Key

Key

As some of you may or may not know, I recently bought a car. It was a replacement for my old beater that I'd been driving around in for the last 13 years and quarter-million miles. The new purchase was a used car. I believe I've probably bought my last new car. I just don't think you're getting the value from a new car that you get with a “newer” used car. And a lot of cars last a long time nowadays so you're not taking as great a chance on a previously-owned one as might have been the case years ago.

This wasn't the first automobile purchase I've made in my life. I've bought others over the years, both new and used. So I'm not totally clueless when dancing the “buy a car” cha-cha. The first step in this dance is the decision about what make and model would be acceptable. (1-2 cha, cha, cha.) The next step is the calculation as to what we can afford. (3-4 cha, cha, cha.) The last step in the dance is to amble around the car lots and to complete the dance between the salesmen and yourself. (5-6 cha, cha, cha.)

Been there and done that. I'm certainly not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but not totally a doofus either.

This time around we used the internet instead of hitting a half-dozen lots and did most of our looking and selecting online. This time the dance was much easier.

So...

We ended up buying a 6-year-old Honda Civic. A nice, dependable car – not heavy on the flashiness but stylish. At least in our eyes. We were comfortable with the choice and liked the ride and the feel of the car. And it was our third Civic. The comfort level was high.

After having the car about a week we realized that it only came with one key. Uh-oh! This was a fault that we needed to rectify before too much time went by as my wife and I always have a spare of each others keys in case of one of us locks their keys in the car or does some other stupid move. We've always done that.

Before continuing I want you to be aware that our previous cars were 1998 models. That's important to the rest of the story.

We'd received a small income tax return check from the state late last week, so I told the wife it'd be a good time to get the spare key made for her.

We went to a local hardware store on Saturday morning to have this little chore accomplished. I'd gone to that particular store a couple years ago with my son to get a spare key made for his car, another 1998 model, an Accord this time. It was one of the newer “smart” keys and had a chip in it. The hardware store was able to make a new one for him and program it at a cost of around $50. I thought that was an atrocious price but, what can you do?

You see, I'm one of the old timers and remember when getting a spare key was a dollar or two. So you got a few, stuck one in the house, gave one to each member of the family and no one was bothered to give up their key so someone else could borrow the car. It was the way things were done then and it was the way things were done on our older cars.

I guess life was simpler then.

Anyhow, we went into the hardware store and I told the man there that we needed a key made. When I showed him my key he stopped me and said that they couldn't make copies there. It was one of the newer “special” ones and was unable to be copied by him. He showed me the reason. The keys edges, where the grooves on a regular key would be were smooth. The grooves were on another layer of the key (both sides) and were grooved on that, exterior layer. In other words, it took a very special machine to cut that key. Apparently ones that weren't available to anyone but a dealer.

That news disheartened me. I knew that a dealer would charge more. But I didn't know HOW much more. I thanked the man at the hardware store, took a deep breath and headed out the door and up the road to the Honda dealership.

I pulled in, parked the car and went to the parts department inside our local dealership. I showed the technician the key and said I wanted a copy made. And that started the process. They had to get the VIN number of the car to make the key. They also had to move the car into the shop. Haven't got a clue for what reason.

An hour later (that's not a misprint – it was an hour) I was handed my new key and a bill. Let me relate the charges for your perusal.

Charge one: One key – blank $58.02

Charge two: Programming charge $25.50

Charge three: Shop supplies $3.83

Total charges: $92.81.

I want you to read that again. NINETY-TWO DOLLARS AND EIGHTY-ONE CENTS!!! For a KEY!!!

I can feel the anger again rise in me as I type this. For a doggone KEY! Something that used to cost a dollar or two! Something that should STILL cost a dollar or two!

I looked at the new key laying in my hand. Not gold-plated. Not ruby/diamond incrusted. Not finely-wrought silver or platinum. Steel, plastic and an electronic chip.

Once more before I continue – NINETY-TWO DOLLARS AND EIGHTY-ONE CENTS!!!

Sigh...

I think the shop charges that they padded to the bill at the end were the ne plus ultra of the charges. Shop charges (and I quote) “cover disposals of fluids, tires, rags, filters and any hazardous materials.” I'm no mechanic, but gee whiz, Nelly. You made me a KEY!

Sigh (again)...

So I told my wife to be careful of the new key as there wouldn't be another one.

By the way, I tried the key and it did work. Thank God for small miracles.

As an aside to those who read my last blog about saying goodbye to my old car. My neighbor bought it. I told him all the things that were wrong with it but he said he was a good mechanic and could fix most of her ailments. He had the asking price in cash so I handed her over to him. He's already put new rubber on her wheels and is getting her clutch repaired. I think she's in good hands. And... I get to see her most days!

That's nice.

Welcome Home

Welcome Home

In the mid-1700's there was a word coined that's always fascinated me. This word referred to the attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals or non-human things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts such as god(s). The term coined was anthropomorphism. Characters from the story “Alice in Wonderland” or “Toy Story” are prime examples of how the term could be used. The inanimate toys in Toy Story and the fanciful animals and such in Alice were given human attributes.

You might wonder why I'm starting this blog with a lexicon lesson from several hundred years ago on a 5-syllable tongue twister of a word . Trust me that it's germane to the subject of the blog. And, whether you know it or not, most of us anthropomorphise all of the time.

Do you have a pet or know someone who has a pet? Does it have a name? Do the owners treat the pet like one of the family most of the time? Bingo – you're anthropomorphising! How about on TV... Gabby Hayes jeep on the Roy Roger's Show was named Nelly-belle. Knight Rider was about an automobile named KITT. Mr. Ed was a horse, of course! My Mother the Car. Etc., etc., and more etc.

I'll bet you could name a dozen more without even breaking a sweat. In fact, when you get right down to it, humans seem to have a predilection to name things around them and to give them human attributes, at least to some degree.

Here's a few more that cross my mind. Ol' Betsy was the name of Davy Crockett's rifle. General Lee was the name of the Duke's of Hazzard's race car. Old Yeller, of course. And who can forget Pyewacket the cat from the movie “Bell, Book and Candle”. Then there was “Kukla, Fran and Ollie”, only one of which was human. How about the Transformers? And pretty much all of the Disney animal characters. B. B. King's guitar was named Lucille. And don't forget the ancients who personified the wind, rain, lighting, sun, moon and innumerable gods with human attributes. Take a look at any Greek, Roman or Norse mythology book.

