A transitional day

DAY SIXTEEN (Monday, July 8, 2013): Today Julie, Jerry, Ben and Tamar got themselves packed up and took off in the morning for Colorado. They were planning to have some time on Tuesday in Rocky Mountain National Park, and then they were going to Julie's acupuncture school in Boulder so that they could see where Julie goes each month and meet some of her classmates. On Wednesday, Jerry, Ben and Tamar will fly back east and Julie will stay a few more days for classes in acupuncture. So Monday morning we were busy with helping them get packed up, saying goodbyes, and all that. Jenny went off to work, Max to his play group, Paul left very early for his work site up in Wilson, and Christian Petrach headed back to Boise in his Sprinter van.

Suddenly, after about ten a.m.,  it was very quiet! Just Ellen, Mimi and myself. We used the day to get ourselves organized for the big trip that we will be doing with Mimi. First stop was the Alpine Library, to get audio books for Mimi for the trip. We discovered they have a new technology called "Playway, the All-in-one Audio Book." It's a cartridge - about the size of the old cassette tape - which contains several hours of data - an entire, unabridged book. You plug your earbuds into it - it runs off of one AAA battery - and listen away. There are controls that allow you to move around among chapters, etc. So we got 8 of these - maybe as much as 100 hours all together. For example, one of the cartridges contains the unabridged Great Expectations! We can also play them through the car speakers if we all want to listen.  While they were doing that, I did some printing at the Library. We also went to the Post Office - now, in addition to Ellen's snail blog, Mimi wants to send postcards on the trip, and she had a couple to mail. Then we came back and got ourselves organized for our trip together. With Mimi and her things in the car, we'll have less room for luggage, so I repacked everything into less space, leaving things we won't really need for this trip with Mimi at Paul and Jenny's which we'll pick up on our way back. Somewhere in there I think Ellen and I found time for a little walk. Ellen picked up Max at play school and she also baked a pie and some blueberry crumble. We did a wash. It was one of those days you need on a trip to get some things done and get ready for the next phase.