On Tuesday evening, August 24, I left my wife and three young children (ages four, three, and sixteen months) at home for a couple of hours to go to a Lodge meeting. About an hour after I left, Jen put the kids to bed and sat down at the kitchen table to eat a bowl of ice cream and work a crossword puzzle.
After a few minutes, she heard a sound coming from the general direction of the utility room, which is adjacent to our dining room, but she guessed that our Boston Terrier might have been sleeping in there and making dog sounds. When she heard the noise again, she got up to check it out. Just as she stepped into the utility room and looked at the sleeping dog, she heard a voice coming up from the basement stairs that open into that room:
"Don't mind me - I'm just hanging around."
