Friday Between Holiday

I was slow and tired from endless nasal drips and nose running. The cold meds and the few hours of sleep made me fuzzy, and Deborah said that even the ‘energizer bunny’ must recharge. When I travel, I am often called that as I want to do everything all the time. I have also stocked the room with some baked goods and Dunken Donuts pods.

I rose just before 8 when the sunrise started. I rise usually with or before the sun. With the winter solstice just passed, it is still late, around 8. I am not looking forward to Monday as that is a 4AM drive to DTW to fly to Boston early. I tried to avoid the awful early flights, but there were few choices to Boston. I will be in New England for a week. Sunday will be my last full day in Michigan.

I wrote for a while in room 303 but soon showered (I got warm), shaved, and dressed. I then headed downstairs to the lobby and had breakfast. It consisted of the usual industrial scrambled eggs, sausage (pork or turkey), and food service sausage gravy with hot biscuits. The biscuits were frozen, as I used to make them, too—excellent—and the gravy came in large cans. I ate that while I wrote for a few hours. I have thought about serving the same breakfast before church; church with brunch sounds like a good idea. It’s not likely to happen…but it’s a fun dream…I travel too much now to do that every Sunday.

I waited in the lobby for Deborah to head to lunch, nodded off, and then watched the young people try to wash the glass doors. Like in many hotels, the doors open by detecting motion. The doors open to a small entranceway to stop the cold wind from blowing in. The first door opens, you step in, it closes, and the other opens as the other one closes, giving you access to the lobby without flooding the lobby with cold or warm air or snow or rain.

I watched as someone first had to be told how to wash the glass with spray and a squeegee (yes, I looked up the spelling as squeeze means something else). The Marx Brothers or Carol Burnett might have invented this routine. Once they got it started, they were left to clean all the windows. Then, the person tried to clean the windows. Every time the person moved, the door opened. I watched as the squeegee person attempted to time it and quickly spray and clean it, but the door detected and even opened again when partially closed! Then, after what must have been ten minutes of just standing there and waving the squeegee to discover the perfect timing, another person shows up and demonstrates, on a non-moving glass, how to correctly squeegee–you must go all the way to the bottom of the glass in one movement with plenty of spray. Our leaner of the mysteries then recleans all the windows.

Soon, three and four people were discussing cleaning the glass. A better squeegee was produced, and finally, they realized you could not clean the moving glass doors together. A key was produced after a moment of search, and the door movements were disabled. The outer door was cleaned inside. It was reenabled, and the inner door was locked to be squeegee-ed. Now Deborah showed up, and this caused chaos if you could call this process anything less than chaos. The gal was found with the key and unlocked the door to let Deborah in, waving to us from behind between the two glass doors (though she could leave).

Escaping the comedy show, Deborah and I headed to Pontiac, Michigan, and Dogwood for lunch, one of Deborah’s favorite places. There, I had a lovely steak salad and a wrap for Deborah. I left my hat there (I called them, and they have it, and I will get in on Saturday). After that, Deborah spent a pleasant afternoon together.

In the late afternoon, we traveled to Deborah’s house after picking up my laundry. We used Deborah’s older but working laundry, 1980s Maytag, made in Michigan, washer and dryer, but there are parts available and instructions on how to fix them, Deborah told me. They worked fast and handled my two loads without issue.

While we waited, Deborah played the board game Pandemic with me. I taught her how to play and helped direct the play as it is a cooperative game. Deborah soon got it and made better suggestions than I did for a few moves. That is the absolute pleasure of cooperative games as you realize that 1+1=2+, the sum is greater than the parts–to coin a phrase. We played the basic version with four Epidemic cards evenly scattered through the draw deck. We got quite a few outbreaks, but with two players, the game is kinder as the acceleration caused by the mechanic is slower to escalate sudden-death losing conditions. Also, this is the first version and does not have lousy event cards or interlocking damaging mechanics like Cthulu Pandemic (my favorite version). We cured all the diseases in time to win the game but did not have time to eradicate the viruses, which still gave us a win.

Deborah ordered dinner for Panera Bread, and her sons, Donovan and Liam, picked it up. I met Donovan for the first time. I had tuna fish and a cup of soup, which was strange, and I did not finish it. Potato soup with stringy cheese was not interesting to me, and it was messy. I finished my laundry and borrowed some hangers. Soon, I returned to the hotel, saying goodnight to Deborah a bit early.

Then, the coughing and breathing issues started. I was concerned about midnight when I had some unpleasant coughing, but Benadryl made it all disappear. Obviously, an allergic reaction going wrong. I was able to sleep after midnight. Ugh!

Thanks for reading!