13-14-15 July

Yes, three days in one post! On Sunday Liv started feeling pretty puny. She had a bit of fever so we did not do much other than in the house stuff. On Monday she was the same and only wanted to sleep. I took the opportunity to go to Norfolk to tour the WWII Liberty Ship John W. Brown which was in port for only 4 days.

She is one of only two operating Liberty Ships in the world. The Brown was built in 1942 and was one of 2700 Liberty Ships that broke the German blockade on Europe. She is full of old technology.

For example, she has a steam engine with three pistons. The largest piston is 72" across.

The engine runs at 76 rpm, that's so slow that the engineers could squirt oil as needed while the engine was running...and actually put their hands on the moving parts to make sure they were getting enough oil. The engine did not even have a transmission. To go in reverse you have to stop the engine and restart it in the opposite direction! Anyway the tour was pretty neat.

Liv did not get better, running a fever of 101-102 until we took her to see the doctor on Tuesday. He referred us to the local children's hospital for some tests and they gave her medicine for pneumonia. She is now home and feeling much better, without a fever. We expect her to feel puny for a few more days so we will not be doing many fun things for a while. Actually, reading Junie B. books is a fun thing and that's exactly what we are doing.