The list goes on and on.

Which leads me, albeit in a convoluted way, to the fact that my family has recently gained an new addition. You might say after hearing this bit of news, “Whoa, old fellow. You're a bit long in the tooth to be adding family members. What gives?”

So let me tell you a bit about her.

She's a 2005 edition who was made in Marysville, Ohio - a little northwest of Columbus. Her color is a beautiful shade of midnight blue called Fiji Blue Pearl and she has black interior trim and a handsomely patterned gray upholstery. She sports a peppy 1.7 liter, 4-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. She's got some miles on her but still looks and runs as sweet as the day she was made.

As you can now see from the previous description, it's obvious that we've just purchased a “previously-owned” car. A Honda Civic to be precise. We'd been in the market for a while, knowing that my old car, a '98 Toyota Corolla with almost a quarter-million miles on her, was approaching a “put some real money into me NOW or get a replacement and let someone else fix me up” point in time. I still think she's got quite a few miles left in her, but needs some expert TLC to make her purr like she should.

So we looked around here and there and finally found one in the make, model and general ballpark asking price we were looking for. Unfortunately it was 150 miles away. We decided that it was probably worth the trip, so last weekend we drove to Bowling Green, Ohio and were introduced to her. After a bit of a walk-around where we admired her lines and how she differed from our older Honda, we hopped into her and took off for a test drive. She ran sweetly, had a comfortable ride and seemed quite well-behaved on the road.

I liked her.

My wife also liked her which was a GIANT selling point!

We did some more car shopping the rest of the weekend (that's a story for another day) before agreeing that the Bowling Green car was our top choice. I called the dealer on Sunday to tell him we wanted her and a week later we went back to pick her up.

After the passing of the check to the dealer and the fastening-on of the 30-day tag, we headed on home, wending our way through the flat-lands of northwestern Ohio and back toward the hillier country near home. We made sort of a 2-car eastbound Honda parade – the newer blue one which I drove followed by our old standby green one driven by my wife.

And on that trip homeward I began to quietly talk to the new car, the new member of the family, in my mind as if it were an orphan which we had adopted and were taking home to meet the family. This is the way to your new house, I said to her in my mind. We'll drive southward until we get near Findlay, then turn east. Then we'll go by Upper Sandusky, Bucyrus and Galion. Then on through Mansfield and we're starting to get closer. Finally, as we pass over the last hill and head downward we can start to see the first of the evening lights of Wooster, your new home.

I guided my new friend up the last miles of highway and onto the city streets where her tires would now frequently roll and swung her into the driveway and, at last, to her new home. I turned off the engine, patted the steering wheel and whispered quietly, “Welcome home, little girl. Welcome home.”

Now I'll have to find some way to break it to the old one that she's going to get a new owner and a new home before too long.

But it won't be easy. She's always been a bit stubborn. But if I clean her up and shine her up I think I can persuade her.

But, in any event, I'm sure glad I don't anthropomorphise my belongings!

Anticipation

ANTICIPATION

I'm so doggone lazy these days. Or maybe lazy isn't quite the correct appellation. Maybe the correct one would be “easily diverged”. Or perhaps “easily sidetracked”. I say this in apology for not writing in this blog for a million years or so it seems. Oh, I always have good intentions to do so. I always intend to sit down and click out a masterful edition of the blog. I've thought about it countless times. And I have absolutely wonderful ideas for subject matter, too. I'll sit and imagine how I'll word this and how I'll phrase that. I'll have the first page or two almost written in my head when I stop and maybe take a quick look at Facebook or check my email. Or maybe someone will say something to me to interrupt my reverie. Something seems to always be there that is interesting or requires my attention and... away I go doing something other than blogging. And all the good ideas and great intentions vanish in the haze.

It's amazing how many great blogs you've missed!

So let's make a start on this one and see where the road takes us. To greatness or to mediocrity. Or to just a blog kind of blog.

I've spent a lot of time recently daydreaming about an upcoming event that is situated a long, long time in the future. So far in the future, if truth be told, that making too many plans now would be silly. It's much too far down the road. And I suppose one of my many failings is to jump the gun on things like this, to over-analyze and to examine a task from way too many different aspects. To visualize, to anticipate, to drive myself crazy trying to dot all the i's and to cross all the t's long, long before any of that is necessary.

To get specific, my wife and I have put a down payment on a cruise. We did it a week or two ago along with a friend from work and her husband. We're heading out on the Carnival Glory to, as Carnival likes to describe it, the exotic Eastern Caribbean. All that's entirely well and good and we're all delighted that we've made the commitment and are really, really happy that we're going to do it. The only drawback is that it's 400 days in the future, give or take a few. FOUR HUNDRED DAYS! That's a doggone long time! The act of booking this far in advance was smart for several reasons. First of which is you get a better rate on your cruise by booking far, far in advance. Second is that you get a much better choice of cabin. Later on your choices might be much more limited. So that's all to the good. But... It's 400 days away! FOUR HUNDRED DAYS! You can't even start looking at airline flights from home to the cruise port for another few months as they, unlike the cruise lines, don't book that far into the future.

So, for the aforementioned 400 days I have to sit and try to relax. Try to not get too excited about going on another cruise even though I am. Try to shift into quiet waiting mode to get through the next half-dozen months or so until I can again ratchet up into active planning mode.

But in the meantime I find myself watching videos on YouTube of cruisers on “our” boat cruising from “our” departure port to “our” destinations. Watching the happy faces and the blue waters and the welcoming palm trees.

And that thought brings me to another aspect of the upcoming cruise.

The anticipation.

With a lot of people, the anticipation of a looked-forward-to event is torture of a particularly evil kind. The hours drag, the days seem to take forever to pass and time seems to stand still. Or even start to go backward!

But I belong to a contrarian school of thought. I like to savor the anticipation, to luxuriate in the time between initiating the wait for an event and the event itself.

Let's face the cold reality, a one-week cruise is going to go by in a flash. In a veritable instant of time. We will no more than board the cruise ship and it will be time to pack up and leave it. One week – zip – cruise over and done. Just about that fast. Trust me, it will seem that way.

