Sometimes it's hard waiting for youngsters to behave like adults.

Eldest son just called (yes, this late at night... he knew we'd be up) to advise us that he was mistaken. Their spring break is this week (as in it started about six hours ago), not the week after as he had thought.

Now, pardon me, but don't colleges kind of make this information available to their students well in advance? Don't you know when you're going to stop attending classes?

Said he found out about this on Wednesday, and could never get our phone line empty to call and tell us. Which prevented us from contacting some fellow parents and arranging a ride home for him.

He's a computer science major. I asked him if he'd ever heard of email.

Gist of his call? It is now obviously too late for him to try to hitch a ride with any non-automotively challenged students that happen to travel near our part of the state. (They're probably most of the way home by now.) And he would like us to come pick him up. As in he has to be out of the dorm no later than Sunday.

Actually don't mind the idea, and glad we get to see him a week earlier than planned, but tomorrow is the ninth morning of March and I still haven't checked a single freakin' strutting ground. This morning's trip got blocked by the blizzard that struck while we were at the United Way banquet last night. The one that closed the highways.

One of my neighbors called to see if I had been out, and to brag that he had already checked three of his leks before the blizzard. Birds were strutting.

So tomorrow was my first chance. To top it off, eldest son does not want us to make a one-day marathon drive. He's hoping we'll stay overnight in College City and come back here on Sunday.

Which costs a second morning of strutting ground surveys. There are only about 70 suitable mornings for lek surveys, and by the end of this weekend 10 of those will have been wasted. Now every morning counts.

Suspect he has an ulterior motive of getting his folks to buy a couple expensive restaurant meals and maybe a credit card-supported trip to the mall. (If they still have Lord of the Rings at a theater in that city, I know I'm screwed. Wife will certainly spend $60 on a motel room just so we can see that film again. 'Course, maybe I would, too.)

And dinner at Carini's would be wonderful.