. He'll be meeting a number of his contacts from other parts of the country at the conference whom he's collaborating with for a project.

On the way home we drove a little further to locate the building where Irving's driving test for those over 80 is to take place on Monday. A more obscure location in the midst of a sprawling industrial complex couldn't be imagined. Good thing he decided to find out where it was now on a trial run, otherwise his 9:30 am appointment would have taken some patience and sleuthing to get there on time.

Soon as we returned home we switched the light sweaters Jackie and Jillie were wearing for their road trip to their usual cold-weather ravine gear and off we went for our trek through the forest. It's been mostly sunny this day, a bright day, but cold. Irving had forgotten to top up his cookie cache from yesterday's hike, and when we were surrounded by a bevy of pups patiently awaiting their due he had just enough to hand out.

Later as we were concluding our circuit we came across two more cookie-expecting doggy pals and there was nothing to give them. Their faces said it all. If anything makes us feel badly, it's that, like a trust betrayed.