Last weekend Jean, Colette and I went to Shane's house in Oxford, Maryland, to celebrate my father's 70th birthday. Both Jean and I ended up working late that Friday, so we got a late start for Maryland on Saturday. My little Saturn was packed to the brim with parents, baby, puppies and luggage.

It was a great weekend. There were two birthday cakes, one for my mom (who also just had a birthday, though we won't get specific here) and one for dad. I actually had neither, since one was a fancy ice cream cake and the other was a wedding cake candidate for Colette and Shawn's upcoming marriage, which will be held at a church near the house in Maryland.

I got to go out in Shane's new power boat. It's sort of like what they call a Zodiac: the sides of the boat (where we sat) are inflatable, but the bottom of the boat is hard. When we first went out, we couldn't go very quickly. Shane deduced that there were too many of us on board, so we returned Brendan to the dock (he'd been on the boat before). The second time around, the boat seemed to skip across the water. We sped in a twisty path across the wide creek that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. On our way back to the dock, we were buzzed by three military jets that we saw before we heard.

Shane took everyone sailing on Sunday morning, but I stayed back at the house with Colette. She needed a diaper change and a bottle, and there was something about her that made me want to pass up the rare opportunity to sail.

Sunday afternoon everyone headed home. Except me. While Jean, Colette and the dogs headed back to Richmond, I went with Shane, Joanna and Sabrina and Molly. After a good Philadelphia pizza at Shane's, I was dropped off at the Extended Stay America hotel.

Carolyn (my former boss in the Registrar's Office) and I were going to Malvern, PA to attend the alpha walkthrough of a new piece of software in development by SCT, the company that makes Banner. The walkthrough dwelt on the functional side of the product, not the technical side, and it was fascinating to see the software in progress. There are only five schools in the alpha program, and I got the feeling SCT was listening to our concerns about the product. We'll see when the software comes out at the end of this year!

The walkthrough lasted from Monday until Thursday. Carolyn and I were invited to dinner at Randy Nichols' house on Tuesday. I survived the raspberry chicken and asparagus dinner (which was very good – I just don't like poultry or vegetables), and had a great time talking with Randy, his housemate Terry, and Deirdre McGoldrick, an old SCT acquaintance who now works for Swarthmore. It was great to spend time with everyone, and an honor that Randy would go out of his way to welcome us into his life away from work.

Each night, though, I spent a healthy amount of time on the phone to Richmond talking to Jean. One night Jean put Colette on the phone. For just a moment when I was talking, Colette stopped eating her fist. I wonder if she heard me. I missed them both all week; it's been especially tough to be away from my family.

It was great arriving home early Thursday night. Jean was in the middle of a diaper change. She'd survived four days on her own with Colette and the dogs. I spent most of Thursday night playing with Colette. If she doesn't need a diaper or a bottle, she's constantly smiling.

Friday it was back to work. I had appointments every hour on the hour between 10 and 3, which kept me running all day. Friday was Louie's last day in Administrative Technologies, and he was moving out of his office for most of the day. His office is now mine, as the Development office on campus has need of my current space. I'm going in this weekend to begin transferring files and documentation from Maryland Hall to Jepson Hall, and I'll officially move out of Maryland Hall when my phone is switched to my new office.

I've enjoyed my stay in Maryland Hall. I didn't get to know the Development office as well as I'd wished, but I've had a great time getting to know everyone in the Controller's office. I'll be keeping in daily touch with Natolyn and everyone there, but it's not going to be the same as my frequent stops down the hallway over these last few months.