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I've wanted to post entries over the past nine days since my last entry; I've just not had any time. Last weekend (the 3rd and 4th of June) we drove over to New York State to attend a graduation party for a niece who had just finished her bachelor's degree -- and I wanted to write about the trip and the traffic, but there was so much to do here at home once we got back about three o'clock Sunday afternoon that I just didn't have any time. I wanted to write about D-Day for June 6th, talk about my father and his experiences. I also wanted to write about the court decision in the Microsoft case. But -- I've been teaching this week and just did not have enough time. It's a five day class, but people always want to leave early on Friday to catch flights back home, so I usually offer to finish class by lunch time on Friday if they are willing to start class half an hour earlier and stay a bit later and I've never been turned down on that. There were only four people in this class, but two of them had 12:45 flights out of Providence, so we had to finish even earlier. And, to top it off, they had questions about some related topics and wondered if I could provide information about those topics. So I've been running longer than normal class days... and then I still have email and various bits of administrivia to deal with for an hour or two after the class leaves plus prep work for the next day, etc. I've been dragging myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and not getting to sleep until after midnight all week. So, although I've managed to get through my email and have found time to read most of the journals I like to follow, I have not been able to squeeze in time to post any entries on my site. Friday, June 9th, was Senior Prom night -- and I had intended to write about my daughter and her friends and the stretch limo they rented for the prom and also about my memories of my Commencement Dance (my high school's equivalent of a senior prom) -- but then a whole bunch of stuff happened and I didn't have time for that either. I had brought Sean to work with me Friday morning (it's a long story, too much to go into now) so he could sit in the back of the room and study for his upcoming final exams. Jennifer went off to school. Seniors only had a half day of school (because of the prom) and she and her friends all had hair styling appointments in the afternoon. After I finished my class and sent my students off to the airport, I went up to my office and found my voice mail message light blinking. It was a message from my wife: there had been a bomb scare at the high school and Jennifer had called her at work to ask if she could bring her home. The authorities had herded the students out of the school and into an outdoor athletic area. Jennifer and her friends had decided that being clumped together like that just made them a big target if there was some kind of Columbine type wacko on the loose, so they had decided to leave but the authorities would not allow anyone into the student parking lot to get their cars. I reached Jennifer at home. She was okay and Nancy had gone back to work, but her car was still at the high school and she had a bunch of errands to run before her hair appointment. No problem, I told her, I was not going to hang around the office for the afternoon and I would be home around 12:30 or so. When I got home she was gone, but showed up a few minutes later. A friend had found out they were letting students retrieve their cars, so she had gone and picked up her car. After Nancy got home from work, we did some yard work (cut the grass, hack the weeds, etc.) until it was time to see the kids off to their prom. The girls were all getting dressed at one girl's house and the boys were meeting them their. (Note to Joanne Golphin: that girl's mother was originally from Perth.) The limo was arriving at 5:30 or so and parents were welcome to show up around five to take pictures. So we went and took pictures. Yes the girls were beautiful and the boys were handsome and the limo was really really long and I'm feeling really really old. I found out during discussions with Nancy and the other parents, that the bomb scare at school may have been more than just a telephone threat. According to the story that is going around, a student had made threats, this student had been suspended last year for bringing the ingredients for a bomb to school, and an actual bomb had been found and the police were looking for him. I have no idea how much of this might be true. I am a bit annoyed at what I understand about how it was handled (i.e., herding everyone into an athletic field surrounded by a chain link fence and, in effect, locking them in there, but I'll wait until I know more. Sean got a phone call from work (he has a job as a dishwasher at the same restaurant where Jennifer makes salads, etc.) saying that they were swamped with work and could he please come in to work. So I dropped him off at the restaurant and then went on down to Main Street Fish Market and picked up some fish and chips to go (and some Buffalo hot popcorn shrimp, yummy) for Nancy and me. After we ate, we spent the evening cleaning the house. Yeah, what an exciting way to spend a Friday evening, but we'd both been too busy all week to keep up with things. (Isn't it amazing how rooms can mess themselves up?) So we cleaned and straightened, etc. Finally, somewhere after ten o'clock I could clean no more and settled down in the living room with a book -- Java Servlets by Karl Moss -- which seems, in the bit I read, to be a decent book, but I was struggling to keep my eyes open and, although I had a cup of coffee, I dozed off for a few minutes. Sean phoned at eleven to say that he was working until closing. Later on Jennifer phoned (from the limo) to say that they were on their way back from the Prom and she would check in again when they reached the house where they were spending the night. Nancy went to take a shower and go to bed, leaving me to babysit the telephone, waiting to hear from our children. I surfed through some journals and was reading Jerry Pournelle's site (where I noted one of his readers had written in with exactly the same comment about a recent radio interview with the Microsoft judge that had I had thought to make in that journal entry I never had time to write). Finally, a few minutes before one a.m. Sean phoned for a ride. Shortly after I picked him up and returned home Jennifer phoned to say that she was at her friend's house where they planned to stay up all night watching videos and then walk down to the beach at dawn to watch the sun come up and then have a big breakfast and then go to sleep. So, all accounted for, now I can go to bed, but by now I was wide awake... so I logged on to the web, checked email and such again, and then decided to write this entry. It's now about quarter past two a.m. and I am getting sleepy again so I think I will bring this to a close and go to bed.... have lots and lots of work to do around the house and the yard tomorrow... uh, I mean later today... |