But the time between now and then? My friend, you can take that cruise a dozen time in your imagination – a hundred times. You can lovingly examine each facet of the upcoming cruise in detail, each leg, each port, each sea-day. You can feel the softness of the cabin's bed, savor the succulent taste of new foods, visualize the incredible blueness of the sea as your great white ship sails through it. You can marvel in the exotic beauty of a Caribbean island coming into view over the bow of your magic carpet – your cruise ship. You can hear the musical patois of the islanders talking in the markets and the sightseeing venues of the various ports-of-call and feel your feet start to move in rhythm to the Calypso music floating in the air. You can even feel the velvety caress of the ocean water as you glide over the surface and watch the beautiful fish swimming below you as you snorkel above them in the warm sea.

All of these wonderful things are available to you anytime! Just close your eyes and... you're there!

So I look at videos of the Carnival Glory gliding into an exotic port, close my eyes and I'm there, standing on the deck and watching the green of the approaching island rise above the crystal blue sea. I watch another video of a port we will visit, close my eyes and I'm there also, walking the old cobblestone streets, eating the fresh seafood, feeling the warm tropical breezes cool my sun-reddened skin and watching the white puffball clouds sail over the island in the azure sky.

So when the cruise date actually does arrive, I'll be an old salt! I'll have walked all the ship's corridors many times already, disembarked onto Caribbean islands countless times, made wonderful friends of shipmates and islanders and watched dozens of crimson sunsets over calm aquamarine seas.

Four hundred days to go? Over a year? A piece of cake! And if you're a Carnival sailor, you'll know... it's a piece of chocolate melting cake!

Late December Saturday

Late December Saturday

It hadn't snowed in the last few days, but it had been cold. The temperatures recently had been hard pressed to exceed 20 degrees on any day and that had only been by a degree or two. I slipped into my old Toyota that Tuesday afternoon, cranked the engine and started my commute up the road toward my place of work. I was glad that the snow was gone for the moment and that the roads were again easy to drive, albeit coated with the salt rime that was common on Ohio roads in the wintertime. I pushed a cassette tape into the car's player as I started my drive, anxious to hear the last chapter or two in the talking book I'd been listening to for the past week. It was a thriller and the most exciting part was just beginning to unfold. There was this girl, you see, and she had went and... Well, I won't go into it right now. Suffice it to say that she was in big, big trouble and I was extremely curious to see if she was going to get out of it. Or not. Most of the time in most of these kind of books the protagonist or co-protagonist does escape. You expect it and enjoy discovering how the author manages to save him or her. But once in a while you get surprised and the character meets their doom. It always keeps you on your toes while you read one of these books to try to figure out if it was one of those kind.

I was rooting that it wasn't.

About the half-way point on my ride to work the talking book finished and I placed the tape back in its container. I was smiling, so you can probably guess which way the ending of the book went, can't you? But instead of starting another talking book right then and there, I decided to instead just relax a bit and enjoy the rest of the ride. As I motored along I thought about the just-past weekend and the drive my wife and I had taken on that Saturday.

To set the stage for the ride on Saturday you need to know a certain fact. And that is that the week before, we had received a Christmas card from my sister-in-law in California. In it she had included, as presents for us, a CD containing Christmas music and also a gift certificate for a box of chocolates. The candy the certificate was for was made by a company named See's Chocolates which is well-known throughout the western United States and is based in Los Angeles. I considered it a bit odd to receive a certificate for something that was difficult to obtain where I lived, but took it as a small eccentricity of the lady who sent it. Her heart was always in the right place but her head was probably a bit California-centric. So, to figure out how to get our candy I looked online to see if there was anyplace within a day's drive where I could redeem the certificate. I soon found out that the closest outlet for See's Candy was a seasonal kiosk at Beachwood Place Mall in Beachwood, Ohio. We'd considered sending the certificate to my brother in California and not trying to redeem it locally, but finally decided that, since the weather on Saturday was fine, we'd just take a drive up there and redeem it ourselves.

So Saturday afternoon after grocery shopping we hopped into the Honda and pointed ourselves north by northeast. The weather was nice – sunny, dry and cold. Easy driving. We chit-chatted as the miles went by and soon found ourselves in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland on Cedar Road just off I-271 and about a half-mile from the mall. We looked ahead and saw a line of cars waiting to make the left turn into the mall parking lot and realized that an appreciable percentage of Cleveland's population had decided to do the same thing! Of course it was the last weekend before Christmas and I guess a lot of people weren't quite done with their holiday shopping.

After several changes of the traffic light we finally made the left turn into the parking lot and found a spot to put the car. It was a bit of a hike to the main entrance of the mall, so we entered from one of the closer anchor stores which happened to be Saks Fifth Avenue. We enjoyed looking at the Christmas decorations and the shoppers scurrying about in this upscale department store. One sight caught my eye as we were passing through the cosmetic department. One of the cosmetic counter girls was applying some makeup to a customer as we were passing. The counter girl was striking – about 6'2”, slender as a whip, dressed in black top, black tights and black miniskirt. She looked as if she'd just stepped out of the pages of Cosmo or Elle or some such glamor magazine.

But of course I wasn't REALLY paying THAT much attention!

We found the kiosk after making a few wrong turns and redeemed our certificate for a box of mixed chocolates. After wandering around the mall for a while doing some window shopping and being looked down upon by the snooty shop girls and guys, we found ourselves in the food court. We peeked into the various food vendors and decided that none of it looked terribly appetizing at the moment. I made a suggestion to my wife that we might stop at a Mexican restaurant for a late lunch close to where I used to work in Twinsburg. It wasn't too far off the route home and she agreed that it sounded OK to her.

We left the crowded mall through Saks again and, before going out the door I stopped my wife and pointed to a display of purses. “I wonder what these guys cost?” I said to her.

She shrugged, so I picked up a little one, about the size you could put a couple big apples in and casually glanced at the tag. Of course it was either a Gucci or a Coach or something like that. The tag said $490. I carefully placed it back on the table and tiptoed out of there wondering at the kind of people who could drop 5 C-notes on a teeny purse.

Definitely no one I was familiar with.

We found our car out in the north 40 acres of the parking lot and headed down I-271 and I-480 until exiting at one of the Twinsburg exits. I decided, since we were in the neighborhood, to take a look at the office where I used to work before being “downsized” back in 2001. It was still there and the sign on the front still said 2000 Highland Road, but the company name was Verizon now instead of Alltel. We drove through the parking lot and noticed a very large addition being built onto the rear of the building. Several stories high and appeared to be the area of several football fields. It appeared to me that the depression in the economy wasn't being felt too much at that office. I left the parking lot feeling strangely disoriented. I'd spent the better part of 20 years there and the place felt as foreign to me as the dark side of the moon. It looked very much the same as it did before but it felt strange and cold. There was nothing there that felt warm or welcoming anymore.

