Home Sweet Home

After a few days in Philly, I'm back home. Evelin and Celeste made it back yesterday. We're all glad to be back here. (There was some miscommunication about this trip, however; until the day before we headed up to New England, I thought Evelin and Celeste were going to time their return so that they could pick me up in Philadelphia this morning once I was done with my work. Evelin thought I was taking the train back. Instead, I was able to catch a ride with L---, who'd also driven me up there. It worked out, but I'm glad we discovered the problem before I found myself hitching my way south on I-95 ...)

Celeste was napping when L--- dropped me off at home, so Evelin and I had a little while to chat and for me to finish unloading the T.R.U.C.K. for her. When Celeste did wake, I went up to see her and the first thing she said was "Dæ!" She knows just the right strings to yank.

She is doing some pretty cool stuff. She's figured out how to pull herself from a sitting position to a standing one using first the rails on her crib and then the sofa. She will try to do it if we ask her to, but quickly dissolves into tears if she slips or has any difficulty. Turn your back, however, and she manages it without a peep. The cruising is getting more adventurous, using walls and other flat surfaces to walk along instead of just things she can grab. She can also point to her bellybutton and to my nose. She also started trying to bite my nose as part of saying where it is.

This afternoon the three of us went to the neighborhood playground and, after the first trip on the swings, while Celeste was walking around and a 5-year-old, F---, was talking our ears off, Evelin and I noticed a large plane climbing from a different-than-the-usual-flight-paths angle. It was big and I was pretty sure it was a Boeing 747, and consider that the direction it was coming from was likely Andrews Air Force Base and what I could make out of the livery, I'm pretty sure it was Air Force One (or maybe Two). The timing works with Bush's travel schedule for the weekend.

Back to Philadelphia

The Philly trip, despite my a bit overblown reaction to the convention's keynote address, was pretty good. None of the computer problems of two years ago, and I was in a nicer hotel (the Hilton Garden Inn Center City) that had free broadband that worked even with the old Gateway I was travelling with.

And, once the Friday issue was to bed and we'd made our run to the printer for the soft proof, I got to have a nice dinner at Portofino the night it reopened after being closed for a while for renovations. I had a fantastic ribbon pasta with wild mushrooms and vegetables tossed with white truffle oil and I can't remember what else. It was very tasty, and it really made up for having grabbed dinner at Wawa the previous two nights.