Needless to say, given all that Macy does for us, this is going to leave a void that will take some time to fill. I’m stepping in for the time being as acting head of C/COD while we recruit a replacement.
In accordance with the usual security procedures, her DODO email and ODIN channels have been “turned off.” Those of you who would like to write personal notes to Macy should leave them in the box at the front desk—we’ll deliver them in a few weeks, once Macy gets back from a long and restful vacation.
Journal Entry of
Rebecca East-Oda
NOVEMBER 13
Temperature 40F, no wind. Barometer rising. Garden: mulch, mulch, and more mulch.
Mei has sent us a cellar-conversion specialist to see about converting the cellar into a “hangout room” for the grandkids so they can be antisocial when they visit during their adolescence. Pointed out that her bedroom worked just fine for her antisocial purposes, but she says they want to set up some kind of gaming center.
Frank has been sulking around the house, as he has been placed on a “time-out” by Blevins, who suddenly informed him that somebody higher up insists he takes his vacation time immediately, because his not taking it is confusing the HR system. Apparently Macy had been covering for him, but now that she has abruptly resigned, the bean-counters are having their way. Never thought I would miss that woman.
While Frank is “on vacation” he is not legally supposed to be on site. He takes phone calls from trucking companies—something to do with acquiring a semi-trailer rig on which to mount the ATTO. Otherwise, he is very much underfoot here again. I like it, now that I’m here more often myself. He is pensive, spending a lot of time by himself. He spent ten hours yesterday in front of the computer in his office, and when I came by later to dust I found evidence of business as usual—incomprehensible sketches and equations on graph paper, and industrial supply catalogs piled on the floor, sticky notes hanging out of them willy-nilly.
It’s probably too late already for Mei’s “hangout room” in the cellar. If I read the signs correctly, by the time she can draw up the plans and mobilize the contractors, Frank will have claimed the space and begun a new experiment there—something to keep him busy in his retirement.
Threw a dinner party last night. Frank brought the leaf down from the attic and put it into the dinner table and we got the second-best chairs out of the basement. Tried as best as possible under these very peculiar circumstances to be all Emily Post about it, inviting people as couples, and setting out place cards.
Frank and I: seated at opposite ends of the table as host and hostess.
Melisande and Tristan: still not a couple, remarkably enough, but resigned to being treated as if they were. Tristan on my right, Melisande on Frank’s left.
Mortimer and Julie (my fellow modern witch, and occasional DOer): very much a couple. Something about her heavily pierced and inked look appealed to Mortimer somehow (although her tattoos evaporated when she was Sent the first time; she has since grown her real eyebrows out). Once I’d gotten past her looks and her language I found her a reasonably good match for Mortimer; she seems to make him happy.
Gráinne and Erszebet: thick as thieves. Erszebet has been the den-mother to all the witches from the start, even her elders, but Gráinne is the first one she has treated as a peer. She seems almost—almost—content in Gráinne’s company. Had never considered Erszebet capable of contentment. Gráinne extremely personable with everyone, so perhaps not a surprise that she can wrest a smile from Erszebet.
Magnus and Constance: I think Magnus had some sort of dalliance with Gráinne when he first arrived, but this seems to have cooled down, and he has lately taken up with Constance Billy, a peaches-and-cream sort of Norman witch from the fourteenth century who was brought forward last year to get her out of some predicament related to the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death. Anyway, she is lovely, she speaks Magnus’s language, and she also speaks modern English now well enough to get along at dinner. I seated him across from Tristan and (breaking Emily Post protocol) next to Constance so that he would be in earshot of two people who could talk to him.
As with all such events it was more work than I had expected and I ended up wondering why I had got myself into it. I was reminded of Frank’s early MIT days when an expectation of a faculty wife was to throw such affairs and extend a welcoming hand to foreign graduate students and their wives and children, who were naturally feeling isolated and lonely. The only difference in this case being that the visitors are foreign not only to our place but to our time. Constance showed up two hours early to help with the cooking, which she understands well. She is younger than I had appreciated, and all aflutter about Magnus, who shows her a lot of attention.