The Second Half of Summer (July-September)

It was rather busy.

At the end of July David and Emily came up from Atlanta and spent 10 days with us. We had our usual fun time: shopping, movies, and day-trips, including Corning, Toronto, and Niagara-on-the-Lake, where we checked out Inniskillin, one of the many wineries in the area.

A few days after, David and Emily left, Naoyuki's parents arrived from Birmingham, AL, their first trip to visit our home here in East Amherst (and they're first time in this part of the world.) We basically repeated the D&E itinerary, minus the movies and Toronto, and instead of Inniskillin visited yet another (even nicer) winery, Jackson-Triggs.

After Yoshimi and Sachiko's visit, it was off to Palm Springs for almost a week to relax at our favorite gay resort, INNDulge, and to check out the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. It was deliciously hot and dry, the films (for the most part) were great, it was fabu to hang out in a town with a big (and open) gay community, and we got in our usual amount of day tripping (e.g., Lake Arrowhead up in the mountains, and Mission San Juan Capistrano down near the coast of Orange County.)

The return to Buffalo was a bit surreal -- it had been over 100 degrees every day in Palm Springs and topped 110 two days in a row. Buffalo was mid to upper 50s and rain-rain-rain as we had two days worth of remnants from Tropical Storm Ernesto. Since then it's heated up again and cooled off several times. Still, the leaves started turning before the end of August and this morning it was in the 40s. I suppose it did the same in SE Michigan, it's just more noticeable here for some reason.

Once back, I had a couple of pleasant visits to Genesee before they said, "yes," they'd be delighted to have me come aboard. As I pointed out to them, one of my formative professional experiences was working at the Undergraduate Library of the University of Michigan, way back in the day. I like working with freshmen and sophomores; for the most part, they're extremely grateful for ANY help you can give them.

In between I somehow managed a trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to do a spot of consulting for my friend Lynn Sutton, director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. ZSR is incredibly lucky to have Lynn and from what I can tell she's quite lucky to have them, too! It's nice to walk into a library and see smiles on the faces of the people working there! (It's the same at GCC, hence my optimism about the new job!)

I don't think we're traveling again until right after Thanksgiving, when we go on our Panama Canal cruise. Perhaps that's just as well!