Come to my Window, I'll be Home Soon

After a lovely surprise afternoon water ice visit from Daniel (who is an excellent towel picker-outer), an even more lovely visit from a surrogate Scharf-Kligerman (no offense, darling Daniel and I really miss you, Nic), and a farewell dinner with a few favorite cousins, I figured the visits were over and started to watch dad pack the car. Actually I hid upstairs, phenomenally anxious that nothing would fit. But it did, because dad is a genius packer.

Then I was almost ready for bed, just figuring out gmail while sitting on the floor of my room (I'm never sure why I do that--I have a desk with a chair not far away...), and I heard all of these voices coming from my window. "CLAIRE," the voices collectively shouted. I jumped up, for some reason assuming something was wrong, but clearly those voices belonged to Al and Emmie, friends extraordinaire. What a treat. They watched as I crammed things into other things and we stayed up much too late (...typical...) remembering and talking and laughing and obviously watching the youtube dance (if you haven't seen it, go to the Skidmore homepage and click on "99th Commencement" and scroll down). It was hard to say goodbye, but Emmie will only be 5 hours away in "Nashvegas," and Al reminded me that I wasn't being banished to Mississippi. She's right. Not only am I going excitedly and willingly, but I'll be back. Remember that, okay?

Anyway. In an hour we are off. We'll be driving throug the Blue Ridge Mountains and hopefully end up in Virginia or Tennessee tonight. We will take pictures and post them and we will spend our car ride with Barack Obama, Tracy Kidder, and Frank McCourt. Want to know why? We'll be listening to Dreams of my Father, a book that I forget, and Teacherman. So it's nice that those three men will follow us on our journey. Well it's actually kind of weird. But it will be nice I think.

Also I hope someone reads this sometime. It's sort of fun. It will be more fun when there are pictures and when we pull into 1715 Myrtle and Kilroy welcomes us (as do his human counterparts). I'm really, really excited.

Lots of love and don't forget to call and write and text and bbm and sent smoke signals,

Claire