June 29-July 4, 2001

[I posted this story originally just a month or so after the events described herein. – rpj]

It seems a lifetime ago now, and in some ways I suppose it was.

The kids [David and Emily were 14 and 12 at the time] arrived from Atlanta Saturday morning, June 29th.

I really can't recall what we did that first day. Did we go see a movie? Did we rent one? I'm sure we played lots of rummy, regardless.

The next day we headed to San Antonio, where we checked in at the Radisson. That evening we headed down to the Riverwalk, toodled about the place, took a quick peek at the Alamo ("that's it?"), and then had dinner at Casa Rio, which was probably the first place I ever ate at in San Antonio (my first trip was in 1986, if I recall correctly, for ALA Midwinter). We had a good joke on David, who was being his usual 14 y.o. klutzy self. He sat down on the side of the table right next to the gate for loading and unloading the pontoon boats. "You are NOT going to sit there," I exclaimed. "I'm NOT fishing you out of the River!"

It had rained on us pretty steadily on the way over on Sunday and it was still looking rainy on Monday so rather than going to SeaWorld we headed a little north of San Antonio to Natural Bridge Caverns. Really quite impressive and it reminded me very much of the time my parents and brothers and I went to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. I still want to do that with David and Emily at some point.

Afterwards we headed back to town and stopped at Northstar Mall to do some birthday shopping for Emily, who, at 12, is now quite the young lady (i.e., she's "blossomed," something I hold her full-figured paternal grandmother directly responsible for…!) We wound up buying her a tubetop and a cool wrap around print overshirt that Jeremy found when we were looking at other stuff. Emily was quite pleased with the purchases.

That evening we had dinner at Ibiza, an Italian place on the Riverwalk. It wasn't until after we were already there that we figured out it was really just part of the Hilton. Sloppy service and uninspired food but we can't guess right all the time, can we…?

Afterwards we went over to Rivercenter Mall and watched Swordfish, the new John Travolta flick. Totally unrealistic but pretty exciting and entertaining even so. Lots of "bang-bang shoot-em up," as my dad would have called it. We were particularly interested in it because a friend of ours, Rex Spencer, designed one of the major set pieces (the desk that Hugh Jackman's insanely complicated / expensive / unrealistic computers were set up…)

The next day we hit SeaWorld fairly early (11 ish, maybe?) and had a great time of it. Jeremy dragged us all over the park, dashing back and forth from one side to the other. "Are we all having fun?" he asked. "Yes!" we replied. "Who's having the MOST fun?" he asked. "You are! It's hot and our feet are tired…!"

He was so delighted with the killer whales. I think he could have sat there and watched them all day long. "Wouldn't that be a cool job?" he kept saying.

We crashed at the hotel for a while, then flipped through the restaurant listings / San Antonio guide and spied the listings for Alamo Quarry, a set of retail shops, restaurants, movie theatres and so forth built in and around an old cement factory. It was just what we were looking for. We had dinner at the Canyon Café, a really nice chain of Southwest-oriented steak restaurants, checked out Whole Earth Provisions (where Jeremy found a nifty birthday care for his sister, Jocelin), and then stopped in Amy's for ice cream which we ate while watching a spectacular south Texas sunset.

In our seven years together Jeremy and I had plenty of great vacations with the kids but none of them was nicer than San Antonio 2001.

Thank you, darlin' Jeremy, for making it possible for us to have such a good time!

 Twenty Years Later 

I have neglected this blog for nearly a dozen years but now that Facebook no longer allows you to preserve content, it's time to resurrect it.

Sunday, July 4, 2021, will mark the 20th anniversary of the massive cerebral hemorrhage (the result of a ruptured aneurysm of the inner carotid artery), that killed my first husband, Jeremy Corry. He was all of 30 years old and we had been together seven years. 

Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting what I wrote about what transpired around that event. It used to reside on a website on a domain that I no longer maintain. Here's hoping (can't say I'm optimistic but you never know) that Blogger will provide some stability.