I thought that I might talk a bit about a recent trip that we took, because it might give you some insights about vacation matters. I'll just ramble on and cover topics as I think of them.
Who? Elaine and I.
What? Spent 3 weeks in an ocean-front condo on the beach.
Where? Ocean City, Maryland.
When? Just after Labor Day.
Preparation: As you probably know already, women pack differently than men. Elaine filled 19 containers of various sizes. I filled 3. I do have to admit that Elaine's fills were mainly things that were needed for the condo: such as sheets, pillow cases, and non-perishable food. And she did also pack necessary clothes items.
My stuff (that I didn't forget) consisted of a few shirts, socks, and underwear, as well as my laptop, books, magazines and binoculars for watching the gulls.... girls?
Over the years, I have developed a check-list for myself, to make sure that I don't forget anything. (Elaine doesn't use one and thinks that my list is "just something a man would do.")
Unfortunately, the only thing about a checklist is that you must remember to find it and use it. (Remember the key point of every memory course... whatever you are looking for, is under something.. so pick it up!) I'll bet that my checklist is right underneath my missing hearing aid.
Moving in: The condo is on the third floor and can be reached by a little elevator. To get our 22 containers into the elevator, I had to make 14 trips, pushing a wheeled holder up a long ramp to get to the elevator. This was done at 11 pm in gale winds. Once in, after a lot of heavy breathing and gasping.. a warm beer helped calm me down a bit.
Since Elaine is in a wheelchair right now, beds and furniture had to be moved to accomodate and in so doing, a heavy picture popped off the wall right over my bed. It's a good thing that it happened then, because if I had had a nightmare and bumped the wall, that damned picture could have injured me. How would I have explained that to the doctor: "A picture flew off the wall and landed on my head." It was a picture of the Titanic..
Provender: Of course, what we brought with us in the way of food was minimal. We would buy the bulk of our food at the local supermarkets where prices are a bit higher than at home; for instance, on the main drag, a dozen medium eggs cost $2.59! Later, I found eggs at $1.59 a dozen at a supermarket on a road going out of town.
Happy Hair: Elaine discovered a store she was not familiar with: HarrisTeeter. They had a clearance table that had Elaine's favorite shampoo at $.99 a bottle. That was a fraction of its price in Baltimore. Elaine bought up all they had.
Broooom!! Our arrival was during "Bike Week" when 100,000 Harley Davidson riders descend upon Ocean City. This made driving our mini SUV a challenge and sleeping kind of trying.
Most of the bikers have been coming to OC for years and a lot of them look like me: chubby, bearded and old. While they cavorted with their fellow bikesters, their wives and girlfriends made the Beach Scene and helped give OC a new name: Cellulite City.
Buzzzzzzz! Since it wasn't safe to be on the road with the bikers, we did not go out to eat this week. Instead, we cooked a lot of good food right in the condo. However, since I do the cooking, smoke detectors feel that they have to harrass me. Just as it was in our Weller Way home, the detector is right near the stove, it has a tendency to go off to let me know that our food is ready.
Yummy stuff: When we did get to go out to restaurants, we went to some favorites:
Outback: Coconut shrimp!
Panda Buffet: Raw oysters and crab legs!
Crackerbarrel: Down home food!
Red Lobster: Unending shrimp!
We brought in a lot of food too:
Waterman's: A couple of dozen crabs!
Market: Big bag of steamed blue crab claws!
Greek Colonels: Creamed chipped beef!
FunFest: One week was FunFest Week in OC. This is when they put up monstrous tents containing lots and lots of crafty stuff for Elaine to buy. She bought some gifts, including some nice things for SuZee, our cat. She also bought a fancy (eternally sharp) knife for a bunch of money. Since I bad-mouthed the deal, she probably won't let me use it. The knife has a 50 year warranty.. neither she nor I will live that long. When I mentioned that to the 20 year old sales lady, she said that we could just pass it on to our heirs.
