Three Beautiful Things 01-25-2026: Leonard Oakland's Morning Classical Radio Show, Music More Than My Words Right Now, Smashing Family Dinner

 1. I wrote myself a note last night to be sure to tune into KSFC at Spokane Public Radio at 10 a.m. to listen to Leonard Oakland's Morning Classical program. His decision to read William Carlos Williams' mighty poem "By the road to the contagious hospital" worked perfectly for me, not only with its promise that the winter season will not last forever, but maybe it also hints that our winters of human discontent won't last forever either, giving me some hope that the brutal beginning of 2026 won't be everlasting. 

Leonard played several wonderful pieces during his two hour show. I was particularly happy to be introduced to Dvorak's String Quintet in E Flat. I love Dvorak's compositions and was uplifted by the effect of adding a second viola to the traditional string quartet and the music he wrote for this ensemble to play. 

2. It's the weirdest thing. 

From the time Christy gave me the book Year of Wonder, I had it by my side, next to the chair I sit in in the living room. While it was next to me, I was opening the book daily, reading the piece Clemency Burton-Hill wrote for that day, and going to Spotify and listening to the musical piece she wrote about. Her book has a prose and classical music offering for each day of the year. 

Well, I moved the book just ten feet away as a way of decluttering the living room before I hosted family dinner two weeks ago. 

From that point forward, because the book wasn't where I was used to having it, I failed for two weeks to read and listen to the daily entries. 

Today, after Leonard Oakland's show, I finally woke up to the fact that this book, while not being next to me, was very close by and I spent the afternoon getting caught up.

I've read a lot of words over the course of this brutal January. I've listened to quite a few as well. 

I realized today that if I were to express what's going on inside of me, the music I listened to lays it out much better than my words can. 

I need to go back, listen some more, pay more attention to how the music affects me, and then I'll think about posting some examples of the music that so pointedly reflects my inward life. 

3. We had a dynamite family dinner tonight at Christy's. Christy made a cottage pie (a shepherd's pie is made with lamb, a cottage pie with ground beef) and to compliment this main dish, Paul brought pickled appetizers, Carol brought corn as a vegetable side dish, I contributed fruity cole slaw, and Christy contributed dinner rolls. We had a brownie with ice cream for dessert. 

Christy's cottage pie was superb and the other foods she assigned us to bring worked harmoniously with the pie. 

We talked about all kind of thing tonight: Carol and Paul's recent visit to Moscow, the Seahawks going to the Super Bowl, the Zags, 70s rhythm and blues music -- which inspired us to watch a video of the Manhattans performing "Kiss and Say Goodbye" -- and other topics.  

It was a great evening, good for our spirits as well as our appetites. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-24-2026: A Correction, "Concert of the Week", Cole Slaw for Family Dinner

 1. A correction from my blog post yesterday: A suite is a collection of instrumental movements, but I stated a suite is a collection of dances. Often, maybe even usually they are. But not always. A suite might extract its component parts from ballet (e.g. The Nutcracker Suite), operas, or original compositions. 

You can see my way of learning. I have a long history of learning as I get things not quite right and correct myself. 

2. I was very grateful today for Spokane Public Radio. Every Saturday at noon, the station features a program entitled, "Concert of the Week". Each week one can hear a performance recently given locally or not too far away. 

I'd been looking forward to today's presentation for the last several days. I went a lecture a week ago Thursday looking at the program the Spokane Symphony played last weekend. I didn't go to the Symphony's performance, but it was on Spokane Public Radio today. 

It was thrilling. 

Bernstein's Symphonic Dances, a suite of songs from West Side Story, touched upon a wide range of emotions, ranging from energetic jubilation to tragic grief. 

I had never heard anything quite like Paul Creston's Fantasy for Trombone and thoroughly enjoyed its energy, drive, various rhythms, and the space it gave the trombone soloist, the Spokane Symphony's principle trombonist, John Church to showcase his virtuosity and play trombone passages that introduced me to whole new ways of hearing what could be played on a trombone. 

Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances occupied the entirety of the second half of the program. I loved its hugeness, its variety of directions, and, as with Bernstein, its evocation of a variety of emotions ranging from disillusionment to nostalgia to expressions of spirituality. 

