Tag Vacation

Summertime in the city

Michael 5 Comments

Greetings buddy bloggers, blogging buddies, responsible readers, and children of all ages. I missed yesterday. The last two days have been whirlwind days for me with more than the usual appointments, commitments, and after dinner mints. But not to fear, I am alive a well. Wonders truly do never cease.

Over in the ROAMcare site, this weekly uplift took a swipe at bad behavior and defending oneself against it. Summer heat seems to bring out the worst in the worst of us. The best of us have to be on guard. Check it out.

The big news is ROAMcare’s Flashback Friday brings back an old favorite, here and there… in fact it is the most widely read Uplift post… Middle Seat Hump Syndrome. Flashback Friday is a ROAMcare subscriber “exclusive” but this is just too good not to share with everybody.  

The post was first published in June of 2021. We were just rounding the corner from the pandemic back to normal. If you can forgive the couple lines that address the Covid years, we think you will find a lot still right with the thoughts that gave rise to the Middle Seat Hump Syndrome.

And don’t forget, it’s National Donut Day. Make it an especially sticky one! 

Happy Summer

Michael 10 Comments

Happy July everybody! We’re heading into our first full month of summer, and it’s hot hot hot, and on fire with summer fun celebrations! I’d like to take the time revisit and few topics I previously revisit on a variety of Fourths of July. I hope you’ll take the time to read or reread them and if you do, that you enjoy reading or rereading them as much as I did when I wrote or rewrote them.  

Up north it’s Canada Day today. South of most of the Great Lakes in will be Independence Day on Thursday. Neither day is exactly when new countries were constituted and truly became independent. Nor did that happen in France on July 14. But they are all momentous dates in the formation of countries we still recognize and celebrate today. Throughout the world, 21 other countries took their first steps to freedom and self-control in various Julys. I wrote more on those eventful events in 2017. You can check it out here.

Here in my neck of the woods we do fireworks in a big way. But we seem to be slacking off on parades. Fireworks are nice but parades, especially the marching bands, get my heart pumping. I think it’s because to me, bands are microcosms of America. I felt that way strongly enough that naturally I wrote about it. In fact, I’ve felt so strongly that I have repeated the same post a few times. The most recent was just last year and you can find that here.

On the Fourth of July 2022 we were pretty comfortably making that return to “normal” that we knew we’d get to eventually. That day I re-visited a post I wrote in July 2020 when we were just starting to find our way out of lockdowns and venturing back out on summer vacations, but not by air or by sea, but by land. That reminded me of my childhood vacations, always by car, and someone always stuck in the middle of the back seat, suffering from Middle Seat Hump Syndrome.

I hope sometime this month, wherever you are you can celebrate, travel, ooh and aah at the pyrotechnics, or march on to your personal independence. And between all that, I hope you have some time to read, or reread these older summer offerings from me.

Happy July everybody!

Who we are depends on many external factors, but what we are is all us. We look at how we tell ourselves what we want to be as we live life in the latest Uplift!

Happy Birthday America!

 

Middle Seat Hump Syndrome

Michael 9 Comments
You need to be of a certain age to remember summer vacations in the family car with enough family that it filled all the seats, three across, and the middle seat made the leg room in coach on Delta look generous for there, right where your feet wanted to be, was “the hump,” the growth in the floorboard that rose nearly to seat level, to allow whatever it was that transferred the up and downs of the engine to the round and round of the rear wheels to make it’s way from the motor to the where the rubber met the road. I am of that age and had been on those vacations and I got that middle seat.
 
It wasn’t always like that. For a while there were just two of us in the back and we would each get out own window seats with plenty of room between for the picnic basket and cooler that were only opened at planned stops along the way. Then the third one came along. At first it wasn’t such a big deal. She started out in the baby seat in the middle of the front seat (yes, that’s where we put them when we used them back then). After she outgrew that space she shifted to the back but because those short, stubby legs didn’t even make it off the seat, the hump was not impediment to her comfort. Eventually though, she grew and with that, so did the complaining. “I don’t want to sit on the hump!” And the word came from the front, “take turns.” From then on, whenever the car stopped, the back seat crowd reshuffled and everyone got a turn being uncomfortable where we decidedly didn’t to be.
 
That’s a little like what’s going on in the world now. Each time it appears to be stopping, or at least slowing enough to risk opening the door and get off this crazy ride, the virus comes back and we have to reshuffle. Do we limit contact, should we close down again, does this mask make my nose look big? Regardless of the answer, some bodies are going to end up decidedly where they don’t want to be doing what they’d rather not be doing or not doing what they’d rather do. Think of the world as an early ’64 Chevrolet and were all taking turns sitting on the hump.
 