The only bad thing about FunFest, in my opinion, is that because noone can smoke in any of the tents, they congregate at the entrances... hundreds of them.. and blow smoke.
Entertainment?: Next to these tents are amusement areas. A ferris wheel, shooting galleries, Dodg-em Cars, Merry Go Rounds, and a weird and very scary piece of equipment that shoots people in little gondolas way up in the sky as though they are being shot by a massive rubber band.
The Hubcaps: Our favorite group, Carroll County's own Hubcaps was there inside the big tent one night. Tickets were $5 and $10. (Blood, Sweat and Tears was in the big tent another night, but they charged $20 and $49.) Elaine didn't want to get a ticket; instead, she sat near the back entrance and could see and hear them very well. She said that they did not do their usual schtick. That is probably because they would have to pay royalties.. and maybe they can get away with not paying them in Carroll County.
Delish: The food tent held many delicacies. One night, Elaine had a crab fluff and I had little fries and fish. Another night, we both had crab soup in bread bowls. Yingling beer was $3 for 10 ounces; light beer was $3 for 16 ounces. (At one time, Yingling was garbage beer and unsellable outside of Pottsville, PA.. now they advertise Nationwide and charge a lot more for a six-pack.) I think that IPA (India Pale Ale) is far and away the best beer made today. Much better than the versions made by the Brits years ago.
WalMart? What's a trip to OC without a visit to their WalMart store? This year, instead of counting the number of people with massive tatoos, I decided to count only those who did not have them. I only counted 5.. but they probably had theirs covered by their shirts.
What other WalMart can you go to where everybody is yelling at the top of their lungs? Strange people down there.
Home away from Home: We rent the condo from a good friend of ours, and we have to care for it as though it were our own home. So, when I fell asleep at the table, tipped it over and saw the glass of tomato juice sail through the air and onto the carpet, I became a little excited. Immediate action allowed us to get the spill completely cleaned up and undetectable.
Pills: As an old dude, I take a lot of medication. One of my pills is minute. A little yellow pill that blends in perfectly with the weaves of the carpet. (Yes, I spilled my pills.) I never did find 3 of them and hope that the vacuum cleaner got them before our host steps on the little squishy things.
Anger: Early one Sunday morning, we heard a knock on our door. It was a maintenance man who said that the guy in the condo under us was getting water into his bathroom. The maintenance man found that the spigot and faucets in the bathtub were loose, perhaps allowing some water to get in and spread down to his appartment. He said that he would caulk the area.
Meanwhile, a man with a very angry red face barged in and started yelling about his ceiling and put his face right up against mine. The last time an angry face got that close to me, it became dented in a few places and it almost happened again this time. However, I restrained myself. After caulking, the guy was getting more water, so it probably wasn't from this apartment at all.
Anyway, after this, I was hoping that we wouldn't have any other problems that would upset this guy.. guess what.. on the last day, while we were packing to leave, the toilet overflowed. Elaine and I spent a long time with a lot of towels getting the water off the floor.. and then we spent hours trying to unclog the drain. I didn't see the guy's red face again so I guess he stayed dry.
Oil Spill? When I went down to the beach to get some shells for Elaine, as I do each year, there were none. Where were the shells? The sand was flecked with black, just as I remember from when I was a kid during WWII. Tankers were sunk in the Atlantic by German submarines and spilled oil created tar in action with the sand.. and it spread out lightly over all after a while. This was like that.. and where were the shells? What is going on?
When we first got to OC, the surf was monstrous. Could it have squashed the shells?
Weather: Later, while remnants of hurricanes were storming up the Atlantic in the form of torrential rains, the weather channel kept showing Doppler Radar pictures of all this wetness coming up the coast. At one time, we had a Flash Flood Alert, a Heavy Rain Alert, a Tornado Watch and something else I can't remember. Over and over we were alerted about and shown pictures of the 12 inches of rain that we definitely would get. It never showed up. Not a drop until the last day that we were in OC.
