As four of GC's classmates tour #Vietnam (trending) on their graduation trips, I spent the heat wave gathering blogworthy anecdotes from parents in CT, NY, NJ, MD and DC:

1) GESUNDHEIT – A rising senior Fulbright hopeful from Yale has already taken his GREs. He did very well, of course, but was not allowed to enter the testing center with his travel-sized packet of Tempo Taschentuecher, the more absorbant German version of Kleenex, which he had purchased during his lab research fellowship in Nuremberg. Although the package looks innocent and minimal enough, the proctors probably assumed that the small print was some sort of code for a mathematical formula.

2) MARSHALL-THEMED REFUGEE DINNER – Attended a foodie BBQ at a fabulous home in Bethesda MD with a fascinating group of DC suburbanites who needed to cook all their frozen briskets because of a prolonged power outage. Among the guests were the parents of a University of Chicago student who has just won the prestigious Marshall Scholarship. AND the parents of a Dartmouth student who leaves in September for a semester in the Marshall Islands.

3) NEST WISHES – As I blog, I sit on a brand new next generation 737-800 , headed from BWI to LAS (Not the most direct route home I know, but the best available on changeable Southwest).  My seatmate, who lives in Austin, just confessed to me that his wife couldn't handle living several hours away from their daughter, so the couple has purchased a second home in Virginia, where their child is working on her MBA. A lovely new tradition: A new take on the boomerang syndrome of kids moving home after college – who says parents can't boomerang too?