We ate our late lunches at Marcellitas and they were good; as good as I'd remembered them being. We took the longer, more scenic route home from there, driving through Hudson on Darrow Road, turning west from there on 303 and going through the Cuyahoga National Park and Peninsula Village before hitting I-271 again and following it to its terminus at I-71. Then south on that interstate until Burbank, Ohio Rt. 83 and back home in the early dark of a late December day, the stars shining down from a frigid sky.

Seeing the old places where I had worked and spent those many years was bittersweet. A considerable portion of my life had been spent traveling those roads, eating in those restaurants and working in those now melancholy feeling offices. I remembered old friends and old enemies, bosses I loved to death and ones I considered monsters in human form. I remembered the weather I experienced making that long commute over the decades, the warm spring nights, the booming thunderstorms that sizzled in my path. And of course I remembered the black ice nights, the near-blizzard drives where my knuckles were whiter on the steering wheel than the snow flying by out the windshield. I remembered the near half-million miles I spent going to and from the place.

But mostly I remembered the many friends who I had to leave when I was so unceremoniously ejected from the life I had grown so used to over the years. The guys and girls who I'd shared the years with.

I thought about them on the long drive home, the ones I still keep in contact with and the ones who've dropped completely off my radar. Of course I've made other friends since then, many of them as close as the ones I had in my Alltel years. But there will always be a place in my heart for the folks who were with me on the long ride through the various incarnations of Alltel, from my first days with Mid-Continent Telephone, through Systematics and the period of merger and becoming Alltel.

And for all those friends from the past, the Mikes and Marys, the Freds and Susans, the Daves and Michelles, the Hermans and the Ottos and all the rest, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

May you remember our good times together with as much joy as I do.

Cruisin' to Coz

Cruisin' to Coz

Bill and Judy’s Cruise Log 2010
Aboard the good ship Carnival Inspiration

7/7/10 Wednesday

We got up at home around 1:15 a.m., ate a little something and hit the road by 2:00 a.m. We ended up getting to the Columbus airport WAY too early, but that’s a lot better than getting there too late. We noticed a TSA agent (Transportation Security Agency) riding in to work in the parking shuttle bus with us and ended up seeing LOTS more of the “blueshirts” at the airport. At times it looked like the TSA guys were outnumbering the travelers. We checked our bags in and they ran through the x-ray machines before being put on the belt. We went through the security checkpoint later when the time was closer to our departure time. For the security check, any metal went into the baskets to be put on the conveyor belt along with your shoes and your carry-on luggage. As an aside, I didn’t wear a belt to make the security check quicker. Bad idea. I’ve lost a little weight and my pants were continually trying to fall off! You were then in the “secure” area of the airport on the concourse. You thought you were done with security, eh? But no. Uh-uh. No way. When we lined up to enter the airplane, some of our carry-on’s were selected for further hand inspection by the TSA and some of us lucky travelers were selected for pat downs. And yes, I was one of the ones selected for the pat-down. Lucky, lucky me. And it was a VERY thorough patdown, too. The agent was friendly though even if I did feel like I was on “Cops”.

We drank some coffee and shared a muffin before leaving Columbus and eventually flew a Boeing 737 to Atlanta and a Boeing 717 from there to Tampa. Had a mix-up when we got to Tampa and the free shuttle to the hotel we were staying at couldn’t find us. (More likely we were standing in the wrong area.) We ended up taking a taxi to Howard Johnson’s on Dale Mabry Street. After checking in and stowing our bags we went to a Thai restaurant right next door to the motel and had lunch. We both had Pat Thai. Very good and excellent service! Later in the day we had supper at the Longhorn’s on the other side of the hotel and had a decent steak there. We walked to the K-mart up the road during the day to buy some fingernail clippers as I had forgotten to pack any and had torn a nail somewhere on our journey south. We stopped at a Sonic drive-in (they have outdoor tables, too) when walking back to the hotel and drank a Cherry Limeade. Mmmm…good! I think we stop at a Sonic on every vacation, so this just continued the string. Pretty hot out, too. Typical Florida in the summer, I guess. We signed up for a ride to the docks at the hotel desk when we arrived. When the transport came the next day we paid for the trip out to the docks and also the one back to the airport after the cruise. We napped at the hotel after our walk and were asleep by 10 p.m. It had been a LONG travel day!

Some impressions:

Both flights down were pretty smooth – mostly clear skies all day.
A stewardess (flight attendant nowadays) on the second flight had a “III” tattooed on the back of her neck. Spent some time trying to figure out why. Should have probably asked her. Probably none of my business.
The Atlanta airport is HUGE. Found out it was the largest and busiest one in the WORLD! It’s the hub for AirTran and Delta and there were LOTS of those planes around. To get from one concourse to another you went WAY down on an escalator and got on a FAST underground train that stopped at each one.
Had a really big dude sitting across from me on the second flight. Not only big-big but so tall he brushed the top of the airplane cabin when he walked. He was miserable sitting there in his too-small seat and looked it.

7/8/10 Thursday. Embarkation Day.

