A visit from home!

Paul and I had visitors in Charleston last week. My parents and grandmother moved their normal October vacation from Destin to Charleston, marking my first visit from home. I had a great time doing the tourist thing (hey, I'm a newbie here, too). Paul even scooted out of work early one day to visit the USS Yorktown docked in Charleston Harbor.

The tours on the Yorktown were interesting. We climbed several flights of stairs from the ground floor to the flight deck, and Paul was like a kid in a candy store studying the various navigational equipment. Unfortunately, what goes up has to come down, and that meant I had to face my fear of going down stairs that were so vertical they were practically ladders. After I made it back to the ground floor, I stuck to the "safe" exhibits (read: not upstairs or downstairs). Overall, though, I think everyone had a good time. My parents, both Navy brats, enjoyed sharing how things were when they were growing up. Dad told me about a summer "internship" he had on a carrier in the summer between his 8th and 9th grade years. (That would've been around 1961, I think.) He had to live like the sailors: sleep in hammocks, stand watch, etc. It was the first time I'd heard those stories. Fun stuff.

Mom and Dad bought us some much-needed furniture for our porch, as well as a small vacuum and bedding for the guest bed. They also brought lots of goodies from home (silver bathroom accessories, a bunch of clothes I had to leave behind, three boxes of Splenda I left in the pantry, etc.). It was great to see them. And it's one of the few times in the past few weeks that I've actually been glad that I'm not working right now. A whole week with my family! I didn't even get that when I lived in Memphis!

Seems a little lonely now without them here. But I've been nursing a bad cold with a fairly high (102-degree) fever, so I've been sleeping a bunch the past couple of days. Paul's afraid it's the flu -- I have all the symptoms at FluFACTS, including the sudden onset -- so he rushed out yesterday for a flu shot. But the joke's on him; the flu virus is contagious at least a day before symptoms show, and the flu shot isn't fully effective for two weeks. Eh, he probably gave it to me, anyway. No telling what snifflies the cadets are passing among themselves, and the new faculty members usually catch everything. We went through this when he started teaching at Memphis a few years ago.

I tell you, I'm still excited about seeing my family. It really, really brightened things up. Just sorry the week flew by as fast as it did.