Visits etc.

I haven't posted in awhile because I have been doing a bit of entertaining!!  Several years ago, I reconnected with my best friend from high school whom I had lost for about 40 years!  Since then we have gotten together at least once a year if not more.  She lives in Florida but comes up once a year to North Carolina for a bridge tournament put on by the local bridge club.  She took up bridge about five years ago because of another high school friend's encouragement  -- she is an extremely good bridge player!!  The first year she came up for the tournament, she came only with her partner for bridge.  The following year she brought up two additional ladies and insisted that I be her partner.  This was rather daunting as I hadn't played bridge in almost fifty years and things have changed considerably in the bidding.  This was my third year of playing in the tournament with her and even though I only play once a year, we consistently score master points (which don't count for me as I don't belong to the bridge league).  I actually feel like a bridge player again!!  This past week she came again with two friends, for one it is her third visit and the other her second.  We had a grand time, playing cards and visiting the Wilmington sights!!  This is a view from a boat ride we took one day when the temps were in the 80s! We ate at this wonderful little restaurant called George right on the Cape Fear River -- it is the building with the white awnings.  The food is generous and really good!!

This was one of the petroleum storage facilities at the Port on the Cape Fear River.  They paid a lot of money to have this painted and it would be great if they were all painted!!

Jean and Vicki decided to go for a walk along the beach one evening after dinner.

This is the four of us after a victorious bridge session.  We came in first as a team winning all our rounds.  I am the second from the left.  

The Azalea Festival (one of the big yearly festivals) isn't scheduled until  next week.  The weather has been so warm, though, that there will be few azaleas left to bloom.  They were glorious when we were touring around last week!

There has been constant bulldozer noise at night as they are renourishing the beaches down here.  These pipes are strung for at least a mile along the beach with a ship pumping sand from the ocean up onto the beach.

This is one of the bulldozers and the end of the pipe from which sand is spewing forth!!  It is quite a process and it has been done about every two or three years since we have been down here.  The sand gets pulled out and shoals created and then man comes in, breaks down those shoals and pumps the sand back to the beach.

I visited the deer down at the Air Force Recreation area.  They have closed off the road that I usually go down so I had to look at them from a distance (about a herd of ten).  I then decided to turn around and all of a sudden they came running up the field to greet me -- I thought I was going to be surrounded!!  They are obviously used to someone feeding them from a car!!  I still haven't seen the big buck though.  In another few months when I will be gone, I am sure there will be lots of fawns.  Hopefully some will still have their spots when I come down in the fall.

I am back to sewing, finishing up a couple of blouses for my daughter and then sewing more purses.  Had to buy more fusible fleece as I actually finished off a bolt!