We sail today! After over 130 days waiting, today was the day!
Up at the motel at 7 a.m. and breakfast at Denny’s across the street as the continental breakfast at the hotel was about gone when we got there. Dale Mabry is eight lanes wide at that spot, so we had to hustle even at the light to get across. At 11:30 the shuttle for the docks arrived and we took the ride out there. To get to the docks in Tampa you have go to through downtown Tampa. The ship looked HUGE as we approached the docks. Very, very impressive! The embarkation went super smoothly. Everything is choreographed so your travel from station to station and finally onto the boat was quick and painless. The cabins weren’t ready until 1:30 down on the lower decks (still being cleaned from the previous occupants who arrived earlier that morning) so we were sequestered generally on Lido and Promenade decks. We ate lunch at the Brasserie Buffet while waiting for our cabins. The food seemed pretty good. We were finally allowed on our cabin deck – Riviera – at 1:30 as promised. The cabin was cool! Small as advertised, but quite functional and not claustrophobic at all. And clean as a whistle! The luggage was delivered outside the cabin between 4 and 5 p.m. We wandered around the ship and settled on the Lido deck near the pool for a bit and ordered one of the “Drinks of the Day”. Fruity concoction (with the proverbial umbrella) of this, that and rum. Tasty. Soon took a walk-around tour of the boat with a friendly young female crewmember. Saw what was where and forgot where it was about as quick. Took some pictures.
Ate supper in our assigned dining room, the Carnivale. We sat at a table for eight, as we wanted to meet some of our shipmates. One couple was from Georgia and one was from North Carolina. The S.C. ones were Judy and our ages and the other couple from Georgia was older. They had been friends for many, many years, but this was their first cruise together. The other couple at the table was younger and from Florida. Ate shrimp cocktail and lasagna that first meal with melting chocolate cake for dessert. All fairly good – the cake exceptional. Our table had two stewards handling us, both I believe from Indonesia. The female of the pair was very cute! Our tablemates seemed quite simpatico and we looked forward to seeing them for the rest of the dinners on the cruise.
When we returned to the cabin it had been turned down. On the bed were our two chocolates and a towel seal! We went to the Paris Lounge (we’d go there a LOT during the cruise) then. They put on a lot of activities there. We watched Speed Trivia, Bingo, Cha-cha Dance class, Game Show Star and, for the evening capper, the Welcome Aboard Show with our Cruise Director Paul. Lots of singing and dancing and fun!


7/9/10 Friday. At Sea Day.

We got up around 8:30 a.m. Breakfast was at the Buffet – normal buffet breakfast food. Went to “Fun Ashore and Fun Aboard” briefing with our Cruise Director Paul. Funny and informative. Watched the ice carving on the Lido stage for a while and saw it was going to be an American Indian head in full headdress. Went to the talk “Do’s and Don’ts of Port Shopping”. Both talks were mostly sales pitches to buy at certain stores on Cozumel. I went to the gym today and did a half-hour on the treadmill and some back extensions. The gym on the ship was of medium size and seemed to get a lot of business. It was attached to the spa whose choices were, of course, for an extra charge. The water of the Gulf was smooth today and we didn’t have much ship motion to contend with. I slept quite well last night, the bed was very comfortable and what sea motion there was made good sleeping – like rocking gently in a cradle. Most of the time so far you’d hardly know you were on a boat! This was “Elegant Night” in the dining rooms so we cleaned up and dressed up before dinner. I had lobster tail and shrimp (two servings!) and Judy had prime rib. Had a nice conversation with the three other couples. It’s been hot and sunny so far and the water of the Gulf is a pretty blue color – a bit hard to describe – a deeper blue shading to a darker aqua? Something like that? Sapphire? Closer, maybe. Saw the captain and his executive officers on the Promenade Deck all decked out in their dress uniforms with the gold stripes on the sleeves. Judy and I had formal pictures taken of us with various backdrops on Promenade Deck. Had cherries Jubilee for dessert at supper. Good. Also ate cold Strawberry Compote and stuffed mushrooms for appetizers. Also good. Wanted to try new and different stuff and got the chance.
We stopped in the casino for a few minutes later on so Judy could get a free lanyard to wear her sail-and-sign card around her neck. While there we threw a few dollars into the slots. Lo and behold I hit a jackpot on a Haywire machine and banked $100!
We then went to the show “Shout” at the Paris Theater. Very energetic! Lots of singing and dancing. The boat was noticeably a bit “bouncy” tonight during the performance. I later noticed that the Paris Lounge, being in the bow of the ship, was always a bit bouncy. We walked around the outer deck a bit later in the dark. It was cloudy and no stars were visible. It was so nice to stand there and feel the breeze in your face and hear the sea hissing by the hull down in the dark. Then we went to an “R” rated comedy show at 10:45 at the Candlelight Lounge in the stern of the ship. It was good, but I’ve seen better. We felt like the oldest couple in the room. Back to the cabin around midnight – long day coming tomorrow.

Impressions from today:

It’s a LONG climb from R (Riviera – 4) deck where our cabin is to L (Lido – 10) deck. We used the elevators a LOT (shame on us!).
People on the ship: Cruisers - @ 2600, Crew - @ 900. LOTS of folks on this tub.
Everything onboard is geared towards generating more money.
Turndown service is VERY nice – towel animals and chocolates every night. Excellent work and excellent staff. I can’t stress that enough.
Staff and crew are cleaning the ship all the time. We notice and we appreciate their efforts.

7/10/10 Saturday. Cozumel.

We got up at 7:30 as we were approaching Cozumel, Mexico, and watched a bit of the docking procedure. We had breakfast, again, at the Brasserie Buffet, then went back to the cabin to put on our swimwear. We got off the ship around 9 a.m. We shopped at the Costa Brava shops near the dock for a while then grabbed a cab and were off to Nachi Cocom Beach Resort. Nachi is a very nice place! Immediately upon arrival we were given two lounges under our own palapa (thatched roof umbrella-shaped shelter from the sun) and our drink orders were taken. I ended up drinking two Margaritas fairly quickly. (A side note: I’m not much of a drinker. The Margaritas were really, really strong, the sun was really hot, it was early in the day and I got wasted really quickly. Then a bit ill for a day or so. Have to remember that on future trips!) Judy and I shared some nachos and salsa before lunch, which was quite good. We then ordered our lunches and I got grilled grouper which was outstanding! Judy got mixed fajitas, which she enjoyed with the exception of a very hot pepper that was lurking in her meal.
The water in front of us was gorgeous! Clear as glass and a beautiful aqua color shading to a darker blue a bit further out where the reef started. I got into the water a few times. Its temperature was perfect (I’m running out of superlatives here) and I bobbed around out there for a while. The salt sea allowed me to float effortlessly and that was fun. Next trip I’ll definitely go snorkeling! Judy’s not much for beaches so she stayed under the palapa most of the time we were there. There were only about 50 people at the resort, so it was NOT crowded at all. They stop their reservations at 100. The sand is grittier than the powdery stuff we’ve seen on other beaches and is a bit hard to walk on. Or was that another effect of the Margaritas? After lunch the staff guy returned to ask if we wanted any dessert. Judy declined and I, still being more than a bit drunk, ordered mine in Spanish by saying, “Uno helados de coconut, por favor”. The waiter looked at my wife then back at me and said, “Uno?” I said, “Si. No helados por mi espousa” and he smiled and went for my coconut ice cream. Which, incidentally, was GREAT!
We left Nachi around 3 p.m. and taxied to downtown San Miguel, the city where the cruise ships dock on Cozumel. We bought some t-shirts and stopped into Carlos and Charlies. This is a bar/restaurant that’s quite notorious as a party place. The music was VERY loud and, for early afternoon, the party was in full swing. Most of the people in there were young and drinking like crazy. We enjoyed watching the antics of the wait staff and the college-age kids bouncing around the bar. Guy came to our table and stuck balloon hats on us (for a tip, of course). Others cruised by wanting to take pictures of you and other stuff for tips. We had 7-ups, since we didn’t want any more alcohol. They serve the drinks in 2-foot-tall glasses. The décor there was lots of primal colors, old license plates, posters and all kinds of this-and-that on the walls and ceilings. While we were leaving they’d built a conga line from all the drunken kids in the bar and the dancers, as they danced out the door into the sun and then back inside, were given shots of tequila squirted from a bottle as they passed a point. The kids were having a ball! I was a bit concerned about going in there as a female friend of ours had her daughter’s money stolen by a pickpocket while there a couple months earlier, but we escaped with what we came in with and were happy about that. We grabbed a cab back to the dock where the Inspiration was docked and bought a few more souvenirs. We returned to the ship around 5-ish as we didn’t want to miss the departure and were iffy on the time difference between ship time and Cozumel time.
We had supper in the Carnivale Dining room again. One of our tablemates, Bill, was celebrating his 75th birthday that night and we congratulated him and ate some of his birthday cake! I didn’t eat much of the dinner as my stomach was still in rebellion from the Murderous Mexican Margaritas. We then went back to the cabin to rest a bit from our outing.
Later that day we went to the Paris Lounge again for the show. That night it was a magician and a comic. Both were pretty good and the comic was a lot better than the previous one we’d seen. Back to the cabin at 11:30 and to sleep. We were now heading home.

