the 13th comment from Raesha ... congratulations! Thanks go to Steve who's always willing to draw names from a hat, or this time from a bowl.
Lots of interesting guesses from dried fruit and old lingerie to old sewing tools. Well, as many of you guessed the goodie that's on its way to me is an old Singer Featherweight 222K model. I picked it out two weeks ago from a very nice gentleman in England. It should be arriving this Thursday. I can't wait to give her a spin other than the few bits of sewing I did already.
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I've been away from the computer because Steve and I were on a vacation to England, Poland and then Scotland for the last two weeks. We just made it back home an hour ago. Boy, was security extra tight at Heathrow airport. The police had their MP5s at the ready. And we didn't realize that just as our plane was taking off, the incident at Glasgow airport was happening. We only found out about it when we landed at LAX.
Good to know that there was extra manpower. Yet I find it a bit disconcerting that few of the American TSA officials, or airline crew bothered to check my passport thoroughly. It still has my maiden name with only a small addendum with my married name at the back of it. This will be changed as soon as it's time to renew it. But how secure are the extra security measures when only 2 out of 10 people ever notice that the name on the ticket and the name on the front of the passport don't match up?
Oh, and we've had the worse luck with luggage this trip. On Monday British Airways lost three of our bags coming from Poland to Edinburgh via Heathrow. They managed to find one and send it up to Elgin, Scotland the second night. The other two bags never showed up. They may be lost at Heathrow, who knows? Then today at LAX we waited and waited for the remaining bag and it never appeared. It wasn't just us though, lots of people have been screwed by Heathrow airport's bad baggage handlers. If it was only today's bag, then I would have said that it was because of the extra security measures. But that still doesn't account for 45 people without luggage on Monday. Usually we don't have that much luggage, but we were traveling to different climates. Plus with the 1 carry-on only rule that the UK has, it's difficult. Luckily we always keep our cameras as part of the carry-on, but it would have been nice to have more than two sets of tops to wear for the last week.
I'm super tired and will save the good stuff about the trip later. Some highlights were seeing the F-1 cars at Silverstone, England and then the very emotional walk through Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. That one deserves its very own post.