July 9th. For our last night in Palo Alto, the temperature was in the mid-90's. During the day we had emptied the house of all of its contents, piece by piece, into the arms of our movers, who finished around 2 p.m., but then had to come back again because we opened our hall closet and discovered our 2 vacuum cleaners were still there! We tried to sleep in our second-floor room at the Cowper Bed and Breakfast, the fan valiantly trying to cool us off.
July 10. The next day, off to LA. Dinner at Fraiche in Culver City, a French place with excellent food. We arrived at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy in South Pasadena just in time to be served ice cream by great-nephew Riley, at his summer job. His parents joined us, Melinda trying hard not to say embarrassing things to her son, calling him by endearing names, etc.
July 11. Killing time, trying not to go anywhere where we thought my sister and her husband might be. Stayed in hiding, ready for the surprise for their 50th wedding annivesary. At 4 p.m. we joined 100+ well-wishers at San Marino Community Church, waiting for Kathleen to arrive with her parents. They were given a quick choice--be blessed or renew your vows (Janet: "What's a blessing?"--tough choice, it was), but they chose to do the vows, and headed down the aisle. I gave a short little speech and Riley showed the fantastic photo show he had assembled. Then hors d'oeuvres and drinks at the Artist's Inn, a nice way for all of Janet's friends to finally see her bed and breakfast.
On Monday, July 14, we flew to Hartford. On the flight I happened to look over Bill's shoulder as he was reading the NY Times, an article about the early Dutch days in New Amsterdam. The picture of my ancestor Cornelius Melyn (see below posting of March 13th) illustrated the article but mon dieu, the caption said it was a picture of Peter Minuit buying Manhattan from the Indians. So I wrote in to the Times that night at our hotel near the airport, and they printed a correction a few days later. And they thanked me in a separate email. Nice of them. On Tuesday we drove down to see our new house. Already had received the news that the truck with all our belongings would be delayed in coming, something about it being the busy part of the moving season, a shortage of drivers. So we've been getting to know our new town of Guilford, and the nearby towns of Branford and Madison. We have our library cards, of course, and our beach pass. There are two town beaches, one on the Sound with a nice view of salt marshes, the other on a lake--the latter is especially nice to swim in, and it's open til 7 in the evening.
Will have more to report once we actually move in...that should be on Thursday, July 24th. We're sending good thoughts to our driver. His name is Mike.