The Last Day: As we battled with a rogue toilet, torrential rains buffeted OC. I made the 16 trips (remember, we made purchases) down the elevator and out into the storm and into the car. Everything got soaked, especially me. (I'm paying for it now with a very painful back and wheezing lungs.)
But, all in all, as usual, we had a great time. We were especially glad that my beautiful granddaughter, Bridget, was able to look after our cat, SuZee for the time that we were gone. SuZee told us that Bridget treated her very well.
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Showing posts with label tatoos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tatoos. Show all posts
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Old and New, Borrowed and Blue (maybe)
Here's another dozen:
01. Prophetic. I'm trying to solve a crossword puzzle from 1943 and one of the clues states: "Chirping note." The answer, of course, is TWEET. (How did they know?)
02. Self-mutilation. Last year, at a WalMart store near Ocean City, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. Last week, at a WalMart store in Westminster, Maryland, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. I predict that the most lucrative profession in the year 2030 will be Tattoo Remover.
03. Methuselah? Former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, faces a total of 415 years in jail.
Do you remember those great lyrics:
Methuselah lived 900 years,
Old Methuselah lived 900 years,
But what use is livin'
When no woman will give in
To no man what's 900 years?
04. Retired? Who said this?
Somebody asked me: "What did you do today?
I said: "Nothing."
"But isn't that what you did yesterday?"
"Yes, but I wasn't finished."
05. Cholesterol: Would you go to the Australian restaurant where you are required to eat everything on your plate or be banished? Chef Ichikawa says he is serious about this.
Is that bad? "I say: Nay Nay!"
06. Somebody is watching you! I just read that General James Clapper (!) has been nominated to become coordinator of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. I hope that Jimmie will be able to get them coordinated enough to find Ben Ladin. (Maybe they already know where he is. If so, why don't they help the guys with hand grenades and samurai swords get to him. )
Question: how did that guy get on a US plane with his sword if I get stopped when my metal collar button sets off the metal detector?
07. Aging: I like this poem by Suzan L. Wiener, that was in Mature Living magazine.
You know you're getting older,
And this is true I guess,
When your life in the fast lane
Is now just the supermarket express.
08. Samuel Clemens: Mark Twain was known all over the West for the Celebrated Jumping Frog story, but when the New York Times published it so the East would know about him, they mis-named him Mark Swain.
09. Beam me up! I'm told that William Shattner auctioned off his kidney stone. I wonder how much he got for it.
10. Church stuff: Elaine likes to see the burrowing animals that inhabit the sloping lawns around the local Catholic church. She calls them: Holy Gophers.
Somebody told me that there is a Catholic church somewhere that is called "Lovely Bones".. I haven't checked it out yet.
Church names are interesting: When I went to a Quaker "church".. it was called the Friends Meeting House. What a nice name.. although it was misleading because if any of us young boys started to nod off waiting for the spirit to move someone to speak, we were subjected to a hearty crack on the head by a long pole-wielding unfriendly old-timer.
Later in my childhood, I went to the "First Baptist Church." I don't recall there being a "Second Baptist Church".. I'm sure there was somewhere. I'm also sure there was never a "Last Baptist Church." I could be wrong.
Some folks know that I was ordained in the Church of Modern Apostles in the 1970's. I still can legally perform weddings in the State of Florida. Actually, anybody can perform marriages in most states as long as the parties to the marriage get appropriate licenses.
11. Computers! (Watch it.. this is boring.. so just skip over it.) I have a lot of computers, partly because I never throw anything away. Let me give you an inventory:
A. One of the first laptops.. it weighs about twenty-five pounds. (Carry-on luggage?)
B. A laptop that I backed over in Massachusetts. It still works, except for the screen.
C. A replacement laptop, that has half of its screen messed up.. yes, I dropped it.
D. A desktop that is driving me crazy. I'm ready to throw it out the window. Its main function is as a network base. At least it actually does that ok.
