En Route: Janet's Update

Today begins my summer travels to Hungary and Transylvania. My 6 am alarm buzzed me into a frenzy of last-minute packing and by the time I arrive in Budapest my internal clock will have done several cartwheels and backflips. As soon as I board my O'Hare flight, I will refrain from all temptations to monitor a clock. I submit to the jet lag gauntlet.

These past two weeks in South Bend, IN were spent unpacking from the move and then packing for the trip. Somehow the house is still filled with boxes despite all opened boxes left out for the recycling truck. Boxes will wait.

A highlight of the week was Book Club, which I hosted at my house. We discussed Pat Conroy's "The Prince of Tides." It is an epic tale with elements of magical realism, as pointed out by one reader. It is long. And filled with lyrical passages laced with metaphor. I must go to the Carolinas. I plan to return to the book after our summer trip to glean some of its colorful vocabulary and memorable phrases.

For the plane ride read: the current New Yorker, the 2006 O'Henry Prize Collection (short stories), The Road from Coorain, and the current Harper's.

In my suitcase: approx. 10 pounds of books, including the biography of Duchamp (his second round trip to Transylvania) and my Hungarian language textbooks; our tennis rackets; and a Gwen Stefani CD requested as a gift from a young fan in Csikszereda. Did you know that Shakira will tour Romania this summer? It is a smallish world made smaller by pop stars doing their thing.

Strong Female Chararcters

A friend sent me this video and I thought it was worth a mere 8 minutes of your life....

IRS Joke

Conan O'Brien

This week, Washington, D.C., received a foot of rain and part of the I.R.S. building was flooded. The bad news? Part of the I.R.S. building was NOT flooded.

Matt's Update from DC

For those who didn't know, I've been on "vacation" all week because my office has been shut down after the flood on Sunday night. It was crazy--the six-block area centered around the IRS was the only area with major flood damage in downtown DC. They finally issued a public press release, and it looks like they're finding new places for us to work (darn)....

IRS Employee Emergency News

STATEMENT ON IRS HEADQUARTERS BUILDING STATUS The IRS Headquarters Building at 1111 Constitution Ave. NW in Washington, D.C. is likely to remain closed for at least 30 days due to flooding and electrical outages. The building sustained extensive damage to the infrastructure, office furniture and supplies. The subbasement was submerged in more than 20 feet of water. The subbasement holds all of the building’s electrical and maintenance equipment such as electrical transformers, electrical switchgears, and chillers. Although these systems require closer inspection, they appear to be 95 percent damaged or destroyed. The basement was flooded with five feet of water. The fitness center, food service canteens, offices, systems furniture, carpet, ceiling tiles, computer equipment and servers, and vehicles garaged in the building were all destroyed. While an assessment of total damage will not be completed for several more days, costs are expected to run in the tens of millions of dollars. Water is continuing to be pumped from the subbasement. Between six and twelve pumps have been running since Monday to clear the water from the building, and it is expected the subbasement will not be completely emptied until Friday. An initial clean-up and decontamination crew began cleanup efforts in the basement level Wednesday. By Friday, two crews of 50 will be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week until cleanup is complete. Repairs to the headquarters building will not impact the IRS’s service and enforcement operations during this period. All IRS business units have extensive business resumption plans that have been executed. The 2,400 employees who work at the headquarters building are being relocated to the other 12 buildings IRS occupies in the metro area or into temporary space, and some will telecommute as appropriate. Commissioner Mark Everson has committed that employees will not reoccupy the building until it is safe to do so. All appropriate inspections and testing will be completed prior to reopening. Any employee assigned to the headquarters building who has not been contacted by their manager should initiate that contact. Employees can call the Employee Emergency Hotline at 1-866-743-5748, option 3, code 32; check IRWeb; or check IRS.gov, key word “employee emergency” for further updates.

Janet's Update

The two-day drive home from Boston was relaxed and delicious.

We stopped in Buffalo, NY where we ate buffalo wings at the restaurant that invented them, the Anchor Bar. I am not a fan usually, but these wings were meaty, crispy, and just-right spicy. Next time, we have to remember that hot is too hot for us. We are medium wings people.

The next day we decided to detour into Cleveland, OH to visit the pastry shop that had baked our wedding dobos cake. A perhaps little known fact: Cleveland is the largest (or was, at least) Hungarian city outside of Hungary. The shop has been located in the same spot since the 1950’s on a street used to be lined with pastry shops, but I believe Lucy’s Sweet Surrender is a last holdout now. The baker is an American married to a Hungarian from Romania and he very generously gave us a tour of the shop, showing us where they make the strudel and all the other baking machinery.

I highly recommend ordering a dobos torte online. He will deep freeze it and then overnight it--very tasty and very authentic. (It is better to do this in the winter to avoid summer temperatures melting your torte en route.)

I spent one night back South Bend before I headed out for a quick trip to St. Louis. I drove the six hour trip straight down Illinois in perfectly clouded skies. A long drive to be sure, but stops in Odell for pie at the Wishing Well Cafe and Towanda at the diner make that jaunt satisfying.

St. Louis always manages to surprise and delight. This time I got a tour of the botanical gardens to see the Chihuly blown-glass exhibit. More importantly I spent lots of time on the couch making googly-goo faces at baby Henry.

Now I am at Lula’s, THE café still in South Bend, despite several new ones that have arrived over the years. They still do not have wireless, however, which I support. It is always good to isolate myself from the Internet when I want to work on my writing.

We leave in a week for our “vacation” in Transylvania, our usual summer trip. This time my parents will join us for a week—it will be their second trip to Budapest, but their first to the Carpathian mountains and villages of Transylvania. I look forward to showing them life lived in the Székely way.