bobmacliberty

For those interested in Vegas, may daughter sent this to me a couple of weeks ago. How to use your Royal C&A status at Caesar's. https://www.facebook.com/reel/678987520300876

That's similar to the Peter Luger method. They do 4 minutes on each side under a broiler to give it a good sear, take it out and slice it up, then 5 minutes under the broiler to cook through. Of course they have a wall of industrial ovens set at specific temps to ensure perfect internal cooking temps.

One more Pinehurst story...the story of Payne Stewart. Payne was a very successful golfer who won the US Open at Pinehurst in 1999 (along with 2 other previous major championships). He was part of the 1999 US winning Ryder Cup team a couple of months after his US Open win. He was known for his traditional golf attire with a flat cap and "plus fours" pants. Shortly after the Ryder Cup win, his jet was flying from Orlando to Dallas and lost cabin pressurization. It's believed that all on board were incapacitated from hypoxia. The plane flew off course on a northwest track. Air traffic control tried to contact the plane but there was no response. The jet flew for several more hours before running out of fuel and crashing in South Dakota. I remember watching this play out live on TV for a couple of hours. It was almost certain that all on board were dead, but there was still hope that something could miraculously happen, until the plane crashed. It was a very spooky thing to watch, especially being a golf fan and having Payne Stewart, one of the best golfers in the world at the time, onboard. Pinehurst has a statue behind the No. 2 course 18th green showing Payne in his celebratory stance after sinking a 15 foot putt to win the 1999 US Open. Here's an 11-minute documentary about the plane crash.

It's not Gallagher's, but here's how they do it at Peter Luger's. We do the Sous Vide to medium rare and then finish in a very hot cast iron with butter technique. Perfect every time.

Yes. I enjoyed the World Golf Hall of Fame very much...more so than I thought I would. I've also played the King & Bear golf course there a couple of times. Also very enjoyable. While at Pinehurst, we saw the new USGA Golf House being built. The USGA is moving their headquarters, and their existing USGA golf museum, from New Jersey to the new USGA Golf House in Pinehurst. I was told that some items may be moved from the World Golf HOF to the new USGA museum, but that the World Golf HOF is separate from the USGA and will stay in St. Augustine. That's different from previous reports that said the St. Augustine HOF location will close and move to Pinehurst. Not sure which is true.

That's a big trade off. On the one hand, you're accomplishing something that most golfers go their entire lives without doing...a hole in one. On the other hand, you'd be buying drinks for the clubhouse...a potentially very expensive proposition! Who am I kidding...a hole in one is worth it. I say that from experience as I was lucky enough (luck is definitely involved) to get one on hole #14 at Old Silo Golf Club in Kentucky, which is now closed. Bandon looks absolutely spectacular, especially the new Sheep Ranch course with 9 greens on the ocean cliff. The biggest problem with Bandon is getting there. Unless you can fly your private jet into one of the smaller, relatively nearby airports, us east coasters have to fly into Portland and then drive 4 hours, or possibly Eugene and drive 2 hours.

We're usually only on I-95 as far north as the I-26 interchange to Columbia. I hadn't been on I-95 north of I-26 in more than 20 years. I was really surprised how bad some sections of that road were. Come on SC...do a little road maintenance.

We had this problem driving from Florida to Pinehurst. What should have been a little over 5 hours took more than 7. It took more than an hour to get through the Savannah area northbound, because the highway squeezes down to 2 lanes in South Carolina.

I like it better when the road wasn't paved also. Definitely easier to get there now though. I also like the sign by the VFW post near there that says something like, "Caution, old farts crossing". 😁

The Masters is definitely in my future. Getting tickets is the hard part. You need to enter a lottery and get lucky, or buy scalped tickets. My parents used to live in Aiken, SC, just across the border from Augusta. They'd enter the lottery every year. I think they got practice round tickets a couple of times and tournament day tickets only once. It used to be that if you get caught using someone else's tickets, they'll kick you out and ban the person who you bought tickets from. Not sure if that's still true.