I’m going to spoil the ending for you. It all works out. Nobody was permanently damaged from sitting with a leg there and the other one there. We climbed out of the backseat a little stiff and a little sore but we made. We’ll make it through this also. Maybe a little worse for the wear after this ride that you are certain we got lost on because no way it should be taking this long, but eventually we are going to climb back out into the world.
 
Middle seat hump syndrome was never that horrible and may have been the inspiration for some future engineer to design SUVs with higher cabins that clear all those mechanical doodads or to shift the driving wheels to the front and obviate the need for a hump running down the middle if the cars interior. Along those same lines it could be someday we might even get to go out and not have to check that we have our masks with us. We just have to wait for the right expert to come up with the right solution. They are out there. There will find it.
 
In the meanwhile,  Happy Motoring!
 
 
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Penny for My Thoughts

Michael 7 Comments

It’s another one of those days when I have all these questions in my head and it’s going to explode if I don’t take some pressure off it and get them out in the open. Feel free to fill in any blanks you can.

I was reading one of my food-centric magazines and came across an article on the most important kitchen tools to pack for your next vacation. The only tool I’m planning on using on vacation for dinner is my telephone to call for reservations.

Sticking with food, I recently made a (surprisingly really good!) two ingredient bagel recipe I found on the Interwebs. I wonder if anybody else noticed it took six ingredients.*

There’s been a glut of TV commercials for guaranteed life insurance. You know, the kind that “you can never be turned down and your rates will never go up.” They all cost “35 cents a day.” Never more, never less. The coverage you get varies depending on how old you are and probably your zip code but the rate is always “35 cents a day.” But did you ever try to buy a day’s worth of insurance? Sure, they’ll quote you that rate but see what kind of answer you get if you ask them to draw “35 cents a day” from your checking account.

QuestionSince I brought up the high finance world, have to you noticed the ads for that company who will protect your personal information, information that impacts your credit reports and affects your credit score, from the “dark web.” They probably know something about it because wasn’t that the same company whose data bases that hold all your personal information, credit reports, and credit score were breached a couple years ago, maybe even by someone on the “dark web.”

Why, after years of encouraging hands-free phone use and no text use in cars, are we now making cars with multifunction touch screens in the middle of the dashboard in place of the traditional tactile buttons and knobs?

Does anybody else remember Dag Hammarskjöld?

—–

*One cup flour, 1&1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, one cup plain Greek yogurt, one beaten egg, toppings of you choice (I used sea salt and cracked pepper on two and onion flakes on the other two so I guess I actually used 8 ingredients). Whisk flour, salt, and baking powder together, add yogurt to combined flour mixture and mix until combined, flour work surface and knead until dry(ish), form into ball and cut into four pieces, roll each piece into a 6-8 inch log and turn into a circle, brush with beaten egg, top as desired, place on parchment lined baking sheet, bake at 350 degrees for 24 minutes then at 450 for 4 minutes more.

 

Why We Eat

Michael 8 Comments

It’s the time of year that posts are flying all over the Internet with main dish recipes and cookie recipes and appetizers that don’t require cooking recipes and make ahead dessert recipes and the world’s best ever side dishes recipes. I gain weight every day just opening my tablet.

Seriously, I am gaining weight every day. I know because I weigh myself every day. There might be a little vanity in there. After years of avoiding scales because my weight was approaching numbers usually reserved for poor credit scores it’s refreshing to step on a scale and see a number more closely associated with IQ test scores. (Not my IQ but I’m ok with that. The world needs average people too.) Anyway, I get on the scale every morning and I see a number just a little higher than the day before. Over the last week I’d say a couple of pounds higher.* And I know why.

It’s not because of all the cookie pictures Facebook. Although they certainly aren’t helping. I would go through this unexplained weight gain when I was working, specifically anytime I was about to go out on a business trip.

Regular readers with good memories and occasional readers who visited just the right posts know that back in a different day when I was working I worked for a national health care company. An extra duty as assigned was visiting other facilities to do operational reviews. Unlike McDonald’s or Wendy’s which have the same food from coast to coast, our hospitals did not share that familiarity. There were some pretty bad cafeterias in those places. So I think subconsciously when I knew I was going away I’d eat a lot. Why ever it was, I knew that whenever I was going somewhere I was going at least two pounds heavier than the week before.

