Where Have All the Roses Gone? (D)

Gainesville

Belated Happy Heart Day to all.

Ours was a bit strange. Bill always gives me flowers, and the past 4-5 years they've been delivered at work with great ceremony, to the envious wonderment of my co-workers. This year, it was Bill who arrived at my office door wondering what had happened-- the roses, which were delivered on time and in perfect shape last year from the same place, were MIA.

Poor Bill. He spent much of yesterday evening and this morning wrestling with the global brown elephant known as UPS. It was clear someone on campus had signed for the roses. But who? All the usual suspects denied all knowledge. It took until noon today to track them down. They'd been delivered to the wrong library building, where lots of deliveries are received, and the library head had just signed automatically and not looked at what it was. So they sat in the mail room in the science library overnight! After being flown from god-knows-where via god-knows-what super-expedited whatever. Then they spent most of today slowly touring the campus as part of the Library's internal mail delivery (which, ironically enough, is a function of Bill's division). The pot was so full of irony by now it could barely hold itself!

Ah, but the happy ending: the beautiful and still virtually perfect roses arrived safely at last, and I brought them home with me tonight. Too bad they will be past it when you arrive next week.

We had dinner at what has become our traditional Valentine spot: the Sawamura Steak House. The cooking is the floor show, and you never know what sort of strange mix of people will be your grill-mates. The stuff tastes great, too. However, I forgot that "martini" is not what you order in this place-- the first drink was about one to one! For the second one, I switched to Tanq on the rocks. Much better!

Mom, I will be sure to stock some Gilbey's for you, as I know you have no use for the high priced gin. Is there anything else I can get to make your stay more enjoyable? After Bill started Atkins, he had to call a halt to his Bert's Oysterettes addiction, but I bet he'd be happy to mix you up a batch of his own special blend.

Today was Anti-Procrastination Wednesday-- made myself do a biggie, months overdue: a haircut!

Lots of meetings and social events today, so not much chance to work on the paper. I finished up the rough rough draft on Tuesday, and reading as fast as I can go, it's 17.something minutes. Spozed to be 15, and not supposed to be read fast. Major cuts must start now. At the same time, I keep finding places where just a little more expansion is needed, and just one, maybe two more slides would make it all make more sense... but NO! Don't go there now.

Today hotel reservations for Comic-Con in San Diego opened. Last year I must have lucked out to have gotten the great hotel in the perfect location. Who knew? This year-- impossible. The best I could do was to book something near the airport, half a mile away, in order to get on a waiting list for the hotel we had last time. I wonder if we really want to do this? I've not submitted anything to this one. Bill had fun last year and wanted to do it again, and I thought we could combine it with a trip to the Bay Area to see Thea and his uncle Ballard French (a neat guy). If San Diego continues to prove so difficult, maybe we'll just do a Bay Area trip this time around.

DIARY, 1952

[nothing for Sept 24-25]

Friday, September 26, 1952
270th Day--96 Days to Follow

Dear Diary
Nothing much happened at school today. We took showers again. Gee, I don't know what we did with out them. Sandy wants to let Patty Mersman join the club. We'll see. At Patwitties this aft we each a 4th of a lemon pie (sigh) Then we took a daredevil ride thru the orcherd. Boy was it fun. Thinking of making it inition. Love, Suzy

[nothing for Sept 27-Oct 3]

What a day! !
Saturday, October 4, 1952
278th Day--88 Days to follow

Dear Diary
This morning Sandy & I woke up early outdoors & started our work. I made my bed & then cleaned up my room. We had Patty Mersman come to the club meeting. We talked about uniforms & different things then we did our puppets. When Feeding the cats Chris came dashing in with a cut wrist. Daddy got sick. When they returned from Doc. he had three stitches. Suzy