Burlington

I'm sitting in the Howard Johnson in South Burlington, sipping pretty bad coffee and trying to ignore the "Little Giant" ladder infomercial. I might go check out the pool in a minute here, but I thought I'd post a quick update.

I'm not sure what happened to Friday's post... Mostly, it was me being excited about it being my last day of work. My boss let me leave at 3, so I went to the gym one last time and was home by 4:30. It was such a wonderful feeling biking off into the sunset. Met a bunch of people down at Cafe Asia for a celebratory happy hour (thanks to everyone who came!), biked home, packed and chatted with my sister.

I was up early on Saturday. I went for a run (in shorts!), which felt really good. Hard and fast. I need to start going for morning runs more often now that the days are getting warmer and longer and I won't have to leave for work so early. My flight was uneventful; I met up with the Wellesley Women at the Howard Johnson, had lunch at Denny's and went to the church.

The funeral was... exactly the way a good funeral is supposed to be. It was terribly sad, and I was on the verge of tears for most of the service. But the reflections given by his daughters and especially his wife were incredible, and I feel really grateful for their courage and ability to speak so articulately and beautifully. It was sad, it was hard, but I'm so glad that I went.

We spent a little while at the reception in the church basement, and then headed out to downtown Burlington. A little aimless wandering (it felt good to be outside, to walk around, to decompress) and then dinner at a neat pub that had lots of good, locally brewed beer. From there, we went to a great little tea house and eventually made it to Ben and Jerry's before heading back to the hotel. Lots of lingering over the table, lots of good conversations - serious and otherwise. A perfect ending to the day.