Anne began clutching her pearls after she posed for this photo and realized that she wasn’t actually wearing her pearls in it. What kind of homemaker must she look like, doing her ironing, without her pearls on? The idea for this picture began as a way to show off her new ironing board extension. She built it and I helped. I was doubtful about the idea of it, but she made it happen.

Chris, our friend from Rochester, arrived by train last night. Frankly, I was amazed that his train showed up on time. We picked him up downtown at the train station and whisked off to his hotel, near our house. After he checked in, we went out for dinner at our local Greek place, the Olympia. Today, first thing, we met him at a nearby Starbucks. Then we all walked together in Tower Grove Park, which was one of Chris’s old haunts. Signs of last week’s big storm were still quite evident. After our stroll, we decamped back to Chris’s hotel, so that he could change rooms. We had lunch at also nearby Mai Lee, a Vietnamese restaurant that we like. After lunch we toured the Slammer, admired the Moroccan doors that he had restored and then toured the new Nubian exhibit. Well, maybe new isn’t the right word, since most of the artworks were thousands of years old. I’ll be fixing dinner tonight, so we’ll be staying in air conditioned shelter for the evening. It’s July. It’s Saint Louis and it’s hot, hot, hot!