Ari to the Rescue

How can you not love this technology? I had forgotten that we posted Ari's You Tube videos from the Pope's visit directly into the blog. When I read the comments, I realized that although it only required a click on my words to view the videos in You Tube, a lot of people, including Ari and Jessica, either didn't bother, did not want the extra noise at work, were not able to go there because of privacy and software issues, or just weren't that interested. Ari, of course, remembered the sequence to do it, while I, having only done it once with him six weeks ago, needed a refresher. Again, thanks Ari! A picture is worth a thousand words, truly. How nice to be able to combine words and pictures in this way!

Tuesday, the temperature outside became steamy, so in the afternoon, after spending several hours on my computer work and realizing that I was sticking to my chair, we turned on the central air-conditioning for the first time this season. Bummer! After several hours of running, it was still 80 degrees in the house. The new $10,000 system is only two-years old with a warranty good for only one year. I hope the whole-house warranty that we bought last year when it expired turns out to be effective. We opened the windows to sleep, and by morning it cooled down outside. Yesterday and today have been beautiful, and the last two days of summer school are over this afternoon, so we have delayed taking care of this. This afternoon, we are on our way to Baltimore. Sami was chosen by her school, Wellwood International, to represent her second grade class to read her French poem in a competition at Barnes & Noble. We will be spending the next two days in Baltimore and Washington, coming home Sunday morning so that we can attend Eden Elmakis' first birthday party in the afternoon. I have a special connection with Eden, who is the daughter of Efrat and Isaac Elmakis. When Efrat had to go back to work after her maternity leave expired, I cared for Eden for a week until day care began. There is something about caring for and feeding a newborn every day that really connects you emotionally. My brother, Ken, was responsible for finding work for Isaac and Efrat, who are both engineers from Israel, which allowed them to begin their life here and hopefully, get citizenship soon.

I had called our friends, Susan Odyssey and Paul Coff about getting together for the Caribbean Festival in DC at the end of June. They had told us last year that they were interested in attending, but they will be away at that time. It turned out they were both home for the day, so I invited them over, along with Beth, to help us demolish all the leftovers from Friday. We only get to see them on rare occasions, but this spur-of-the-moment opportunity worked out great and we spent several hours schmoozing and catching up. Susan, like Larry, used to teach at Cooke Junior High School with Saul many years ago. She is an art teacher and an artist par excellence! Originally, Saul recruited her to moonlight with us when we had the catering business because she was a very adept waitress with years of experience from her teenage days. She became a very good friend over the years, even stepping in at the last minute and handling everything when we thought Saul might be having heart problems one weekend many years ago. Thank God it turned out to be nothing back then, but I will never forget the nightmare of it. We even became godparents to their youngest son and signed papers agreeing to become legal guardians of their three children should anything happen to them. I am very happy to say that Max, the youngest, is now in college, so we are finally off the hook!

We had gotten supplies at Home Depot to fix the collapsed coat closet Tuesday evening and Saul was able to repair it yesterday after we delivered some of my work to various places and met our friend, Laura, for lunch and to pick up some additional work. Laura, who is the P.R. person for the Springfield Township School District, and who was introduced to us by Sandy Schinfeld many years ago, is helping to plan some of the memorial charitable events for Sandy. She forwarded an email to me today which shows an amazing outpouring of support from many people. All who were close to Sandy are having a terrible time dealing with the suddenness of her death.

Saul should be home soon, and now our summer vacation begins! Teaching may not pay very well, but oh those summer vacations!