My two cents on grits...I didn't know grits existed for much of my life. Then I never had a desire to try them. More accurately, I actively avoided them. But when I moved to Florida, I was told that I MUST give shrimp and grits a try. Boy am I glad that I did. Most shrimp and grits recipes seem to include chopped bacon (didn't I just say that everything is better with bacon?), but I prefer a version with andouille sausage. @helen haywood - If you haven't been there yet, give the Down Under Restaurant a try. It's literally "down under" the bridge to the island. Not a fancy place but good food and I really like the shrimp and grits with andouille sausage and a sherry cream reduction.

I'm finally caught up. I've been on a guy's golf trip to Pinehurst Resort the last 4 days. Way too much alcohol, not nearly enough sleep, and a lot more physical activity than I'm used to, means I'll need a couple of days to recover. For those not familiar with Pinehurst, it's located in North Carolina about an hour from Raleigh. It's known as the cradle of American golf, with the first course there opened in 1901. They currently have 9 courses, which are all known by a number. We played No. 2, No. 8, and No. 9, plus their par 3 course called The Cradle. Pinehurst Number 2 is the most famous course. It has hosted 3 US Opens (and will do so again in 2024 plus 4 more times in the future), a US Women's Open, a Ryder Cup, a PGA Championship, and numerous other senior and amateur tournaments. It's a bucket list course for golfers. It has brutally hard greens that are high in the middle and slope away in all directions. You must hit a great shot to keep the ball on the green. If you roll off (which happened to me WAY more often than not), you have a difficult chip shot, or long putt from off the green, to try to get back near the hole. That course kicked my butt! It really makes you appreciate the talent that professional golfers have. They play a very different game of golf than I do. We stayed in the Carolina Hotel, which is a 100+ year old, 4 diamond hotel. The hotel itself was great but service across the resort was generally poor, especially in restaurants. That seems to be a common problem everywhere these days. However, we had a great drink called Eagle Fashion. The recipe is Makers Mark Bourbon, Muddled Orange, Cherry and Brown Sugar with Maple Syrup and Bitters over an Ice Sphere, garnished with a Slice of Bacon. Yup, bacon. Bacon really does make everything better. Eating that slice of bacon (that has soaked up the cocktail) once the liquid is gone is a great way to finish a drink. While I'm glad we went there, and especially played the No. 2 course, that resort is a one and done for me. My friends had the same opinion. There are several golf resorts that I haven't yet been too (Bandon Dunes in Oregon and the Kohler Resort in Wisconsin in particular), and many that I very much want to return to (Kiawah, Bay Hill, Streamsong, PGA National), that are ahead of a return visit to Pinehurst.

Just one, because you'd be paying for all of us to join you on that cruise. 😁😉

Micheline texted me today (while I was playing golf!) saying the hot water wasn't working. Every time she opened the hot water tap somewhere, the Rinnai tankless water heater controller on the wall would start beeping and display an error code. I went home and did some troubleshooting, found that the error code was from a failed temperature sensor, and called a local service guy. He got there within a couple of hours, took the cover off the outside heater unit, and immediately saw that several wires were "cut". A rat was making a nest inside and had chewed through several wires, including the wires to the temerature sensor. Fortunately, he was able to splice all of the chewed wires back together. He'll need to order several parts and come back later to make a more permanent fix. Sigh. 😡

I (and the rest of my family) use Microsoft OneNote. We all have it on our phones and on our computers. It is cloud based so whatever you enter on one device is immediately available on all devices. I can keep some notebooks to myself and share others (or just a tab within a notebook, or just an individual page) with any and all of the rest of my family who can then add their own info to shared notebooks. I've got one Notebook that is filled with vacation planning notes (planning ideas, detailed itineraries, confirmations for flights, hotels, excursions, etc.) from 2016. We've got a separate notebook set up for my daughter's upcoming wedding. I got hooked on it at work and my kids got hooked on it at school. Microsoft OneNote Digital Note Taking App | Microsoft 365 Microsoft OneNote on the App Store (apple.com)

She's starting to look a little older, but still incredibly cute. She's already figured out how to throw in a little head tilt to the side while smiling.

