The Admiral made a friend online last year — I’ll just call him City Mouse for now.  It started out as a joint effort to upgrade an RPG site and then extended to other online activities. Soon, there was a webcam and Scype to facilitate face-to-face activity amongst an entire group of friends, both locally and in farther away places.  It’s amazing — until very recently, kids grew up and made friends from a local geographic circle. Now, they can pursue some fairly unique interests and find friends who share and support those interests, even if they’re on the other side of the world.

As it turns out, City Mouse lives near the city where our older daughter got married this fall, and we able to arrange for the kids to spend some time together in RL (real life).  They really hit it off with each other, and City Mouse’s family generously offered to send him out for a week during the school break.

Naturally, as we do with all visitors, we put him to work.  Boy, that’s how you find out who your true friends are — just ask them to go out in the freezing dark to feed a bunch of hungry ruminants.  You should hear the whining sometimes!  City mouse was a good sport:

****Ugh. Note to readers:  this is the wallpaper that came with the house when we bought it.  It can’t come down until we’re prepared to replaster the walls (they’re the original part of the house).  Not that there’s anything WRONG with floral wallpaper…..

Bundled up and under watchful supervision……

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we trim some hooves.