I started a 3 1/2-week vacation and found out that the lateral move/promotion I had applied for earlier this year I finally got, with another modest raise. I'm honored and a little anxious about my new responsibilities (which I'll likely share with my old responsibilities for a while) as administrator of the Presbyterian Panel but also excited nonetheless. I'm also on my way home to Florida, where I'll visit briefly with my Mother and a few friends and - if all goes according to plan - drive back to Louisville with Mom's old Toyota Camry. We currently have three sick cars. The trick will be deciding which one or ones to keep (for me to drive) and which one or ones to decommission. We're also a little anxious about Mom getting used to her new Camry.
On the down side, we've gone for a couple of years since the old pipes - mainly in the basement - in our rental house have gone bad. In the past, two plumbing catastrophes had spewed all kinds of noxious materials mainly in the unfinished part of our basement. This week Stephanie adroitly caught this - while she was showering - so it was shower water only spewing, instead of something else. Plumbers - to be paid by our landlord - came and attacked the immediate problem. However, they want to come back to fix a leak in a pipe in the wall in our kitchen, and I'm not sure our landlord will authorize this. Now is a good time to be a renter (in that we don't have to worry about a house we own suffering falling values or about trying to sell a house), but we don't control maintenance (except for a few things we've gone ahead and paid to have done that our landlord wouldn't). And the sad sahpe that our 60-year-old house's plumbing and electrical systems are in give us pause about ever trying to buy the house.
The very serious academic problems Vincent is having helped trigger a conversation with his social studies teacher in class earlier this week that has him informally suspended pending a meeting with school district staff. Within the context of a conversation about whether Vincent would need the Commencement items we had ordered (some of which came in this past week), Vincent told his teacher - while some classmates listened - a disparaging comment. This triggered a phone call by the teacher to the principal, who in turned called my voice-mail. The next morning a rotating group of the principal, new assistant principal, high school guidance counselor, Vincent, Stephanie, and I met. It wasn't clear if Vincent was going to agree to talk with district staff, to whom they referred him. Now that he has agreed, he can't get an appointment until Monday AM and he declined this AM (Thursday) to go to school after we realized the school would let him be there (as long as we'd made the appointment) and he realized he would face two classes with the teacher (who - from Stephanie and my point of view - quite predictably - had called the principal about Vincent's remark). Yesterday (Wednesday) they cut him some slack by reporting him home sick while he contemplated compliance. I'm not sure what they'll do about today (Thursday - when he stayed home). (Either way - if the district staff clears him to go back to school Monday - he'll presumably be going to social studies class that day. We'll see.)
P.S. Vincent went back to school Friday - ironically - to see "The Nutcracker" which is used to see in Columbus. He also saw this ballet once in Tallahassee, and this weekend I'm reminded not only of Vincent's (up and down) days in Tallahassee, including at my Mom's house, where Vincent and Stephanie lived for two years and where I'm of course staying for this three-day visit, but also of our long fugitive week. I think it was really a week later 10 years ago when we were fugitives. But Vincent went to the Nutcracker Friday, when we saw that Sunday afternoon in Florida State's Ruby Diamond auditorium, during the fugitive period. More importantly, tonight was the night of the Flotilla of Lights - which we saw along with leftover fireworks - on the bridge in Carrabelle, FL, 10 years ago (Carrabelle harbor by day pictured above)- staying in the Beachside Motel that night ("What's that noise?"), eating at Julia Mae's, walking on the beach in the morning, and driving through the Apalachicola National Forest on the way back in the morning ("There's a deer on the other side of the road"). While we drove back after breakfast, Vincent's father met with our pastor, Pastor Brant, who did not disclose our whereabouts, and warned Pastor Brant that he might be back late that afternoon, for a carol sing and chili supper we were planning to go to. Mom warned us about this at the Nutcracker and sent us out to Shell Point, where we stayed for several nights with the late Marilyn Crook. There we watched videos and Vincent and I even swam in the Gulf (Vincent always loved telling people up north that we had gone swimming at the beach in FL in December - later that day it got too cold for this). Tuesday evening we drove into Crawfordville for dinner, and Stephanie called her lawyer (whose house we drove near in Pickerington, OH last weekend), who told us that the court had cleared us not to turn over Vincent to his father and so we went home to Mom's the next day, since we were no longer fugitives. The Tallahassee police did not get the message and so when our tire blew on our way back into town from Pascagoula, New Orleans, and the Sugar Bowl two weeks later, the police asked us about that. 10 years ago!
To check out videos of the two apropos songs we listened to on the way "home" from Crawfordville to Shell Point (thanks Mom, Ruth, Elizabeth, Brant, Nancy, Marilyn, Walter, Marian, Terry - and Steve!), click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e9y6-LRDPY
And: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFGZufk4HFs
-- Perry
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