A new "toy" to play with!

21.V,07 - MoM

I just copied the first part of DoD's saga of the visit in Europe of Suzy and Chris. I think it is priceless. So glad I came across it.

Not sure I could share my yard with your critters! I don't handle even the occasional garter snake well. A few weeks ago when Sidney and Bennet were here with Chris while he cut the yard she saw one in my fenced "garden." At least, I don't have to weed the flower beds anymore where there was an occasional one.

It was a great day weather-wise. It got up to 79° and I didn't notice any humidity. I'm glad you are having a few bits of good weather, Suzy, before the heat and humidity descends on you. There was a time when I loved both.

I guess I am going eat strangely tonight. (What else is different?) This morning after my tea and cookies, I had a sudden urge for a grilled cheese with halved large olive sandwich for breakfast. It tasted so good that I think I will do it more often. I used the electric grill that we bought early in our days in Shannondale. It was the first thing I ever ordered by mail. It still works great. When I was working at Berkeley Night School, I used to go up to a little sandwich place next door to the movie theater for my "dinner". Every night I had the same thing -- a grilled cheese and olive sandwich and a coke. I know it didn't cost more than a quarter. (Time out to eat.) I guess I have had the rest of my night meal. Ended up eating the bowl of "greens" plain, that I harvested from the AgraGarden, Then I had a half of a large avocado with Mandarin Oranges and French Dressing. Now, I can enjoy my gin.

I didn't get much else done today because my camera came. I thought that by getting another Olympus, I would be taking pictures as soon as I got it. I should have know that things get more complicated every model. It used to never be a problem for me, but as I have grown older I have lost my confidence. I always seem to do dumb things that mess up things.

The action at the patio feeder today was blue jays. I am going to have to have the feed tray lowered an inch or two as when there are little birds eating there, I can just barely see the top of their heads and by the time I make it out of my chair they are gone. There was a pair today that had pale heads with brown streaks. I keep my field glasses beside me, but I could not see enough of them to tell. This morning, I was ready to go out to water the deck plants when the cardinal pair decided to drink from the birdbath there. Again, the female took a good bath while the male just watched. Guess I'll send this, then spend a little more time reading about the camera.
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This is part of a letter to Sandy and Bob, written on 22.XI.85 from Saalfelden.

For a report of the trip I will now append what DoD wrote Jim Bensen. I love it when he writes on the Computer as he gets almost as wordy as the rest of us.
"The just completed trip had its ups and downs. After traveling by train for five years in Europe, you would think we would know all the ins and outs, but a few caught up with us this time that we didn't anticipate. we went from here to Salzburg and picked up a through train to Strasbourg, our first nights stop. However, the French railways went on strike about an hour before we got to Strasbourg so we had to get off the train at Kehl, across the river in Germany. We managed to get a taxi to our hotel by carrying out bags to a hotel in Kehl several blocks away and asking them to call us a cab - there was a long line at the station and no cabs. We hoped to resume our trip to Paris the next day by train, as the strike was supposed to be a quickie. No such luck, so we had to taxi to the Airport and fly to Paris, taxi again to our Apartment-Hotel. We couldn't wait for the strike to end as we were meeting our son and oldest daughter the next day. His first trip to Europe and her first to France. We planned to take the RER to the airport but what do you know, as we were on the train platform the RER announced a sympathy strike. Back to the street and a taxi out to the Airport. The planned meeting came off OK although the plane was an hour late. We spent 10 days in Paris, longer than we would normally spend but Chris had to attend and speak at a meeting that took up most of the week. Over the weekend we took a day trip to Versailles and again messed up on the trains, too complex to describe. Florence had a ball cooking for us in the kitchen of our quarters (fresh fishk crabs and other shell fish from a huge Monoprix nearby) while the kids enjoyed eating out in French restaurants almost every night.
From Paris we went to Carcassone and enjoyed the restored medieval city. Then on to Biarritz where we spent a day then left Florence in one of her favorite hotels next day [I added this to his letter to Sandy: "me: Miramar, of course, where the room like we had was double what we had paid for the suite the last time we were there. It was high season, too. The kids stayed at the President."] while the rest of us ventured into Spain. We took the bus to San Sebastian and using a schedule given us by the Biarritz tourist bureau expected to arrive in time to pick up a train to Zaragoza. The bus station proved to be a half a mile from the train station, our Spanish is very limited, everybody said it was "close by", so we ended up hoofing it, carrying our bags, which were too heavy for such stuff. At the station we found out that the timetable given us was out of date and that daylight savings end had overtaken us - the train to Zaragoza had already left. We broke out "the unplanned for contingency plan" and took a train to Burgos instead. Great place -- as it turned out Chris wanted to go there more than Zaragoza. We much enjoyed walking around town on a beautiful fall evening and had a nice dinner. Suzy and Chris decided to take the train the next day to Barcelona while I returned to pick up Florence in Biarritz. The morning we left, the local taxis went on strike, and again a half mile haul to the station with bags. We had planned to check our bags at the station while we looked around town for a couple of more hours. No place to check bags so Suzy sat the bags while Chris and I tried to get to some ruins in the limited time left -- no luck -- ran out of time. Chris and Suzy much enjoyed Barcelona -- both the food and the town. Florence and I had been there last year. They caught the train for Nimes after an overnight stop and had time to look around there at the old Roman ruins before they took a train to Arles, where they met us. Our train was in Nimes on its way from Biarritz to Marseilles, when the kid's train arrived. We saw them get off their trains as ours pulled out so we knew they had completed their Spanish leg on schedule.