No matter how things go, I have to say I have the best club-mates in the world. Jessi1 showed up tonight to give me two bouts even though she was 2nd in the tournament yesterday and even though it's Rosh Hashanah. Kiersten and Donna and Meng were there too, and all fenced me ten-touch bouts and wished me good luck. Between those guys and all the others, they have been working as hard as they could to help me prepare for Vet Worlds and I found myself thinking this morning as I drove in that I'll have to find about fifty presents while I'm in Limoges for all the people who have been working with me.

Michelle and Alex D. are in the adult class, refurbishing their skills before they return to fencing. I introduced Alex to Meng as "one of our juniors," and Alex said he wasn't a junior any more (pretty obvious--he's a thorough grown-up now). But to me he always will be a junior sabre fencer. Michelle was in the adult class, so she, like Meng, is always an adult beginner to me. She was in Bob's class. I haven't seen Bob much lately. His job involves a lot of travel and he was away long enough that when he came back he found it tough to keep up.

Lesson with Mark was basically sharpening and smoothing. We did push-pull and push-push-pull, and push-push-half retreat and push-push-advance. He wasn't wearing any protection on his upper back arm, which I found a little daunting, but I managed not to injure him.

I held a department meeting at work today and mentioned to one of my faculty members who happens to be the Dean of Faculty that I was leaving for Veteran Worlds. "You're fencing?" I said yes. "Have you been training?" Of course, I said. "When--how do you do it?" she said in blank astonishment. She knows how hard I work at school and knows how hard she works, and she clearly doesn't think there's any way she could do it. And she knows about my mother, too.

Part of how I do it is I don't watch much TV, I think. I went on a two-day field trip with the sixth grade, and the faculty I was sharing a cabin with all had to watch "Gray's Anatomy." HAD to. It was weirdly mannered and forced, and I could not bring myself to care about any of the characters. I'm obviously out of the loop.

I spent some time today on the phone setting up my iPhone for international roaming and data. I won't use it much, and I'll keep the phone turned off, but it would be nice to call briefly and check e-mail briefly. I also talked to the people at the Apple store and made sure it was okay just to use a plug adapter; apparently the little plug that you can use to charge the phone is good up to 240 volts and the iPhone is fine with it.

Tomorrow I'll scurry around and get organized and pack. I want to buy one of those little airline neck pillows and dig out a Polartec blanket. My plan is to go to sleep as early as I can on the plane and pretend it's just a bad night's sleep, then stay up all day Thursday. I'll be pretty mocus on Friday but I don't have to be anywhere until Saturday, really.