EATING’S A BALANCE

Eating's A Balance

There are days when I eats
Almost nothing but sweets.
Eating sweets is for me such a compulsion.
That the health food crowd has threatened expulsion

Other days I eat healthy,
My plate’s vitamin-wealthy
Full of veggies and greens
Like kale and green beans.

Today at the movies, we just ate M&M’s
Not leafy greens with crunchy stems
But we’ll make up for it later
With a supper much greater.

If I recall correctly
It’s to be seafood directly
Removed from the deep fryer
Eating all we desire.

But please do not disparage us
‘cause we’ll be adding asparagus.

A Great Thing, and Sharing A Few Discoveries

A Great Thing, and Sharing A Few Discoveries

There is a great thing I've discovered about writing here.  I can wander off the reservation whenever it comes to mind and receive no criticism about it.  Like many other people I'm sure (or maybe I'm all alone this way!) I'm usually first in line to offer criticism of what I do.  It's perfectly normal for me to criticize myself before anyone else gets around to it.  I've been asked more than once why I choose to write here instead of some sort of personal journal, and I have been at a loss to explain it.  I enjoy reflecting on things that pass my way, and hope that other people will see this and say one of the following:  "That's goofy, why would anyone think that way," or "By Jove he's got it right!" or "What is wrong with this nut case?" Or, "I totally disagree with this whole line of reasoning and I'm not going to even look at this again," or "He's right, you know, I just never looked at it that way."  Or, one might say "OK, it's mildly entertaining, so I'll read on." or....

In the end it really doesn't matter.  At least I know what I'm noticing will not be inaccessible.  If anybody wants to know what I thought of late one evening or early one morning, here it will be, to the extent that I could express it.

I've taken to jotting the briefest of notes to capture things that strike me during the day, and, if I feel like I have nothing to say, I can look back at these cryptic references and try to recall why I thought it noteworthy at all.  Today's notes--Shrimp Shack, Spaghetti Squash, Chocolate Tree, Lowcountry Store and Oh, Canada (really a note I should have made yesterday, but I forgot), and lastly, is Jury Duty still one of my duties?

Our motoring adventure on this, a gorgeous Fall day in South Carolina, was to venture to Beaufort, SC, the county seat to which I have been summoned to appear for jury duty.  This is the second call, my previous one was to municipal court in Bluffton, SC, where I made an appearance about eight weeks ago, and was dismissed with the thanks of the court when all matters set for trial were either settled or postponed.  I received, just this past week, a check in the amount of $26.95--ten dollars of which was termed "subsistence" and the remaining $16.95 reimbursement for mileage expenses.  How these numbers were arrived at probably did not include deliberation by any jury, as the potential jurors who were dismissed with me grumbled about the time they had lost--as if to say we would have retained that time and kept it for some other time when it might be more useful.  Let's say at the end of life on this earth, although my present understanding of those final hours is such that I might not want two or three more hours of extension.  So, where would I have spent these two hours?  Nowhere special, I think.  Just where and when they were.  Hence, whether they were wasted or not had been up to me and not the Municipal Court of Bluffton, SC--a town in which I do not reside, unless or until my wife persuades me to move to Sun City Hilton Head for the camaraderie and socialization it might afford us.  The notion of wasting or even spending such hours is preposterous, isn't it?  I mean, time passes, with or without our petty little decisions to "spend" or "waste" it.  Oh but this is probably farther down that path any of us wanted to go, so...

Back to Beaufort, SC.  We found our way, and determined it was suitably simple to allow even a dullard like me to locate it (as long as I had the help of the car’s satellite navigator, I mean, there were two turns after leaving our residential area).

After that, we pursued the Shrimp Shack, which turned out to be nearly thirty minutes further along the same road as the courthouse.  It was (and probably still is) named the Shrimp Shack.  There we lunched on shrimp burgers, cole slaw and diet coke.  Moments later, despite my spouse's concern as to whether we had ordered enough or not, we headed back.  We stopped at a pumpkin stand in search of Spaghetti Squash (see 2nd note above)--I guess the people minding the stand looked to be likely suspects in possession of spaghetti squash, I don't know, and if you don't know what spaghetti squash is, why should you even care?

