Progress

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Queen Mary photos. Above: first class smoking lounge. Middle: First class cabin with bathroom faucets and punkah lever for ventilation. Bottom: First class foyer with leather walls and nickel trim. 2010.

The Sidebar Himself: Drove Don and I to the We Meeting on University. It was bed time by the time we got home, and he still had five wrecks to write up. That meeting doesn’t work with our hours. Herself: Showers, move around a little and shower again, come home and shower again. It’s just like living in Alabama humidity….something I have intimate attachment to since I did my basic training in Alabama. WW foods for the day:Breakfast: Green beans and yogurt. Lunch with the poets: small cheese omlette and fruit. Dinner, vegan: Loving hut Lucky Mongolian with white rice and wraps. Tiny piece of cake at meeting. Purelandmountain.com offers the latest news from Japan on days he isn’t fighting his local flora and fauna.

• After a long struggle, he reached the HR person at work who admitted to a blond moment. It wasn’t 4 1/2 hours vacation time he had accrued, it was four and a half days. He still needs one more half day. He will be submitting his vacation days to his boss with a request for half a day advance on his vacation time. I’m beginning to believe this is really going to happen…allowing myself a little excitement.



• Read the piece on Queen Mary to the Poets Group yesterday at Du-Par’s Coffee Shop. The owner was there. Here was this group of ladies gathered chattering and reading out loud in the middle of an unused half restaurant where they graciously allowed us to sit. He stopped by to talk with us. There had been a large Travel Lodge surrounding this restaurant and bar which used to be Bakers Square. The hotel management company went bankrupt just as Du-Pars took over the restaurant. Business went down the tubes. The same management company was brought in to run the hotel as a Wyndam, and they put a fortune into renovations. Suddenly the hotel is full again, and the restaurant business is picking up. My reading. They hadn’t known a thing about these two ships.





• The Birthday trip: First stop; Portland. My high school best friend lives in Portland. She’s going to find us a hotel near the train depot, and we will have lunch with her the day we leave. We have progress and I am smiling. Chicago, the Art Institute, a nearby cultural museum, and the river tour. Perhaps my cousin Tim can join us for the day. Yes, only one day.





• I stopped in to the Cancer Society yesterday with G’s camera in hand. I wanted to retake the things I’d photographed with the new camera. Neither G nor I can figure out how to make the Macro function work. When I looked at the absolutely full children’s book area, there were now great gaps on the shelves. They sold. I was amazed at how fast.