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I got home last night around 9:45. The Red Sox were losing by a big margin, so Skip and MW, her aide, had turned that off and were watching CNN, which was covering Michael Jackson's death in the obsessive way 24-hour news channels will do in the coming days. The house was in good order, especially the kitchen. MW always does a great job cleaning up the kitchen. (It's such a pleasure and a great luxury to have someone else take care of things.)

My trip was successful, the meetings went very well, looks like we'll be getting lots more work as a result of them. It was great to see some of my day-to-day contacts at my client face-to-face. Had a good time with my work colleagues. And, Charlotte's weather was absolutely gorgeous. Sunny, hot, but not too hot, and not very muggy. On Wednesday afternoon, we walked the 10 blocks from our meeting to the hotel and it was great to be outside.

Skip was back home in a pretty nervous state for much of the time. But, no mishaps. MW took very good care of her, as always. The agency aides got her all dressed and set up in the mornings.
One odd thing happened. I had crashed in my hotel room at about 9:15 Wednesday night. My cell phone rang around 10:45, waking me out of a dead sleep. It was MW. The SureHands Lift in the bedroom wasn't working. We covered some of the obvious things, such as how to charge the battery, in case that was the problem, how to tell if the remote was working and such. Was starting to get very concerned, imagining the difficulties they'd all have without the lift. Just before the call ended, MW asked me what the white switch was on the outside of the lift motor. I explained that was the on/off switch and shouldn't be an issue, we never turned it off. As we ended the call, MW said she'd call back in 20 if the issue persisted, otherwise they wouldn't call if she figured out the problem.

When I laid back down in bed, my heart was pounding and I was fit to be tied, worrying about how they'd get by if the lift didn't work. I laid there for about 10 or 15 minutes thinking through their not-so-great options and decided to call back to find out how it was going. No way I could just assume after 20 all was well. MW had figured it out! Turned out that the aide in the morning had turned the motor off! That's what I used to do, to save battery life, in the early days of having the SureHands, and she must have remembered that from when I trained her back then. By the time I called, Skip was already in bed and things were getting back to normal. Yay for MW!

Fortunately, that was the only real problem for Skip and company during the trip. She was well taken care of in my absence, but I know she's glad I'm home. And, I'm glad to be home, too.