Monday, August 4

Three posts in one day – a record. You saw the post about the Flickr photos; I was also able to get an album about the George/Deirdre wedding created in Facebook. That one’s only 60 photos as opposed to the whole shebang, so if you’re interested but want only the specially selected ones, that’s where to go.

I also managed to read through all my emails that came in while I was away. Since it took the entire afternoon, I wasn’t really able to deal with any of them; my key thing was to get rid of everything that didn’t need my attention. Tomorrow is the day to begin digging in.

On a sad note, one of the first emails I did see today was one bringing the very unwelcome news that one of our faculty members passed away on Saturday. He is someone who has meant a great deal to me from the moment I stepped foot in his class (one of my first in grad school) nearly twelve years ago. My feelings run quite deep and are not to be posted here, but in an attempt not to lose track of this tribute, I do want to post a link that David Dwiggins came across:

http://hoofcare.blogspot.com/2008/08/lost-farrier-allen-smith.html

It was written by someone from his other life – in addition to being a professor at GSLIS, Allen was a horseshoer for many, many years – but it is not surprising to me that he made the same impression in that world as he did in mine. He will be deeply missed.

 

George and Deirdre’s Wedding – July 2008

Rehearsal – July 10, 2008

Originally uploaded by jendoyle2007

It only took me about three hours, but I finally finished uploading all the photos from the George & Deirdre wedding weekend into Flickr. I still want to make an album in Facebook and, potentially, burn some CDs for George and family so that they can own whatever they’d like. Not, of course, that I’m Annie Liebowitz or anything, but I know firsthand how hard it is to get family shots so I figure if they like them, great.

I’m also taking advantage of this opportunity to test out the link between Flickr and my blog. If it works, we’re in a whole new world!

🙂 Jen

 

The life, as they say

I’m sitting here in the Courtyard Marriott on an interlude from George’s wedding activities. It’s quite odd to be in a hotel on the Cape rather than at Grandma’s House or The Retreat. Not, however, bad.

Lucy and Will were quite funny on the way here, Will saying that he liked hotels because that’s where they brought you the food and you could eat it on the bed. (“To the tune of $100 for bad pancakes,” Kelley of course added.) Lucy took no time in getting to the work of scoping out the room service menu which, in this case, is actually quite slim since it is only Domino’s pizza from 11 a.m. through, well, I’m not sure since Lucy has appropriated the detailed list. For most people (like, again, Kelley) this would be an awful transpiring of events. For Lucy, however, who has inherited my odd love for Domino’s pizza, it is the cherry on top. Thus the note I awoke to this morning:

Dear Mom,

I know it is still morning, but for dinner I want a small crunchy thin crust cheese pizza and side of chicken “kickers.” [quotations hers]

Lucy

In the words of David Letterman: I’m not making this stuff up.

Alas, for dinner we are being treated to a barbeque (how the heck do you spell that??? My spell check is saying it’s wrong, but I can’t think of what else it would be) at the compound and therefore will have to forego our Domino’s room service. Now, as much as I am a fan of Domino’s, I’m a fan of big family bbq’s even more.

I’m not entirely positive that Lucy is feeling the same way, but I’m thinking at the moment she is. The thing about being with George’s family is that there are a billion (or maybe a billion and two) kids around at any given time. In addition to the Churchill kids (six of them, between George, Elly, and Jon and their respective partners [and ex-partners, I suppose]), there are various cousins and, in this iteration, the children of all the wedding party. Actually tonight, there are probably even more coming in since it’s wedding guests as well. Last night, while the adults were at the rehearsal dinner, Betsy hired a coordinator plus four camp counselors to run childcare for the 25 kids. Lucy and Will were in heaven.

Most of the kids went their separate ways today, although we were lucky enough to spend the majority of the day with Daron, Ted, Leo (Ted and Elly’s 5-yr-old) and Julian (George’s 5 yr-old). Part of that was spent hanging out on the semi-private beach, part of it sailing to and from Egg Island with George W. (Refer to title of this blog.)

Will, for as much as he really doesn’t like venturing out into the water (the red seaweed paralyzed him — not literally, of course, although you would wonder if you saw him frozen in place this afternoon), absolutely LOVES being out on boats. And it’s pretty hard to tear Lucy away from the beach, although getting her onto the sailboat wasn’t exactly hard. Before we went out to the sailboat, George W. took all the kids puttering around in the Zodiac (or, according to Will’s not entirely accurate memory of the description in the car ride down, the “maniac”) for a while, leaving Daron, Jon, Kelley and I to just hang out on the beach. And this is why it’s really hard to return to real life after vacations.

One of the other really nice things was that I felt very little guilt leaving at around 4 to come back to the hotel and walk on the treadmill, shower, check email, and write this post. The kids probably haven’t even noticed I’m not there, and although Kelley has, it may only be because he needs me to bring Will a short-sleeved shirt when I return for the BBQ. (And I don’t even feel too much guilt there because there are so many 5-yr-old boys around that there’s no chance there won’t be an extra shirt lying around if it turns out it’s really desperately needed.)

That said, I am pushing it, so I really should go. Perhaps I will be able to get back on later tonight and write about what life is like for the other half. No, I’m not talking about those lucky enough to spend their days leisurely beach-going and sailing. I’m talking instead about that class of folks that I don’t think much about when it comes to the lives they have to lead: husbands.

Until later…