Next stop (see third note above), as I had hoped, was the Chocolate Tree, a small chocolate shop which I believe to be the only real justification for the existence of Beaufort,  Sorry, Beaufort people, you should have shown me something better than a few over-priced seafood restaurants and a riverfront park if you wanted me to remember you for anything beyond the Chocolate Tree.  I escaped that store having spent slightly less than I had at the Shrimp Shack (mainly because I acted as if my wallet was stuck in my pocket and I was having trouble getting it out in time to pay the cashier).  My wife paid for the twelve dollars worth of chocolates (hey, lunch was $19.76!).

We stopped at the Lowcountry Store and another similar shop in Beaufort and escaped without further damage to my pocket.  The latter two stores consisted of stalls maintained by a collection of local artists who “over priced” their work by charging about half the minimum wage for each hour they had spent painstakingly creating their various works of art.  You do that sort of work for the joy of creating it, not to make a profit, of course.    

On to Oh, Canada--I was traveling and in recovery therefrom when the recent tragic shootings in Canada took place.  Oddly enough, the morning of our own Washington State school shooting, I saw an editorial cartoon of the U.S. President making a condolence call to Canada's Prime Minister, in which our President was depicted saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, here in the U.S., we call it Wednesday."  To me, that simply meant that these had become commonplace in the U. S., even to our highest elected official.  To Canada, these things are not so at all, hence the ceremony I observed at the opening of a professional hockey game where the Canadian people visibly pulled together and sang their national anthem to honor their dead and the bravery of those who put a stop to their shootings.  I was moved to tears, but now I sit and wonder--what will it mean to "pull together?"  We haven't after thirteen years or so after 9/11 and a series of tragic school and workplace shootings figured out what to do, except to care a little more about one another, I think.  But that promptly disappears when that other fella pulls out in front of you in the road.  In Italy and France, I saw all sorts of aggressive driving and people cutting amiably in front of one another, but I never saw a driver express anger openly toward another.  No road rage?  I wonder why?  Well, that’s all folks.

How Fast Do Frenchmen Walk, An Impression of Impressionists, etc.

How Fast Do Frenchmen Walk, An Impression of Impressionists, etc.

Our friends have gone home, we've moved on to Paris.  I have some hard~earned wisdom to share. Never trust a Frenchman's estimate of the time it will take to walk somewhere. When we got up this morning, we planned to hop a B~train to the Eiffel Tower, walk around a bit. then keep a reservation for lunch halfway up the Tower. when we talked to the concierge, he reported there had been a serious crash on the B~line and it would be down for some time. The weather was delightful, so we asked how long it might take to walk. "Oh,thirty~five minutes," he said. An hour and a half later, we staggered to the ticket office to pick up our passes to go to lunch. I had not watched all sorts of Frenchmen striding past us, either.  

But, who's complaining? After a marvellous lunch as we swayed in the sky--yes, like lots of other tall structures, the Tower sways noticeably--we took a taxi to the best Art Museum I've ever seen- Musee' d'Orsay in Paris. Although we had already walked our legs off, touring the museum was worth the pain. It's collection seems to focus on some of my favorite art. After a week and a half of Renaissance painters and sculptors, we moved among the impressionist. My new observation of Impressionist for the day--I like what they do with the skies.  

The Trip Home and Napping In Recovery

As travelers, we are sometimes our own worst enemies.  Our friends booked their trips home to include three different stops, four airports.  We had only one takeoff and landing, but we appended a four and a half hour drive to the finish to save ourselves the "hassle" of taking two planes and making a connection.

The consequence for our friends was a twenty-some hour trip to their hometown airport.
Our trip itself was only nineteen in total, but on our travel day, we were awake for twenty seven hours, since our trip did not begin until late afternoon.  Oh, but we know how to plan the perfect climax.  That car ride was an experience, it ended at 3:30 AM in a driving rain.

