In the winter of 2004 (doesn’t seem like it was that long ago! is that what 😉 wisdom 😉 does, diffuse time?), we received tickets to The Open Championship at St. Andrews, Scotland, for our birthdays and Christmas. Superb tickets on the stands right next to the Royal & Ancient club house, overlooking the 1st and 18th holes.
out-ra-geous!
Well, back up, back up! That happened later. Ehem! In the autumn of 2004, a friend and I went to get flu shots at a local pharmacy during our lunch hour. I told the lady at the pharmacy my name (Marinés*),
spelled it, and re-pronounced it slowly
(too slowly, I guess): Ma-ri-nés. Ok, so we get inoculated, go back to the office, and on our way in, I look at the card before slipping it into a pocket of my handbag … and laugh.
“What?” My friend eyed me sideways.
“look at this.”
“Bleeping idiot!” Or something of the sort, she retorted.
The pharmacist 
wrote my name on the record as Mary Ness. Weird because I also gave her my last name — so what did she do with that??? We joked about me being related, a cousin, actually, we said, of Loch Ness. See where this is going? I mean,
we laughed about it for days,
probably longer. Then mid-November rolls around, and we receive the gift of Open tickets — an annual golf tournament played in the UK. This particular one in St. Andrews, Scotland! The Open of Opens, at the home of golf, where it all started. I couldn’t wait to tell my friend about the upcoming summer trip! I went into her office, trying not to smile too much, but obviously unable to contain myself.
“What?”
“I am going to see my cousin next year.”
She frowned. “What? Which cousin?”
“My cousin??? Got tickets to—”
“You’re going to Scotland to see your cousin Loch Ness!?!”
anyone overhearing that would have been like 🤯 =)
And no, I did not visit Nessie on that trip. It was strictly for attending The Open golf tournament and exploring the city of Edinburgh a bit; there was no time for anything else. Uh, not true, we did other stuff, but Nessie was far away and there was no time to venture off.
in 2015, i went to scotland again
Blessings upon blessings! This time we drove through the country and stayed in Inverness, very near Nessie, but did not visit either. We golfed two of the glorious days there, and the others were a tad gloomy, so we toured castles and ate long delicious meals instead, which, as you know by now, is one of my favorite things.