We're taking a break from cruising. Gonna focus on longer land trips for a bit. We live at the beach and belong to a club with beach/pool chairs, great restaurants, and drinks delivered to your chair. We get "sea days" whenever we want. We cruise mostly for the ports and there's too much been there, done that with Royal's ports. When (not if) the cruising bug strikes again, we'll try Celebrity, or maybe one of the more upscale lines. Royal was great when we had kids cruising with us, and it's still fun with a group of people. Love Oasis class and Royal's entertainment. For just the two of us though, we want to try something different...hopefully better food/service and new ports of call.

I've never heard of using cold water to avoid hot water tank sediment, but it makes sense. We have a tankless water heater though. Our biggest issue is lack of patience. If we need boiling water for lobsters, pasta, etc., it's much faster to use hot water from the sink to get to a boil. We do use our pot filler if we're sous viding something in a large pot and time doesn't really matter.

I'm waiting on 2 blocks. Sent an email a couple of months ago and never got a reply, so I called C&A. They told me that they received my email and it was already in process. I was told that I should have a shipping tracking number in a couple of weeks. This was 28 days ago. Time to call again. I'm not holding my breath no matter what they tell me.

We used to use a steamer a lot...mostly for vegetables. We had a fairly cheap countertop model...less than $50. We used it so much that we needed to replace it every year or so. When we remodeled our kitchen in Cincinnati, we were looking at appliances at a distributor showroom and Micheline saw a Wolf in-counter steamer. It got hard piped in, both filling and draining, which would have been very convenient. I thought the drain idea was very cool. Micheline thought the price was $250 and was ready to pounce on that in our new kitchen design. She missed a zero though and the actual price was $2500. We could buy a new "throw away" countertop model every 3 months for 10 years and still spend less money. 😁

I fully agree about the slide out drawers. We have them in a couple of cabinets meant for pots and pans but plan to add them to all lower/base cabinets with doors. So much easier and frees up the "hidden" space in the back of the cabinet. We have a pot filler over our stove but rarely use it. It dispenses cold water. Not sure if it's plumbed as cold water or if it's plumbed as hot water but if it's plumbed hot, the pot is full and we turn it off before the hot water starts coming out. Unless we want to leave a big pot of water on the stove for a while before it boils, we're better off (i.e. it's faster) filling the pot with hot water from the sink. Maybe we'll use it more as we get older and heavy pots of water become harder to manage.

Micheline just looked out the windows by our front door, and there was a peacock sitting on our front patio. I've seen him (her?) wandering around the neighborhood, but it never really comes down our street. Not sure why it chose our house today. We scared it away when we opened the door. IMG_0388.MP4 Neighbors have told us that it's not good for a peacock to be near your parked car. They like shiny things and will poke at fenders and bright body panels, causing damage.

Out of curiosity...what's the current protocol for Covid at AA before he can fly again? Does he need to wait a certain number of days after first positive test, or for a negative test, or for symptoms to disappear? Inquiring minds...

Still thinking about it. We have a few concerns. First, we've become suite snobs, and the suite prices on that cruise are outrageous. I really want to try the new Wonder suite area. Second, the Super Bowl is the Sunday that the cruise ends. That's not much of an issue because we can be home in 3 hours from PC but if the Bills were to finally get back to a SB... Third, and most important, we are planning a couple of big (i.e. expensive) trips in the next couple of years instead of cruising. We decided to take a break from cruising since we've lost the cruising bug a bit. We want to spend a month in Europe and a couple of weeks in Hawaii. We're also looking into paying for a week somewhere with our daughters and their significant others. AND, our older daughter could soon get married in addition to our younger daughter getting married this coming September. Ouch. Still, the desire to join you guys and meet people in person is strong. I'm tempted to have Ken book a refundable group rate balcony and then see if suite rates drop.