One of the iconic places on Panama City Beach was the Treasure Ship Restaurant.  It opened in 1977, and we have eaten there many times through the years.  Like thousands of other local high school students, our daughter, Catherine, worked there during the summers when she was in high school and college, and that place no doubt contributed to what is today her career as a restauranteur.  Here’s a picture of the fire:

The restaurant was built on dry land, but the design gave the impression that it was asail on Grand Lagoon just off St. Andrew Bay.  The building was actually a scale replica of The Golden Hind, which was the ship of Sir Francis Drake in the Elizabethan era.  As I recall, the “ship” was three stories tall, and the Top of the Ship was a fine dining restaurant where we celebrated New Year’s Eve on several occasions.  The main dining room was enormous.  At the peak of the summer season they employed 200 people, and many of them had worked there for over 20 years.  As of tonight all of those people are out of work.  Fortunately the fire started between the lunch and dinner rush, so very few people were in the building.  Nobody was injured, thank God.

ED

Today was the fortieth annual Earth Day observance, and I marked the occasion by cleaning my bathroom.  I’m not talking about routine cleaning, like scouring the toilet and mopping the floor.  I’m talking about deep cleaning that involved unscrewing a soap dish and a toothbrush holder to soak them in cleaning solution and then going after both with steel wool.  I tried to buy replacement fixtures, but, after they told me at the fourth store I went to that they really don’t make wall mounted soap dishes and toothbrush holders anymore, I gave up and cleaned the old ones.  Incidentally, the handles on today’s toothbrushes are too thick to fit into my toothbrush holder anyway. 

I have a cabinet in my bathroom that measures 18″ x 24″ x 9″.  You can cram a lot of stuff in something that big, and I had it loaded.  I had an empty can of shaving cream, a couple of half-used tubes of toothpaste, a partial bottle of mouthwash that I haven’t touched in well over a year, two packages of stuff to glue dental crowns back on, and several empty prescription bottles.  My favorite discovery was a tube of some kind of skin medication that the dermatologist had given me as a sample.  I checked the expiration date to see if it was still good, and it had expired in 1990.  I might not have had much of an impact on global ecological issues, but at least my bathroom is clean.

ED

This morning a friend brought us a sizeable bag of live crawfish.  Liza was here, and she was quite taken with the creatures.  At first she didn’t want to look at them, and she said they were disgusting (“disgusting” being a new vocabulary word for this week).  We put the crawfish in the kitchen sink to purge them, and they became quite lively.  Liza was fascinated by this turn of events.  At first she stood across the room from the sink, but she gradually got closer and closer.  I put a few on the counter, and they crawled around as I played with them.  One of them crawled back into the sink, and she wanted me to make the others crawl back in, too.  We played with the crawfish for a good half hour, and by the time she lost interest in them she was almost to the point that she would pick one up.  Beth eventually cooked the crawfish, and she peeled some for Liza.  She ate them as her afternoon snack, and she loved them.

I hope Liza always remembers her adventure with the crawfish, but she probably won’t.  She called them “crawlfish,” and I’ll always remember that.

ED

Liza, our granddaughter, is spending tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday night at our house while her parents, godparents, and four friends are attending the Wanni Musical Festival.  Tonight Liza asked Beth if she could play some Barney games on Beth’s computer, and Beth found a game that involved dragging and dropping “trash” into the appropriate recycling receptacles in a park.  Beth showed her what to do, and Liza sat down and played the game without a moment’s hesitation.  It was pretty clear to me that Liza understood the game and that she already–at age 4–has pretty good mouse skills.  Liza’s only complaint was that as soon as she got all the trash picked up, somebody came along and threw out more trash.

Before Christmas I taught a computer class for the Council on Aging, and one of the things we worked on the most was using the mouse.  The students were three ladies over the age of 60, and one of them never caught on to the whole “drag and drop” scenerio with the mouse.  Liza, at age 4, is able to do that using her right hand (she’s lefthanded).  Liza has grown up in a computer-rich environment, and she will probably take computers and cell phones and all other things electronic as much for granted as her parents took radio and TV.  Progress?  I think so.

