A couple nights ago Chris borrowed a puzzle from the game area of the dining hall. It’s an old puzzle, judging from the faded picture on the box with women wearing 1960s clothing in a Tudor town in England. Melissa and I have no time for such things at home – we have never worked on a puzzle together and can’t even remember the last time either of us worked on one before we knew each other (working on Everett’s puzzles doesn’t count) so we didn’t think we would get very interested, but this has become somewhat of an obsession. After 3 nights we are about 75% done. Everett helps us put in pieces from time to time and follows up by pounding his hand on the table and saying “Boom! That just happened”, which undoes the piece he helped put in and a few others around it, providing an added level of difficulty.

This morning Chris got up around dawn and went to the dock to experiment with raw photography like this (I’ll put more on the website gallery soon).

Then off to school. After saying goodbye to Chris, Everett turned and engaged with his new friends, resulting in the lowest drama dropoff since we arrived.

There are two people named Mark Billington on the island and during his previous visit in 2004 Chris got to know both of them. He met the first Mark Billington at the ferry terminal in Anacortes, and the second at Wescott Bay Sea Farms on the north end of the island when they graciously allowed us to hunt for nudibranchs from their docks. Of the two Chris got to know the former a lot better and the two of them met for coffee today at The Doctor’s Office. Mark spends a lot of energy writing about various things: the island and its history, lunar calendars, children’s games, unification theory. He gave Chris a copy of his book in 2004, and during this visit he provided an updated version along with a book he wrote in both Spanish and English on the history of the island. He also gave Chris a copy of a lunar calendar. Recently he has started submitting some of his writing to the Friday Harbor Now website.

After work we drove to the southern tip of the island to hike on the beach.

On the way home we were about a half mile from the house when a deer ran right in front of the car. We were going about 20 mph and Chris hit the brakes fast but we still made contact and knocked it off its feet, after which he jumped up and ran into the woods. It was upsetting but not terribly surprising – as we mentioned a few days ago the deer on the island are plentiful and fearless. We didn’t think Everett saw and quickly decided not to tell him about it but within a couple minutes he was asking questions like “Was there an animal in front of the car? Did it have horns?”. There seems to be little that escapes his notice.