Birthday dinner

My 80th birthday was on June 20th.

After a month and a half of cloudy days (May Gray/ June Gloom), the sun came out and I got to take my walk in sunshine.

Then my daughters and son-in-law and a potential son-in-law, plus grandkids, took me out to dinner to a Japanese place where they cook the food right in front of us.  Wonderful!  What a show!

To top it off they had gathered lots of pictures of our family life, including some pictures of my husband Chip that I had never seen before and put them in an album.

What a treasure!

Aren't all writers rich?

No

No they aren't.

Too many people think all writers are rich. Once, I decided to show kids how much I got per book bought and it was one dollar. And that's actually high; several of my books earn me pennies. And don't ask writers about their income from paperbacks. 

I was talking to a lawyer about writing my will and he also assumed I was rich. Blew my mind that he didn't know that it's only a few writers who finally, often after many book out, earn a decent living. 

Me? I kept my day job. Which gave me a pension in my retirement years.  

Airport mixup

 I had quite a mix-up at the Seattle (Sea-Tac) airport returning home from the writer's retreat.

Evidently, the TSA entrance to security did not lead to the TSA checking machines.  So I was handed a pink card and told to go that away.  I kept going, finally reached one of the last machines and put my carryon suitcase on the moving strip, went on through, and discovered - no suitcase.  It finally showed up on a different moving strip, was examined and they scolded me for having the laptop inside. (I've left the laptop inside for years now.  very strange.)

So the helpful guy put the suitcase and the laptop back to be re-examined and down came the suitcase again to be searched.  This time the guy found my wrist support was the cause.

So I was standing there, repacking my suitcase and was almost ready to leave when the guy said, "Stop! Stop!"  And showed me that my laptop was coming down the main moving strip, having been passed through by itself.  I HAD HAD NO IDEA  that they had separated it from the suitcase.  

If I hadn't been so slow putting my carryon suitcase back together, I would have walked off without it.

WHEW!

Well, now I know how to navigate that airport. 

 If I go to that writer's retreat again, I won't be so confused.

Librarian clothing rules

We were talking on Facebook about others handing down rules about what library workers should wear and this memory popped up. 

The library board of the library where I worked in Maryland handed down uniform requirements for working in the library and it included these: 

shirts and dresses must have sleeves. Can NOT be sleeveless. Nobody wants to look at floppy underarms. (I looked at our muscular arms and then remembered the board consisted of older men and women who probably had floppy arms.) 

The other thing I remember is that librarians must wear heels of at least 2 inches high. I immediately told my branch manager that I couldn't wait to see the male librarians wearing their two or three inch heels. HA! 

They then revised it to say that tie shoes were okay - for men. But if any women wanted to NOT wear heels, they had to get a doctor's note proving they had foot problems. My friends with bunions and other problems had been wearing sandals, nice sturdy ones. My own sneaker/ tennis/ walking shoes were because of my own foot problems. No shoes like that were allowed, so I had to jump from $60 expensive walking shoes to $200 sturdy/ supportive tie shoes. I did mention that I wanted the board to PAY for the extra expense they forced us to wear, but that was a no-go.