Well, we made it through the weekend, but it was tough.

## Moving In

This past weekend was move in weekend for the freshmen at UMass Dartmouth. In what turned out to be a giant fiasco, the move in process which was scheduled to take an hour ended up taking 6. Hurricane Danny had something to do with it as it poured rain all day long. Nobody is quite sure **how** it caused the problem, but everyone is sure that it did.

I’d like to give my daughter’s boyfriend Sean a big shout out and thank you for all his help. We couldn’t have done this without him! He brought some stuff to school in a separate car and my two daughters drove with him (of course, they couldn’t be seen with the parental units :-). He was patient and helpful the whole time. Thanks Sean!!!!

We arrived at our scheduled move in time of 4pm to find ourselves in a several mile traffic jam trying to get onto the university campus and moved at an average speed of 1mph for the next 5 hours. After a couple of hours like this, Vanessa and Madison took off on a hike to get her room key and take a look at the room. At one point, I actually left Danae in the car and hiked the half mile or so across the campus with a back pack and one of the boxes to get started moving her in!

At one point a little later, I was back sitting in the car and talking with a lady in the car next to me. She just laughed and said “I’m WAY past being mad at this… it’s just ridiculous at this point!”

We met Vanessa’s roommate Morgan and she’s great! Vanessa really lucked out this year! Her room is WAY bigger than my dorm room was at UCSB.

## All’s Quiet on the Carney Front

An eery silence has come over the Carney household since Vanessa has left. It’s very strange! I’m now starting to understand what my parents went through when I went off to school all those decades ago! The house is just… different. Sure, Vanessa had spent the night at friends’ houses many times, and had weekend camp outs with crew, and had even spent 2 weeks in Europe away from home, but this is different. Even though she’ll be back at home over holidays and summers, somehow, a threshold has been crossed and she LIVES somewhere else now.

I know she’s just an hour away, and it’s only been a couple of days, and that I’ll see her in a week or so, but I miss her already.