Stardate 60385.94 – Catching Up

Lots to report, as I mentioned earlier this week, so please bear with me.

First, on Wednesday Cheryl’s Mom graduated from Monmouth University with her Master’s Degree. We took the day off and went to see her get her diploma (well, actually it was a rolled-up piece of paper, kind of like an IOU for a diploma – does anyone actually give out the real diplomas anymore during the actual graduation ceremony?).

TV anchor Charles Gibson was the speaker, and singer Frankie Valli got an honorary degree as well. Cheryl’s Mom was in the first group to cross the stage, and since Loren had woken up and was getting cranky and hungry we bailed out early. We then went out to dinner with her family at Charlie Brown’s Restaurant, and Loren was very good and played with her toys and even tried some of the mashed potatoes.

On Thursday I got up at 0400 and traveled to McLean on the 0600 shuttle for a series of meetings. I will never again use Google Maps to get directions from one place to another. I’m back to using MapQuest. Thursday was the second time that Google Maps completely let me down with directions that were, quite simply, completely wrong. I spent over an hour trying to find an office building that should have taken me 25 minutes to find. The last time Google Maps tried to send me the wrong way down a one-way street. I think Google is trying to kill me.

I had dinner Thursday night with the soon-to-be Godparents of Loren – my brother-in-law Andy and his wife Jen. We ate at an Italian restaurant in Falls Church named Argia’s. I still cannot get used to leaving NY and going to places where smoking is still permitted in bars and restaurants. I think banning smoking in such places is a fantastic idea. If people want to slowly commit suicide by toxic vapors, let them do it at home or in their own cars, not in a place where I am eating. Now that I’ve pissed off my smoking audience, I’ll move on…

On Friday I took two of my staff out to lunch at Tom Sarris’ Orleans House. They are at a remote site and get left out of some of the office activities as it is tough for them to break away for a day or part of a day, due to the nature of their work. I had the grouper and it was pretty good! When I got home I told Cheryl I ate there and she said, “That place is still there?” But before I could get home I sat on the tarmac for 90 minutes waiting for my flight to leave Washington National Airport. Storms over Jersey caused a hold on flights coming into LGA. At least I had my newspaper to read, and Delta was nice enough to go ahead and serve the snack and water to everyone while we waited.

On Saturday Loren was baptized at the Church Of St. Vincent Ferrer.
One of Cheryl’s relatives asked about the stained glass windows, and it turns out they are not Tiffany but instead the majority of the windows were contrived by the master craftsman Charles Connick, under the direction of Goodhue.

It was a nice ceremony that went off without any problems, other than Loren getting bored part-way through and then getting very wiggly. But we even managed to get her to wear a necklace for the event, and she didn’t cry during the water pouring on the head portion. Lunch afterwards was in the garden at ZaZa, one of the restaurants owned by our across-the-hall neighbor.
We then had everyone back to the apartment for desert and coffee. We had a total of 14 people plus Loren, and it was pretty stress-free.


But now, it looks like Loren may be coming down with another cold. She was sounding congested last night and this morning, and she did not go to bed easily last night and she was up a few times during the night and then got up for the morning at 5 AM. By about 7:15 AM she was exhausted and she and Cheryl went back for a morning nap while I write what is quite possibly my longest blog entry, ever. I’m just trying to beat the records of people like James and Steve.

NYC