I just spent an hour this morning sorting out my folded shirt collection. For the last thirty years (or at least the thirty before I moved out here five years ago) I had all my suits and all my collared. shirts custom-made. This had little to do with an affectation and everything to do with the inability to buy suitable and proper-fitting clothes off the rack. For casual clothes I could find a growing selection…
Yesterday we went to see the new Steve Coogan movie called The Penguin Lessons. I must admit that I had not heard of the movie before we booked it, but I am a big fan of Steve Coogan and his co-star Jonathan Pryce. This is a true life story set in 1976 Argentina and is about a Brit named Tom Mitchell. It is directed by Peter Cattaneo, who you may remember burst on the scene…
We have determined that the natural wonders we are experiencing on this trip are its highlights, and nothing is more interesting in nature than the wildlife that inhabits it. Our most memorable part of riding through Tierra el Fuego Park was happening on a not-so-wild brown fox that was busy scamming the tourists for food. I’ve seen many a dog that looked just like that fox, but few dogs can draw tourist attention the way…
This is the fourth time we have taken a cruise on Viking. Three of those times have been on ocean cruises where one was on a river cruise. If you look at the map, we started with a river cruise in Eastern Europe doing the Blue Danube run from Budapest to Nuremberg. Then we did the Baltic Cruise starting in Iceland and going from Stockholm to St. Petersburg and back to Denmark, hitting Finland, Estonia,…
One of the busiest and most diversely demanding jobs on this ship is clearly that of the client service officer. To begin with, imagine that guy on the Progressive commercials who has the job of training people not to act like and turn into their parents. Whoever invented that commercial deserves an all-time achievement award for understanding the modern human psyche of aging and general human nature. What that person probably doesn’t even realize is…
I have spoken before about my extended cadre of siblings. The two that I have been closest to for the longest (other than my full sisters, Kathy and Barbara) are Diane and Sondra. Back in 1962, when we were living in Madison, Wisconsin during my mother’s graduate years spent there getting her Ph.D., my mother got thinking that for various reasons it might be a good idea for me to go visit my father in…
Yesterday, on a quiet Saturday afternoon found me finished with my weekend round of planting the sixteen new rustic pots that I carefully placed (and Kim even more carefully adjusted in their placement) along the stone Patio wall on the north side of our barbecue area. It was then that Kim told me that Doctor Zhivago was on Turner Classic Movies. I have become so used to on-demand streaming of movies that it unsettled me…
Ever since I was little, I have had the very bad habit of biting my nails. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but I think it was when we lived in Wisconsin and I was in early grade school. Nail biting is called onychophagia and is a common habit that affects around 30% of the population. The obvious and default cause relates to psychological factors like anxiety and stress relief (many people bite their…
As most of us settle into whatever retirement housing configurations we prefer, it is hard to deny that we all want to have nearby friends to commune with on a daily basis. These are not replacement friends for the people we have known and loved for years and with whom we seek to gather regularly as circumstances allow, but rather a new set of friends that share our usually mundane and common interests like gardening…
Last night my friend Mike sent me a CNN article on Chile and the collapse of their electric grid due to excessive summer heat, drought and infrastructure overburdening. Yikes! Seems like Chile is experiencing a combination of California and Texas calamities just as we are heading down to begin our cruise. Mike seemed a bit pensive about it all where I felt like I wanted to take it more in stride. I take some solace…