Sorry for not having posted all week, but this was the craziest opening week of school I’ve ever had. One of our new teachers decided to quit Wednesday morning, the day before classes even started. Nancy and I were caught in a 2-hour traffic jam that morning, and by the time I arrived at school the entire administration was looking for me to deal with the bad news. Meanwhile, the district math supervisor was away that day because her husband was having an operation.

I spent most of Wednesday running around trying to rectify the situation, since we needed a teacher by the next morning. By the end of the day a woman who is scheduled to replace Megan during her maternity leave starting in a few weeks agreed to come in two weeks early and teach an entirely different set of classes in the interim. Thank heavens for Deanna! At least temporarily she has saved the math department. Now it is Pam’s job to find a permanent teacher before Megan starts her maternity leave.

Yesterday morning was my father’s inurnment at Good Shepard Cemetery. It is a gorgeous 18-acre site which has very few graves since it has only been open for a single year. My father’s ashes are in an above-ground structure which is very nice. Fr. Mark held a short ceremony, and in the evening most of my family attended a memorial mass for my father at Our Lady of the Mountain.

Friday night I was browsing at Borders where, as usual, I saw lots of good things I wanted to buy, but I restrained myself to buying the book The Skull Mantra, by Eliot Pattison. It is a mystery steeped in Tibetan culture and history, recommended highly by Frank Denton, plus I found several rave reviews of it. Hopefully I'll have time to read it sometime this fall.