Impressions:

The other tablemates across from us were also born in ’46 and ’47.
Mexican vendor sayings: “Cheaper than Walmart!” “Almost free!”
Most of the Mexicans we ran into seemed fine. All the ones we saw were working hard at their jobs to make a living. Most of them looked like they had a LOT of Mayan blood in their heritage.


7/11/10 Last At Sea Day.

Up at 8 a.m. Felt a BIT better but not near 100%. Shower and dressed and we went to the Mardi Gras dining room (the other big dining room on the ship) and had a sit-down breakfast for a change. We sat with seven other new people at a big round table. One of the girls sitting there was from Ohio and we had a good conversation with her, her husband and most of the other tablemates. Had Eggs Benedict and they were very good. We left there and stopped at the casino to play about $25 between us on the slots (we lost) and to cash out my bank from the previous trip. Got counted out $100.25 in cash! We then picked through all the photographs we’d had taken of us and bought four of them. Then it was back to the Paris Lounge for our disembarkation talk from the Cruise Director Paul, which was funny and informative. We then stopped at the Ship Shops (stuff is always cheaper the last day!) and bought a couple more T-shirts and a refrigerator magnet. Then we returned to the cabin and did most of our packing, along with filling out our duty form. We stopped and watched a towel-folding demo then at the Paris Lounge (of course) and took a quick tour of the galley at 4 p.m. It was HUGE! It sits between the two main dining rooms (logical), the Mardi Gras and the Carnivale. We ate our final dinner with our tablemates and the food was unfortunately so-so. Took a picture of our cute little table steward. She said that most of the crew worked 6 months on the ship (7-days-a-week), then 4 months at home. Went back to the cabin to finish packing and placed our luggage outside our door for overnight pickup. Went walking around the ship then on the outside and watched some flying fish pop out of the sea and fly away near the bow of the ship. They are quite small, minnow-sized. But they really do fly!
We went to the Paris Lounge that night for the last time to see that evening’s show. It was Latin-themed and had lots of feathered costumes and Latin music – Ricky Ricardo stuff. Still oodles of energy from the singers/dancers. As an aside, I’d only grade the performers as high-end amateurs, though. But they did try really, really hard and that made it OK. Then it was off to the Candlelight Lounge for the last “R” rated comedy show. This was the second comedian we’d seen at the Paris Lounge the previous day and he was in his element now. Funny as hell! Back to the cabin around 11:30 and asleep by midnight.


7/12/10 Disembarkation Day.

The ship docked back in Tampa around 6:30 a.m. this morning. Judy had been popping up out of the bed since 3 or 4, peeking out the window and watching the lights of Tampa Bay slide past, listening to the changing sound of the ship’s engines as it approached her dock. Breakfast, again, at Brasserie. Sat on an outside deck and admired the Coast Guard tall ship, The Eagle, that was docked right next to us off the stern. Then we grabbed our carry-on stuff and went to the Promenade deck to wait for our disembarkation number to be called. They called it around 10:30 and we went down to deck 7 and left the ship. We found our luggage quickly and proceeding through customs was no problem at all, just had to wait a bit on the lines. We walked across the street to the ground transportation place and got our van to the airport.

Then we waited.

(The following is an account on how things can go wrong, even on a great vacation. We suffered some but we’ll remember this trip for a LONG time. Read on if you dare.)