You might observe that at least it's over with, so to speak.  But this is our fourth day home, and as I write this, I am waiting for my dear wife to awaken from yet another lengthy nap.  She has found a daily nap or two necessary in order to keep her always cheerful disposition.  She is worried that nap-taking is addictive.  I can't say, because I have not tried to quit my nap-taking habit (I think I have been napping almost every day for a year or more).  Oh well, I think I'll end this and lean back and rest for a while (Yawn).

Some Tour Guides Are Better Than Others

Hereabouts, tour guides are plentiful.  There appear to be several challenging qualifications.  They must be able to speak several languages fluently and have to either learn their subjects thoroughly or quickly memorize a script~which is a distant 2nd best. 

[hmmm, typing before your anti~tremor meds kick in--an opportunity that arises once every four waking hours and upon starting each day--can produce interesting lessons.  Today, I learned that "either" can be readily respelled, note: I didn't say misspelled, these are actual correct spellings of another word entirely~as in either, dither, zither, and wither, but not eithen, pithen, etc.)

Ah, but back to second best.  A tour guide who doesn't know his or her subject will not be able to display passion for the subject matter.  The best of the half dozen tour guides we've encountered was informative and thorough, of course; but she was also passionate about the artist she most admired.  It came through when she said his name, when she recounted events in his life and when she talked about people who did him a disservice.  It came through without any drama or overstatement on her part.  We all saw it, and it impressed us.  It was a judgement several of us formed independently during the tour and pointed out later.  The script-memorizer promptly gives the impression that they believe the most important thing is not the questions their touring party members have, nor is it the item along the way that makes the members stop and admire them, rather, it is getting through the script.  Soon the customers stop asking questions, even when the script calls for the leader to solicit them.  

Another missing element with the script-reader is humor.  While such a person can learn an expression or two to use to inject humor, but inevitably they overuse it.  One of our guides used an expression she had learned to inject.  It was "C'mon, did they really _____.  She would insert some unrealistic expectation or aspiration of the subject of the exhibit.  It was a subtle way of expressing the thought that that person was over the top in one respect or another.  She knew when to use it, and she did so--probably ten or twelve times.  The first two or three were not bad, but the rest of them were really just overdone.  The best guides we had were able to express humor in a variety of ways--relating to historical figures, to people they had on tours in the past, and themselves.  It takes a certain amount of mastery of the language to do this, and while all of the guides met the qualification of being able to make themselves understood in English, they simply could not inject humor.  

One final consideration that affected tour guide performance was just having too much on their plate.  One of our tour leaders had to cover the languages.  Ours was a mixed group, so the tour had to be spoken in both languages in turn.  As a result, the guide could only provide half as much attention, response to questions, and more.  Another way of giving a tour guide too much to do is to travel on several different public forms of transport.  Most groups numbered twenty persons or more, so keeping track of all of them can be inconvenient.  It's way note than inconvenient when a late-arriving tour member arrives at the rendezvous point for the next leg of the journey.  We had a guide who was quite good when it came to answering questions, and making conversation about the subject of the tour when sh had time to do it.  But we had two trains and a boat to catch who operated on their schedule, not hers.  She had to round up her group and ensure that all were present so often that she was able to offer little narrative about where we were going, or what we were looking at.  Managers of tours, you are no different from mot businesses.  When you load up your good employees with too much to do, quality suffers.  Keep it in mind.  Can all this information help you the reader?  Probably not, but it was on my mind.

Monday

Monday was a slow day.
A watching people shop day.
Pestered by the gypsies every time we sat.
No art for us to study, only standing pat.

No laundry to do, just a bunch of walking.
No great discoveries made, just  plenty of talking

Followed by the best lasagna in Northern Italy,
Consumed in a tent, during a driving rain.
A special ending to an ordinary day,
In a place where marvels are often in play.