So, if we are to believe that a) there are no coincidences, b) the past is a harbinger of the future, and c) I historically always use three examples, I am gaining that weight for a reason and it has nothing to do with water weight gain and/or Christmas cookies in the kitchen. I’m going on a trip! Now since I haven’t planned anything on my own and since neither my bank balance nor my credit score is sufficient to finance a trip much farther than 12 to 15 miles down the road**, somebody is giving me a vacation for Christmas!***

Boy I hope it’s somewhere where sun block is recommended.

*For those of you of the metric persuasion that “couple of pounds” would be about a kilogram if you subscribe that a pound is 2.2kg or 1kg=0.454lb. I used to know why the abbreviation for pound is “lb.” but I don’t remember right now and it’s not all that important anyway. Probably more important is if you are somewhere that requires me clarifying the relationship between pounds and kilograms, do you also require clarification of the American credit score (or debt score as some would insist)? If you do, well, there is no reasonable explanation but the lowest FICO score possible is 300. In the VantageScore system the lowest score is 501. See. No sense at all. Just like the lowest SAT score is 400 but the lowest PSAT is 320. Oh. What’s SAT? This is going to take another post. My weight approached the lowest FICO score, not the VantageScore.

**19 to 24 kilometers (We really need to universalize weights and measures.)

***Holiday (We really need to universalize English too.)

Give Me a Break

Michael 2 Comments

Everything starts to run slower every now and then and can be fixed if you unplug it then plug it back it. Even you. This sage advice is brought to you by the people who marketed the first home computers way back in the dark ages, like 1970something. That it’s still true today isn’t surprising. That you need to unplug even from unpluggedness isn’t something I would have before imagined.

When I was working I always looked forward to time off. Not a day or a weekend. Not a week around the holidays when you worked harder at cooking and cleaning and then celebrating and recovering than you did before taking the time off. Real time off. A week on a beach on an island that has spotty cell coverage and Wi-Fi is something you ask when questioning the use of the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. That kind of time off.

If you’re still of working age I strongly urge you to consider using some of your time for actual time off. Even if it is just a day or a weekend, make it a day or a weekend of unpluggedness. Maybe you can use it to come up with a better word than unpluggedness. Lexicologists excepted. And if you’re still working then by all means take a break from not working.

Here’s my logic. As I said, when I was working I looked forward to my time off. I also looked forward to going to work. Yes, I was one of those people who loved my work. I didn’t mind if I was in early, worked through break times, worked late, worked extra, or covered others. Preferably not all in the same day but if it happened I still made the best of it. But even though I was doing what I loved I wasn’t going to be fooled into believing that sampler waiting to happen “when you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life” resembles truth. Doing anything well, even something you like, takes work. That’s how you get good at it. And work, even at doing something you like, is tiring. Exhausting even.

You need that break from work to recharge so you can do it again. That’s why so many companies have a “use it or lose it” policy regarding vacation time. No, it’s not so they can work you to death and then not give you what (you think) you’re entitled to. They have it so you’ll be forced to take time because so many seem to think that by denying yourself time off you’ll make it look like you’re such a great worker they can’t do without and you’ll never get let go. Actually, not taking time off only means you get burned out, end up doing a half-assed job, and get let go. That’s why I insisted those who worked in my department took their time off even if I had to schedule it for them myself. That’s also why, having managed to work myself up to a position of getting rewarded with 5 weeks of available time off each year I took as many of them as I could, often within a day or two of all five weeks. It might be why I enjoyed what I did. Because I took the time to recharge. Even when I was just starting and got all of two weeks vacation, between taking time off for the holidays and family activities, I always tried to take a couple of days off to just be off.

Now that I’m not working every day should be a holiday, right? Well, not so. You know that not working was not originally my idea. Those guys called doctors as well as those body parts called mine got together and decided it was better for my health, wellbeing, and continued living to start taking time off on a more or less permanent basis. Not working has not been fun, and I was sure it was because I wanted to work.  Ah, but I was wrong.

Perhaps at the beginning of not working, not working was not fun. But I’ve been not working for 3 years now. I should be used to it. Used to it I am. Enjoying it I am not. That is until I “took time off” from being off and started doing new things out of the routine that I had established in lieu of working. It really doesn’t matter what the routine is; what matters is that it is a routine. It was going to work at not working. But in the last 2 months I took a break from that. I didn’t a adhere to the routine, and I feel more refreshed, more positive, and more anticipating of returning to, you guessed it, my new old routine.

If I can keep taking some time off from myself like that more often, I might get used to this not working thing.

 

You’ve Got Mail. ish.

