Yesterday I was chauffeured into town again by Joe. While he was skilfully manipulating powerpoint (‘noodling’) to perfect the conceptual framework of CHS, I attended to other business, mostly related to our partnerships. It felt more like partnershits and mid-morning I was getting in such a funk because of all the hiccups in those relationships that it was time to get out of the building. Luckily the rowing club is across the street, so I left Joe to his noodling and went rowing on the Charles River for about one hour, down to the Elliott Bridge in Watertown and back. That got things right and the rest of the day went well.
After lunch we had another meeting with some staff from CHS in Cambridge and one on the phone from DC which produced iteration 8, sent out before we left the office for one more round of comments. That will be it for now. This morning Joe slept in; the early risings were starting to get to him. He is off to another job in Worcester to be back with us tomorrow night. On Monday we have one final meeting on the framework to put that baby to bed and Joe on the plane back to San Diego on Tuesday.
We left MSH late; too late, because of two goodbye parties that I wanted to attend. Thomas is leaving for business school in California. We travelled together to Nepal a few years ago. I will miss all 6 foot 10 of him. I read him a short poem and handed over lots of money from all over the world that he will pass on to a friend in Nepal. Kathleen is off to Belgium but she will come back in 3 months, speaking fluently French, at least that is her plan.
Our commute back was our slowest sofar and took us nearly one and a half hour. The worst part of the commute was that it was NPR fundraising week so the people who would otherwise have given us the news to distract us from the traffic jam were busy telling us why we should give them money for most of our slow ride home.
Back home hausfrau Axel was waiting with ‘mood adjusters’ and a chicken on the grill. Tessa joined us soon returning from a hard day of selling leather goods in Rockport. We sat outside as long as the mosquitoes let us, which was not very long. We ate our meal inside while outside continued to be a glorious evening with mosquitoes looking for blood.
After dinner we watched the movie Pucker Up which chronicles the run up and climax of the international whistling championships in Lewisburg North Carolina. Sita does not order hits or popular movies from Netflix. This is how we learn many things about the world we had no idea existed. Among other things we learned that Geert from Mierlo in the south of Holland was crowned the world whistling champion (in 2005 or 6). The movie follows him around in his native town which was fun as I could check the translations. Axel could too. I was also fun because none of the Americans could pronounce his name. We think Geert won because his last whistle was the American national hymn and the audience rose from their seats, hand on heart, deeply moved. After the movie was over everyone who could was whistling throughout the house for a little longer as he/she went about the business of getting ready for bed. The house was full of happy whistling sounds. I also puckered up producing a puffy sort of sound, not a whistle, but happy nevertheless.
Sylvia's Journal 
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