Neil Armstrong mural

Wednesday
Today was Laura’s last day before returning to Kuwait. She had wanted to arrange an annual physical with the doctor while she was over and that was this morning, and took forever - more in waiting than the actual appointment, though they are quite thorough. When she finally got home, we managed to get the final pieces of sky in the jigsaw puzzle we have been working on - I say we, but it was really Laura that did most of it - but it was very satisfying seeing the completed puzzle!
We then headed downtown to have lunch at a Mexican restaurant that had been recommended to Laura by several of her friends. Roger and I have passed it several times before, as it is near the Aronoff Center, and we had noticed they always seem to be doing good business, but we had never tried it. The food was really excellent - we will definitely be going back! The mural depicted in my Blip is just across the intersection from the restaurant, on the Fifth Third Bank Headquarters, and depicts astronaut Neil Armstrong, who was a Wapakoneta Ohio native. The mural was created by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra, who completed this after wrapping up a massive mural in Rio for the 2016 Olympics. After lunch we drove out to Shawnee Lookout Hamilton County Park for another frigid walk. Unfortunately, although the morning had been sunny with blue skies, by this time the sun had disappeared. As we were approaching the Park, we crossed over the Great Miami River, largely frozen over, with just a small channel of freely moving water. When we pulled into the car park we were greeted by this huge but very friendly Irish Wolf hound and his owner, who were just returning from their walk. We had a brief chat, but it wasn’t really the weather for standing around talking! In the evening after dinner, Laura showed us her pictures from a recent weekend in Oman, then she had to finish her packing and we got to bed relatively early. It’s been lovely having her home for almost two weeks, and I was feeling quite sad at the thought of having an empty house again. However, we will definitely be seeing her again in England in August, and maybe before that in the Spring.