E. A new laptop with VISTA. Every day it has a problem that takes me a long time to fix. But it has a very user-friendly keyboard, and I like it when it is working. Every once in a while it becomes unfixable and I have to restore it to its pristine condition and lose a lot of information.
F. A mini-laptop which was very cheap to buy and is easy to carry around and store. However, my fingers are a little too fat for the keyboard.. and pictures don't show up very well on the small screen.
G. A DROID. I like it, but it also has small keys.. my daughter-in-law gave me some tips about it and that has helped me learn to use it. The battery gets used up fast so I have to charge it up every evening. It takes nice pictures.
H. Three CPU's from earlier computers.. a technician says he can take all of the data from them and put it on a CD that I can then download/upload to one of my newer computers and see what I thought had been lost when I upgraded.
12. Celebration. Please be advised that July is National Baked Bean Month. (I'm sure that Larry the Cable Guy will have something to say.. or do.. about that.)
...................................................................................................................
01. Prophetic. I'm trying to solve a crossword puzzle from 1943 and one of the clues states: "Chirping note." The answer, of course, is TWEET. (How did they know?)
02. Self-mutilation. Last year, at a WalMart store near Ocean City, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. Last week, at a WalMart store in Westminster, Maryland, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. I predict that the most lucrative profession in the year 2030 will be Tattoo Remover.
03. Methuselah? Former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, faces a total of 415 years in jail.
Do you remember those great lyrics:
Methuselah lived 900 years,
Old Methuselah lived 900 years,
But what use is livin'
When no woman will give in
To no man what's 900 years?
04. Retired? Who said this?
Somebody asked me: "What did you do today?
I said: "Nothing."
"But isn't that what you did yesterday?"
"Yes, but I wasn't finished."
05. Cholesterol: Would you go to the Australian restaurant where you are required to eat everything on your plate or be banished? Chef Ichikawa says he is serious about this.
Is that bad? "I say: Nay Nay!"
06. Somebody is watching you! I just read that General James Clapper (!) has been nominated to become coordinator of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. I hope that Jimmie will be able to get them coordinated enough to find Ben Ladin. (Maybe they already know where he is. If so, why don't they help the guys with hand grenades and samurai swords get to him. )
Question: how did that guy get on a US plane with his sword if I get stopped when my metal collar button sets off the metal detector?
07. Aging: I like this poem by Suzan L. Wiener, that was in Mature Living magazine.
You know you're getting older,
And this is true I guess,
When your life in the fast lane
Is now just the supermarket express.
08. Samuel Clemens: Mark Twain was known all over the West for the Celebrated Jumping Frog story, but when the New York Times published it so the East would know about him, they mis-named him Mark Swain.
09. Beam me up! I'm told that William Shattner auctioned off his kidney stone. I wonder how much he got for it.
10. Church stuff: Elaine likes to see the burrowing animals that inhabit the sloping lawns around the local Catholic church. She calls them: Holy Gophers.
Somebody told me that there is a Catholic church somewhere that is called "Lovely Bones".. I haven't checked it out yet.
Church names are interesting: When I went to a Quaker "church".. it was called the Friends Meeting House. What a nice name.. although it was misleading because if any of us young boys started to nod off waiting for the spirit to move someone to speak, we were subjected to a hearty crack on the head by a long pole-wielding unfriendly old-timer.
Later in my childhood, I went to the "First Baptist Church." I don't recall there being a "Second Baptist Church".. I'm sure there was somewhere. I'm also sure there was never a "Last Baptist Church." I could be wrong.
Some folks know that I was ordained in the Church of Modern Apostles in the 1970's. I still can legally perform weddings in the State of Florida. Actually, anybody can perform marriages in most states as long as the parties to the marriage get appropriate licenses.