We’d anticipated a long wait at the Tampa airport. Our flight wasn’t due to leave Tampa for Atlanta until 5:45 p.m. with an arrival time of 7:18. Then the connection to Columbus would be at 10:15. So we were prepared for a long wait. We’d gotten to the airport around 11:00 a.m. We sat around and read in the main terminal for a while, then ate lunch at an airport Burger King. We then went through security and arrived at our concourse a bit later and settled down to wait some more. We had supper there (Pizza Hut mini’s) around 5 p.m. and waited some more.
That’s when our flight was postponed the FIRST time due to thunderstorms in Atlanta. Then it was postponed AGAIN. We boarded the airplane around 8 p.m., sat there a bit and were ordered off as it was STILL storming in Atlanta and we STILL didn’t have permission to take off. It looked as if we were going to miss our connection in Atlanta to Columbus, so I talked to the booking agent at that time and he said he couldn’t get us into Columbus until Wednesday… and that was just a maybe. He checked his computer some more, then said he could get me into Dayton from Atlanta the next morning (Tuesday) if I was interested. So we RE-boarded the same airplane we were in before and finally got off the runway around 9:30 p.m. The flight was fine and we got to see some of the nearby thunderstorms from the air, which had been tormenting Atlanta. It was spooky seeing lightning at night from an altitude. We landed at 10:44 p.m. and taxied to a spot at one of the gates at a terminal. We arrived at that spot at 11:00. Then we waited. The captain came on the p.a. and said they were having "some trouble” with the skyway (the extensible tunnel they attach to the plane’s door). Still trouble at 11:15. More at 11:30. Still no-go at 11:45. We’d been sitting at that gate for 45 minutes waiting to get off the plane! Us passengers were about ready to revolt and the crew was looking like they were willing to join us! Finally they decided that they couldn’t fix the skyway and we taxied to a new gate. We deplaned at 12:00 midnight! One hour and 16 minutes after we’d landed. The pilot said on the p.a. that he’d never seen such a screwup in his 29 years of flying. So… We’d missed our flight to Columbus and our assigned flight to Dayton from Atlanta was at 8:55 in the morning. It was midnight. Too late to really go find a room somewhere. So I found a comfortable (?!?!) spot on the floor, Judy tried to curl up on a couple seats and we attempted to spend Monday night at the Atlanta airport. Please note that there are a LOT of hours to spend from midnight to 9 in the morning. It was cold, noisy, uncomfortable, bright and as far from a good place to sleep as I’ve ever seen. Judy got about 15 minutes of sleep and I may have got an hour in 5 to 10 minute increments. Horrible, horrible night. We got up (?!?!) around 6 a.m. and got some coffee and a Danish when the coffee shops opened. Off to our new departure gate around 8:00 (on another concourse, of course) and on the airplane around 9:15. We took off on time and got to Dayton as planned. We then had to rent a car, one-way, from Dayton to Columbus. Then we retrieved our luggage (which had flown on to Columbus without us earlier that morning), retrieve our car and drove home.

We arrived there around 3 p.m.

And thus ends the odyssey of Bill and Judy’s first cruise.

Impressions, thoughts and conclusions.

So how was it really? Was it worth it? Was it fun? Would you do it the same way again?

I’d say it was definitely a good vacation, maybe even a great vacation. Was it worth it? I wondered about that around 3 a.m. while sleeping on the floor at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, the biggest and busiest airport in the world. But I’d still have to say yes, definitely worth it. I mean, how many times would our luck be that bad on another cruise? Fun? Yes, for sure. Lots of good times. Would we do it again? Sure! Not a doubt in my mind. In fact, it’s about time to start thinking about the next one!!

High points:
New friends. Wonderful ship’s staff and crew. Very nice accommodations. A beautiful ship. The nice weather was a plus.

Low points:
The food was OK for the most part but nothing extraordinary. The entertainment was a touch amateurish. The horror of missing a connection and its consequences.

Final conclusion:

Start booking our next one soon!!!!!

Affinity

Affinity

While recently reading a magazine I ran across an article about migrating some of your banking business, or perhaps all of it, to a credit union, and how wise that movement might be. The article explained how you'd probably get a better return on your money and how the rates for loans through a credit union were lower than you might get at a bank. It went on to say how easy it was to join a credit union these days as the affinity clause that was necessary for a credit union to exist was generally stated so broadly that it could easily include a lot of people. And how each credit union had different affinity requirements. Some required you to be an employee of a certain company – or in the family of an employee of that company – or a former employee. For others you had to have been a sailor or family of a former sailor. Or an airman. Or a marine. Or... Many different requirements for membership but all fairly broad and fairly inclusive. The article went on to stress the point that there were many credit unions out there, pretty much one for anyone interested in them and that they would fit almost anyone's lifestyle.

That concept of affinity was demonstrated this weekend, at least to me, by two reunions which I attended.

On Saturday evening I attended my 45^th high school class reunion. Going to your high school class reunion is, for a lot of people, a very stressful occurrence. People worry about all kind of things prior to attending and fret over what their former classmates might think of them. They worry about their weight. They agonize over how prestigious (or not) their jobs are or had been. They fuss over how many divorces and remarriages they've been through and how many ex's are still out there. Some men are abashed by their loss of hair. It's amazing the amount of things people worry about. And, to be quite honest, I used to fret a bit about some of them in years past too. But I don't do it any more. Or at least not much. I've reached an age where those concerns just don't mean much any more. My hair isn't going to go back to it's dark brown state by itself nor is the balding spot at the top of my head going to fill in magically. I'm not going to lose a bunch of weight just in anticipation of seeing old classmates. My work history is pretty much a done deal at this time – a number of my classmates are already retired.

I'm just not worrying much about it anymore. So I decided to just go and enjoy myself. Just as I am.

And what do you know?

Almost all the rest of my class did the same! The rich classmates and the poor classmates and all of us that occupied the ground in between looked... well... we all looked pretty normal. I don't believe I saw any expensive suits that evening. And the women didn't seem, at least to my eyes, to be wearing any high-fashion ensembles. And let's face it. We're all at that “certain age” now and most of us in that bracket aren't trying to impress anyone anyhow. There's a whole lot of “been there – done that – got the tee shirt” mentality. What I did notice there were people who wore nice but comfortable clothes and were more interested in renewing old friendships and catching up on what everyone was doing.

And I realized that, no matter what road each of us had traveled, how diverse each of us were in our lives, we were all a member of the affinity group called “Class of '65”. And yes, to be honest, some of my class had taken very different paths in their lives than others. Some had become important people, politically, financially, even on the world stage, doing work that you might have possibly heard about in the news. Others heard a calling and chose the clergy and had a flock to care for. Still others did quite well in businesses large and small and had become the local aristocracy. Or at least what passes for it in these parts. Probably a larger majority had remained close to home and had manned the clerical, technical and manufacturing businesses and had made comfortable livings. Lots of us had raised kids, served on boards and committees, volunteered in a myriad ways and performed various civic tasks, large and small, acknowledged and not.

Some of us had gotten into trouble. Most not.

And an alarming number of us had passed on.

But no matter how far we had gone or how grand we had become, we were all, for all time, the “Class of '65”. We all held that link. That bond. That anchor to the past.

And most of us held that affinity in fond regard.

The theme of affinity continued that weekend as my wife and I attended her family reunion on Sunday afternoon. My wife's mother was ninth out of 14 children, so their reunions are generally very well attended. The original 14 are about half gone now and the ones remaining are getting up in their years, so it's not surprising that a lot of them don't make it to the reunion. But their children and the next generation are quite plentiful and a lot of them do show up. Along with their spouses, their boyfriends/girlfriends, and so on. There were probably 70-80 people who attended this year's edition.

