Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Sunday we slept in, and I said my good-byes to Dad early, believing we'd be on the road before he got back from his afternoon rounds.

Mom called at about 10 to say that she'd stayed home from church if we wanted to come over. She'd found this one watercolor that she'd wanted to show us yesterday.

So we drove over to Mom's place, stopping on the way to document some of the flood damage in the community.

Dad's place, incidentally, was hit primarily in the basement, where a very unfortunate tenant lost a lot of furniture. You could smell the mildew when you walked in Dad's front door.

But apparently the tenant can't clean out the apartment until the Federal Emergency Management Agency comes by and photographs it, since she's requesting emergency funding.

In the waiting room for his office, a carpet had a slight amount of water damage. Dad is convinced he can use a shop vac to clean it and it should then be hunky-dory, but I told him that if the mildew smell doesn't go away, he should replace that portion of carpet.

As soon as we got there, Mom showed us the watercolor, which she had done from a photo of an iris I'd taken. It was really good, I agreed.

She talked about wanting to start selling her art on the Internet, so I sat down with her and showed her how to set up a basic site. I'm not sure how much of that sunk in.

We hung out with Mom for a couple hours until she had to go to work. Then we took off to get lunch. The Gryphon wanted to try this Mexican place I'd mentioned. I didn't know if they were open for lunch, but we drove there to see and it turns out they were closed.

So then we hopped to the next town over to go to an Italian place, Amato's, where I used to eat when I was a reporter and had stories to cover in that area. That had closed, but just a couple doors down was an Original Italian Pizza, so we went there instead.

It looked new inside, as if it had been remodeled within the last few years, so I asked our waitress how long they'd been there. She said they'd been there for three years, ever since they'd had a fire in Amato's. So it turns out it was the same owners under a new name.

The vegetarian pizza we had was evidence of that: just as tasty as I'd remembered.

We were a little later getting on the road than we thought we'd be. In fact, we did get to say good-bye to Dad again. He had returned from his rounds.

Before we left, I checked his computer to make sure it was still functioning. He'd told me he'd had some problems after he dropped it while trying to move it out of the way of the flood. But then he'd had a technical support guy fix it, and everything was fine.

I would have taken him at his word, but I might not be back in that area until Thanksgiving, and I'd like to be able to do my work from there, when I do.

The Gryphon and I were a little later getting back to the Philadelphia area than we expected. He got to his gaming group within a reasonable time. I did a little work and then played The Sims until he returned.

Then, after taking a break together, I did even more late night work, making up for our weekend away.

More from this weekend:

September 27, 2004 - Good-bye, Red Arrow

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

Musings Index

What do you think? Share your thoughts
at Alyce's message board (left button):