It�s been a busy but highly satisfactory weekend. On Saturday, my friend M. arrived for a short visit, laden with assorted gifts � a giant cookie shaped like a baseball with black and white striped chocolate chips outlining the stitching for my Sox-loving husband, several still large but significantly smaller cookies for the rest of us and a boatload of wooden trains and tracks and bridges and tunnels for AJ, who has played with little else since their arrival.

Yesterday dawned sunny, crisp and cool. I apologize for rubbing it in about the weather when I know my east coast friends have been contemplating stockpiling gopher wood and animal husbandry in case the rain never does stop. But it really was a perfect fall day. And, as luck would have it, we actually got to enjoy it, as my husband and I had signed on for a canoe trip down the Fox River northwest of the city of Chicago.

The trip was an anniversary present to ourselves. While I grew up in and out of boats of all shapes and sizes, my husband�s first and only previous experience with a canoe was on our honeymoon. We stayed in an inn on the shores of Lake Massawippi in the Eastern Provinces of Canada. The inn had a well-stocked boat shed that no one used but us. Every day we dragged out a couple of orange life vests, worn wooden paddles and a bright red canoe. We tooled around the lake, admiring the brilliantly colored foliage and the beautiful homes with private docks and lawns sloping down to the water.

Yesterday�s trip was a little less idyllic all around, but still spectacular. The man who rented us the canoes and gave us a map of the territory was one of the strangest individuals I have ever met � �a character� or even �eccentric� doesn�t begin to describe it � and he seemed to have a serious problem with short term memory. He phoned us on Friday to reschedule our trip from 12 to 1 so he could send us out with another group. He phoned us Saturday to ask us the same question once again. And then he apparently showed up at noon wondering where we were. So we spent a fair amount of time standing around listening to him tell us about his days in the army and his career as a shop teacher. We finally got on the river a little after 2:30. Fortunately, it was worth the wait. The leaves were turning. Most of the stretch of river we canoed was bordered by forest preserve. There were lots of birds. And lots and LOTS of decoys. The route was peppered with duck blinds, weird shacks built on poles at the edge of the water and covered in grasses and branches � they looked like a cross between an organic art project and a succah. Nevertheless, given the abundance of decoys floating around them (one had more than fifty), their purpose was evident. We were glad our life vests were safety orange.

But we encountered no hunters, only the occasional fisherman (and one fisherwoman) in large rubber waders. We also saw a small boy catch a fish about half his size with his bare fans, clutching it wriggling to his chest as he skipped up the shore toward his family.

Unfortunately, we were so intent on watching and paddling, that we didn�t stop to take any pictures, so you�ll have to take my word for it.

I�d never canoed on a river before. It�s a lot more difficult that on a lake, even when going the direction of the prevailing current. My arms are very sore, thanks to our one portage (�portAGE,� said our strange canoe guide) wrestling with the current in an effort to avoid careening across the river and back and also because of getting grounded several times. The river, thanks to our long, dry summer, is very shallow in spots.

We arrived home at dinner time to find AJ curled up on the sofa watching Cinderella with his grandmother. After our kind babysitters had departed, we all settled in to watch THE WHITE SOX WIN THE PENNANT!

Despite our sore muscles and general exhaustion, we were up late celebrating our favorite team. This morning I received an e-mail from my thesis advisor, a dyed-in-the-wool Cubs fan. It read simply, GO SOX!

I owe elgan a follow-up to her response to my entries on Beethoven historiography and feminist criticism, but I�m out of time this evening. Tomorrow, I hope!

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