Michael 5 Comments

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had three friends go on vacation. One to the other side of the world, one to the other side of the country, and one to the other side of her back porch. I don’t know if any of them were where sloths are indigenous but I do know that all of them swore off electronic communication of any kind while they were out of country, state, and office.

I also know that upon their returns, all of them swore they will never do that again. Apparently it took each of them as much as a full week to sift through email, Twitter and Instagram feeds, and Facebook posts. Email the worst.

I’m not a big vacationer. Other than a couple of longish trips over the last 45 years my vacations were mostly long weekends or 2 days jaunts. Before that my parents were responsible for recreational trips and mostly I remember being in the back seat of a large Chevrolet with no air conditioning during the two hottest weeks of the year. Probably why I now tend to vacation in the fall. Now by the time anybody realizes I am gone, I’m back home. The long trips that I did take were so long ago that snail mail was still a catchy way of denigrating the US Postal Service and my catch-up phase amounted to retrieving the mail and newspaper from the next door neighbor and dropping off some salt water taffy, moon pies, or beignet mix in exchange for being my personal drop box for a handful of bills and a flyer advertising the local department store’s weekend long one day sale. Catching up on hundreds of hundreds of emails wasn’t part of my routine. (The thousands of thousands of work generated emails accumulated over the rare day off don’t count. And they were easy to sort through anyway. Unless it came from someone who signed my paycheck or annual evaluation, they were quickly deleted.)

So the thought of having to take vacation time so I could catch up with correspondence that came in while I was off using vacation time is not something I would entertain. But it’s not something I would scoff at either. I wouldn’t entertain it because I haven’t had to entertain it. I’m not sure that I have that large of a friend base. But if you can accumulate a few hundred unanswered emails and again as many messages on this or that feed in a few days that means someone wanted you at least a few hundred times over those few days. I think that’s very cool. And pretty positive too.

SlothFor me though, I’m probably pretty safe going off grid and coming back to not much more than a full spam folder with which I’ve had lots of practice in dealing (see work emails above). I will offer my mail and newspaper pickup services to anybody planning a trip if you still get hard copy papers and mail sent with a stamp.  But if you expect me to pick up your mail and papers while you’re away for a month in the Brazilian rain forest I’m going to want more than a box of chocolate mini World Cup candies. You can at least bring me a mechanical sloth.

 

There’s No Place Like Home

Michael Leave a comment

Last week I was somewhere I hadn’t been for about two and a half years, on a plane. I never was a very frequent flyer. I flew a few times a year for this or that but in the last couple of years at work it seemed I was in the air as much as I was behind my desk. Between July 2012 and June 2013 I got to visit airport bars from Seattle, Washington to Washington, DC. Then in July 2013 I had the first of what became six hospitalizations, 4 surgeries, and countless hours of rehab.

A couple of months ago I decided I wanted to go somewhere. It didn’t matter much where, as long as it wasn’t here. I picked between Thanksgiving and Christmas as my target travel time because I knew that as long as stayed away from the holidays themselves it isn’t a very well-travelled time of year so airports shouldn’t be terribly crowded.  I checked on the hotel points I had accumulated over the years and found I had enough for almost a week in a handful of cities that would undoubtedly be warmer than where I live. I compared those destinations with any air fare deals I could find and narrowed things down to three cities. Further checking revealed one of them was hosting a professional conference I could attend where I would find company in fellow members if I wanted and pick up some education credits toward my license which I keep active in case I ever get to working again. Win, win, win. And win.

So I dusted off the suitcase, packed up a carry on, and wondered what sort of scrutiny I was going to get going through security with my ever-present stash of medical paraphernalia. After a couple of questions regarding the purpose of said paraphernalia I stepped through the people-checker and proceeded to the gate.  From then on it was pretty anticlimactic.

The planes were loaded in the airlines’ unusual manner where Group 1 is the third of fourth group called to board, connections were made on time, hotel shuttle drivers demonstrated why they were deemed too reckless to be part of the local demolition derby circuit, hotel lobbies were much grander than the sleeping quarters, meals were overpriced, and drinks were watered down. You know, normal.

But the weather was good, the food was plentiful, the area around the hotel wasn’t too touristy (i.e. it wasn’t horribly overpriced), I felt better than I had for some time, and I couldn’t wait to get back home.

It’s nice to have a break in the routine, especially when the routine is mostly dull. But then it’s nice to get back to the routine. Even when the routine is mostly dull.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Life Needs a Soundtrack

Michael Leave a comment

Do you know a problem with real reality? There are no clues to what’s coming next. Life needs a soundtrack.

