It was hard to sleep last night knowing we had to be up early for our 9:50 flight. I was awake at 3:30 and could not go back to sleep. Yesterday, the hotel desk clerk said we should be at the airport three hours before departure. As it turned out, we got there and through all the lines and screenings well before 7:30 when they first opened the hall leading to our gate. I never know who to believe about times at airports. We could have slept a lot longer and still...

Today breakfast in the hotel was followed by very un-birthday activities. Philip worked on school stuff and had to deal with an alert from the credit card company that his account number had been compromised. He will get a new card delivered to our apartment building in Cork. In the meantime, he cannot use the card in the States, but can use it in Ireland until the new one arrives. He will need it to rent the car when we arrive since good insurance coverage is in...

After breakfast in the hotel again, we checked out and left to drive around Cleburne a bit. Philip had looked up and found the addresses of two homes where Aunt Nora and Uncle Doc lived about a hundred years ago. We also had an address for his office. The home on Willingham may have been there, but we were not sure. We found the house that should have been next door to it. Next to it was a fairly large open space that may have been enough room for a small house....

This Hampton in Lubbock seemed fairly new or well-kept and service was fine. The best feature was an exhaust fan in the bathroom which I haven’t seen a lot of in a while. They were doing some construction on the building. During check-in when I asked the desk clerk about what noise level to expect from the work, he assured me that they were working on the roof, and we shouldn’t hear anything in our ground floor room. Also, the work was not scheduled t...