It's eleven thirty. It's the end of Miguel's 40th birthday. I got him a pig mug and some jellybeans and Kirsten baked him a cake, and Rachel gave him the 7th season of Seinfeld. We convinced him to go to Karen's for coffee after dinner, and our friends all dropped in casually and bugged him. One gave him a tape measure.

She explained it like this: although her husband is very handy and does a lot of work around the house, he always blames her and the kids when he can't find his tape measure. You rotten kids are always taking my stuff and losing it, how am I expected to get anything done around here, etc, etc. So last weekend when he cleaned out his workshop and found, in various places, no less than nine tape measures, my friend claims this as a moral victory of sorts. If the children had taken them they would be under beds or out in the driveway, not in the workshop. So the tape measure for Miguel was a symbolic gift, of sorts...

One of my friends from the prison I worked at in BC is 'on the run' tonight. I want a happy ending for this, but I don't know.