Maeráed is back from Hanoi ....

.... though I have not had a chance to see her yet. Nor have I had a chance to talk to her mother Maire ah Rua yet. It should be an interesting conversation because the CIS folks, those wonderful people your tax dollars pay to protect us from 5 month old Vietnamese orphans (btw, this is literally true in this case, I am not just being sarcastic) would not allow her to bring home her adopted baby boy.

But I have missed them all, especially Maeráed and look forward to taking her to the bar at the Mellow Mushroom on Tuesday.

Anyway, everybody take care, and may the good Lord protect you from ever having to do business with the folks from Homeland Security ... at least until we have a chance to vote their masters out of office.

Update on our trip to D.C....

... This last week end Carmen and I went up to Georgetown for a conference. Or rather I went for the conference and she went to tour the museums ... and for some unexpected and enforced shopping (a touchy subject that I will get to later). Anyway, we had a great trip. We even ended up attending the service at the National Cathedral, which is an Episcopalian church under the idealized and stunning Gothic Cathedral building. We also spent about an hour in the gift shop, and could easily have spent another hour. As it was, we didn't even get to the books.

We got back about two hours ago and it is time for bed - I will take the bus into school tomorrow where I will have many meetings concerning personnel matters to attend to. So it might be a day or two before I get to post anything about our trip. But I intend to.