Tomorrow we fly off to London.  Poor Grace is bored silly.  All of her friends are off at school already.  She is probably counting down the seconds to go and I'm dreading every passing day!  Last night I booked a parent's weekend for GP and me to go to London.  My excuse is that he will not yet have seen Grace's university.  In reality I don't want to wait til Christmas before seeing her.  We're going 3rd weekend in November.

It has been so damned hot.  Last weekend we tried to escape the heat, 96 degrees, and get outside so Grace and I went to a royal hunting lodge called Racconigi, (check it out at: http://www.ilcastellodiracconigi.it/eng/) with enormous woodsy grounds.  Alas even in the shade it was an oven and it's not the humidity as I thought, which is actually lower than ours in Maine, but the complete lack of air.  There is not a breath of breeze, not a leaf shimmies, not a cloud blows across the sky.  Nada, niente, zilch!  The trees were all dusty and dry with late summer and the only movement we saw were the lizards skittering all over.   Off to cool, drizzly London!  * Let me rephrase that.  Just checked the weather in the UK and it will be 90 degrees tomorrow.  Really?  xxoo me