The Canadian Embassy

No idea why, but our neighbors that moved in about a year ago have been gone for months. Usually folks come up here for the summer and leave in winter, so I've been assuming it's been a long term stay with ill family or something. It's been getting cold, though, and their sprinkler system was still running. I was going to write a card to remind and offer assistance, as I think their mail was being forwarded, but I happened to see what looked like a blow-out truck there a couple of days ago. Just in the nick of time, too, as we're expecting our first snow tonight. Their own vehicle was there yesterday and lights on in the evening, so maybe they're back back?

Nothing has started yet on the new house supposedly going in on the other side of us, so I'm hoping we'll at least get to keep our views of field and hill and distant trees through the winter.

Well that's alarming. One of the folks in our neighborhood said a camera on their back porch caught a bear walking by. Their back porch faces kiddo's bus stop, where she waits in the dark in the mornings. I believe it because I found several articles and video of other bears in the area, wandering around in broad daylight in the city, and others talking about the general comeback of black bears across northern Michigan in the last decade. I think the new plan is for Josh to drive her the few hundred feet down there and wait with her. In general I find that parental behavior ridiculous, but I had never ever considered BEARS.