very late october currents

How in the world is it nearly November already?!? That’s a little scary. I’m going to try to do NoJoMo this year (hahahahahahaha!!! Yeah, I always say that, and have yet to actually follow through and DO it) so maybe I should try getting in the habit. Although of course I’m leaving town tonight and am not likely to have another chance to make an OD entry till Tuesday. Oh, well. We’ll see what happens. And I’m sure that "what happens" will of course not be that this is my last entry till, oh, January.

Yes, I am babbling. I sent out the "You’re Graduating, YAY! / You’re NOT Graduating, Eejit" emails yesterday, so my brain is now officially mush from answering the gazillion phone calls from the 50% who have deficiencies. I blame that for any nonsense my fingers are spitting out. 

Current Anticipation: My dad and I are leaving for Delaware in the morning on our becoming-pretty-frequent trips to visit his sister, Cousin E’s mom. I am actually looking forward to this trip. Not that I don’t always enjoy it, but the process of getting there has been stressful in the past. We used to drive — nightmare! Daddy won’t stay anywhere that doesn’t involve his own livingroom for more than a few days, and it’s something like ten hours all the way to Cousin J’s in Delaware. More if you hit horrific traffic and get lost like we did last time we drove. I think that was a 13 hour trip. We can stay with Cousin E in Baltimore and break the trip up, but when it’s a two or three night visit, that doesn’t leave much time. Then Daddy flew to Washington DC with a WW2 vets trip last year about this time and decided flying is the way to do it. (He’d never flown, other than in a crop dusting plane when he was a kid, despite having gone all the way to Europe in WW2- he was on a boat then). So we flew up in January, flew up in May, and here we go again. The first flight was really nerve-wracking, as I did not know what to expect while dragging an 83 year old all over three airports, two of them huge international ones (Asheville is, happily, teeny and easy to navigate). By this last trip, though, I’d figured out how to quickly snag one of those cool little carts that will tote you around, and also realized that when the flight starts boarding and they announce that anyone who needs extra time to board can go first, helllllllo, that means US– Old Man With Cane gets to mosey on up the ramp ahead of the crowds, resulting in a MUCH less stressful boarding experience. There’s actually time to stow your carry-ons and get in your seat before you get trampled. (Amusingly I think the cane is a prop —  he gets around perfectly fine, and in fact goes to the mall to walk. The only time he’s actually needed a cane is when he’s been recovering from surgeries. But I think he’s embarrassed to ride in the cart and do the "need more time boarding" thing without this visual aid that signifies he DOES need more time to board. And needs a cart ride when the gates in Charlotte are fifteen miles apart). 

Anyhow. I love to fly, so now that I have mastered the art of Traveling With The Elderly, I’m looking forward to it. Although I hope my aunt is feeling better — she was in the hospital earlier in the week because of an irregular heartbeat, and I think a few other issues. Hopefully she’ll be out by tomorrow. When I called Daddy to tell him, I expected him to ask me what I thought we should do, since he’s gotten to where he seems to want me to make these big decisions – so boy was I shocked when he said, "We’ve got everything set up – I say we go ahead and go up there!" I think he’s afraid there’s not too many trips left. So I’m glad we’re going. 

Current Even Bigger Anticipation: Kim and I are…….

GOING BACK TO ENGLAND!!!!  SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Okay, probably not till next fall, but I am already SO excited!!!! I’ve missed England since we left. This time last year. Almost exactly this time last year. We flew home on Halloween. Oddly that’s when I’m flying home from Delaware this year. Anyhow, we were mooning over what a great trip that was and how much fun we had and how amazing it was that we actually did it…. and then we said, "Let’s do it again!!!!!’ 

Baker B is still not going – he is dying to go to England too, but he wants to wait until he can stay for months. Which means after he retires. He wants to go hike in the Lake District and camp out. He actually is serious about doing that as soon as he retires, which he can theoretically do in six years. Baker B is a bad, bad traveler so it’s just as well he’s not wanting to go with us. I want him to go, but I don’t want him to have a horrible time and ruin our wonderful time. 

Kim has a timeshare — she has several weeks in a timeshare, which is a complete and total waste of a whole lot of money ordinarily, but if you can use it for something like this it can be a great deal. Well, a great deal for ME — she’s paid enough over the years in dues and fees and taxes and the initial investment to BUY England. Well, to buy a little hut in England, maybe. She’s paid a LOT. And she can’t get rid of them. She’s tried. But she’s really wanting to use it for this trip, because that at least makes it a LITTLE more worthwhile. That’s how we ended up going last year — and how we ended up on a canal boat. Of all things. Because the other hitch is that its a LOT harder to exchange locations than they lead you to believe. A canal boat was all we could get. Since we didn’t book it till April last year, I’d hoped it would be easier a year in advance to find something, but it’s not. I don’t think. They have the most baffling and non-intuitive website ever so I’m having a hard time figuring out how you can even tell. And you can get on a waiting list, but you have to pay a fee and you don’t get the money back, even if you end up not getting the rooms. Yeah, RIP OFF! But all this is to say that I have no idea where we’ll be the second week. The first week we’ll stay in London, in Stratford, at the same place we stayed last year through AirB&B – because that was amazing, and very reasonable, and we LOVED it. Like we loved, oh, everything. The house was wonderful, though –it was cozy and comfortable and although you’d kind of expect it to be a little weird, renting a room from strangers, we felt like we’d known these women forever. It was like staying with thoughtful, considerate friends. 

