h20skibum

Congratulations to Ava and her team mate.

It was just on the morning newscast for one of the TV stations. My daughter must have had a notification from the school, so she let us know when it would be on.

I decided that today would not be a good day to “go big”. One of my childhood friends (same age as me), passed away. He married my 3rd cousin, and we would always reminisce about growing up, when we would have family get togethers. Then, I just read that an old girlfriend was struck and killed by a car last night. Dated for a couple years in high school and a year in college. Once again, same age as me. Not doing anything to tempt fate today.

That is probably a good decision. Here, I was fortunate enough to be able to collect half of my wife’s, and let mine grow until I was 70. So essentially, I gained 32% by waiting, but with collecting on hers, it made sense for me. I don’t think the younger ones have that option anymore.

Congratulations on reaching that magic age to collect your old age pension. Do you have different options to claim at different ages, or does everyone have to take it at 66 in the UK?

@Momof3gurlz, if you haven’t already done the initial Wi-Fi calling setup, set up Wi-Fi calling while you are at home, and don’t wait until you are on the ship. That way, you can try it out to make sure it works, by putting the phone in airplane mode and connecting to your Wi-Fi network and making a call.

We have 53° and rain this morning, so today is a day to catch up on inside work. One of the things I hate about getting old, is discovering bruises and not remembering what you did to get them. Got a nice one on my forearm by my elbow, with no idea what I hit it on. Maybe I need to start “going big”, like Greg, to make them memorable. Oh, and I got to see my granddaughter on TV this morning, doing the Pledge of Allegiance with her class. She did excellent. When Susan and I worked with the grandkids every day during remote learning, we had them start every day with the Pledge.

And if you want to see some hilarious spelling mistakes, there are some here. https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-spelling-mistakes-errors-fails/

On the way home from the hospital today, stopped at Firebird’s for lunch. And to my surprise, they had seasonal cocktails. 🤣🤣 So here you go @bobmacliberty, a recipe for a cinnamon mai tai. I guess as long as you are experimenting, you can try everything. Lunch was a couple light items. Chicken tortilla soup. And a smokehouse chicken sandwich You can never go wrong when bacon is involved.

It is so nice that you can all get together, Dani. What a great looking group.

Happy 35th anniversary

I will be following along. I should have been getting off Voyager last weekend, but that cruise didn’t work out. Will be interested in your take on Voyager. It has been several years since we were on her.

I think everyone has been “looking” at Icon, but how many will book. It has a few new things I would not mind experiencing, but then I think…… Max capacity 1,000 more than Oasis Class, and not much bigger. I already think Oasis class is too crowded when it sails full. Maybe I will book it during the next pandemic when it sails 1/4 full. Until then, the older ships will be good enough for me.

When we were in Italy, I think we had to stop at every gelato place. Looks good.

Thanks for taking us along, Greg. It was really hard trying to keep up with all the LIVES last week. Now, rest and heal.

Our weather was beautiful today, with temperatures in the 70’s and sunshine. We decided to enjoy the day to ourselves, and hike some trails. It was a nice diversion. We were in Ohio to have those delicious pazookiies, so we decided we would hike some of the trails in Mill Creek Park. With the beautiful weather, there were a lot of people out hiking, and we saw several photographers taking family fall photos. I decided to try out the iPhone photo filters for a few of the shots. Usually, I just shoot with the default. I tried vivid in this one to see if it would bring out some color in the trees. I think the photo of this duck almost looked like a water color, when I used vivid. Just a few trail shots with the default We even found a couple ghosts along the way. And a waterfall, with the long exposure mode to blur the water. It was a relaxing day.

Safe travels today. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of the trip.

Yesterday was our standard day of football games and cheerleading with the grandkids. In our grandson’s game, they were down by a couple touchdowns early, but our grandson threw three TD passes, and they came away with the win. We traveled to another neutral field for granddaughter’s cheerleading. Their team won 14-12, and they remain undefeated. The high school field they were playing on had a brand new artificial turf, plus they just spent $1M on a high tech video scoreboard. Sometimes I scratch my head when thinking about spending priorities some schools have.

That is a very nice wedding present.

Those both look delicious. Speaking of deserts, this was ours from lunch today. We saved up room for them by sharing a big, honey mustard chicken salad. This was a pazookie trio of salted Carmel and a couple white chocolate macadamia nut ones.

Thanks for taking us along, Greg. Safe travels home. Are you going to try to make it home in one day? You do know that you can stop and explore along the way. That is one of the benefits of being retired.

+2 Maryann. I always love to see the grandkids succeed in what they do.

And let Linda drive part of the way.

SIL is breathing better, and sounds better, but is still testing positive. Probably a few more days before she tests negative. When I had it, it was about 8 or 9 days before I got that negative. Now my son-in-law is sick with something. He tests negative, but my daughter doesn’t need to catch anything right now. Thanks for asking

We have not had a good one in the five cruises we were able to do since the restart. Maybe supply chain issues, or just getting lower quality.