Official Vacation Week

If you read the blog Cindi posted yesterday, you know this would have been Linda and my 35th anniversary! All the years I worked at Heatilator, I always took the week that contained July 20th as my vacation week. Linda NEVER liked watching car racing. She went to 34 raceway with me ONCE before we were married. Our 10th anniversary was on a Saturday. Jeff wanted to go to the races. I told him I took that week off to do what Linda wanted to do on our anniversary. Linda informed me, we could go if we wanted. I refused saying I intended to spend the 20th with HER. After some "arm twisting" whining etc. Jeff got her to agree to go with us. That was the second (and last) time she went to the races with me. As our 20th anniversary grew close, I told her "You went to the races before we were married, and when we were married 10 years, you're due to go with me again." I'll never forget her reply, "If that's what it takes to keep this marriage together, you just as well file for divorce right now."
Her assessment was "They're noisy, It's dirty, And all they do is drive in circles!" However, she was impressed when 4 sprint drivers attended Matt's funeral. And when Tyson Hart had "In memory of Matt Harris" painted on his sprint car. She made it a point to take her camera to the "car show" at westland mall to get a picture of Ty's car! I later had Dennis Krieger print three Photos of that car, one for us, a 11 x 14, and 2 8 x10's one for Cindi and one for Jeff.
She also never missed a chance to comment on being married to "an older man" (2 years) but you would have thought it was more like 30 or 40 years.
Cindi was absolutely right in her June 24th Blog "People that say 'time heals all wounds' have never lost someone they LOVED" She wrote more descriptively and elequently than I can! That's nothing new though, she could from about the 3rd grade on. Linda always thought she should have studied journalism in college. However, she never tried to influence any decision that Cindi made about schooling, EXCEPT she would have had a FIT if Cindi had shown any interest in going to nurses training! Linda was an excellent nurse and (she would proably denied it) enjoyed being a nurse. Anyone she cared for had nothing but praise for her. Not many people work the last day of their life and die from natural causes less than an hour after finishing their shift.

In other news: I normally dread to hear that RAGBRAI is passing through Mt. Pleasant and wish they would use a different route. This year I'm suddenly am looking forward to them getting to Mt. Pleasant. Mike and Cindi's former landlord is riding in it and is supposed to give me a call when they get to Mt. P. He's a really GREAT guy and I'm looking forward to visiting with him and taking him to dinner - somewhere other than Mt. Pleasant. All the restaurants there will be "snowed under" with the other riders.