Weekend and Catch-Up

Saturday was a very enjoyable day. JM and I picked up G&SS to head up to the wedding in Frederick, MD. Other than avoiding the traffic congestion caused by P-ville's Town Wide Tag (yard) Sale and being slowed down by an accident at an intersection on Rt.15, the drive up and back was very nice. OK, I should say ride--I didn't have to drive myself to a wedding for the first time since I've been out here! :)

The wedding was simply lovely--traditional, meaningful, and focused on the couple and family. There was a significant turn-out of PHC students, alumni, staff, and variously other-related individuals. There were plenty of people I knew and wanted to talk with at the reception.

The bride is a PHC alumna (graduated in May) and currently works here. I got to know her better than most students, as we went to several plays together and met together for lunch from time-to-time. I had also met the groom on different occasions. Based on what I know of them, I think they have a good start on their relationship and by keeping Christ as the center of their lives, they should be very happy. The first photos I saw of the wedding were posted by Sarah and Nathan, including a very good picture of the couple.

When we got back to Purcellville, JM's dad and sister Margaret had arrived for the weekend. We picked up the leftovers from the birthday supper and managed to make them feed the four of us a meal. As Margaret is deaf, I had to pull out my old signing skills in order to try to keep up with the conversation. (I took a year of sign language class in grad school, just because I always wanted to. Outside of that, I've never had call to use it. I have taken another class of basic sign language 2-3 years ago, because it was convenient and to brush-up on what I remembered. Again, I've never had much call to use it outside of class.) It took quite a bit of concentration for me to keep up with the conversation and even then, I was mostly only following the general drift of the conversation and was missing details. (Or, annoyingly at times, catching the statment and missing the subject.) I just need more practice.

For the evening, JM, Margaret, and I headed into Purcellville for the first Bluemont contra dance of the season. Margaret had never been contra dancing, but has done ballet and piano. She picked up on contra dancing (and waltzing) very well. She was keeping up as well as and better than the other first-time dancers. I think I even caught a time or two when she was reminding vetran dancers which way to go (we all lose track of where we are in the dance at times).

Sunday, after church, I went out to lunch with JM, Margaret, his dad, and Jer. His dad spent most of lunch encouraging me to ramble on about myself and libraries. Anybody who lets me talk about what I enjoy is good in my book! :)

Sunday evening was Awana. We actually had time for the Sparks storytime this week! Previous weeks have been so chaotic that storytime got squeezed out. The younger kids are still learning the rules for the games and some of them I think are lacking a little bit of the maturity to remember and comprehend all the instructions. As always, I expect they'll pick it up before too long. I have a couple of kids on my team that are refusing to play games because "they don't feel like it." Why do I get these kids?

Monday and Tuesday, the Board of Trustees were on campus for a semi-annual meeting. That didn't affect me too directly, as I had turned in the library report a couple of weeks earlier and am not expected to attend any of the meetings with the board. However, some e-mails and some business at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday and the faculty meeting this morning reflect some of the issues raised during the Trustees meetings.

I was most directly affected by the Board meetings, when one of the committees meeting in the library conference room wanted to to be able to include another member by phone. Unfortunately, at some point, the phone numbers for the conference room and the library reference desk had gotten switch and it had not been properly changed on any phone extension lists. The first problem was that the person trying to call in from a pay phone was reaching the reference desk instead of the conference room. The second problem was that the current extension for the conference room cannot be reached from an external phone, it has to be dialed or transferred from an internal phone. The third problem was that the reference desk phone is not the type that will allow you to transfer a call to another phone. The fourth problem was that trying to reach the individual at the pay phone from the conference room phone resulted in a busy signal (based on other attempted calls, the guess is that the pay phone was blocked from receiving the call). The fifth problem, was that by the time all of the other problems had been figured out, we had no way to reach the individual to explain what she needed to do to work around the problems and the committee meeting was more than half done.

Otherwise, my week has been pretty standard--work, clogging, Wednesday evening Bible study. And between everything else, JM and I manage to find time just for us--lunch, supper, a movie, or just talking.