11. Computers! (Watch it.. this is boring.. so just skip over it.) I have a lot of computers, partly because I never throw anything away. Let me give you an inventory:
A. One of the first laptops.. it weighs about twenty-five pounds. (Carry-on luggage?)
B. A laptop that I backed over in Massachusetts. It still works, except for the screen.
C. A replacement laptop, that has half of its screen messed up.. yes, I dropped it.
D. A desktop that is driving me crazy. I'm ready to throw it out the window. Its main function is as a network base. At least it actually does that ok.
E. A new laptop with VISTA. Every day it has a problem that takes me a long time to fix. But it has a very user-friendly keyboard, and I like it when it is working. Every once in a while it becomes unfixable and I have to restore it to its pristine condition and lose a lot of information.
F. A mini-laptop which was very cheap to buy and is easy to carry around and store. However, my fingers are a little too fat for the keyboard.. and pictures don't show up very well on the small screen.
G. A DROID. I like it, but it also has small keys.. my daughter-in-law gave me some tips about it and that has helped me learn to use it. The battery gets used up fast so I have to charge it up every evening. It takes nice pictures.
H. Three CPU's from earlier computers.. a technician says he can take all of the data from them and put it on a CD that I can then download/upload to one of my newer computers and see what I thought had been lost when I upgraded.
12. Celebration. Please be advised that July is National Baked Bean Month. (I'm sure that Larry the Cable Guy will have something to say.. or do.. about that.)
...................................................................................................................
Monday, January 11, 2010
How to Understand a Woman
I was listening to a Gunsmoke radio episode from 1960 last night and noted the following exchange.
Chester: "Mr. Dillon, why is Miss Kitty so grouchy tonight? I just don't understand her sometimes."
Marshal Dillon: "Chester, save yourself some grief. Don't try to understand what a woman is thinking."
(The episode was written by a woman.)
Also, yesterday, Elaine showed me a piece of a comic strip that showed a girl complaining about her boyfriend's necktie, over and over as he tried on several. She finally said she liked the last one he tried on.. which was actually the first one he had on. He told her that he didn't understand. She told him not to worry about it and gave him a kiss.
I think that Ovid said this many years ago: "There are five facts that a man must know to be able to understand a woman.. unfortunately, no man knows any of them yet.".. or words to that effect. And Ovid was an expert on LOVE.
Elaine is watching the "Bachelor" show on TV and the women there appear to me to be complete airheads. If I had never heard of the show before and suddenly found it on TV and watched a bit of it, I would guess that it was filmed inside a whorehouse. (sorry)
Why would a woman want to demean herself by appearing on that show? One would ask: "Why do women chase after men anyway?" Ovid (again) said: "Women chase after men? Does a mousetrap chase after mice?"
Last week, after watching that Bachelor show, Elaine turned on another kind of related show which I found to be hilarious. On this show, four beautiful ladies sat facing the stage and in their hands were double-faced signs. One side said "interested"; the other side said "not interested".
As they sat there, men would be pushed accross the stage on a conveyer belt. When it stopped, they would do all kinds of "shtick" to try to charm the ladies until one of them showed the "interested" sign. Then they would be able to go into a "holding area", where they would stay until their "interested" lady got interested in a different man, who would take their place.
If the man in front of the four ladies did not interest any of them.. they would be shuffled off on the conveyer belt and another "man" would be wheeled out.
It was obvious to me that these conveyer-belt men were young actors. No man could possibly be as stupid as they made themselves out to be. But they were certainly funny. The final "picked winners" got to go on a date with the ladies that picked them. There was some funny footage of these dates.
I thought that this show was right on the money... it showed how dumb some men act compared to women.. rather than the Bachelor show, where women are showed as dummies.
'enry 'iggins sang: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" But if they were, wouldn't that be a crazy world?
Elaine and I watched the movie "War and Peace" the other night. (I had waded through much of the book once.. and even though I had studied Russian, I could not keep the Russian-named characters straightened out sufficiently to follow all of the plots and gave it up.) The movie folks had shortened the names and kind of anglicized them somewhat, so it was easier to follow the plots.
