The first hurricane of the 2010 season is about to hit the US. I know this (of course) because the Weather Channel is on. Unfortunately this isn’t good news for Janet and family as Janet is heading to Cancun with her family on Friday. Hopefully it will be past by that stage as they are predicting that it will hit land by tomorrow pm. We are, on the other hand, heading West to LA where the weather is much cooler. However, that is tomorrow only!
Today was pretty much a repeat for Janet and I, in that we left for the exhibition at 8am and got back to the hotel at around 3:30pm. We had about 6 or 7 meetings and some really productive ones. I felt it was a better day than yesterday. What probably swung it for me was a very good meeting with Crossway (one of the large USA publishers) and the owner’s son met us and we immediately made a connection. A 30 minute meeting pretty quickly turned into more than an hour with Janet nudging me and pointing at my watch. In the end Janet went off for our next meeting and I stayed behind a finished off the discussions. Even though we have been really careful about what we have collected, we still have a lot of catalogues and freebies and so tomorrow when we pack we might have to be a little more ruthless and get rid of some of the stuff.
The family went off to Grant Farm (I believe owned by the Busch family who used to own Anhauser Busch) and is a place with lots of different animals that have been rescued. I got to see a few photos only but the kids seemed to enjoy it. After that they went to the Mall and watched movies. The boys (including the big boy Jeff) watched Iron Man II and the rest watched Toy Story 3. The first thing Michael told me about the movies was the size of the Medium coke – we would classify it as Extra Large in SA from what he showed me. Helen later told me the same story as well. When they got back (which was after Janet and I got back), the kids went up for a swim on the roof top pool again. I went up briefly to have a look at the view and it was extremely bright up there as well. The kids were all having a great time together in the pool. Daniel (my nephew and Stephen’s cousin) has been with us as well and it is incredible to see how quickly he and Stephen have picked up their friendship again. It is a pity that they couldn’t see more of each other.
This evening we went to the St Louis Waterfront for dinner. If you have visions of the V&A in your mind then scrap that idea. It is a very small area of town which is very pleasant but is actually also not really near the water (it is at least 2 streets away). We had dinner at the Spaghetti House which Jeff says he remembers coming to 25 years ago. Obviously it was pasta for dinner tonight and it was another enjoyable evening together. After dinner we walked down to the river which has risen even further since Sunday night. Janet says she was done today at the River and where the kids had paddled in the water on Sunday afternoon was now off limits and in fact cordoned off. It is amazing to see how much it has risen in 2 days. We walked back to the hotel through the park and under the Arch (which looks even more impressive at night) and back to our hotel.
It is short and sweet tonight for 2 reasons, firstly I am incredibly tired and need to get to bed and (2) I didn’t get to the do the interesting stuff!
Yours
P, H, S, M & C