I want to increase my familiarity with this Rachmaninoff composition. I want to listen to it more, read more about it. It was more than I could absorb today, listening to it for the first time.

3. For tomorrow night's family dinner, Christy assigned me to make cole slaw. I made it this afternoon in the hope that it will benefit from sitting overnight in the fridge, giving its variety of flavors a chance to mature. I usually prefer cabbage salad or cole slaw with a vinegar dressing, but I decided to veer away from my usual pattern and made a creamy cole slaw. 

I have my fingers crossed that Christy, Carol, and Paul will enjoy it tomorrow evening. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-23-2026: The Suite, Bach's Cello Suites, Yakkin' at The Lounge

 1. By listening to the lectures that comprise the music course I downloaded into my audible library I'm learning a ton about music forms: the concerto, oratorio, fugue, cantata, and more, with many more to come. I've listened to twenty of these forty-five minute lectures and still have twenty-eight to go. 

Right now, I'm in the midst of learning about dance music from, let's say, the 18th century. It's what's known as the Classical period of classical music and unlike the previous period, the Baroque, Classical composers like Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven and others put much more emphasis on recognizable and memorable melodies in their compositions, whatever form their music took. 

During this period in Europe, dancing was very popular and composers had several dance forms to work with and integrated these dances into the larger structure of their compositions. 

One of these larger forms is the suite. Spokane Symphony music director James Lowe talked about the suite in the lecture of his I attended about nine days ago. I learned that the suite is a compilation of different dances, each different dance a movement within the suite. 

So, for example, this past weekend, the Spokane Symphony performed Leonard Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story". It's a suite made up of the several dances in Bernstein's musical and features the different sounds and rhythms of the cultures portrayed in this musical. 

2. So, now let me move back in time from the 20th to the early 18th century, from Leonard Bernstein to J. S. Bach. 

I last visited London forty years ago. 

It was my third trip there and I had learned that I enjoyed going to classical music concerts as well as theatrical plays that I didn't know much about. 

I enjoyed being out of my element and being surprised. 

One evening I attended a performance of Bach's Cello Suites. 

I'd never listened to them before. 

I was out of my depth that evening, but the music made a very positive impression on me. 

About twelve years later, Rita Hennessey and I, as part of our team-taught course in Philosophy and English Composition agreed to include in our course a series of six films entitled, Inspired by Bach. 

Each film featured Yo-Yo Ma playing one of the six suites that make up the Cello Suites. 

Each film also focused on how the film's suite could be enjoyed in relation to another art form. The films focused, in order, on nature and garden design, architecture, dance, film making, Japanese Kabuki dance, and ice skating. 

These films and Yo-Yo Ma's discussions with each of the six directors significantly expanded my enjoyment of the Cello Suites. 

But a key element of the Cello Suites hadn't yet sunk in. 

It hadn't sunk in a few years later when Debbie and I went to St. Mary's Episcopal Church to a performance of the Cello Suites by a University of Oregon professor. 

So what was missing? 

What do I know now that I didn't know then?

I didn't realize that each suite consisted of six movements, a prelude and then five dances. I wasn't paying attention to how Bach composed a different prelude for each suite and then presented different music for each of the repeated dances. 

Here are the names of the six movements of each of the six Cello Suites:

1. Prelude

2. Allemande

3. Courante

4. Sarabande

5. A mixture of dances

6. Gigue

The Great Course lectures are teaching me the specifics about each of these dances as musical forms. 

I know that as I learn more about these musical forms and as I listen to these Cello Suites more often, my appreciation and enjoyment of them will expand.

And, who knows, maybe I'll discover that a cellist from somewhere will give a concert somewhere not too far away and I'll be able to hear Bach's Cello Suites performed again. 

3. If you read through all of that and are still with met, I thank you. 

My day wasn't all suites and minuets and musical textures. 

Ed and I met up at The Lounge this afternoon. Before Ed got there, I yakked with Harley and Candy for a while about the Elks Taco Feed and the pleasures of the Elks sponsored hoop shoot that is about to move from the local to the district level. 

As a way of being able to laugh about his treatment for prostate cancer, Ed likes to make jokes about the hormone pills he takes, the hot flashes he experiences, especially at night, and likes to act like the therapy has made him want facials and other luxuries usually associated with women. 

