Skipping Town

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of final preparations for graduate orientation, my office's biggest undertaking of the year. It is no easy feat organizing three days of events (35+) for almost a thousand grad students when the office consists of two people. This is my fourth orientation, and it has always been exhausting, but this year we added more events and it nearly did us in. I'm still recovering. And now I have to return forty black linens that I panic-ordered from Amazon when it looked like the catering team had dropped the ball on my massive linen order. Hassle upon hassle. But it's over. Unlike last weekend, when I had to work every day on preparations, I had a nice relaxing weekend. Some pool time, some nice meals, actually seeing Andrew and the kids.  On Saturday, Mom and Dad came in and we went to our favorite book sale of the year. It's a fill-a-bag for $15 sale, and we always find amazing things. We all filled a bag (or two). Then we went to a fe...

Our return from Cape May and re-entry into our crazy life did not go smoothly last week. Our return, from July 27 through July 31, was so busy and chaotic I didn't think we would get to the other side of it.  Monday: Greta had crew from 6-8am, requiring one of us to drive her to Verona at 5:30am and then sit in the Oakmont Bakery until pickup. One of us, meanwhile, drove Lucia to work. Then both of us went to work. Greta did geometry. One of us picked up Lucia. Andrew took Greta to math tutoring from 6-7pm. I had to lead a webinar for 400 grad students from 7:30-8:30pm. Tuesday: Same. Crew, Lucia work, our work, geometry, then piano lessons from 6-7pm and then XC for Lucia until nearly 9pm. Did we eat dinner? That question will be answered later. Wednesday: Crew, Lucia work, our work, geometry. Andrew had to wait at home for the gas company to come for a required gas meter update, which we'd put off so long we were notified that our gas was going to be turned off. Lucia had vir...