I have returned from a conference in Philadelphia. A rare work trip. And I was told I was going just a little over a week in advance, and also just after the company announced there would be no more non-essential travel for the rest of they year. I guess I'm special. No really, it was the UHMWPE conference and my new bosses thought it would be valuable to send someone to see what's going on in the world of poly. I was only gone for a few days; I left for O'Hare Wednesday just after lunch (the rental car return setup there is now bizarre, seems to me, and the car GPS was confused. The toll transponder also did not work so I had to pay those myself). I got to Philly in the evening and rented a car for the short drive to the hotel, but I should have gotten an Uber because I did not move the car from the original parking spot until I left. The conference itself was held in a place called the Union League, which seems to be an old school gentleman's club, from a time when that meant where rich men go to hang out and smoke cigars and tell their big game hunting stories with other rich men. There were places in the building that were marked members only, but I walked through anyway. They have a dress code, but I wore a tie on the first day and just a polo the second day when I decided they weren't going to enforce it. After the first day (Thursday), dinner was at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which was super cool. We had a private dinner in a museum of dinosaur skeletons and a butterfly garden and animal specimens. I had a fun time texting pictures to Missy; that place was right up her alley. After it was over Friday I walked down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, sort of on a whim, to see the Rocky statue and maybe run up the stairs. But when I got there I didn't. It suddenly seemed silly. After seeing the whole huge crowd in line to take selfies with Rocky, I just wasn't that interested any more. But at least I saw it. I headed home right after that. And the airline managed to lose my luggage on the way home.....Speaking of our minivan that can't catch a break lately, I got a message from our insurance company just after landing in Chicago on Friday. They have concluded that the van is not repairable and it has been totaled. The settlement amount is about $5300 which won't buy us a new van, so my first thought was to cancel the claim and just drive a van with a bashed side for a while. But by Saturday I'd changed my mind, since we'd never get that kind of money out of the van any other time, and the settlement could pay off the truck loan and pay for both girls trips to Europe next year, which would be a net savings of a few hundred dollars a month even with a new loan. So we went van shopping Saturday and found a could nice ones on the same lot where we found the T&C. Test drove them both, liked the Toyota better, and put a hold on it. So looks like we're getting a new van.....I did some shopping with Missy for her Halloween costume this weekend too. She has an idea for a dragon warrior kind of thing, so she wants to build a dragon head helmet of sorts. I'm going to give it my best shot. She also needed a cape and some gloves which she bought herself. She wants to paint the cape green and doesn't want to hear that it probably won't work.....Alex finally got his VR ready computer (the one that was cancelled twice) Saturday, but we still had to run around to get it to work. He needed a particular kind of cable for the monitor that we did not have, so we had to find one at Wal-Mart, and also needed a digital video input for the graphics card that we also did not have and could not find. In the end we had to order a DVI to display port converter on Amazon today, so his VR set still does not work and won't until sometime in a few days.....last week Natalie had her first choir concert, "Autumn Leaves," at the PAC center. She is the choir historian so she is supposed to photograph all the choir events this year but couldn't get the actual camera to work after changing the SD card, so she used my phone which doesn't take good photos inside in low light, so it didn't work out that well. The concert was nice though.Nat is in the beginning women's choir but some of the more advanced choirs were very good.