Why Was I Thinking Of Gilligan Today?

First of all, it was a thirteen hour tour, not a three hour tour.  Secondly, despite their efforts to make the island feel like home, there was never a burger chain involved with Gilligan.  But I thought of him just the same.  It may have had something to do with the fact that our tour included travel between and among five "islands" of a sort, specifically, the Cinque. d' Terre.  Who would have thought Italy would even have a national park? It just sounds to American somehow. Cinque d' Terre is a collection of five fishing villages that typify such places as they existed for centuries along the Ligorian shore of the Mediterranean Sea.  Italy has created a tourist attraction that is beautiful and majestic.  Walking their streets and boating between them gave a splendid pair of perspectives.  One close-up and touching the stone streets the shops, the churches and the homes of its inhabitants.  The other offers a view of these villages perched on the sides of mountains, green with vegetation, even trees that seem to rise out of the sea.  Their vibrant colors add to the natural beauty of the place.  It was a joy.

However, it was a thirteen hour excursion.  And it included lots of walking and stair-climbing.  It was an ordeal in some respects.  Who can blame us for the moment of weakness that put us in a Burger King in Florence, Italy (not to be confused with Florence, Alabama, where Burger King visits are much more common).  On average, the eight of us probably averaged four years since our last visit to any Burger King.  Yet we took some TEMPORARY comfort there.  I say temporary, because after walking home, we data in our living room groaning about how our stomachs felt.  It all made.me wonder  if we might not have been better off on one of Gilligan's three hour tours, even with the risk those entailed.

A Bigger Get Me To The Church On Time--The Vatican Tour

Waiting at the Foot Locker store next to the Piazza of St. Peter's Basilica.  Domes, ceilings, walls covered in art.  Some in mosaics, even underfoot.  People, people, people. Shoulder-to-shoulder and cheek-to-cheek, literally. Popes entombed, one pope's corpse on display.  Twenty-five thousand people a day take the tour. Nine million people.  Lines snaking behind your guides as they dodge each other.  Ready to fall down at the finish.  But lunch revives us, and we resume the role of lost travelers trying to follow maps deliberately not made to scale.  Why would your hotel provide a map deliberately not made to scale?  Why to minimize the distance from.the hotel to the various major attractions to the casual eye.

We limp home--Ah, but dinner under the moonlight.  How many times have we done that?  The restaurant had a bit of sadness to it.  The hotel building attached to the restaurant but always a separate entity had failed just a year ago, and the empty building shielded the restaurant from our view on the side from which we approached.  But dinner err was excellent, and, as we stepped away from the building to look at an olive tree, and turned back toward the restaurant-we saw what this restaurant building had once been before the hulking hotel was added-a vine-covered inn bathed in the light of a full moon.

Touring and being lost have walked our legs off.  Next day we'll know the territory better--how bad can walking be when you know where you're going?

Am I Walkative Or Talkative?

Am I Walkative or Talkative?

Caught a cab to the Colisseum to start the day.  Walked up to the top of the plaza of the king,  celebrates the unification of Italy in 1861 .  Honoring Victor  Emanuel...after the fall of the Roman Empire, the first time Italy was re~unified was in 1861, folllowed by designation of a rebuilding Rome as its capital in 1871.  Decided to sit at a cafe across the street. waiting for our more  walkative lfriends who walked the Forum~including the Colisseum, Palatine Hill and the Pantheon.  When their stretched from.two hours to four, we opted for returning to the hotel to talk and relax with a wee bit of wine in lieu of studious pursuits.     Dinner at the hotel with several more bottles of wine for our thirsty walkers  was surprisingly good.  We all relaxed, enjoying our last night in Rome.


Jim B

Erupting From Rome

Erupting From Rome

Spending the day remembering Vesuvius And Pompeii is important. They built their city on lava, created their streets using old lava stones and forgot Vesuvius towered over them. They didn't know what a volcanic eruption was when it struck.

In a way it is similar to the way in which we regard the whole miracle that surrounds us here and now.  We take it for granted.