Watch any movie or television show, even the so-called “reality” shows, and you see that they all have musical accompaniment. It’s quite clear when someone or something is to be happy, sad, humorous, suspenseful, romantic, mysterious, thrilling, or chilling. Just about the only time the background is silent is when the director intends for extreme drama. Even commercials have background music. Everything from auto insurance to male erectile dysfunction therapy has an associated tune. Why can’t we.

It sounded like a good idea when it popped into my head. Heaven knows there’s enough music up there. I’m always mentally humming a tune, a jingle, a theme. How hard would it be for that to be amplified and spill out around me so I know for sure what mood I’m in – not to mention everyone else who might be in the area?

It’s hard enough to get through a day without being misunderstood. Think of all the relationships that could be saved if there was a full orchestra ready to turn despair to hope, hope to thought, and thought to action. Imagine the peace people could experience if daily routines were spiced up with a bluesy southern anthem or smoothed out by a soft jazz composition. Think of your daily commute to the tune of a driving chorus instead of the tune of blaring horns and mufflers in need of repair.

If you really want to explore this idea, can we consider making life a musical? On second thought, I don’t know if I can handle a sudden eruption of song and dance while standing in line at the deli counter. “You’re the ham that I want. Ooo, ooo, ooo honey,” doesn’t run trippingly off the tongue even if you are looking for that tasty lunchmeat. No, just a soft background perhaps of Dave Matthews Band’s Pig song.

Like I said, it sounded like a good idea when it popped into my head.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

The Ambassador and the Triscuit Inspector

Michael Leave a comment

Recently we stayed a few days at a Sheraton hotel.  At most Sheratons there is a club suite for the Starwood Preferred guests.  Go to the web-site and sign up and after the first stay or two you move into the preferred category or most touring stays will add you to that list.  It’s not a terribly exclusive club,  no more than many hotel and airline members-only clubs.  But this one was different.  This one came with a host who falls into the “Now that was an interesting person” category.  You decide how to define interesting for yourself.

Our host for our evenings at the Sheraton was a former Triscuit Inspector.  We don’t know if he actually had a numbered slip that he popped into each box or a personalized stamp that emblazoned the inner seal so we can’t go into the archives to confirm that but that is what he told us.  For years he worked at the local Nabisco plant as the Triscuit Inspector right up until they closed the plant and he had to make a decision as to how he should earn his keep until Social Security took over.  Since this story takes place in the general area of Niagara Falls he thought tourism.  And quite logically.  So now for the past while he has been the Sheraton’s Starwood Suite host and sees that the cracker plates are full (we didn’t notice any Triscuits), the cheese platter is balanced, and the beer and wine are cold and chilled respectively.  But what makes him interesting wasn’t the Triscuit background or his ability to keep the yellow and white cheeses equalized.  It was his willingness to share his background and his stories of when he worked at Nabisco, where to find the cheapest wines in town, and where the best smoke-free slot machines are in the casino.

Interesting people always find us. We already spoke of our tour guide in Puerto Rice who regaled us with stories of real life on the island, his life. We saw his home town, heard tales of his family, were told of his wife’s cooking, and saw his favorite beach.  All that while he managed to extract tales from those he was touring.  Another interesting soul from that trip was our hotel’s lobby ambassador.  Do resorts still have such a character, the cross between concierge and man on the street?  Not a day went by except the one he was off that we weren’t greeted by name by this giant of a man who split his life between Puerto Rice and New York and was a diehard Giants football fan but took a Steelers wrist band from us and wore it at least while we were still there.

It was also on that trip that we found the artist in his gallery in Old San Juan telling the tale of how his wife came to visit her sister six years before and still hadn’t gone home.  So he painted each town with his stories in each.  We made sure to bring a piece of his back to grace a wall.  There it joins two local artists’ works.  Both of those artists have gone from favorite artist to favorite story teller to favored member of our circle.  We spend much time when we see either of them at shows and we can now pick out the one’s husband who is a shadow in every piece she does and know what room of his grandmother’s house the other used as a mental model for the window in the painting that becomes a window to his memories of her backyard, real and imagined.

There are many, many others. Most people have their favorite people who aren’t necessarily a part of their circle but make the circle more interesting.  We’ve been blessed that almost everywhere we go we can find that person and eventually find him or her again.   The pleasantries are shared, new stories are spoken and heard, and ultimately our circle grows.

So if you should be travelling in the Niagara Falls, NY area and you happen to stop into the Sheraton there, make your way to the Starwoods Suite and ask to speak with the Triscuit Inspector.  Grow your circle a bit too.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?