Tonight there was the rehearsal dinner (to which we were not invited) followed by a reception for all the out of town guests (to which we were) but there was a whole lotta stuff before that.
First there was Olivia's $19 oatmeal, delivered to her room without any brown sugar.
Then Walt and I ate in the hotel grill and I have to admit it was the best eggs benedict I've had in a long time. Even if it was overpriced.
I hung around the hotel until noon-ish. My friend Melody was picking me up and we planned to spend the afternoon together. When I got downstairs there was a big group of people in pink with balloons all there to cheer on the walkers in a Susan Koman Foundation walk for breast cancer.
Somebody handed me two balloons and I sat there cheering with everyone else whenever walkers dressed in pink passed by. By the time Melody arrived, the crowd of cheerers was at least double this size.
Melody drove us out to a little shopping area by her house which has lots of little restaurants built around a lake. She asked my druthers and we never got beyond her first suggestion...
This Joe's Crab Shack was quite different from the one in Sacramento and I ate an embarrassing amount of delicious Dungeness crab, while Melody had a heaping platter of coconut shrimp.
We sat watching the ducks on the lake swimming by the fountain and just talked for about 2 hours, the way we used to do. It was wonderful. Melody is one of those people you can go without seeing for years and then pick up where you left off the last time you were together. Those are very special friends.
We went to a Best Buy where I was able to buy a charger for my camera battery. This thing will charge just about any battery and I swear if a space shuttle needs charging, I can probably do it. It was spendy, but not nearly as much as buying a new camera, which was my fall-back plan!
After that we drove out to her house. Her daughter and son-in-law live with her, along with granddaughter Brianna (who is 9 months older than our Brianna), Melody's son Tenere, and the family dog Bosco. We watched Brianna play for a long time
and I found out that I was the first person Bosco hasn't barked at for a long time. He took his time, and I ignored him and he finally came over to sniff my pants and let me touch him. I'm sure he smelled generations of dogs on those pants.
Melody got me back to the hotel in time to meet the others for dinner, which we had in the hotel grill.
We each had something different. My short ribs were delicious, but Norm hit the jackpot with his chicken pot pie.
Throughout the day we had been keeping in touch with Jeri and Phil, who were en route from Boston. We went to the reception for the out of towners and Jeri showed up soon after we got there, with news that she and Phil had gotten separated at the Metro, but they did manage to get here separately and were very happy when Phil finally showed up.
Tom is on the red eye from Los Angeles and will be here in the morning, and will leave for the airport right after the reception for a conference in So. Carolina.
Phil and Jeri had not had dinner, so they filled up on the hors d'oeuvres at the reception.
People gradually started fading and heading off to their rooms...there were a LOT of people in those two tiny rooms! I came up here to recharge my battery and to start writing this. Walt said that at one point he looked around and the only people left still chattering away were: Walt, Alice Nan, Norm, Joe, Jeri and Phil. The hosts had left and the hotel staff had removed all the food.
Hour Baur is alive and well in Bethesda.
Tomorrow is the big event!
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