July -- before it's gone!

I've not been living up to my resolve to post more frequently, but I don't want to let July go by completely without posting, so here's the first 2/3 of the month, in a nutshell:

I spent a few days in Chicago as an advisor for a 3-day, CSTA-sponsored Leadership Cohort training session. While I was in town, I seized the opportunity to meet Emily, my nephew's soon-to-be bride, about 10 days before their wedding, and Emily, Jon, and I had a terrific dinner together! I knew their lives would be a lot crazier the following weekend, so I was thrilled to steal a bit of relaxed time with them.

Speaking of stealing... One casualty of my time in Chicago was my new red BlackBerry, which I left in the hotel room one morning. When I realized that I had left it, I didn't rush out of the workshop to retrieve it, and that was my biggest mistake. (I guess I'm not used to having cars or phones that people want to steal.) By the time I got to the room, it had been cleaned, and the phone was long gone. I had borrowed a friend's phone so I could call mine, in case it had fallen behind the bed, but it wasn't anywhere nearby. I continued to call my number periodically, and for 2 days it always rang a few times before rolling over to voicemail, but by the third day, it went immediately to voicemail, so it had either run out of juice or been turned off. I reported it immediately to both Housekeeping and Security, but it never turned up. I had gotten this phone at a bargain price (after rebates, with a 2-year contract), but the replacement phone, purchased via eBay, didn't come anywhere near as cheap! (The guy at the AT&T Wireless store, where I went to activate my refurbished phone last night, said that BlackBerrys are apparently quite popular among thieves.)

Never mind that nutshell thing...

A week after I returned from Chicago, we were back for Jon's and Emily's wedding -- what great family times we had! We weren't sure that Mom & Dad would make it there, due to Dad's complications from Parkinson's Disease, but they made it, he did OK, and everyone was glad they had come!

Also on the medical front... I need to get a crown replaced (symptom: peel-me-off-the-ceiling pain when I drink anything cold), but I don't have breast cancer (based on the results from a needle biopsy), so I'd say I'm WAY ahead of the game! BENIGN is my new favorite word!

In between (and during) my trips here and there, I've kept busy with some CS curriculum proofreading -- I'm actually earning some money this summer!

We're home for a while and eagerly anticipating being able to set up our office. (The rest of the flooring should arrive mid-week.) Maybe I'll even be able to find my paper copies of the score reports from my NTE/Praxis exams! I need them to get a NJ teaching certificate (if I get a job with a public school), and ETS doesn't keep scores after 5 years. Who knew, in 1977, that ETS would change policies so many years later?!