He gets a lot of mileage out of these jokes and I think they've helped him maintain a positive attitude throughout his treatment and I'd like to think his positive outlook has helped his treatments be so successful. He's come through all of this doing very well. 

Ed regaled us with a few of those jokes at The Lounge this afternoon! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-22-2026: Medicare Annual Wellness Exam, Apple Fritter and Lemon Almond Scone, Spokane Symphony and Sha Na Na

 1. Today was my annual Medicare exam, which means I saw my primary care person for the first time since January of 2025.  I think the fact that I have seen Dr. Bieber and the different pros at the transplant clinic so many times over the last year helped this exam go quickly and smoothly. I had plenty of data on hand measuring how I've been doing and could report on it and, as a bonus, I crushed the memory test and the clock drawing exercise. 

2. I enjoy treating myself to a pastry or two and a latte after I've had any kind of medical examination or test and today I indulged in an apple fritter and a lemon almond scone at Beach Bum Bakery and brought them home to enjoy with a homemade latte. 

Wow!

3. There is no way that I can write out what I learned today listening to a few more lectures, each 45 minutes long, about how to enjoy and understand great music, but suffice it to say I will listen to Baroque music, especially J. S. Bach, with a keener ear and I'm getting a far better understanding of the Classical Era of concert music than I've ever had before. 

I don't know if others who love music have strong preferences regarding different eras of music, but I don't. These lectures are helping me better understand why I have been almost instinctively moved by classical music of all eras, an experience that began in the fall of 1972 at NIC when I secured inexpensive student tickets from our choir director, Rick Frost, from time to time and went to Spokane to hear the Spokane Symphony. 

During that fall of 1972 I heard the symphony live at the Fox Theater and I also heard Sha Na Na at the Coliseum one nights and Santana another and so began my epicurean love of nearly all music. 

What I've really enjoyed about getting older is that some uninformed prejudices against some kinds of music have melted away and I really enjoy music now that I disdained, with unearned smugness, when I was younger. 

Like disco. 

Let that sink in! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-21-2026: Everything I Want in Life!, My Uptown Kellogg Pleasures, Stir Fried Beef

 1. It's funny. Almost everything I want in life is right there on those few blocks that comprise the Garland District. Art. A movie theater. A bookstore. A bakery. A diner. An ice cream shop. If I frequented the Garland District more than once or twice a year, I'd no doubt find more. 

2. I was uptown today giving a project I'm into some attention and, fair or not, I thought how fun it would be to be able to go to a jam-packed used bookstore, sit among the stacks of books, read pages of book I'd be buying about classical music, and then walk a short ways and have some homemade ice cream. 

But, hey, we have the Elks. We have The Lounge. We have the Beach Bum Bakery. We have the Uphill Grill. And there's more. 

So, believe me, I might dream, but I'm not complaining. 

3. With a tip of the hat to those of you who read my blog post yesterday and viscerally rejected the idea of eating eggplant and tofu, tonight I stir fried chopped tri-tip with mushrooms and onions and rice left over from last night. 

I made it nice and spicy with Green Dragon Hot Sauce and a bit salty with soy sauce. 

Gibbs liked bits and pieces of my dinner, too.

Three Beautiful Things 01-20-2026: Sibling Outing to the Garland District, Lunch at Ferguson's, Murals and Used Books and Ice Cream

 1. Christy, Carol, and I do our best to clear out one day a month and go on an outing together. 

In 2026, we are going to Spokane for each of our outings and hang out and explore a bit some Spokane neighborhood or area. 

If I remember correctly, we went on three smashing sibling outings in 2025 in Spokane: we visited the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Browne's Addition, the Jundt Art Museum on the Gonzaga campus, and the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum in Opportunity. We also enjoyed meals at Frank's Diner, Indigenous Eats, and The Mango Tree. 

Today we piled into Christy's Outback and cruised up Monroe Street to Garland Avenue and the Garland District. 

Starting at Monroe Street and extending several blocks east on Garland, on both sides of the street, are a variety of businesses housed in building that have been around for decades, giving the Garland District a charm we all enjoyed. 

This unassuming and inviting district has not been gentrified. 

We liked that. 