While the Russian men in the movie acted dumb most of the time, the women in the movie spent most of their time trying to seduce the men and seemed to care little for anyone's welfare but their own. I guess that was what Tolstoy thought the world was all about.. and women were like that.. airheads.. like on the Bachelor show.
A few years ago, I read "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" and several of its offshoots trying to understand women. It helped a little. I learned that men should not try to change women, while women must try constantly to change men, because men are just big boys, at least in the U.S.
The Europeans have a phrase for it: Europeans put the man into the boy too soon. Americans leave the boy in the man too long. (One example: the Baltimore Sun had a picture of two men who had spent 15 hours each having Baltimore Ravens symbols and information tatooed into their arms.)
Any thoughts on the subject?
........................................................
Chester: "Mr. Dillon, why is Miss Kitty so grouchy tonight? I just don't understand her sometimes."
Marshal Dillon: "Chester, save yourself some grief. Don't try to understand what a woman is thinking."
(The episode was written by a woman.)
Also, yesterday, Elaine showed me a piece of a comic strip that showed a girl complaining about her boyfriend's necktie, over and over as he tried on several. She finally said she liked the last one he tried on.. which was actually the first one he had on. He told her that he didn't understand. She told him not to worry about it and gave him a kiss.
I think that Ovid said this many years ago: "There are five facts that a man must know to be able to understand a woman.. unfortunately, no man knows any of them yet.".. or words to that effect. And Ovid was an expert on LOVE.
Elaine is watching the "Bachelor" show on TV and the women there appear to me to be complete airheads. If I had never heard of the show before and suddenly found it on TV and watched a bit of it, I would guess that it was filmed inside a whorehouse. (sorry)
Why would a woman want to demean herself by appearing on that show? One would ask: "Why do women chase after men anyway?" Ovid (again) said: "Women chase after men? Does a mousetrap chase after mice?"
Last week, after watching that Bachelor show, Elaine turned on another kind of related show which I found to be hilarious. On this show, four beautiful ladies sat facing the stage and in their hands were double-faced signs. One side said "interested"; the other side said "not interested".
As they sat there, men would be pushed accross the stage on a conveyer belt. When it stopped, they would do all kinds of "shtick" to try to charm the ladies until one of them showed the "interested" sign. Then they would be able to go into a "holding area", where they would stay until their "interested" lady got interested in a different man, who would take their place.
If the man in front of the four ladies did not interest any of them.. they would be shuffled off on the conveyer belt and another "man" would be wheeled out.
It was obvious to me that these conveyer-belt men were young actors. No man could possibly be as stupid as they made themselves out to be. But they were certainly funny. The final "picked winners" got to go on a date with the ladies that picked them. There was some funny footage of these dates.
I thought that this show was right on the money... it showed how dumb some men act compared to women.. rather than the Bachelor show, where women are showed as dummies.
'enry 'iggins sang: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" But if they were, wouldn't that be a crazy world?
Elaine and I watched the movie "War and Peace" the other night. (I had waded through much of the book once.. and even though I had studied Russian, I could not keep the Russian-named characters straightened out sufficiently to follow all of the plots and gave it up.) The movie folks had shortened the names and kind of anglicized them somewhat, so it was easier to follow the plots.
While the Russian men in the movie acted dumb most of the time, the women in the movie spent most of their time trying to seduce the men and seemed to care little for anyone's welfare but their own. I guess that was what Tolstoy thought the world was all about.. and women were like that.. airheads.. like on the Bachelor show.
A few years ago, I read "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" and several of its offshoots trying to understand women. It helped a little. I learned that men should not try to change women, while women must try constantly to change men, because men are just big boys, at least in the U.S.
The Europeans have a phrase for it: Europeans put the man into the boy too soon. Americans leave the boy in the man too long. (One example: the Baltimore Sun had a picture of two men who had spent 15 hours each having Baltimore Ravens symbols and information tatooed into their arms.)
Any thoughts on the subject?
........................................................
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