Another Fast Train To Firenze

Another Fast Train To Firenze

Another fast train back to Firenze, then a "couple of blocks" rolling our suitcases. Turned out to be the longest couple of blocks in recorded history. Arrived to a staircase of 20 steps. Once up there, we relaxed (which required a trip to the grocery for wine and cheese, etc.).  

Wandered the plazas nearby and found a cafe down an alley where we enjoyed a dinner with wine at a reasonable price. We made up for that with breakfast where we were charged $50 for coffee.  Thirty minutes later we found a small cafe with coffee for one Euro.  From there we managed to resolve never to eat breakfast at that place, and headed for home, on the way we decided to do laundry.

talk about fun.

Irascible Italian and The Two IQ Tests (New Add 10/15)

Irascible Italian and The Two IQ Tests

You might think one against eight might penetrate even the feeble~minded.  Picture this: a cab driver drives along a street filled with tourists on foot.  In the noise and distraction the tourists aren't getting out of the cab's way quickly enough to suit its driver.   Instead of tooting the horn and rolling forward smoothly, he guns his engine and then accelerates into the gap he does have.  Not unexpectedly, the tourists are at least startled, if not frightened.  One responded by slapping the fender of the cab as it rushes by.  The truly Italian driver slams on his brakes, jumps out of his cab and charges into the group of eight tourists he just tried to run over, thus failing two consecutive IQ tests.  What possessed him to confront us when he was outnumbered eight-no-one? Cooler heads prevailed and he drove off cursing, but....


P.S. The Irascible Italian passes a real-life IQ test on his third try--Central Florense is a small town.  Two days later, we called for a couple of cabs for early the next morning to take the eight of us somewhere.  Imagine my surprise when the first driver to pull up was the irascible Italian himself.  Faced with the choice of accepting a profitable fare or recalling the tantrum s of several days prior, he wisely chose to.pretend he did not remember it at all. Passed that IQ test.

Raised On Amtrak

Raised on Amtrak

Raised on  Amtrak and the CTA, I don't think I have ever ridden  the rails faster than fifty or sixty [miles per hour, not kilometers].   But no more.  The electric sign at each end of each car provides a stream of information about next stops, special offers, the time, the speed at which we were traveling, and this  statement "this train is on time."   

Little wonder they can stay on schedule, our speed ranged from two to three hundred kilometers per hour.  in terms of miles per, that's 124 to 186.  Easy to make up time when you can dial up an extra fifty or sixty miles an hour.  

Although we rode those rails apace, we spent all day making the trip,  A cab ride to the station was followed by a quick lunch, standing, of course.  All the seats were occupied by people who were not eating. There are really no seats at the station for those who have to wait, so people take whatever seats are available.  This might  explain the pay toilets, but it does not, however, the missing toilet seats inside,  Unless people are thinking, "hey, I paid one Euro..."  They may have something there.  Way back in the 1960's, there were pay toilets at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.  The devices that collected the payment were manufactured by a company named "Nik~O~Lok, and the price was...yes, a nickel.  To raise the price to one Euro. is 2600 percent increase.   

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, it took all day and we were still looking  for a good pasta meal.  Our hotel's desk personnel recommended a place nearby, but we are still looking.

Things That Count

Things That Count

But enough about Venice, although it might just as well have been Venus at  times for all we knew about finding our way, enough....  You think I was kidding?  Let's talk counting. We are  with a woman who is wearing a device on her wrist that she connects to her iPad at night and it tells her how many steps she has taken that day.  In two days we took roughly twenty~five thousand 25,000 steps!  All those  steps and I think they were all taken in an area two or three city blocks square if we had been in Chicago.  All those blind alleys, dead~ends at canals, bridges to nowhere....

while I'm thinking numbers, I have a product idea.  converting Euros to dollars is too complicated for a window shopping wife,   so she just calls them "dollars."  So a fifteen Euro price tag becomes "fifteen dollars" instead of the twenty it actually calculates to.  Will somebody please invent a pair of eyeglasses that converts those prices in real time?

