Reading: The same. Don't expect anything new for the next few days.

Learning: That I am so glad I don't and won't have children.

Listening: AEW on his baby monitor. Surreal.

Viewing: DEDBG's photo albums. The changes at UConn.

Moving: Nope!

16 November 1999: Storrs to Putnam to Boston to Denver

Breakfast with coffee drunk from bowls with DEDBG's name on them. Pancakes with Charenton's own syrup. Salivating... RDC asked if the syrup they made lasted all year, and JUMB said more than enough, since they make more now and don't have three kids eating pancake breakfasts thrice a week. I'm sure this wasn't a conscious hint on my husband's part, but when we left, we had a bottle of sirop d'erable, a jar of preserved coigts, and another of marrons glacé (maple syrup, quinzes, and chestnuts).

APB wants to have a 30th anniversary party for the house next summer and to invite everyone. (That means everyone.) Their old WHO union (wood-hauling organization) that helped them assemble the house. Anyone who's come by in the past 30 years. I just learned today (20 November) that DEDBG and SPG are flying home for Christmas and New Year's. Last year, I shouldn't've gone home in June but in September, when the weather is better, when I could have gone to ALB's wedding, when DEDBG would have been home...and now this year I made my long trip back for another extremely worthy and wonderful cause that still didn't coincide with DEDBG's visit. Poop.

Anyway. So off we went to UConn. It was sunny, so Mirror Lake was nearly a normal color. No one's done anything to my beloved Holcomb, but Sprague has a wheelchair ramp now. A huge new von der Mehden. South Campus demolished and new arisen. Arjona and Montieth hulking like the 1960s monstrosities they are. The Dodd Center. The slightly unbelievable library. We parked as visitors in the Co-op lot and even found a spot without a meter. We went into the Co-op, where Suzy wasn't, and left her a note. I bought a University of Connecticut sticker for Cassidy and drinks, which we sucked down before entering Homer. Everyone in Circulation was in a meeting and the director of special collections was absent as well. So far we were zero for several.

RDC's English adviser had no scheduled classes or office hours, but he usually comes in anyway. RJH's class was scheduled to let out at 10:50. We headed for Arjona and the English department early because I wanted to catch RJH coming out. If we'd waited, we probably could've caught library people after their meeting, but we'd've missed talking to a couple of other English professors. A particular favorite, from whom I took History of the English Language (and with whom I earned my best graduate grade), told us all about looking for a job in Colorado and how much he likes it. I asked about another, emeritus medieval professor of whom I'm quite fond (he's writing another book for Columbia) and mentioned that I had recently consulted my History of the Language text trying to figure out if a sound change was Grimm's or Verner's Law. "You are perverse!" observed my professor. I grinned. "If it's internal, it's always Verner's," he said, so there you are.

RJH kept on with his class until after 11. I did not want to be kept from him by a pane of glass again. I sneaked in a quick hug and we left UConn behind, going up Route 44 to Putnam and ABW. I must have been that far east on 44 before, but I don't remember it. It's gorgeous out there. It is way out there, which is how it's preserved. We passed through Pomfret with its active chapter of the KKK and its remarkable colonial and Georgian mansions. How can a town so lovely in architecture and scenery have such a major drawback no one would want to live there? Sigh. Then Putnam. ABW's new house, unlike TJZ's new house, was easy to find.

ABW met us at the door. "I knew you'd come now--I just put both boys down for their naps. NKW wasn't asleep yet, though, and I got to read him The Foot Book and The Cat in the Hat. I met AEW, who was your basic three-month-old baby. ABW works for an editorial service contracting copyediting and so on. I wonder about that for me. I could work at home!

Ah ha ha ha.

We left ABW's at 2, got to Logan before 3:30, returned the car, shuttled to the gate, and confronted the box BJWL had given us. She wanted me to save room in my carry-on for it, but she wouldn't tell me its size and I wanted room in my carry-on for books anyway. I insisted she wrap it such that I could check it. When I first saw it, I gaped. The box was bigger than my knapsack; it would hardly go in it. RDC pointed out we didn't know its contents and if it was an oil lamp like the one my father gave us or kitchen knives, it would be illegal to carry it on. But we had plenty of time, so we checked the box, no problem, and sat at the gate. We'd stopped on the Mass Pike for RDC to eat, which meant Burger King. I could wait until the airport, where I bought a delicious feta and vegetable sandwich from Au Bon Pain, with which I teased my husband.

I could have wished to see CLH on the way back, but I didn't want to do any more driving in Boston than I had to. (I had been doing all the driving in our Daewoo VCR car.) There was already stop-and-go between South Station and Sumner and I can only imagine its worsening closer to rush hour. So we read at the gate. When we could, under the cell-phone monologue of another passenger.

Hearing this woman make demands of someone who was clearly an assistant but clearly someone else's assistant, like that she should stay late "with apologies to your husband" (so presumably the assistant had plans already) and do all this crap and ya ya ya and it sounded exactly like when I worked with consultants at ATK. Perhaps because consultants have to bill their hours, they get more stressed? I was loving Dot Org, listening to her. I don't work in a stressful environment and I like it. And her nasty attitude--her tone with the assistant and speaking so loudly in the general area that everyone could hear her instead of moving away and speaking more reasonably--wasn't just because of whatever she thought had gone wrong at work. Presumably she doesn't work on the plane, which the ATK consultants did, because from two rows behind I could hear her demand of a flight attendant a fresh pair of headphones still in plastic so she could watch "Runaway Bride." She made excessive requests throughout the flight for blankets and liquid and peanuts. And at the end of the flight, when everyone usually does their best to gather their luggage ahead of time so as not to cause a backlog behind them? No. Not she. She reminded me a lot of my ATK supervisor, and I came back to work with a fresh appreciation of CoolBoss.

Landed at 8:35, at the gate at 8:39, with our luggage waiting for us at carousel 11, a prompt shuttle to the long-term lot, and home by 9:19. What's the problem with DIA again?