July 3, 2008. Western Head, Nova Scotia.

Last night I could not seem to get anything done. Eventually I forced myself to umpack my case and put everything away, but as I wandered through the house and garage the task ahead of me seemed overwhelming. Today, it is all done. Ken is drinking a glass of wine in the living room prior to going to the Macdonalds for dinner. The garage is organized, and is ready for the girls to use it as a play room. I went to the grogery store yesterday so the refrigerator is full. The clothes I brought with me for the 50th are all sorted and put in their proper place. All the phone calls to set up meetings for next week are done. My lists are made for when we go to Halifax tomorrow, also for when I go to the grocery store in preparation for our return. We arrive on the first of August, the same time as David and Suzanne, and Andrew and Christina come on the second along with our other relatives, so by the time we leave here on the sixteenth, I want everything purchased and stored, so I can enjoy the company. I am always amazed at the impact of a good noghts sleep on the ability to function at peak performance.

My friend Gill is here and will be there for the rest of the summer. She has just completed a year at Cambridge University in England, on a sabattical from York University in Toronto. After this summer, she will return to York to teach and to run her research lab. She is a very unusual lady: blunt, stubborn, energetic, smart, driven. We have been friends since the early seventees in Bethesda, where her husband worked in research at NIH. Both her boys were born there and we met at the Y, and she was part of Picnic Group. They moved to Toronto, when Alan became a Professor at the University of Toronto. He died from a brain tumor in 1981, so Gill was left to raise the boys herself. And a good job she did of it too. She is very proud of her boys and their accomplishments, but she never rests on her laurels. After Alan died, Gill completed her PhD in Biology. She was offered a position at a drug company in Switzerland, so the boys agreed to move, as long as they all returned to Toronto after the two years. Then Gill went back to research in Toronto, then took the position as Dean of Science and Engineering at York. She was the first woman dean of Science in Canada. She is a goof friend and lots of fun. She is also the most unusual woman you will ever meet.

We were all at a wedding, and Gill commented to me that she has seen me wearing that same purple dress for the past several weddings. Further, she suggested that I give the dress to her and buy myself another dress, as she was an academic, and I worked in the world of business. Everyone laughed, because I am taller and heavier than Gill and the image of Gill in my dress seemed ridiculous. That was on the Saturday wedding celebration, as we were drinking cocktails. During the salad course, I spilled the dressing all down the jacket of my dress, and my friends at the table all told me that I may as well give the dress to Gill because it was ruined by the grease. Next morning at breakfast, I presented the dress to Gill, with the speech that I had worn that grease laden dress too many times. Gill has been wearing that dress ever since. She first had the cleaners get rid of the grease, the she tried it on and it looked spectacular. At subsequent weddings and parties, you can see Gill in my dress, and she looks great. Just amazing indeed.