I have reached Halifax and seen my dad. He's thin but still Dad. Tomorrow he will be going home because at the moment he doesn't particularly need to be in the hospital. We will take it one day at a time.

Also, I found an online story about our neighbours' fire. It's kind of inaccurate because the number of people is wrong (the front tenant wasn't just one person living alone I don't think) and it leaves out my friends' dog and hamster both (the hamster was apparently mentioned in the TV report) but it has some details for those who are interested: http://www.mykawartha.com/article/3964. An earlier draft at http://www.mykawartha.com/ka/article/3930 has less details but I'll include the link for completeness. You might want to poke around mykawartha.com to see how exciting my life normally gets: a parking lot near our Peterborough office is to be shut down for a while, City of Kawartha Lakes council is trying to fund the renovations needed at the Janetville community centre (where my boy takes martial arts lessons), and somebody (other than me) wrote a book.

My mother is still in Winnipeg so we don't know what was decomposing in one of those row houses yet.

Kate