First the good news – my luggage arrived yesterday with
everything intact! Thank you United and FedEx. Apparently if you live far
enough away from the airport (2 hours in my case) they FedEx your luggage
instead of having it delivered. Since it had been a few days since packing it
was like getting lots and lots of presents as I unpacked all of my purchases! Wow
– I bought a lot of thread!
The bad news is that my camera is apparently dead. My photo
quality has been going downhill for a month or so and it was really bad last
week. I thought it was the lighting at the show but I tried lots of different
photos last night and they were all bad. My geek co-worker looked at it and
thinks that a lens is messed up. It’s been a great camera and I have used it a
lot (and dropped it a few times) but it is 4 years old so I suppose it’s time
for a new one. There will be no pictures on the blog until I get a new one
though.
Since I’ve been home I haven’t done a lot of sewing. Real
work has been very hectic to catch up but I am making a little progress on the Hour
A Day Quilt. I’ve also been watching way too much news and I have to stop. I
graduated from Virginia Tech 25 years ago and an a bit surprised at how this
event has shaken me. It’s very upsetting to see such horror at a place that I
loved. On the up side, I have been so impressed with the students that have
spoken on TV and I think their love for the school, their intelligence and
maturity really shows through. I also think the Governor has also been great. All
of the other Virginia universities have shown a great deal of support as well, especially our
friendly rival, UVA. The media, on the other hand, is horrible – as usual.
An interesting side not to this. I am the Risk Manager for
my company and therefore in charge of Emergency Response Planning, Business
Continuity and Disaster Recover. One of the things we have in place for
employees is an emergency contact system. It’s a service that we pay for. Our
vendor sources say they are being inundated with calls from schools and
universities to inquire about such services. That tells me that most
universities do rely on email as a contact method. Even with a more robust contact method I think
that the university situation will always be difficult to manage. We have a
very difficult time here getting employees to keep their contact information up
to date. I can’t imagine how difficult that will be in a university situation
with thousands of young people. They are more mobile and have less structured schedules than
employees and I think it would be like trying to herd snakes to get them to
take the initiative to notify the university when their cell number or campus
address changes. It’s an interesting dilemma and I do not envy the universities'
challenge in resolving it.
I see many hours of sewing therapy in my immediate future
and I don’t plan to blog anymore about the Virginia Tech incident – so if it upset you,
don’t worry, I’m done. Meanwhile, I'm off to Costco for camera shopping!