I've been back from vacation for a few days now and can't seem to pick up the rhythm of "ordinary" life again.
When the plane touched down in Huntington Saturday I almost literally hit the ground running and dashed to Fairmont for my cousin Robyn's wedding. I've not had the opportunity to give it a proper write-up and likely won't have one before the image of it fades. I will say that it had an undercurrent of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and every table had as the centerpiece a goblet filled with 20-sided dice and a Kahlua cake based on Granny's difficult to master recipe. I've learned the secrets to this recipe have been cracked, and as soon as humanly possible, I plan to get my hands on the recipe and share it with the world... minus the secret parts, of course.
School started in our absence. The first day of school was Friday and my kids spent it at Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. I'm not ashamed of this — the timing of the trip and the school calendar simply clashed. With that said, I do question the value of starting school on a Friday, because I'm sure nothing of educational value happened on that day. My kids certainly seem no worse having missed that day, though perhaps lacking the same calendar boundary as their peers will have some long-term effect I can't predict.
With the start of school has come the usual bevy of paperwork: emergency contact cards, applications for this and that, acknowledgements that we have read certain things and agree to the terms therein. Blah blah blah, got to keep the legal folks and bureaucrats happy (he said, realizing he was one of said bureaucrats and the Mrs. one of said legal folks). The emergency contact card is perhaps the greatest mystery to me. I understand its purpose and I understand that people's information changes. I do not understand, for those of us whose information doesn't change, why it needs to be filled out again and again. And I really don't understand why it's not online yet. I guess there are still some "I don't need no damn Internet" people out there who refuse to participate for whatever reason — well, I submit that if you have a student in your home, the benefits to society of that student having Internet access far outweigh the self-perceived benefits of being a curmudgeon or Luddite. The future is here whether you like it or not.
This evening perhaps will be the evening of school supply shopping and thus another evening of running hither and yon. I don't think it will be too bad. I'm going to guess most folks have taken care of this already, probably last weekend, so with that — plus it being a school night — I'm expecting light crowds. The timing of the trip depends on when band practice happens, which will be a constant dragon to slay over the next few months (years?).
Maybe one day soon, everyone will have a nice quiet evening at home. The way things are going now, though, I think it won't be until January, 2013.