Farewell Jane

The faculty at WHS will lose a fantastic teacher when Jane leaves for England next week--I mentioned her before; she and her husband Milan are moving to Oxford so he can finish up his Ph.D there. This afternoon, Amanda and I hosted a little "going away suaree" for the Babiks. Most of the English department was there--Dave and Jen, Zach and Nikki, and Michelle (Chris had to work). Michelle blindfolded both Jane and Milan (she likes to do that to people . . .wah wah wah) and drove them all the way from Vassalboro to Fairfield. We had balloons, a banner, a great pasta salad, a fruit pizza (with M&Ms), and lots of burgers, chicken speedies (a Raider Society favorite), and red hot dogs. All in all, it was a nice, mellow little gathering. We set up a bunch of chairs in the garage, had a couple of beers, laughed a lot, and threw around the Frisbee and football.

We had a skunk in our garage tonight, so that was pretty neat. But it was just Frank, the neighborhood skunk, and he's a pretty good boy who doesn't spray people. Kind of funny--you can pretty much walk right past him (like I've done by accident many times) and he just looks at you for a second, and then goes back to whatever he was doing. We had the garage doors open tonight, since we were all out there. And then, after dark, we went into the garage to clean things up, and there he was, right in our garage, checking out our garbage. We're trying to set up a play date with him and Thomas--Thomas needs to be exposed to all kinds of different lifestyle demographics--especially if he's going to go to public school . . .