you want Tookie - I've got answers

First of all, there's no snow in Ste Agathe. Last year the guy who plows our driveway plowed it 13 times in ... November. He almost started crying when the 14th snow dropped down. You can tell Emma that even if she could somehow succeed in getting you guys to make a visit way up yonder, she still would not be able to go on the sled. And we do not think the bears in the neighborhood are hibernating yet, so we can't make a sled out of leaves and branches that will slide on the green, non-snow tundra, because we do not want to go into the woods until the bears are sleeping.

Secondly, we've never tried it with Tookie pulling children. He has a special thing with kids that we are trying to train him out of...namely that he treats them like his dog friends when they're all 'off leash' outdoors. He and his friends Jake and Bill run up and down the street, galloping clowns, biting each others' ears and slamming into one another. A few of the neighbors laugh when they see them and call them Les Buffons (clowns). Ask Emma if she is, at this very moment, ready to belong to the clown club.

Thirdly, it can get unbearably hot in Ste Agathe in the summer. Two summers ago? We spent weeks and weeks just panting. We swam and swam in different lakes, but at some point, they stopped being refreshing because they heated up so much. Last summer it was much cooler and we hardly did any swimming. But I was told that last year was a rare event. So who knows about this coming summer?

Speaking of this coming summer, we may have to all live in Massachusetts, provided that I can get a job here that would pay enough for me to support us all living in Boston. It's possible but I do not know what the probable stats are. You could say 63% probable, or even 38%, but really, what does that all mean? Maria has put in for a couple of grants in Canada to do more filming, but as soon as I can catch up with my work here at MIT (from being away so long) I am going to start sending out my resumes here. Last year it was all about NYC, which won't work out. That does not mean we will sell our house in Ste Agathe thoough. So even if the probability is at 98% for getting a prime job here and we relocate, there is a chance in having a probability of 40 - 96% that we could take time off in the summer and go up to the house and so you guys could too?

Eighthly, it is possible that we could train Tookie to pull a cart with wheels on it. Who can say the probability of this? Who can compare that probability with the probability that we make a cart with wheels on it that can be controlled remotely, electronically, so that if Tookie were to see a rabbit, we would not be able to take the kids flying on aforementioned cart.

These things and more are what roil around in my brain when I am not contemplating dinner, contemplating subscribing to the New Yorker magazine, getting the energy up to floss my teeth, or returning emails from people at work who weirdly demand my attention.

Sheesh.