After the hullabaloo ...

Whew - the past couple weeks have been Busy and yes, the capital "B" is meant!  But now the events celebrating my former boss's retirement are complete and I also seem to be recovering enough from the follow-up cold to begin picking up the pieces of my scattered psyche.

This morning at 8:15, the postman also delivered the Snapfish album that was the culmination of at least one million emails and photo dumps and CDs that I received from far parts of the globe.  It appears that a good time was had by all in the doings!  I have also been acquainted with "top-of-the-line" Rimowa luggage as it was decided by consensus that a blue-black Rimowa cabin trolley would be ideal as a group gift.  So off HWMBO and I trekked to the Balexert shopping center in Geneva, which is in the throes of its gala new opening celebrations this month after a massive makeover.  While the Buzzano shop at Balexert did not have the case we wanted, they offered to have it sent over from their Rive shop.  The case duly arrived two hours later, providing us with the excuse we needed to check out the new shops and facilities at Balexert, which has now "officially" become the largest shopping center in Geneva.   Best of all, Buzzano let us have the ten percent discount that the Balexert shop was offering even though the case actually came from the Rive shop, where the discount was not operative.  Who says that one can't bargain in Swiss shops?

It was good to see so many wonderful people and remember shared good times.  It is true that some of the shared times were also very stressful.  But the fact is that those times were unique, so special in that they involved nationals representing every continent on the globe joined together to accomplish common goals where individual human beings around the globe actually received tangible benefits.  It is unfortunate that circumstances existed where individuals had been harmed in the first place, in large part due to conflicts over which they had no control whatsoever.  But it is equally fortunate that at least some small restitution and, most of all, acknowledgement of the harms suffered by those individuals became international precedent.  We are all proud to have been a part those efforts, even though we have now all moved on to different phases of our lives.