prepping and sailing

We have spent much of the past week packing for the cruise.  I have doubts that we will do this again because getting ready and getting there is not half the fun.  We had our new choir member and his wife come for crawfish etouffee and had a nice visit getting to know them.  They are Phil and Deborah Vangen.  He is a retired pastor from Florida, and we hope to make them friends.  After we played cards, he had a very touching idea: he asked Evelyn to read a couple of chapters from the Bible.  I hope to employ the same when we have future guests.  Evelyn served her final day at the hospital; I volunteered to help clear some weeds and brush at the church.  We also had a Homeowner’s Association meeting at which I volunteered to be president during the summers when we are here.  Gary will continue while we are gone during the winter.  I also went to see Dr. Lisa Greene, the optometrist who was married to our former pastor.  Shed  gave me an exam and said my eyes weren’t much different from when she examined me more than 5 years ago.  We attended the September ballroom dance of the month before celebrating Evelyn’s 74th birthday, an read the Scripture for the final time this year. 

We withdrew some cash from the bank and checked into our flight with SWA for our trip to San Antonio on Tuesday.  We had to get up at 4 AM Tuesday to drive to Hendersonville where our former neighbor, Frieda lives.  She took us to GSP by 6 so we could check our baggage and fly to San Antonio where our friends, Tom and LuAnn picked us to spend the night with them before flying to LA with the remainder of the group we will sail with Thursday.  We all flew on the same flight.  Tom (who did virtually everything to plan the trip) had arranged for a shuttle van to take us to a motel he had booked for us where we spent Wednesday night.  It was a nice little inexpensive motel for the LA area.  Another van took us to the port where we boarded the ship bound for the canal.  We had only 2 dinners with the entire group while on the trip, and the first was on Saturday evening in the Tsar’s Palace.  We normally eat at the public restaurants because the food is included in the price of the cruise.  There are 3 places to eat free, but the Tsar’s Palace has a rule that men must wear long pants in the evenings.  We didn’t go there more than 4 times during the 16 day trip.  We had a cabin with a balcony and spent some time just lounging there.  I will try to summarize many of the events of the cruise later.