Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

(Professor Farnsworth voice) – Good NEWS, everyone!

O-fficial word came forth this afternoon that, after much holding of cards very close to the vest, Youngest’s skool has decided to proceed with letting freshmen move on to campus for the balance of the fall semester.  (She started online classes about two weeks ago.)  Furthermore, although we were originally scheduled to move in on September 14, she’s now wangled permission to do so even earlier than that.

Woo-Hoo!

The Gel and Mrs. R, like many frosh and their parents, have been near frantic for some weeks now fretting over whether this was actually going to happen.  (Ol’ Robbo didn’t fret, but simply grumbled a bit.  It’s not that I didn’t care, it’s just that I recognized it was out of my hands and therefore setting on fire what hair I have left would have been pointless.)  This evening they are springing about in relief and renewed excitement.  Those are feelings in with which I can readily join.  (Not so much the springing about part, however.  I’d get wine all over myself and I wouldn’t be able to type.)

So Ahia, here we come!

The other thing teh Gel decided in the past couple days after we talked it over is that she’s not going to bother taking her car to school.  This doesn’t bother me a bit.  As she herself said, she’ll only be there for about two months, during which she realizes she’s not going to have time for much joy-riding.  Also, she’d have to leave it over break since she plans to fly down to  Columbia to visit her cousin at USC when classes are done, the two of them driving up to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving, where we’ll meet up with her and bring her home for exams and Christmas break.  By leaving it, she’ll save money on parking.  (We’re also going to see if USAA will put her insurance on hiatus.)  Besides, there’s really no place in Oxford you can’t get to on foot, and her car won’t sit idle, exposed,  and unguarded over the winter months.  (What we’ll do next spring, I haven’t even begun to think about.)

Of course it also means cramming ourselves, Youngest, and her junk into the Honda Juggernaut for the Big Trip, but I think we can manage.  After all, she’s moving into a dorm room, not an apartment like Middle Gel, and has significantly fewer items she needs to take with her.  Also, I was never particularly keen on having to convoy all that way, constantly keeping one eye on the road and the other on my herd, especially as about two-thirds of the drive will be new to me.  It’ll also mean that my original plan to split the drive out over two days (because I didn’t think Mrs. R and Youngest between them could put in an eight or nine hour drive all at once) has been scratched, and Ol’ Robbo now is going to do the whole thing in one fell swoop.  I don’t mind: It’s a long day but not the longest I’ve done, and I was planning to do the return trip all at once anyway.

The Gel’s been champing at the bit ever since this spring to get out on her own and start the next phase of her life, and now it’s actually going to happen.  Good to go.

“Don’t Put That Kerosene Away!” UPDATE:  The Skool issued another email this evening that had Mrs. R (and, apparently, other folks on the FacePlant parents’ page) reaching for the matches.  It was all about this being “a critical week in our implementation schedule” and had a lot of phooforall (a legal term) about testing and masks and whatnot, and the potentially dire consequences if everyone didn’t rally to the cause.  (“Don’t make us pull this college over to the side of the road!”)

Having just now read it, I believe it to be, at most, a piece of bet-hedging and covering of the posterior.  But then I’m a lawyer as well as a skeptic.  As I told Mrs. R, even an educational institution couldn’t be idiotic enough to try and screw a single incoming class out of its full tuition and room-and-board dash, and expect to survive going forward.

Nobody’s told us not to come.  So far as Ol’ Robbo’s concerned, that’s all that matters.

UPDATE DEUX:  Now Ol’ Robbo is being told that the definitive word has not been given, and that the decision is still up in the air.  Grrrrrrr…… But as I say above, at least nobody’s told us not to come.  So at least we’ve got that going for us.  (Down in the comments, I vent my spleen a little more and offer my armchair analysis of the current situation.)