06-JAN-A-5

THE UNSEASONABLY WARM WINTER DAYS PRECEDING MY DEPARTURE FOR WARMER MINDANAO, AND THE RUNNING USE OF THEM BEFORE THE ELDP CLOSES IN ON ME

January 9-10, 2006

In an unseasonably balmy January with temperatures cresting in the high sixties, I have taken advantage of the better climate even if pitifully short daylight to run as often as I can get to it, and have racked up many predeparture miles. Many of these have been run through the dark, as with Joe yesterday when we began and finished before dawn, and tonight when I tried to push for distance starting up near the time of sunset, so running back under a silvery moon. It is good I can get some of this done—largely as a substitute for my doing the ELDP Comps study and the voluminous homework piling high around me. I am not feeling the anxiety that most of my colleagues are about the coming comps, but I have to pass the orals in teams, so everyone must pass together, it does not matter how stellar one performer is doing.

Chona Hamrock met me today with her husband as they made a delivery of much of the surgical supplies like drapes and disposables that we will be carrying to Mindanao and will be sorted and distributed at the packing party tomorrow night before I leave for the Eastern Shore. I now have more than enough to pack also for the Rwanda mission and the Sudan or Eritrea follow-up trips. I should clear out as much as possible, but there are few of us leaving from Washington for each of the trips to overload. Chona and her husband are working fast now toward the completion of their new restaurant in Annapolis named for their daughter “Ali” which will be ready for opening in mid-March, about the time I return from Rwanda. I am trying to make plans to run the Governor’s Bay Bridge Run on May 7, followed by the Bay Bridge Walk, so it may be the right time to go for the Brunch at their new restaurant after the run on that day!

I also fielded many more inquiries about the hopes for several students to accompany me on the trips planned and some who are so forward as to suggest that I make a special trip to plan around them for the different time frames that they have in mind! I am packing up many of the plans since I will be gone in the next three weeks so that I cannot handle further details like the airfare-lowering advance planning of itineraries. Jill Seaman agreed to come to the MMHOF in Toledo and be the awardee (see 06-JAN-A-6) so that I will have several meetings of the Saturday March 18 for which I should be scrambling back.

I will have to start managing my own Home Page since the guru seemed to think the efficient way to catch up would be to skip the last year’s entries he has ignored and drop half of the remainder and by posting the most recent ones, he considers that we are now “caught up.” As soon as I can get this laptop regularly hooked to the internet, by means that are wireless (which is not at home as yet) I will see how I can update the whole page and its contents and links, last updated during the Fulbright leave now a decade ago!

Return to January Index
Return to Journal Index