Trading fours

Who uses it: Jazz musicians
What it means: Short solos -- "trading fours" is four bars apiece, but musicians can also trade twos or eights or whatever -- exchanged among musicians in a combo, often returning to the drummer in between.
How you can use it: To describe a conversation where everyone takes a turn.

Another sunny morning -- astonishing. Dizzy and I walked down to the landing, where they're pulling the floating docks out of the water today and tomorrow. One more sign of the changing seasons.

"That can't be ice," Anna said yesterday, looking at one of the bodies of water we passed on the way to Portland. It wasn't, of course; who knows what kind of chemical scum it might have been, stirred up by the weeks of rain. But Mount Washington got several inches of snow over the weekend, and heavy winds have already taken most of the leaves off the trees. We're supposed to play field hockey tonight, starting at 5:30, but I'm not sure how that will work. Sunset's at 5:49, and I don't think the field has lights.

My plans to start a pirate radio station and my own publishing imprint must hang fire a little longer, because I didn't win the Powerball last night. Rats. Back to work.