Mickey And The Museum

Walked Kimball. Went to T.O.P.S.and was pleased to weigh in at 129.5, a loss of 2.3. The program? Not worth mentioning for a variety of reasons.
After breakfast, I suddenly started thinking about my long-time (roughly 60 years) friend, Michaelanne (Mickey) Eldridge. We had been neighbors when we were in back-to-back apartments in Ewing--ours on Concord Avenue--and when we bought homes, ours on Lower Ferry, the Eldridges in Fleetwood Village. Micky and Art had three sons, Gary, David, and Kennie, roughly approximating my first three children in age. Mickey and Art divorced, he died, and she moved to Arizona years ago. I had her number from there, but it was no longer valid; I found her current one and her address on the Internet. Called her and we--figuratively speaking--fell into each others' arms. We talked for--get this--more than an hour and what fun it was.
Mickey is six months older than I am; both Gary and Ken are divorced, neither have children, and she hasn't been in touch with her middle son, David, for ten years. She now lives in Phoenix and Gary lives with her. What's incredible to me is that Mickey has no electronic devices at all: no desk top, no laptop,  no tablet, and no mobile phone, so no Internet. Gary has some, but she doesn't want to use it. Therefore, we decided we'd write and call back and forth.  I want to dig up some old pictures and send her copies. I'm so glad we re-connected; it's been 24 years.
As planned, Suzanne and I left at precisely at 2:20 to get to the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology (aka "the bird museum") in Camarillo at 3:00. This proved to be a fascinating place, one of only a handful in the world. The collection includes more than 1,800 mounted bird specimens, 20,000 nests, 56,000 bird skins, and an astounding 800,000 eggs. There was only a small family group with us when we took the guided tour with Rene, the collections manager and Shannon, the curatorial assistant.
Chatting with the latter, I was interested to hear that her mother and stepfather were moving to Singapore shortly; he's to be the editor of a paper there. Shannon has been to Singapore, as well as Malaysia and Cambodia. It was great to talk to her.
The museum fascinated me, in particular, the eggs, especially the gigantic one from the extinct elephant bird. Here are Suzanne and I in front of it:

Anyway, it was a different and interesting excursion. On the way home, Stella called from the library, wondering if I was walking. No, but we can get together later. Later, Betty called to say she had another doctor's appointment on Tuesday, so not to come to SB.
I had baked two large onions, which I first marinated, in my newly-acquired onion baker and, with chicken and spaghetti squash, had them for dinner. Yummy, yum, yum!