Countdown to London, June 9, 2007

The root canal is done, but the tooth still hurts. Tuesday I go back; fingers crossed.

While I am in London, my mother and husband will supervise the move from the old house to the new house. My mother, of course, is a saint.

Here is the house I'm leaving, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY.

We have been living on the top floor of this house for 11 years. The children were 3 and 4 when we moved in, and are now 14 and 15. We have long outgrown the apartment, and are very much looking forward to more privacy, more communal space and most of all, having a back yard and a basement! :-)




And here is the house I'm moving to, with my two children, my dog and my cat. It's in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY. As my son says, we will now live "in the 'hood".

The house has been in renovation for six months, and now we are finally moving in. As always with these things, the timing is slightly less than perfect, since I'll be away for the move. Also, the house is not completely finished. At first we will not have a kitchen. The ground floor and basement are still in the process. I'm hoping that we will be able to enjoy at least part of the summer once we're settled. Maybe August...








Today I rented a U-haul van and drove with my son to The Home Depot to rent a floor sanding machine. My wonderful contractors are going to sand the floors in the children's rooms, the last thing missing to make the parlor floor complete. I will be sleeping in the library/guest room, the children will sleep in their new rooms. We will all share the children's bathroom while we wait for the contractors to finish the ground floor, which includes my bedroom, the kitchen/living/dining room, my bathroom, my walk-in closet, and the back yard. Then there is the basement.

All this is the context in which I am introducing my trip to London, part of my Master's program at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science. In London I will be taking a class in e-publishing, a subject that is very important to academic libraries. I hope to work in an academic library, so I thought it would be important to take this class. I'm interested in the subject in itself, of course, and I have ulterior motives for wanting to go to London.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I went to boarding school in West Yorkshire for two years. There I met A., the most wonderful teacher/mentor I ever had. I am fortunate enough to be able to count him and his wife D. as my friends to this day. I made a few lifelong friends in boarding school, one of whom, I. is from Berlin. I. and I have been meeting in Florence, Italy, my hometown, London, Yorkshire, New York, Maremma (the seaside in Tuscany), for the past 30 years; and this summer she is going to visit me in London. A. and D. are coming down from Yorkshire and the four of us are going to see an art show. It will be glorious. I think I've just understood the meaning of life.