06-JAN-A-4

THE LAST RUNNING WEEKEND AT HOME BEFORE THE ELDP AND PHILIPPINES TRIPS AND DOING A FEW LAPTOP AND HOUSEHOLD CHORES IN PREPARATION FOR A FINAL WINTER WEEK

January 7—8, 2006

I am at home in Derwood, doing a few of the domestic chores that I always try to have completed in time to go away, and then I can return to whatever disasters have befallen in my absence to start the process over again. I am trying to type into the laptop with a new word processor called “Open Office” which gives far too much help and types up a full word when I get only a short part of it typed. For example, in this sentence, “the” became “therapeutic” and “for” became “fortunately” and “part” became “particularly “, as well as a number of other rather intrusive completion of commands I have not given. But Chris Tate with whom I met on Friday has come over with my laptop “defragmented” and a few of the glitches unkinked before I carry it off to the Philippines.

I ran this morning, got groceries at the Giant, and my haircut at Carl Dees, as well as picked up my mail at the Post Office in Derwood: they had started my “hold” on mail immediately instead of awaiting my departure on January 15. I began the packing for Mindanao and for a duck hunt I am planning with Craig Schaefer on Wednesday. Now, I am trying to get this machine ready to travel and get the glitches out of it from a too-intrusive word processor which wishes to write a different story than I have to tell.

I am now trying to return to Word documents getting out of the tortured format which is forced by the Open Office processor and having to redo the work I had done. It may be an advance for some uses, but not this one, and I have used some part of my Saturday, which has been spent at home doing some chores. I also got a chance to read the mail which has now been unplugged, and even a few magazines which I usually have had to stack instead of read. The coffee table is now thinned out from a year’s burden, to a new January start for each of the subscriptions I get. I paused to see the very defensive playoffs game by the Redskins and Buccaneers, with the winner having scored the fewest offensive yards in the history of the game—and that is after I had seen the Ravens go to the SuperBowl without having got to the end zone in four games.

SUNDAY MORNING BEGINS WITH A RUN WITH JOE AMONG DEER, RETURNING TO DERWOOD GRACED BY A BEAUTIFUL BUCK AT THE DOOR

I have tried hard to get to the Comps fervor that the groups I heard on my conference call yesterday are already enthralled in, but I fall asleep on each of the voluminous readings we are supposed to be going through. I have a very large load of work for each of the forthcoming months, the first weekend of this semester arrives this weekend immediately prior to my departure for Mindanao returning through the Grand Rounds to be given in San Francisco area for my student now resident Kevin Bergman. I will miss the month of March, and have already notified the faculty of that fact in emails which go unacknowledged. The on-line course is held on “Blackboard” but it simply does not work for me. I can write up an assignment and the drop box has two commands, “attach” or “submit” and one cancels the other out, so it has been a non-starter for me. All others are already into the near-hysteria of Comps Prep, and I am in a team which is the dregs of those not already selected, and ALL of the team must pass or fail together. So, we will see what kind of system we can get going for this “team orals” followed by individual “written comps.” It is a very elaborate hazing rite, concluding with yet another draft proposal for the dissertation which is supposed to be defended in a “mock defense” in June. It is rather arbitrary, and I must swallow hard and go through the make-work pedantry to get to the same points I have already reached in other previous parts of my career.

I arranged to run with Joe this morning. He is going to early mass, so he asked if I could stop by early. How early? I was there at 5:30 AM—it makes no difference to him that it was dark from start to finish in our pre-dawn run. We linked up and went down the middle of Rock Creek Parkway, with me pushing him to the shoulder if and when a vehicle came along. At one near magic moment, I came upon a group of eight deer, and we walked through the middle of them, with Joe hearing them move about at close range. When we had talked thoroughly about the progress of the two women in our lives who are getting therapy for some fears, we understand each other very well. It finally worked out after the phone call I had got form Joe on Friday morning December 30, with the kids all excited about the road trip to Philadelphia to go to see the places where their Dad had once lived, and to make to calls to visit friends who had invited them. It was very expensive and inconvenient to travel by train, and Joe had also looked into the bus. But Betty had agreed to go by car on a day when there would be almost no traffic for the holiday and the weather was good. On the morning with the kids up early and in their coats at the car, however, she was frozen into immobility in bed, not having packed saying then that she just could not do it. Joe called me to see what I would say, as I was at work. I thought it would be bad if I had enabled her again by dropping everything and leaving work to go up to drive them away for their weekend, so I suggested a cooling down and then I would call Joe on his cell phone to see how things were going. When I did three hours later, Joe was cautiously optimistic, since she had at last got in the car and they were on their way. At on point she had burst out “You drive, or take the bus!” a comment not only specious but cruel. Along the way she said aloud to the family, “It is really hard staring straight ahead for three hours.” Little Joey said after a pause in which no one spoke: “Probably not as hard as being blind!” No one said a thing more. So after the panicky start, the weekend went all right.

I came home to shower and do laundry, and driving up the drive I saw a regal ten-point buck at the circle staring at me as he showed off for two accompanying does who were quite unimpressed. He circle d the house with his head held high.

I went to DCCRC, where Myrtle Pippin was back in church for the very first time from her nursing home after two successive strokes. She can no longer play the organ or be the music leader, but she is alive which no one had counted on.

I have returned home to pack up for three events this week and one more on the weekend. I have the ELDP this Friday the thirteenth, and Saturday, and I have the “Packing Party” for the students accompanying me to Mindanao on Tuesday, along with their orientation. I am seeing Chona Hamrock tomorrow, who is my most consistent forager for medical supplies to be packed up with us as we go. The third event which I had tried so hard to arrange before my departure is that I will go out on Tuesday night after the packing party to Trappe MD and then Craig Schaefer and I will go out to Hooper’s Island duck hunting for the morning only. The weekend event is somewhat larger in scope—I leave in early afternoon from Dulles for San Francisco to catch the PAL flight across the Pacific to Manila, where I will call Juan Montero and then fly down to Gen San City to begin my surgical work in Tiboli area of South Cotabato.

As per usual each time I go away, Derwood is “ship shape “ and looking superb just in time for my departure, and I will see just what has come apart in my absence upon return! When I come back in February, I will be scrambling on both the past due assignments for the ELDP and also getting the pre-arrangements for Rwanda all set, for which I have ordered the MAP packs and also the ticketing for the travel at the end of the week just past. So the two big trips that are marked off for students and me to Asia and Africa are the winter time travels. Before I return to the Comps, and then plan a series of US trips for June (St Mary’s College) and July (Florida to Disney World, possibly to see Donald, and then possibly a quick visit to Cumberland!)

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