My car still had its snow tires on it and I wasn't getting them off until like, Tuesday of this week. So I was like, okay, we can't take my car on the highway 'cause like, it's gonna be bad with the tires. So we took my husband's car, which is an electric car. And I thought we'd be fine, range-wise. In fact, I'd even looked for a place we could probably plug it in on our way up there if we stopped for lunch. Um. But we didn't end up plugging it for, in for lunch, but we went about our business. I really wasn't thinking about it. And that night, my husband said, "You know, we're gonna have to charge the car before we get home," and I was like, "Oh yeah." Um, you know, and I didn't want to, I didn't want to have to like, be sitting in the car for like, you know, two hours waiting for it to charge and he said, "No, no, no, it'll charge really fast if you can find, you know, just find us one of those plugs that has the rapid charging." I went online to do that and realized only then that the -- so, my husband's car is a Nissan Leaf, and it uses, I'm not gonna pronounce this right, it's like, I'm gonna call it Chad Demo (CHAdeMO). I'm sure it has a different name, but its charging plug is, is a Chad Demo size, and, um, at the time the car was manufactured, I think they thought more cars would do Chad Demo. But then, and my husband said, GM came out with its electric cars, it decided to use the same kind of plug that Teslas use, and so now most charging stations don't do Chad Demo. And now, in fact, even Nissan now sells cars with like both plugs, so you can do the other one, but my husband's car could only do Chad Demo. And I went online to look, to see, and there were only two places in the entire city of Midland that had Chad, Chad Demo. And I was like, "Oh, great." So what I told my husband I'd do was, "Well, I will, uh --" We only had 48 miles of charge and, you know, we had to get home. It was like, you know, 100 miles or…

I guess the first time, ironically, I can think of that somebody suggested I watch something and I thought I would hate it, uh, I was, I believe, seven years old. And my parents didn't get to catch this in theaters, so they brought it home as a rental on VHS. Um, and it was the first time we had a rental where you had two, two tapes that you had to switch out at a certain point in the movie. And that movie was Titanic, which is hilariously ironic that I thought I would hate it, uh, because it is my favorite movie. I watch it multiple times a year. I have it on VHS and VHS widescreen. I have a fan cut that includes all the deleted scenes, um, on my PC -- can't currently access it.  Titanic, when I first watched it, I, I remember the opening scene being like the, the waves and, you know? And they have the, the logo for Titanic show up or whatever? I was like, “Ugh, I'm not gonna like this movie,” and as I watched it, it, it struck me for a few reasons. I really resonated with Rose because my home life was terrible. And I, I'm not sure if the movie affected me this way, or I was already affected this way and I understood the movie better, but my childhood very much was focused on if I can find a man that has the ability to take me away from this home life and start a new life together, I, I have hope. Um, I always fantasized about somebody taking me away from my home life and, and completely leaving it and finding myself as a person and being free to do the things that I wanted to do. Um, and Rose does that in the movie, and I always, I think, held on to that. And then, as I got older, I fell in love with the historical accuracy of Titanic. I, at this point, Titanic -- I could really go without the love story. I really could. I would've rather watched a Titanic, maybe, that focused on an actual survivor story. And that's something I have, I've always admired as well about the movie is the different true events that they cram into this movie. Um, you know, just, just, um, the couple that dies…

You know what happened the other day that was kinda weird? I was wearing my Eloy shirt. Eloy is a German prog band. I guess, yeah. They're prog, they're all kind of like hard rock, and psych rock and, um, apocalyptic rock. Eloy is really good. Highly recommend checking out Eloy. They’re like one of my favorite bands at the moment and they have been for a couple years now. Um, anyways, I was wearing my Eloy shirt and it just said Eloy on it, and, um, I was at a restaurant in Traver-- in Grand Rapids. And this woman kept looking at me. Like a older woman. And I'm like, "Why does this lady keep making eye contact with me?" And so then we ate our meal, and I went to go leave and I walked by her and she goes, "Excuse me! I was just looking at your shirt and, and I was --" Um, what did she say? "I was looking at your shirt, and I was wondering like, what does your shirt mean?" And I was like, "It's, it's a, a German rock band." And she's like, "Well, that was the name of my father. And I -- and when I saw it, I just really felt his presence in this restaurant," like, "And he's been with me all day and I've been really feeling him here, and to see you with his -- the shirt with his name on it… I've never seen anyone else with his name." And she like was tearing up telling me this. And she's like, "And they're a German band?" And I'm like, "Yeah, Eloy." And she's like, "Well, thank you," like, "Thank you for telling me," or whatever, and she was like really emotional about it. And I was just like, "Oh my God, that's so amazing…"

In 1973, the guy that I had gone with in high school decided to split with me, and I spent the rest of '73 and '74, and part of '75 dating different people. Not shocking. I was in college and I went to Michigan State, of course. And the summer of '74, I went home and I was working at the bookstore.  One day in the bookstore, a friend of mine from high school came in and he asked me out and I started dating him a little bit. I always had gone out on occasion with one of my childhood friends. He was the kind of friend of mine that on different parts of the year, we would do things together, and if neither of us had a date for an event that we needed an event, we would go with the others because we had been friends since third grade or something and our mothers knew each other. And it was one of those things where, "Yes, you can take [diarist's name] to your grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary because she will behave appropriately," or, "You can take [friend's name] to your cousin's wedding because he will, he will be fine," and that kind of thing. So, we, we dated.  There was a guy that decided that -- I had met him on our trip to Europe and he was in Detroit for something and he decided to come and visit me. So one Monday in the summer of 1974, the guy from my trip to Germany had made arrangements to come and see me, and the guy that I dated in -- from high school that I had met at the bookstore, he decided to come over. My friend [same friend’s name] got off work and he decided that maybe we could go to a movie. So he came over, and of course, you know, there's no cell phones, there's no text messages, people just show up at your house. And the guy that I had gone out with at high school and in Michigan State who lived in Ypsi was over in the area, and he decided to come by my house. So there were four guys trying to see me in one afternoon that I didn't work in July. My mother looked at me, and she said, "What the heck is this?" And I said, "I…