Cleverness

In my last conversation with my mother a few years ago, she commented about something that she thought Deb had written in our Christmas letter. I told her that I wrote our Christmas letter every year. There was a long pause before she said, "You write them? I just assumed...." Another long pause, and she was clearly puzzled. "I thought Deb.... You write them? But Philip, they are so clever." So I have to give credit where it is due. The "Oxford Comma" title is in fact Deb's cleverness.

We are just about packed and will be ready to head to the airport in a few hours The last week or so has been a lot of farewell lunches, parties, and hugs. Many people are glad to see us leave town-- we had no idea. We are pretty sure that we will have forgotten something, but England is generally civilized and we speak the language (more or less), so we can probably go to a store for things we discover that we have left behind. Our flight goes to Heathrow, and the Oxford Bus Company runs every half hour so that means minimal baggage handling. We have a one bedroom furnished flat in downtown Oxford with an internet connection, so we will let you know what it is like once we arrive. After we get there, our first significant errand will be to get set up with a mobile phone service. (Notice that I am trying to learn the language-- a "flat" rather then an "apartment", a "mobile phone" rather than a "cell phone". Those language lessons are paying off already.)--Philip

It seems that many wanted to join the conversation about "The Oxford Comma" by leaving a comment, but could not do so because they didn't have an account with Google. So we loosened the permissions on the blog, and now anyone can leave a comment by clicking on the "comments" link and simply typing in your comment -- checking the "Anonymous" box at the bottom. We'll see if it works out okay... if we receive too much spam (which is up to our discretion :)) we may have to restrict commenting. We'll trust you all to behave yourselves and sign your names!

Oh, and we changed the "post time" to Greenwich Mean Time--- the official local time of Oxford. --Deb