Slusser called me earlier in the week and offered to make it worth my time to come up the mountain and work on digging ditches. Well, that's not entirely accurate - actually, I'm helping the Slussers to dig out trenches so that they can build a new retaining wall. I left the pickup truck with Marilyn and Michael gave me a ride up here to their house, where I will stay for the rest of the week until Marilyn comes up to join me on Friday evening.

As a man who hasn't gotten any regular exercise since we stopped going to the YMCA in Minneapolis, it's been a bit of a shock to the system to engage in some old-fashioned manual labor. But it's been fun to spend some time with the Slussers and see the kids, and today my old friend John Eldevik came up to help us out. It's also been nice - as it always is - to spend some extended time up in the mountains.