Cool kid, cool house

This past week was the annual conference for my professional organization. We had some terrific workshops, great food and lots of fun, once we were finished with the executive board meetings. I am the treasurer now, for the next two years. We had a two hour conference call about the budget, and that was where I finally learned how things work. Then, at the conference, we spent four hours on Sunday afternoon poring over the same budget, wrangling over the thing line by line.

I was able to catch up with my friends around the Midwest and get all their family news. My friend from Missouri has a son in Afghanistan now, so she is upset about that. Other friends are having babies or having babies graduating from college. There were lots of new members at this conference, so I was able to convince some of them to get involved in the organization.

My plane was not leaving until 8:00 p.m. from Indianapolis to O’Hare, which meant I would not be home until after 11:00 p.m., so I tried going standby on some earlier flights. I had not done that since about 1969, when I was flying from Columbus to New York and wound up spending the night in the Columbus airport. This time, though, I was able to get the last seat on the two legs of my trip and got home at 5:00 p.m., about seven hours earlier than I was originally scheduled!

While I sitting at O’Hare, this Indian guy sat down next to me and asked me what the area code was for California. He had just arrived in this country for the first time and he wanted to call his brother to let him know he was OK. There are many area codes in California, so I asked him which city he needed. San Jose. So I called information on my cell phone and got it for him. Then he told me that he was in a masters program for computer science and that was why he came to the United States. Turns out he starts school at my university in a few weeks! We spend the rest of the next hour talking about the town and the school and things he would need to do, and what he could expect. He promised to come to my office with sweet treats from India. What a great thing to have happen---meeting a student fresh from India like that.

Last week a friend of ours called to tell us that she had seen our grandson's name in the weekly paper, and sure enough, he and the rest of his T-ball team were listed in the sports section. So he ran around saying, “Look! I’m famous! I’m as famous as Harry Potter!” So now we have a celebrity in our midst. We went out to Kathy's sister's house for some swimming on Saturday morning. While we were there, her husband brought out a robot that grandson Max used to be afraid of. He was still a little leery, but gradually got braver and learned how to work the robot’s remote control. At one point he took some paper towels and dusted the thing off. Then he kept on dusting the living room, the balustrade of the staircase going to the second floor, lamps, tables, everything, remarking that he was for hire, in case she needed more work done.

It was hot and humid here the whole week I was gone, and the air conditioner was not working. Poor Kodiak was panting away in his own house, and usually he is OK. We had the same problem as last season with water leaking out of the ducts and onto the control panel. I had to shut it off the night before I left. Kathy didn’t want the repairman around if I wasn’t going to be here, so we waited until Friday to have the guy come out. He had it running inside of fifteen minutes and even showed me how to fix it if it happens again. I guess we saved a lot of money by not running it all week, but then it ran for eleven straight hours to cool the house on Friday. It sure is nice in here now.