ED

It’s been some time since I last wrote about Meals on Wheels, but something happened today that I must report.  This blog is supposed to be about irony, remember, and I think this qualifies–at least at some level.

Last week one of my Meals clients asked me if I knew anybody who wanted to swap a recliner for a like-new wheelchair.  This lady has problems with her legs, and the doctor told her she needs to get a recliner, preferably one that would raise her feet higher than her heart.  I considered posting this request on Craig’s List, but I figured the odds of finding someone who wanted to make that swap were well over a million to one.  I found a used recliner at Goodwill, though, and Friday another guy and I delivered it to the lady’s house.  She was thrilled with the chair, and I was thrilled that she was so happy about it.

When I got to her house this morning for my regular Meal delivery, she was sitting on another chair in her sitting room, and she had a long face.  When I asked her what was the matter, she told me she couldn’t use the new chair.  She said it was really comfortable and beautiful and so on, but she couldn’t get out of it once she sat down.  She had to call somebody to help her get up this weekend, and the chair obviously won’t do.  I was reminded of the man who had a glass eye at the keyhole. 

I relayed this story to the Executive Director of the Council on Aging, and she said she’d be on the lookout for a lift recliner.  People donate those from time to time, and my lady is the perfect candidate for one.  In the meantime, she’ll have to go back to a regular chair.

ED

Almost every year at least one student visiting here for Spring Break falls from a balcony at a condo or motel.  This year there have been 4 such falls, and 2 of the young men involved have been killed.  Last Friday–Good Friday–a 17 year old boy from Cincinnati fell from the fifth floor balcony of a condo, and he was dead by the time the emergency folks got there.  The week before, a 19 year old boy was killed when he fell from a fifth floor balcony at another condon.  I didn’t pay much attention to the news of the first death, but the second one touched me.  His name was Matt, and he had recently received a football scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.  Matt was a lineman, and he was 6’8” tall.  He weighed 290 pounds, and, by all accounts, he was a proverbial “gentle giant.”

My heart mourns Matt’s untimely demise, but it positively aches for his parents.  I can just imagine the kind of soul searching they went through before they gave him permission to come here for Spring Break, and I can also imagine the enormous guilt and remorse they feel now on top of their tragic loss.  There are no words to comfort those parents, and I lift them and Matt’s siblings up to God in prayer.

ED

We got a new telephone directory late last week, and I used it for the first time yesterday.  I wanted to call the doctor with a question, and I dialed the number that was listed for the office.  It rang and rang, and I finally hung up.  I tried a second time later in the day thinking I had called the first time before they opened, but they still didn’t answer.  I assumed they were closed yesterday as an extended Easter holiday.

This morning I called the number listed in the book, and, again, there was no answer.  This afternoon after lunch I swung by the office to see what was going on, and they were open and had a waiting room full of people.  I told the receptionist what I wanted, and I also told her about my problem with the phone.  She looked up the number in their new book, and–sure enough–it’s wrong in the directory.  In fact, the numbers listed for both offices of this practice are wrong.

I don’t know how often this sort of thing happens, but nothing can be done about it until the phone company puts out another directory next April.  I checked our number in the new book, and it’s correct.  If you’ve gotten a new phone book lately, you might want to check your number just to be sure.

ED

We had our annual Easter Party today, and everybody had a good time.  One of the first orders of business was an Easter Egg hunt, and “Aunt Judy,” our hostess, went to quite a bit of trouble to get great prizes for the kids.  Here’s some video of Liza hunting eggs.

After a fantastic lunch that all the guests contributed to, “Uncle Larry,” our host, took the kids and their parents for a ride on his boat.  Here’s a picture of Liza when she was getting off after the ride.  Her Easter Dress was a pink sailor suit, and the Easter Bunny brought her a stuffed bunny that was wearing a dress identical to Liza’s.

After the boat ride, the three kids lined up for a picture.

               Liza, Christopher, and Laura

I hope all of my readers had as much fun on Easter as we did.

ED