I'm home in Baltimore after being away for eight days. The house (pic 5) feels inert now that our dog is away. For the first time in 10 years, there was no fuzzy silhouette in the front door window, and no dance of joy by a blur of fur when we walked in. But she is apparently enjoying her vacation with my in-laws in Ohio and getting five walks a day.

And starting this week, we're spending most weeknights in the basement apartment at my mom's house to cut our one-way commute to D.C. down from an average of 90 minutes to 40 minutes. On bad traffic days, we were in the car over two hours one way, and we haven't seen snow yet. Because Amy and I work in the same office, the time together in the car was doubly lost. Since June, we've been bleeding an average of 30 person hours a week worth of time in the car, which wore us out. The hours saved in this new arragement will let us spend more time with Cianna, catch up on rest, see movies again and more. We'll live this way until we move to a house closer to D.C. in the spring.

- mike lee - baltimore