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and last updated July 31st.,1999.
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
This is my window on the Mississippi world, folks...
And THIS is what I can see...
My room looks out over the Boomtown Casino and the Port of Biloxi, just around the point from the Gulf of Mexico and the main Casino strip...and this part of its coastline must be America's best-kept secret.
And the ride was worth the fare, since I must have found myself the most eloquent cabbie in the entire south who spent the entire twenty minute trip filling me in on even small details about the hotel...much to the chagrin of my fellow passenger, and Air Force Reservist who had been travelling for 24 hours to get here, (from Washington D.C.,) for a Reserve Exercise weekend, and who was chanting "Make him shut UPPP!" over and over!!!
So I wasn't really surprised when noone came running with umbrellas (for the rain had well and truly started just as we drove up), or to help with the luggage until the cabbie went to "stir them up!!"
But I managed to get a 'frig for the room, (extra $7 a day), though I have this sitting on a foldeing luggage trestle, the huge room having very little actual furniture in it, since they don't really want you to stay IN it!!!
And that night, when I finally set up my IBM connection, I found we had a new granddaughter....
...and that the hardbitten, man-of-the-world younger son has fallen into the role of proud father headfirst!....
Attatched is a snapshot of our new pride & joy in all her newborn glory - she
is a champion. Now all we have to do is find a name fit for her to wear.
Last night she went the full 12 rounds, with 16 1/2 hours of natural labour,
followed by several unsuccessful attempts to get her out with forceps,
followed by a non-emergency C-section. This was also difficult in that they
couldn't get her out even then, but after some time they realised that the
cord was wrapped around her neck, not once but twice! Anyway, she's
delicious and seems bright & well despite the trauma and Ruz is also over
the moon.
To those who have 'em already, now I know what you mean. To those who don't,
you truly don't know what you're missing.......
Today we have an accidental smile but it won't be long before we get the
real thing - she's as bright as a button and really alert, lifts her head
all the time and she stayed awake for about 8 hours between feeds since last
night. Needless to say she's got more energy than her mum & dad...
I changed the second nappy after delivery last night - picked a really good
one for the first effort but I did okay with Ruz's guidance.
Anyway, we both haven't come down to earth yet. The bub is like the best TV
channel you've ever seen and you never turn off (or if you do, you have to
make sure someone else watches it so they can tell you what happened).
Neighbours wasn't this good.
For stats, she was 3.66kg (8 lb, 1 oz.) at birth, has blue/black eyes, brown
hair, pink skin and really big feet...
Enough of that, we still don't have a name but check out the photo and let
me know if you see anything which would help you decide on an Islamic name
for a girl. Shortlisted possibles so far are Sana and Sahar, but this is not
something I've had to do before....any help you can offer??
Yahya, Ruz & Baby X.
Well, as a grandparent, now, of SEVEN, I guess I am in the right place, since, according to the cabbie, the Imperial Palace is aiming its net at the mature, retired market, and certainly, through the week , this is what they have...I counted more walking frames, wheeelchairs and little motorized carts , the first night, that I have seen all year, I think..
Some casinos make a feature of this "off-shore" facility, one even decking itself out as a full-rigged sailing ship, but in the Imperial Palace, the division between land and water is..er...seamless....I refused to believe, until JOhn had it confirmed for me by a security guard, that the casino floors are, indeed, moored on water!
As I remarked to my guide, this would be the VERY job for an ex-submariner...who would feel RIGHT at home!!
Taking a picture in the casino is a real experience. Even though I had with me Tom from the Publicity Department, who was wearing his badge, each time my flash went off a uniformed guard materialized and tgried to stop me! There must be NO pictures taken of folk gambling in Mississippi! When I pointed out to Tom and Ed., his immediate superior, that I had no trouble taking pictures in Reno, they said Mississippi hasn't worked out, yet, where it is going with all this, but that I could take pictures if I didn't show any people....
The pool, though, is on land..well, on a roof, actually..on the roof of the 12-story carpark, to be exact...and thpool tries very hard to make you feel you are somewhere ELSE...well, except for the Security Guard at the entrance...but it is a pleasant place which actually manages to catch whatever breeze blows in this torrid area..
