Living in the wilds of Massachusetts has its interesting moments.

Today we went to Longfellow's Wayside Inn for Easter dinner. (My mother needs new things to do on holidays that don't remind her of my father. I'll be glad when all the "firsts" are over.)

Now the Inn is one of those really old New England places that has been around forever. It's supposed to be where Longfellow wrote "The Children's Hour" (Between the dark and the daylight, when the night is beginning to lower, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the children's hour).

It is a charming spot, and always busy. We ate in the "tavern" part of the house, not the main dining room. Same menu, just a smaller room with the authentic beams, etc., that are original to the house.

Also original is the lack of lighting. The room is strictly lit by candles, so it's an adventure in dining because you really aren't sure what you've captured on your fork. The last seating in that room was at 6:30.

I think that it gets hazardous after dark.

But this was not the adventure in the wilderness, that came on the ride home.

One of the roads that cuts over to the street where my mother lives leads through "The Garden in the Woods" which is a place that's maintained by the Audubon Society (or a similar organization).

Well, the road to get through the Garden was closed tonight. Not because of the flooding that we've had around here, but because of the salamanders! It's the time of year that they need to cross the road to mate and reach their summer lodgings, so they block off the road to avoid squished salamanders. They've been doing it for years and years, but I'd totally forgotten about it.

So we had to take a slight detour to get home.

Ah country life!

I'm dying to get to the city!

I'm doing all sorts of self-talk to keep myself from overspending at Virgin Megastore. That may not be as hard to do, as apparently tickets to "The Producers", the only show I really really really care about seeing are just about impossible to get. I'm hoping I can get one through a ticket broker even if I do have to hand over a paycheck!

Elsewhere, the work thing is still unresolved and I doubt that it will get dealt with this week. I'm just keeping fingers and toes crossed.

There have been a couple of things decided, both working to my advantage.

One is that I've been appointed to conduct a faculty inservice in October about the statewide writing test. This is a good thing, it involves about 12 hours of work, and they are paying me $50 an hour to do it!

The other good thing is that they've come up with a nice chunk of change to pay me to do the school website, something that I'd agreed to do two years ago, but that they've never funded.

But I'm still waiting on this other thing.