Three Beautiful Things 02/28/16: Good People in the World, Long Talk, The Dogs Relax

1. Ed ended and I ended our superb time in the mid-Atlantic together with a full breakfast at the Silver Diner. Our server was sweet-natured and very attentive and it made me think of all the great people Ed and I talked with and joked around with on this trip. There was the woman with a touch of the flu at the Arlington Cemetery Visitors' Center, the Big Bus Tours driver who offered to let Ed drive the bus and then, later on, popped the bus door open and really let a jerk cab driver have it because he wouldn't let her merge into a traffic lane, the Big Bus Tours guide from Wyoming, the woman who'd lived in Rexburg who gave us friendly service and bright conversation at the Verizon store on Rt 50 east of the Bay Bridge (was that in Easton?), and, of course, Tony and Juanita at Bobby's Burger Palace, along with any number of people from Mississippi, southwest Virginia, New Orleans, and other places we chatted with on the tour buses. I would have to say that Ed got to experience just how friendly and helpful people out here in Maryland and D. C. can be and it made our getting out and seeing things all the more enjoyable.

2. I dropped off Ed at the airport right where he needed to be and eventually made my way over to the Diazes and met up with the Deke who was napping after her drive back to Maryland from Nyack, NY. Last week was one of the worst weeks the Deke has ever experienced in her life as a teacher and we had a good long talk about what happened.  It's all very upsetting and it was good to have some time to hash it all out and talk about our future.  It's not for me to go into detail about what happened. Suffice it to say that the Deke was seriously chewed out, verbally attacked, by the mother of a leukemia stricken student in the Deke's class. It happened at a meeting with school administrators, a district administrator, and other staff at the school. The Deke got blindsided.

3. After our long talk, the Deke and I returned to our apartment home and enjoyed seeing Maggie and Charly relax after their stressful time by themselves at the Diazes. They are fine now, back into their routines of intense barking as they guard our apartment against the sounds in the hall, the mail being delivered, and the tiny dog who lives across the hall and who runs around out back a couple of times a day to do his business. The Deke and I picked up a few threads of our earlier conversation, but mostly we let things rest for the evening and went to bed kind of early.