Ah, it's good to be back.

I now have time to write to all of you. As expected, work more than piled up while I was gone. However, I was expecting a lot worse. I came into the office the Sunday after I got back to get through my e mails and that definitely helped my Monday morning. Joel celebrated his 60th birthday party that evening so we had a blast. Just two other couples from St. Kate’s were invited so it was a small intimate gathering of friends. That weekend really was not too bad because I did my best to stay awake and force my body to get used to the time change. I did nap a couple of afternoons. Thank goodness I was not scheduled to work on Monday and Tuesday because both days after I got back from work, I slept for a couple of hours. I would say it was the remnants of my jet lag. By Wednesday, my body was fine.

Wednesday was the first day I made it back to the residential facility and they were happy to see me. A couple of them asked me about the trip and how things were. There were a couple of incidents that happened while I was away and the other staff updated me on it. Overall, it was very good to get back into the swing of things. On Thursday, I went to a jazz concert by Regina Carter and she’s this amazing African American Jazz violinist. She’s part of a quartet and this is the first time I’ve attended a jazz concert where there was an accordion. The guy who played the accordion was amazingly talented and it was such a great concert. The only way to describe the music would be to term it jazz-fusion-funk. People were tapping their feet and having the time of their lives.

Saturday I worked at the other facility and this group of residents are the ones who have taken a liking to me and I heard through the grapevine that the past week, they’ve been “harassing” different staff asking them when I’ll be back from my vacation. They were told that I would be working on Saturday and one resident got up at 6:30AM because she knew I was going to be making pancakes for breakfast and she was more than excited to see me again. In so very many ways, it felt really good to be back working at this facility. They were more than happy with lunch and a number of them came up to me and said that it’s good to have me back working again. I guess they really did miss me. After work, I went to Ann’s house and we just chatted for hours. She wanted to know everything about the trip and then some. On Friday she told me that Harley would be grilling steaks since they figured I probably did not have steak while I was away. She knows me so well. She thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and the souvenirs I got for her. More importantly, she said that it’s good to know that I made it back into the country without any problem and it must have been a good feeling to know that international travel will not pose a problem to me again.

I met up with a two students who are going to be in the RCIA program this year and got to know them better and gave them the opportunity to ask questions about the program. It should be a good group although it’s definitely the smallest group I’ve had since I started. This would be the third year I’m the RCIA coordinator. It was a very quiet Sunday at the facility as a couple of them were out with family. That made for a nice and relaxing work environment.

So, it looks like things are pretty much back to normal with me. Work will be keeping me busy for some time especially with entering the forms, but it’s a great feeling to know that the reports were sent to the state yesterday without a glitch. Now, I have two weeks of just plain entering the forms and we’ll see how much will be able to be accomplished.

That’s the news from me.