So I am not certain whether it was the pool, or the hotel's frighteningly efficient air-conditioningt, or the smokey air in the casinos...but I caught a cold here...a gruesome "start in the throat and straight-to-the chest" type of cold...just as my feet were starting to heal up....
But John bought a power board (they call them PowerStrips, here), and I managed to get a straight-backed chair from Housekeeping, so that I was able to set up a computer desk of a kind..and the PX had the kind of dressings I had been using on my blisterered feet, and some Revlon makeup..and some Conditioner, which the shops here don't carry, possibly because the hotel has a Beauty Salon (which has NO semipermanent colors, though they are "working on it", their usual clients being, apparently, all well into the "permanent color" age bracket!!
John had it all organized that I would take him to Pensacola, next day, to catch his plane, and then keep his truck in his absence, since he doesn't like, he says, to think of me cooped up in this' high-class-prison!"
One interesting sidelight to the tragic John Kennedy Junior death..
NEXT BULLETIN FROM BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI !!!
March 22nd:
1998
June 4th:
BACK TO THE OPENING PAGE:
Please mail all your questions,answers and comment about this home page to:
robin_knight@bigfoot.com
©Robin Knight, 1999.
I hadn't meant to get a cab from the airport; the airport shuttle bus, I was assured, runs ever half hour..but this day, it didn't!
And the cabbie was persuasive, and it was very hot, standing with my bags outside the airport, and the day was blowing up to one of those sudden thunderstorms I learned about in Atlanta, last year..
In fact we had just flown down THROUGH it, having no other choice, and I know NOW why they don't feed us on these small planes!! I was VERY glad that the stomach I left some feet above or below me when the plane bucked...was empty!!
(It was only after I had unpacked that I realised I had brooken the nails on my right hand..pressing so hard on the back of the seat in front!!)
But I guess it did surprise me, after the smoothness of Marriot operations, to find myself standing in line, in roped enclosures like Australian banks now use, amongst a vintage car collection, for more than half an hour....just to check in!
....
And requests for an extra table, a table-light and a power-board producing a degree of consternation (and no results) from the housekeeping staff!
"...... 
***
But at weekends the prices go up..room charges,AND charges in the restaurants, and tour buses disgorge hundreds of younger folk...and, I suspect, the slot-machines are set to seem less willing to surrender their contents..
My "system" had been working very well, until the Friday night!
But a couple of days later, I was given a tour of the very bowels of the barge, where the hotel's clerical, sales and marketing staff work.... 
Which I said might give OTHER people the idea noone was using the place.....
I also suggested they get Tom a bigger badge!! 
And have had to call on the resources of the hotel's general store for cold remedies...!
And spend some time in bed, unfortunately, since I did feel REALLY terible, but it is a King-Sized bed, and a nice lady makes it for me every day and gives me lots of sympathy!!.
Especially since the hotel computer system can't cope with my 13 day booking, so that I have to keep going downstairs and queuing to check out and in again!!
And Mississippi host, John drove down from Hatttiesburg on my second evening here,despite having not arrived back from England until 3.30am, and having worked the day. He took me shopping for supplies to a HUGE Airforce Base PX, and to the base supermarket, and we ate, eventually, in a buffet restaurant at one of the other casinos
right on the coast, where John, as a retired serviceman , gets "Two For One", and which has
a high, domed ceiling designed to look and feel. like as early evening
summer sky, so you don't feel any urgency to leave.
But John was to work half the day, next day, and then hitch a ride on an Air Force place, and then rent a car for a 4 hour drive to Portland, Oregon, where his mother was still desperately ill after surgery. So I was a bit on edge about the time, all night. It was only later we discovered I was running on some other State's time, that it was an hour EARLIER than I thought....
Of course, this hotel, being a casino, has no radios and no clocks in its rooms!!
I told him I don't drive a manual in USA because it is just one thing too many to try to remember, but he couldn't understand my reluctance.. said I could open the window if I want airconditioning!!
It was only hours later I realised he didn't know Australians drive on the other side of the road!
Apparently the Kennedy family request for a Burial-At-Sea uncovered an embarrassing situation for the US Navy....they found 52 lots of stored remains awaiting that same watery final resting-place...
Seems noone had gotten around to actually scattering the assorted ashes...
But they are going to get right onto it now!!
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