2.  Just south of Garland Avenue is the Garland Art Gallery, on open air exhibit featuring about thirty murals. We were going to begin our visit strolling in the alley, but decided we'd rather eat lunch first and so we dropped into the venerable Garland Avenue diner, Ferguson's.

Ferguson's had to be refurbished after a fire about fifteen years ago, but it was not gentrified. Instead, the interior maintains the looks of mid-20th century diner with a linoleum floor, a dining counter with stools, and booths and tables smartly placed along the walls and windows facing the street. 

Ferguson Cafe is kind of a gallery/museum too with pictures and other artifacts on the walls portraying the history of the cafe and of the way scenes from three different movies were shot here: Vision Quest, Why Would I Lie, and Benny and Joon.

I had dined at Ferguson's when I worked at Whitworth over 40 years ago and Kathy, Mary, and I had dinner there in 2019 one night before playing trivia at the Bon Bon Bar located inside the Garland Theater building. 

I enjoyed the food on those visits and to my delight I very much enjoyed my jalapeno burger and fries with a cup of delicious everyday black diner coffee. 

3. After lunch we strolled through the open-air art gallery and over to Book Traders, one of those great used bookstores with thousands of books packed efficiently into a narrow long building, filling shelves and boxes on the floor and stacked in piles in some spots on the floor. 

I bolted straight to the music section and found a book titled, Listen to the Music. It's crammed with essays about orchestral works composed by Bach, Vivaldi, Brahms, Beethoven, and many many more. While Christy and Carol browsed, I found a chair and started reading the book's essay on Brahm's Fourth Symphony, learned all kinds of things in a short amount of time, and closed the book and bought it when it was time to leave. 

Time to leave, yes, but not time to leave the Garland District. 

If you've been on Garland Avenue any time over the last several decades, you know there's a building on this street constructed in the shape of a milk bottle. 

It's Mary Lou's Milk Bottle, yet another wonderful space standing up to the inevitable encroachment of franchise eateries and gentrification in US cities. 

Mary Lou's makes their own ice cream and I devoured a heavenly single scoop of salted caramel ice cream in a dish. 

It was the perfect way to wrap up our visit to the Garland District. 

One more thing: our father, Raymond Harold "Pert" Woolum divided his high school education between John Rogers High School on E. Wellesley in the Bemiss neighborhood not far from Hilyard. 

So we drove by his alma mater (Class of '48) to see how it's been renovated and to pay a kind of homage to our dad. 

Then we returned to Kellogg. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-19-2026: "Deteriorata" at the Cockroach Castle, Learning More About Classical Music, Tofu and Eggplant -- Yeah I Know!

 1. Liz posts a lot of great stuff on her Facebook page and she came through again by presenting the poem, "Desiderata". 

The poem immediately brought to my mind the National Lampoon parody entitled, "Deteriorata". 

Two Kellogg guys, Robert Larsen and Bruce Alldredge, rented an apartment in a wobbly building close to the North Idaho College campus, a place they nicknamed Cockroach Castle. 

In the spring term of 1973, I hung out a lot with Bruce and Robert and before long was also hanging out with Liz and Jane in and around the Castle along with other friends. 

The Castle was my cultural hub that semester. We listened to all kinds of music, read (Bruce and Robert also wrote) poetry, pontificated freely with one another about Richard Nixon, religion, and a wide range of other topics we had passionate and ill-informed (ha ha -- so what!) opinions about. 

We also read National Lampoon.

And it was by way of Bruce and Robert that I first heard "Deteriorata" read aloud and it completely killed me off and contained lines that we quoted to one another (Rotate your tires) and that never failed to make us laugh. 

So, when I saw Liz's post of "Desiderata", I messaged Liz and Jane and wondered if they remembered the parody poem. 

They did. 

And that led to all three of us being transported back 53 years and taking some time to revel in how much we loved the Castle, Bruce's van, The Purple Pig, and the wonderful times we had together for those few months until the semester ended. 

As a nineteen year old, being with these friends at the Cockroach Castle was the first time in my, albeit, young life that I felt absolutely uninhibited with peers. 

These were the most accepting and open people I'd ever known and I thrived on our times together, whether at the apartment, shooting stick at the Fort Ground Tavern, dancing to Free's "All Right Now" as we closed down the Steinhaus, or buying a dollar pitcher of Lucky Lager beer for each hand at the Rathskeller to celebrate the Knicks' NBA Championship victory over the Lakers. 