ANYHOW, obviously I’m just a tad excited at the prospect of a return trip. I fully intended to return, of course, but was not expecting to start making plans again quite that fast. And it’ll be a year, but a year will fly by. Something actually is open in March in the Lake District, but neither of us can save up the money by March. It’s funny, now that we know how doable it is to make a trip to England, and to rent a car and drive around, it seems like no big deal at all to go again. Which is pretty much exactly what I expected would happen – it was pretty scary the first time, even though it was of course tremendously exciting. Neither of us had been overseas, and it was just a BIG thing to do. But we did it, and it was fantastic, and now we’ll do it again!

SO, England Buddies, I’ll keep you updated, and maybe we can meet up!

Current Annoyance: That I have to wait a year!!! No, no, it’s not annoying. That’s just plenty of planning time. I want to stretch my visits out until the time when we can actually stay for extended periods. Because, yeah, Baker B and I want to do that. Pack up the cats and stay awhile. 

My other annoyance is there are too many phone calls from upset students today (that’s why I’m doing this, can’t focus on work) and time is crawling. Oh, and it’s supposed to get very cold tonight and probably SNOW. Although apparently it is going to be okay in Delaware over the weekend. Cold but not snowy. 

Current triumph: I got a picture in the Blowing Rock calendar!!!! It took so long for them to let me know that I just figured I didn’t get in, but I did! They are using the Wonderland Trail one. Oddly they are using it as April, despite it having been taken in October. 

Very early October. Leaves weren’t really changing yet. They must have gotten some good Fall entries. Their theme is rock work (Blowing Rock is full of rock work, not surprisingly) so it was hard to get anything really fallish that early in the season that also showed the rock work. But that was quite exciting. 

Current Bafflement: Well, one would be how the college decided to take away our building’s extremely good housekeeper, and move her to another building, and then assign someone to our building at night. Which means that nobody has keys to open up the locked classrooms during the day. And which has been, to put it mildly, a problem. Since we are an office amidst a bunch of random and unconnected classrooms, (apparently this is an overflow classroom building now) instructors are constantly coming in because their doors are locked and they don’t have a key. And now there’s no housekeeper with a key in the building during the day. So we’ve had to call security numerous times to come let people in. Security got really mad the other day, and Mr. Policeman came to our office and told us that we have to cooperate and we have to act like part of this community and we have to go around to everyone in the building, figure out who has keys to what and get their contact information so that when someone needs to get into a locked room, we can call whoever has a key. And presumably order them to get back to campus and let whoever is locked out into their classroom.  

"……………." Pretty much sums up our reaction. We all stood there staring at him, and he just kept repeating this over and over, louder and louder, I guess because we all were just staring blankly at him. Thinking, but much to polite to say, "What in the FUCK are you TALKING about??!??! How is Building Service’s complete and total screw up suddenly OUR responsibility?????" 

He asked who was the dean of the building, and one of us said, "Ummmmmm….. there isn’t a dean of the building, it’s a classroom building with a number of completely unrelated offices!!" So he says, "WELL, who is the Dean of THIS OFFICE???"

And our very nice dean, who had come in and heard most of this tirade but had gone unnoticed because she is small and she is a woman and Mr. Policeman was a tall imposing man, raises her hand and says, "That would be me!"

Naturally Mr. Policeman got all polite then, and they went off for a little chat, and the outcome is that master keys will be passed around to the various offices so that we can open the classrooms. Like, DUH. 

SO, yeah, very very bizarre. I’m not sure what’s going on but I imagine it’s a result of massive budget cuts. Although you’d think building services would have a grip on who needs keys to get into classrooms. 

Oh, and since our housekeeper got transferred, our bathrooms are so nasty that I’d just about rather go use McDonald’s. We were out of soap in one all week. The sink is grimy. Yeah, EWWWWWWWW. There IS a night housekeeper, but he gets here so late we rarely even see him. I’m not sure what he does, but it can’t involve much cleaning. I guess with the budget cuts we might as well expect to start doing it ourselves. 

Okay, I really really need to go now, to finish off my work and get ready to leave for the Big Trip. Or, the Slightly Less Big Trip.