Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - Hawley, Pennsylvania

Another day spent fairly relaxed. It was supposed to rain but I don't think it did until the early hours of Thursday morning, if then. Gena took the kids to the grocery store after stopping by the rec center where I go to do my work (since it's the only wi-fi access on site). The kids are excited by the old arcade games, air hockey table, ping pong table, and pool table the rec center has. Alec is definitely obsessed with video games (which I can empathize with), and was eager to try Ms. Pacman.

He had tried it a few days ago, with the median time of each game being roughly around 40 seconds. At a quarter a pop, I was pretty reticent to continue feeding the machine, but I gave him some pointers by playing a game while he watched. This seemed to improve his median game time to around 45 seconds, and after a buck or so in quarters I cut him off. Caedmon and Mika played a bit on the air hockey table, but need a lot of practice there as well. I showed them a game of pool and helped them to shoot, but there wasn't much interest. Mika & Caedmon are too short still to really hold the cue and shoot.

We had a repeat of last night's dinner since we had a ton of spaghetti sauce left over. The kids were thrilled to eat noodles again. It's near the end of the semester, so the courses I'm teaching online will be done on 4/30. The crunch of grading final papers & tests, and then turning my attention to getting the World Religions class I'll be teaching this summer online in order. Thankfully we should be back in St. Louis in enough time for me to more comfortably access the Internet for that work!

It's hard to believe that our week here is almost over. It's been a very relaxing place. At times Gena and I feel guilty about that. We're not the uber-sightsee-ers. We like to go and get a feel for a place, and aren't overly concerned about seeing everything possible. What we needed as a family was some downtime after the pressure of DC and NYC, and that's what we've found. We're grateful for the blessing of a calm environment with more room in it.

I've booked us at a hotel in Bedford, MA for Friday & Saturday night. Tighter quarters again but it will only be for a couple of days. We have a dinner invitation for Saturday night from Gena's cousin, Emily, who lives nearby in Waltham. I have tentative plans for dinner or drinks with a couple of my high school buddies who live in the area Friday night. Should be a good balance of socializing before we leave Sunday for New Hampshire.