I know now that I came out of high school feeling confused and insecure and it was great to pontificate, party, read poems, and be someone I'd never been before and revel in the accepting embrace of my friends at the Castle.  

2. I spent much of today doing my best not only to understand, but to absorb all that Professor Greenberg had to say over the course of four lectures about opera, oratorio, and the cantata. I can't even being to write it all out in this blog post, but I will say that learning more about the oratorio and then listening to a thrilling excerpt from Handel's Messiah and finding out the role of the cantata in Lutheran worship and hearing excerpts from Bach's Cantata 140 moved me, made my belly shake like a bowl full of jelly. 

3. I returned to two foods I love today by preparing a tofu and eggplant stir fry over white rice and seasoned with soy sauce and Sichuan chili crisp  It worked. The sodium of the soy sauce and the heat of the chili crisp played off of each other just the way I hoped they would. And I have more of this simple food in a container to eat again in the next day or two. 

Yeah == I know you probably can't imagine eating tofu and eggplant. All I can say is that they float my boat......

Three Beautiful Things 01-18-2026: Leonard Oakland on the Wireless, Intro to Opera, Magnificent Family Dinner

1. If I weren't so scatterbrained and, at the same time, single focused, I would have figured out a long time ago that I can listen to Leonard Oakland's Sunday morning classical music program from 10-12 on Spokane Public Radio's classic music station, KSFC. I would have figured out there's more to the world of classical music on the radio than SiriusXM's Symphony Hall.

Leonard was an English professor for decades at Whitworth. I took a course from him and I looked to him for guidance and inspiration when I taught at Whitworth. 

Today I finally got my head on straight, figured out how to stream KSFC, and listened to Leonard's show. I loved hearing his voice again, experiencing his mind at work, listening to his comments about the music he played, and relishing his music selections. I also deeply enjoyed when he took a short break from playing music and read Billy Collin's superb poem, "Forgetfulness". 

I must, now, whenever possible, and that should be almost all the time, listen to Leonard Oakland's program on Sundays. I cherish the thought. 

2. I put on Lecture 11 of the Great Courses series I'm listening to. It, along with Lecture 12, focuses on opera in the Baroque period. It was during this period that opera was invented.  I got the gist of the lecture, but I fell asleep during it (I like to nap) and so I'll go back and listen again. Professor Greenberg shares his unbridled enthusiasm for opera, repeatedly arguing that it is the most complete form of musical expression, combining instrumental and choral music with dramatic storytelling and theatrical spectacle, bringing together sophisticated music and stagecraft in service to rich and powerful human emotion. 

3. We had a terrific pasta and meatball dinner tonight at Carol and Paul's house. We began with Christy's perfect appetizer, Carpaccio.  Alongside the penne, sauce, and meatballs Carol prepared for dinner, we enjoyed the green salad I brought and the fresh homemade bread Carol baked. I honestly wanted to sit for hours and eat countless helpings of everything. I love pasta meals like this. 

I really can't even begin to list all the different things we talked about tonight, but subjects ranged from the Seahawks and the Zags to The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was fun bouncing all over the place and we topped off the evening with a piece of the yellow cake with vanilla frosting that Carol baked. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-17-2026: Being Unnoticed, A Day of Serious Listening and Learning, Debbie Played It Smart

 1. When it comes to volunteering, it makes me very happy to find ways to help out when I can be pretty much unnoticed. The Elks food pantry makes this possible for me -- at least it did again today. 

2. I decided to devote much of today to listening to the Great Course on learning how to listen to and understand great music. When I was going to college at Whitworth and the U of Oregon, I always enjoyed learning about the Protestant Reformation and what practices of the Roman Catholic Church that movement was protesting and what, over many years, the movement did to reform not only doctrine and church governance, but the experience of worship and the ways it urged individuals to search their conscience and not rely on the Church to do that for them. 

That short paragraph I just wrote doesn't account for how messy the Reformation was nor does it account for Protestant abuses that I find historically repulsive and find disturbing as I see them continue into the present. 