I always like to attend her family's reunions. It seems that all the women who bring dishes to the gathering really know how to cook, and that know-how shows in the scrumptious offerings that end up on the serving tables.

Good eats and lots of familiar faces. I'm such a sucker for good food!

Family. Probably the seminal iteration of all affinities. Whether it's the nuclear family – mom, dad and the kids, the extended family including the uncles and aunts, nieces, nephews and cousins, or the super-extended modern family which also includes the 2^nd, 3^rd or more marriage spouses, intendeds, companions, friends and all the other variations of relationships. It's all the affinity called family.

I looked around the room at all my wife's relatives and marveled to myself on the diversity of their lives. How very different we all were from each other. Even a lot of our last names were different by reason of marriage. But through us all ran the common thread of what we all liked to refer to as “the original 14”. That nuclear family, raised on a farm and tempered through the crucible of the great depression was the cornerstone and lynchpin through which all of us in the room were connected.

Our affinity through family.

It was a weekend for reflections on connections. A weekend for laughing, for touching, for hugging and for possibly shedding a tear or two.

It was a weekend for appreciating our friends and our family, our histories, our yesterdays and our tomorrows.

For enjoying the affinities that touch our lives.

Almost Summer, 2010

Almost Summer, 2010

I like to play a little game with myself and wait until the last possible moment to install the two window air conditioners in our old house. Wait until the warm weather forces me to stick 'em in the windows. See how long I can go before I gotta do it. It's a bit of a bother to install them, too, one down in the living room and the other in our bedroom, as they're heavy and I need some help from my son with the big one downstairs. I'd have put central air in this century house, but the way it's built made that option unrealistic and way, way too expensive. So we put in window units in the summer and take 'em out in the fall.

The last possible moment arrived last weekend, my little game ended and I finally had to acquiesce and install my window air conditioners. I was feeling smug that I'd gone this far into Ohio's hot weather before I had to do it, using the window and ceiling fans to keep us cool, but it was getting to the point where some extra cooling was becoming necessary. Necessary for two reasons, actually. First, it was getting warm, even for me, and staying that way into the late evenings when we were going to bed, making sleep more difficult. Second, the wife was giving me “the eye”, telling me non-verbally to cut out the procrastination and my little game and put the doggone a/c's in the windows for goodness sakes.

So they're in now and our bedroom is much cooler. In fact, almost too cool. The wife likes it best to sleep at night when the air temperature has descended through cool and nippy and is beginning to approach frigid. At least it feels that way to this hot-blooded participant. As my partner Patrick and I say at work when the office temperature is too low: “cold enough to hang meat.” Yep, that just about describes it. So I just snuggle a little deeper under the blanket and make sure my ears and nose are covered up to prevent possible frostbite.

Well, at least it feels that way to me!

***

Got a chuckle while I was working out at the gym the other day.

My wife purchases our gym membership through payroll deductions where she works. Our membership at a gym here in our hometown was coming up for renewal and she had the choice of three gyms for the upcoming year. One was the gym we had belonged to for the past couple of years. One was a health facility attached to the local hospital and was way out of our price range. The third was a place we had belonged to before our present gym and it was a few dollars cheaper per month. For that reason and a few others we decided to switch. The “new” gym has new ownership and has done some revamping of the equipment in the gym. It looks nice and has a good assortment of machines for most exercise regimens.

So, since I work evenings, I've been going to this gym for the past couple of weeks during the day. It's quiet then as there are few members working out at that time of day. There is a television on one wall of the exercise room and it seemed to be eternally tuned to a country/western music channel. Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to be critical of a particular genre of music, but I've never really been a big fan of c/w music. Not even close. I'm fond of bluegrass – lots of banjos and guitars, but most “cowboy” music (as I call it) leaves me cold.

However...

I was pounding away on the treadmill the other day and noticed that the c/w station was again on. I wasn't paying too much attention to it. I had my mp3 player plugged into my ears and was rocking along with some classic rock and roll when I happened to glance up at the tv. Shania Twain was gyrating and dancing on the screen to one of her songs along with a half-dozen other great looking ladies. It was very pleasing to the eyes. At the same moment, Dire Straits was rocking along on the mp3 player with “Money for Nothing”.

I watched the video.

I listened to the rock.

I was at once amazed at how well the video was matching the rock in my earphones! There were those country chicks dancing away to the sounds of Dire Straits! I started grinning and the steps and minutes and miles on the treadmill just melted away while I enjoyed the rock music and eyed the videos on the TV. I'd discovered the secret to watching c/w videos. Just plug some great old rock 'n roll into your ears and groove away!

***

My wife and I are into the final countdown before our first cruising vacation. If my numbers are correct, we have 23 days before our big ship pulls away from the Tampa docks and lumbers off south toward Cozumel, Mexico. To say we can't wait would undoubtedly be an understatement. I've been talking to the few folks where I work who've “been there, done that” and have been wringing their memories for their experiences on their cruises. All things look good. I've printed out our packing list and we're finishing purchasing the final “this and that” that we may need “on the boat”. Of course we'll forget something. But that's the fun of it, isn't it?

Won't be long now and it'll be time to pull out the luggage and start filling them up.

***

Patrick, my partner at work, and I were talking a couple months ago about our favorite comedians. We found out that we were both big fans of a man named John Pinnette. We'd heard routines of his in the past and considered them very funny. We decided to check on-line to see if he might be appearing somewhere nearby and found out that he was headlining at Pickwick and Frolic in Cleveland. So we purchased tickets to go see him. After asking around, there ended up being six of us going up to see him: Patrick and his wife Rhonda, my old friend Chuck and his wife Pam and my wife Judy and I who went.

We met at Fat Fish Blue restaurant in downtown Cleveland last Friday and had dinner before going over to the comedy club. This restaurant specializes in Cajun/Creole cuisine and was a favorite of my wife and I as we'd eaten there in the past when going up to the big city and watching the Cleveland Indians play. The six of us enjoyed our dinners and drinks, then wandered over to the comedy club about two blocks away.

John Pinnette was, as we had expected, very good. We all got our share of chuckles, guffaws and belly laughs as he recounted this and that from his apparently hilarious life. He is an extremely gifted funnyman and I'd recommend him to almost anyone. I was surprised at how clean he works compared to some of his fellow stand-up comedians.

It was definitely a night to remember.

***

So, in case you hadn't noticed, summer officially begins in six days.

Let the fun begin!