7 Quick Takes Friday #14

I cannot believe that it is so soon Friday again and time to contribute to 7 Quick Takes Friday, a meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. I am happy to report that I am back in sunny California, and it has been sunny! Also, the cold I felt I was coming down with simply disappeared as soon as I was home. (Maybe it has something to do with Fr. Ed blessing everyone's throats, one at a time, at noon Mass on St. Blaze's day. (Yeah, it was nice to start my first day back in the USA with a morning off and noon Mass.)

1. I started the week still in Lithuania. On Sunday, the English department chair and I attended Mass again at St. Casimir's. The temperature inside the church was still below zero. Proof positive: the holy water was a solid chunk of ice. After Mass, the dean, department chair, and I had dinner together at an Armenian-style restaurant. The food and company were both outstanding. Afterward, we went shopping, the one and only time while there that I had time to pick up some souvenirs, and I was delighted to find an illustrated book of the history of church art in Lithuania for Fr. Ed, who likes art. The only drawback is that the book is written in Lithuanian. Hopefully, a picture really is worth 1000 words!

2. After returning from the evening out on Sunday, I discovered that my ticket was for Tuesday, not Wednesday. On the one hand, I was distresse, trd to figure out how to get the Tuesday night class taken care of. On the other hand, this was a godsend. I really did not want my division to be reorganized in order to pose for a 125% expansion with my being able only to provide input from afar, since the direction things were taking were not at all to my liking and would have made it difficult to maintain quality control. It was a godsend (perhaps literally) that I was able to get back on Wednesday, before the final decision was made on Thursday. Once back, I was able to provide my input, and the decision all the way up and down the chain matched exactly what I wanted. Yes! Saying goodbye to the students a day earlier was emotional. Lots of hugs!!

3. The three-and-a-half hour drive to the airport was, in a word, snowy. We left with plenty of time to spare, which was necessary because a tractor trailer had jacknifed across the snowy, slick roads. Powder-white snow covered everything: the slim birch trees struggling to grow in the northern sea climate, the ice-covered lakes that reminded me of ice-skating as a child on New England frozen ponds, and the once-green-now-white fields. The trip reminded of Robert Frosts' poem about driving through the woods and snow on a winter night, only I was traveling in the day. In fact, as we passed the ice-encrusted birch trees, which in the summer could have been very much like the bending birches that Frost describes so affectionately, the poetry of Frost, a fellow New Englander, and Frost-related memories flooded my thoughts. Beyond his poetry, I have always felt affinity with Frost because he, like I a few decades later, home-schooled his children long before it was an accepted practice. Then there was the time that the British co-editor of one of the books I published through Georgetown University Press came to visit friends in New Hampshire when I was visiting family in Maine. We met at Robert Frost's farm, which was not only equidistant from where we were staying but also only a mile from my uncle's house. There, on the hood of her rental car, we signed the publishing contract, which needed original signatures, and then I showed her the real mending wall and the real west-running brook about which Frost wrote so meolidically.

4. My departure brought its moment of adrenaline. The Lufthansa flight arrived from Vilnius was delayed, and I arrived at Frankfurt with just minutes to make it to another gate area and through security before my Washington DC flight departed. I made it to the gate out of breath just as they were calling my name to say that the door was closing. Whew! This really is not the best way to get my morning calisthenics. I am sure planned exercise is a much saner way!

5. This week while on Facebook, I found a long-lost cousin. Well, she was not actually lost because I could have found her any time I wanted through my aunt, but when I made contact with another relative on Facebook, up popped the name and picture of this cousin, who is now living in New York. She was the youngest of my aunt's four children by far, not much older than my own children, so sort of a half-generation younger than me. I grew up with my older three cousins but had left Maine by the time their youngest sister was born. Maybe it is time that I got to know her better. I contacted her, and we are now Facebook friends. Lotsa catch-up to do! This is definitely going to be fun!

6. When I got home, Donnie told me that there were some interesting developments in family life that he had not shared with me by email while I was gone. Perhaps it was just as well. I have now blogged about them on the Clan of Mahlou site (Welcome Home?), but I will quickly relate them here. (a) Lizzie and Blaine, who have lived about because of work assignments in different states for the past five years of their 7-year marraige, have decided to divorce and remain permanently apart but good friends and devoted siblings. (Not blood kin, they were raised together from the time we took Blaine in from the barrio as a teenager.) We sort of think that is probably the relationship they should always have had, but grown children make their own decisions and parents support them whether or not they agree with those decisions. (b) While recovering from the loss of Ray, Noelle has encountered another difficulty. Her bone infection has worsened, and doctors are talking again about possible amputation of her foot. She is scheduled soon (still don't know the date) for some last-resort surgery to avoid amputation. Prayers welcomed!

7. Ah, Friday at last! And a special Friday at that. I was supposed to be on leave all week from work, but considering the drastic changes being planned on Wednesday and Thursday, I put in pretty full days, although I did take Wednesday morning for errands and Mass and came home at 7:00 p.m. for our Bible study group when I might have stayed later into the evening as I did on Thursday. I do have to go in to work this afternoon, but this morning, yippee, I am going to First Friday at St. Francis Retreat Center! A moment of peace! :)

Wishing all of you a weekend of peace!