BUT, what I hadn't thought a lot about before today was the Roman Catholic influence on music, what its purpose is, what the Church regarded as appropriate and what wasn't, nor had I thought a lot about how Protestant reforms affected the composing and producing of music. 

So many intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, and ecclesiastical developments that began to emerge in the 16th century matured in 17th century and beyond thanks to the Enlightenment or The Age of Reason. This blending of the spiritual, scientific, and rational, this trust in the authority of reason (almost always with God right in the middle of it all) helped a creative and precise and deeply pious mind and imagination of someone like J. S. Bach flourish and helped give us the exuberant creations of the Baroque Period, not only in music, but in other arts and sciences, too. 

What I just wrote falls far short of elaborating upon all I learned and thought about today, but, hey!, this is a blog not a seminar paper! 

3. I'm not quite sure how severe the winter weather was today along the route Debbie drives when she goes from the Diazes in Woodbridge, VA to Adrienne's house in Valley Cottage, NY. 

What I do know is that a day or two ago Debbie saw the winter weather coming today and drove up to Adrienne's yesterday and so didn't have to make her way north in the winter weather today. 

I am relieved she made things easier for herself by driving yesterday and that she has settled in at Adrienne's where she'll hold down Adrienne's fort and look after Jack while Adrienne travels to Virginia with Ellie next week on a business trip. Thankfully, Ellie will stay with the Diazes during the day while Adrienne is busy with work. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-16-2026: Debbie's Check Arrived! Three Month Later!, I Loved Eating a German Chocolate Scone, Taco Night at the Elks Club!

1. Debbie submitted the paperwork back in October to receive her Idaho state pension money in a single payment. Now, keep in mind, when Debbie bought her new Corolla in New Jersey, it took a few months for something in the machinery of auto titles, registration, and license plates to get unstuck and for her to have them in hand. 

Similarly, something, a typo?, an error in code entry?, Thai curry stains on the paperwork?, something got the processing of the paperwork for Debbie's pension money held up.

Today, however, three months after she put in her request, Debbie's pension check arrived and I mailed it to her in Valley Cottage, New York (where she arrived today). 

Luckily, on Wednesday, the process of extending the life of her expired driver's license only took a part of a day.

Everything's cool on that front. 

Everything's cool with the car. 

I have the Corolla's title in Kellogg. 

Debbie has the registration and license plates with the car. 

And everything's cool with her pension check. 

It's in the mail. 

This is all a relief. 

2. When I went uptown to mail Debbie her check, I also stopped in at the Beach Bum Bakery. Rebekah recently introduced a German chocolate scone into her bakery case. At family dinner Sunday, we had a discussion about the divinity of German chocolate cakes and BOOM! now a German chocolate product was available for me right uptown. 

Back home, after a quick check on the food pantry and shopping at Yoke's, I sat down and as slowly as I could, I blissed out on the chocolate and coconut splendor of this German chocolate scone. 

I am developing quite a list of products I love at Beach Bum Bakery and I hope this scone will continue to be available from time to time. (What else do I love? New York bagels. French bread, chocolate chip cookies, ginger molasses cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, rye bread, apple fritters, sunshine muffins, rustic sourdough bread, and I know there's more. I also haven't even had a chance to sample many of Rebekah's wonderful creations. I will continue to do so.) 

3. I don't know if it was the first time ever, but I am pretty sure toght's Taco Night at the Kellogg Elks was the first one held there in the last 8-9 years since Debbie and I moved here. 

The turnout was excellent and Tamie and her volunteer helpers set up an excellent taco bar with hard shells, soft shells, ground beef, refried beans, Mexican rice, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olive, sour cream, chips, and salsa. (I might have missed something.) Margaritas were for sale. It was really helpful having a volunteer ready to serve the shells and the other items to go in them and it worked out great for each diner to select their own toppings. 

Since my transplant, I've decided not to risk the harm alcohol might do in combination with some of my medications. Being dry opened the door for me to have Coca Cola with my tacos and I realized tonight, if I hadn't realized it before, that Coca Cola is my very favorite beverage to drink with tacos (and burgers, too). 

A bunch of us swarmed across the street to The Lounge for some more social time and we did just what we used to watch the old people do when we were younger: we headed out the door and home before the clock had a chance to strike seven o'clock!