gmt-8: california time

we’re all packed, everything has been taken down to deck 2 for holding for tomorrow morning. Both personal bags and 7 boxes of textbooks going off for donation. The library is clean, everything is shelved, in perfect order, and looking beautiful. I have the clean database backed up for UVA plus a video list plus a book list. And Destiny documentation left for the crew IT folks and for Jean. Several crew have stopped me to tell me how happy they are that textbooks are being donated. It must have distressed them in the past also to see them thrown away. This afternoon, I need to work on my end-of-voyage report and then I’m DONE! We’re having a party at 4:00 in the faculty/staff lounge, convocation is tonight, and then I’m sure something celebratory will happen after that. We’re told that tomorrow is nuts and that you don’t get to see anybody you want to see in the chaos and that you should say goodbye to everybody today. That’ll make me nuts. I can only do the goodbye-thing once and I need it to be at the end. But I fear that people will just vanish into the whirlpool of luggage grabbing & UPS shipping & happy families greeting the ship.

I decided to get a hotel room for tomorrow night. Staying on the ship was going to be overly complicated. They won’t let us take luggage off tomorrow if we’re staying tomorrow night. There is no secure location in the warehouse to store our stuff (although this seems hard to believe). Customs won’t let us back on the ship with our stuff once we’ve cleared. So we have to wait until Tuesday morning. When UPS will no longer be there to greet us. Mailing was going to be a headache, disembarkation was going to be a headache, customs was going to be a headache. There’s a big reception onboard tomorrow night for alums -- 1100 people -- and that seemed crazy. I was already having a hard time thinking about watching everybody leave tomorrow morning without me and then the idea of 1100 people I don’t know wandering around *my* ship after all my friends have gone … yuck ... So, I booked a hotel room and I’ll be getting off the ship with everyone else.

Last night we dropped “instruments” into the ocean. There have been a couple different folks from an oceanography institute at UCSD with us for various legs of this voyage. They’ve been dropping things into the ocean along the way to do science. I honestly hadn’t been paying much attention. But, last night, the faculty/staff all signed the last instrument that was being dropped and we stood on deck 4 aft and watched them throw it overboard. It was quite something to watch. I should have paid attention earlier. We actually threw two things overboard. The first was lighter (called a drifter) and it was thrown by hand. The second was heavy and it was strapped to the ship by cables. First it was lowered slowly and then released. Standing in the dark watching these things get sucked in by the wake was really impressive to watch. Swirling and swirling and swirling and swirling before finally sinking into the foam. The plan was for us all to yell something that we wished to throw out into the universe that would help us continue this voyage. These instruments will live in the ocean for a good 10 years or so and we were supposed to send our words and thoughts with it. But there wasn’t a whole lot of yelling. Mostly there were tears and hugging. 'Though Toni did finally yell at the top of her lungs: FACULTY & STAFF, I LOVE YOU! And then more tears and hugging …

I had breakfast today with the Archbishop and Leah. He told me I have a very nice library and that I "did good". Have I mentioned that I am totally in love with the Archbishop??? And we had a Mother’s Day (or Parent’s Day) lunch for Mary and Michael with ice-cream cake and all. It was our last family gathering and we’ve all promised to reunite at Mary & Michael’s cabin in Wisconsin sometime soon.

And, as for the rest of the day … ugh … so many more tears and hugging. This has got to stop …

Wishing happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there, particularly mine.