Mazeophobia In Venice

Mazeophobia In Venice

Getting around in any place new is awkward at best.  In Venice, it's frightening.  Even with a map,  nothing is straight and everything looks the same, even when what you are seeing IS the same--or you thought it was the last three times you wound up back in this same spot.

Then see what happens when it gets dark and you realize you didn't sleep at all the night because you were on a plane flying here in a coach seat you really could not recline because you knew the passenger behind you was also six feet tall and jammed into his own seat.

Now, I wouldn't be here writing this if we hadn't eventually found our way but come on, how does anyone find their way?  And don't tell me some satellite GPS system would take care of this.  I don't believe you. These alleys are four feet wide or less.  Your satellite can't see it.

I went looking for a term that describes what we were feeling as we pondered leaving our apartment this morning--it's known in psychological studies as mazeophobia--The irrational fear of becoming lost in a maze from which you never escape. But this
 seems so real. I for one don't think it's irrational at all....

On The Move,If You're Lucky

On The Move, If You're Lucky

´
Eventually, the glow you feel from all those x~rays you absorbed in the ever~changing world of passenger screening subsides.  You reach for your phone and notice a phone message from your airline ~your flight has been delayed  hour and fifteen minutes.  Your layover of just under 2 hours is now "estimated" to be 35 minutes.

Can you make it?  It depends.  From the 20th row, there are seventy people who must disembark  ahead of you.  You'll  lose ten to twelve minutes waiting for them to get out of your way.  Further, your departure time is just an estimate and is likely, as it was in our case, likely to be optimistic by fifteen minutes.  In short, all of your layover time is gone.  

But miracles do happen and they may delay departure of your international flight since twenty~five of the passengers on your flight are trying to make the same connection you are.  "We made it baby, it could happen to you."  NEXT: mazeophobia in Venice

On The Road Again

On The Road Again

What is it about driving down the road to someplace you've never been that isso attractive anyway?  Driving itself is mostly boring, especially on the long straight dull interstate that makes up two~thirds of the first leg  of  our  usual journey, followed by the airport.  

Next up, the ever~so~soothing process of lining up for inspection to be admitted to the waiting corridors that stretch for blocks  but back to that inspection  Open your bag, remove certain electronics and all liquids~oops I forgot, this is Atlanta on a Friday, so wait in line for forty~five minutes just to be inspected.  Now, will you be x~rayed?  Oh yes, we must ALL do that  and remove your belt  and any jacket or sweater you have on  Oh, and those shoes..  

Now stand  on the painted footprints and raise your arms [hoping your pants don't begin to fall].  The unfortunate among you will be directed aside and the inspector will have to rub the back of his hand over the suspicious spot or spots on your x~ray image  Luckier still?  you can have your hand swabbed and watch while the cloth used to swab your hands is moved with tongs  to a machine "sniffing" for traces of bomb~making materials  Hope you didn't spread fertilizer in your yard recently.  

Where was I?  Oh yes, your bag might have contained suspicious metal objects, so now after you retrieve your shoes~hard to forget those~and the contents of your pockets, like your wallet, spare change and  your cellphone;you get to watch them remove the offending object object or objects from your carry on ["are there any sharp objects in here that might injure me?"  I wish, you think but don't say].  Then they inspect the entire bag.     The suspicious objects, and your bag,of course, are re~x~rayed.  

Now your bag is wiped with another damp piece of cloth and "sniffed" by that machine looking  for traces of bomb~making materials.  Let's hope that's not your old briefcase from when you  used to work for a chemical manufacturer, but you pass, put your shoes  and belt back on and,glowing with radiation, you head for the gate to begin the wait.  

Being the reflective sort you pause to wonder why they don't call it "the waiting room" and not the "terminal.'  Ah, but mixing "terminal' with "waiting room" only brings on....   Are we having fun yet?  Wait a minute, where did I leave my cellphone?