California Trip - Day 15

July 4 - Monday "Final Stretch - Last Gasp"

After the terrible night, I ate dinner leftovers (slowly so as to avoid hernia problems), took my last set of pills (miscalculated by one day), and took 20 minutes filling up water bottles (water just dribbled out of dispenser).

I wrote "The Down Side" and Megan had a bad reaction to it. I wrote "The Up Side" and she said I was redeemed. Megan said she was feeling vulnerable and worried a bit about other women. I assured her I only had other eyes for:

Tink,

Emma Frost,

Power Girl &

She-Hulk
(not Miss Piggy anymore).

We wondered why Tim has adopted a 'racist' attitude in who he would date (no Blacks, Hispanics or Asians); otherwise he is not actually discriminatory; has has Black, Hispanic and Asian friends (Niles, Gil, & the Carpenters). Megan and I only became a little prejudiced when we got to college - the way we were treated by Blacks. We evaluate all people by how they act towards us, not skin color.

I finalized my journal contents and added maps, receipts, lists, et. al. Called Brett & Alyssa to make sure they hadn't forgotten to pick us up. Megan read me "Clever Alice". Tim got upset and started crying when he messed with Miranda's Pokemon game and she didn't want to play anymore.

I gave "Wolfie" (Greg) our card. Megan finally told him about Miranda's relationship to Tim. He was astounded. The floor in front of Tim's seat looked like a pivot point for a halftrack (like his room or computer area at home). It took him a long time to clean it up.

We had one hard thump that felt like we were going off the track; something hit the bottom of the train. Things got green again in Oregon. There was some really cool little town just north of Kelso, but we didn't see a name. Beautiful rustic homes. Very brief, saw no people.

I started writing up a new schedule with goals & projects.

My comments:

Yes, I did get upset when Bill read me his list of "The Down Side". Here we had just had a wonderful vacation with our family, and he was listing all the things he didn't like about it - and he had 49 things listed! He said that he had already written the "Highlights" of the trip, so they were balanced, but I didn't think so. So he cudgeled his brain and came up with 50 things on "The Up Side".

"Clever Alice" was a little story that was written by the same author as "The Little Lame Prince".


I love "The Little Lame Prince", but "Clever Alice" was one of the stupidest stories I've ever read, and I wanted to see if Bill felt the same way. He did.

I was on the wrong side of the train to spot the Master's house, but I did see the path that winds down to the train track. It flashed by so fast that I almost missed it, so I can see why we didn't see the Master's house on the trip down. As we passed through the North End we could see all the people gathered to watch the fireworks later on (it WAS the 4th of July). Huge crowds, and lots of little booths selling all kinds of food. However, we all agreed that the fireworks at Disneyland beat anything we could see.


Brett met us at the station and we managed to stuff everything (including ourselves) into his car. I have to admit that it was nice to get home and collapse. At least I collapsed. Bill did his usual frantic unpacking-everything-and-putting-it-away but Tim's suitcase sat in the hallway for a couple of days before he finally took care of it.