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June 3, 2006
Bon Voyage
I'm in Seattle right now--have been since Thursday. I've been staying with H&K, H being one of the few friends from my undergraduate days I'm still in touch with and K being his wife. We actually fell out of contact for, like, a decade, but a couple of years ago I decided to google H, found a phone number that worked, and this is the second time I've stayed in their guest room since then. They're a lot of fun.
Yesterday K & I were at Pike Place Market and I heard someone say, "Oh, look, there's Holly!" I thought, "Huh, so there's someone else named Holly around," and then this woman came up and hugged me and I realized it was my sister.
"How did you recognize me?" I asked. She looked at me for a moment as if she didn't recognize me, then said, "Well, you look exactly like you did at Christmas."
"So do you," I said. "It's just, I don't know; I didn't expect to see you here."
But it's not really all that weird that my sister would be here, because to tell the truth she's here for the same reason I am.
In a few hours we board a ship, and we'll be on it for a week.
Over Christmas of 2004, my mother said to me and some of my sisters, "What would you guys say if I decided to take us all on a trip? We could go some place like Yellowstone and take all the grandkids, but what I'd rather do is take the grownups on a cruise to Alaska. Don't you think that would be fun?" We did indeed think it would be fun, so since then my mother has planned and paid for a cruise for 11 people: my parents, my siblings and their spouses, and me.
Mom isn't at death's door but she has enough health concerns that we're all aware she won't be around forever. She has decided that while she can, she will spend her time and money doing fun things with her family, and we all think that's a really cool idea.
So I'm going to be incommunicado for a week. After we dock I'll spend a few more days in Seattle before flying back to Pennsylvania: I'll hang out with my good friend and generous blog hoster, Jim, his partner and their son Ray. I'll have (I hope) some cool stories to share (and maybe even some photos, since I brought my camera and can take pictures with it, though I've never tried to upload anything). But to forestall any problem with spam comments, I'm turning the comments off for the next week.
Posted by holly at June 3, 2006 5:22 AM
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