bobmacliberty

I learned something interesting today. The Amelia Island Book Festival has a Gala event every year with a few celebrity authors in attendance and making speeches. Proceeds go to several charities related to literacy. David Baldacci has a house here and is often one of the celebrity authors. He sometimes auctions off the right to name a character in one of his books. You don't know if the character will play a big role or a small one, and you don't know if the character will be good or evil. You only know that a character will have the name that you provide. A guy in our club named Eric Blum won the bid a few years ago and wanted a character named after his wife Carol. Those of you who have read Baldacci's Atlee Pine series will recognize Carol Blum as Atlee's sort of sidekick. Not only did Eric end up with a "good guy" character, she's an ongoing character in several of his books. Small world.

When we learned of her passing yesterday, Micheline and I talked about who was the greatest female sex symbol of all time. I leaned toward Raquel Welch but Micheline thought it was Sophia Loren. She thought that Raquel "tried" to be sexy where for Sophia it was purely natural. We agreed that Marilyn Monroe would round out the top 3.

I've been in this position a couple of times and it's never fun. I tell myself that I'm not only doing what's right for the company, I'm doing what's right for her co-workers (who shouldn't need to put up with her), AND I might even be doing what's right for her in the long run. Maybe this will actually cause her to change.

So....congratulations are in order for @Tree_skier's new cruise?????

I use insuremytrip.com. They provide quotes from several different companies and have a nice comparison feature so that you can see how one less expensive option compares with another more expensive option. We end up mostly with Nationwide.

Don't know about adding a 3rd person. We (2 people) were there for 2 nights in September 2017 and paid 594 Euro. $492 seems like a reasonable deal for a good hotel in a major city. You can certainly find cheaper and also a lot more expensive.

@Momof3gurlz Deb - A couple of other suggestions for Barcelona that you may not find from others: In the gothic quarter of Barcelona, visit the Barcelona History Museum. It doesn't get as much publicity as other attractions, and we honestly were just going to kill a few hours there while waiting for someone to fly in, but the roman ruins in the basement were fantastic. Very informative look at what life was like in those times, if that sort of thing interests you. We took a regional train to Girona and did a walking Game of Thrones tour of the old town. Several scenes were filmed there. The company that we used had pictures on an iPad of the scene in the show that you could compare to the real world in front of your eyes. Since we were GOT fans, it was a fun way to see the city.

I agree with your Hotel Jazz recommendation. Nice hotel and a great location by the top of La Rambla and near a Metro station.

For your Nice stop, I highly recommend Ingrid Schmucker at Best French Riviera Tours if you want to go with a private tour. We used her in 2017 and she was excellent. Very knowledgeable and personable. If I remember correctly, she's German, lived for several years in Italy, and has been a private guide in France since the 90s. My contact info for her at the time was kultours06@gmail.com (Kultours Private Tours) so she may have changed the name of her company (she is a one woman company). You might need to complete the form on the Contact page of her website to reach her. She has a 6 person Mercedes van that is very comfortable if you want to share the cost with anyone else. In 2017, it was 500 Euro for an 8 hour tour. We went to Eze before all of the bigger buses got there. Beautiful in the morning without crowds. We then toured Old Town in Nice where she picked up some food and wine for a picnic lunch. We drove to a spot at the top of a mountain where we could see the ship in the distance from one side of the mountain and looked down over Monico from the other side. Amazing place for a picnic lunch. From there, we drove through La Turbie to see the Trophee d'Auguste (ruins of an ancient Roman monument) and then drove down to Monte-Carlo. Ingrid is very flexible and can tweak a tour to do whatever you want.

I can't answer your question for Miami, but if you use a limo service like Larry's, look into getting an S class Mercedes sedan instead of a stretch limo. A stretch certainly makes an impression, but the S class exudes luxury and elegance.

We used to go to Epcot every year when my daughter was doing competitive dance. The Dance Worlds competition was held there in the World Showcase Pavilion between the Canada and UK Pavilions. This is like a lot of kids sports where you're there for 8 hours but your kid is actually performing for a couple of minutes here and there. We had a LOT of downtime and quickly learned about the Rose & Crown Pub (UK), a beer cart in front of Canada that sold Moosehead, and even some sort of bacon flavored beer sold in front of the American Pavilion. One of the alumni from my daughter's dance studio who was then old enough to legally drink made up her own version of an Epcot passport. You had to get a picture taken of doing something (typically wearing a hat representative of that country from their gift shop) and drink something (typically a local beer) from each country in the Epcot World Showcase. One of the Disney employees (sorry...cast members) had to witness and stamp your passport. It was a lot of fun for the parents while the kids were changing costumes and rehearsing in the back room. Eventually, the competition outgrew the World Showcase Pavilion, and they moved it to the Coronado Springs convention center. Not nearly as much fun as it could have been a convention center anywhere.

The Disney characters are generally really good. When our daughters were about 2 and 5, we went to Disney World. My older daughter was a big fan of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She was sick though and spent most of her time in the park sleeping in a side by side stroller. She perked up when she saw Belle and Belle talked with her for a few minutes...more than I'm guessing that she normally would have because my daughter was not feeling well. Later, during the parade, Belle was riding on a float and saw my daughter in the crowd. She pointed right at her, waved, and blew her a kiss. That's the Disney magic that you pay for.

It got me also. I saw Micheline playing with something out of the corner of my eye and thought she had the TV remote. It was her phone. I said, probably in a much too accusatory voice, "why are you changing the TV?".

Reminds me of taking a Yeoman Warder tour of London Tower a few years ago. The Beefeater tour guide started by saying that they get visitors from all over the world and that he would give the tour in 4 different languages...English, Australian, Canadian, and American. 🤣

Thanks so much for this. I just finished booking everything yesterday. Napa has changed A LOT since I was last there (20+ years ago??). All wineries now require a reservation and the cheapest tasting that we're doing is $60 per person. 😧 For our 2 full days in Napa, we're doing a hot air balloon ride the first morning, followed by tastings and tours at Laird Family Estate and Baldacci Family Vineyards (cousins with David Baldacci) in the afternoon. The second day, we'll start at Castello di Amorosa and then work our way back down to Yountville (where we are staying) with stops at Del Dotto Estate Winery and Grgich Hills Estate. We decided to go with smaller wineries that have great views/facilities and get great reviews. We were not able to get reservations at the French Laundry. Apparently, you need to get lucky and make reservations there in advance whenever you can, and then schedule the rest of your trip around the reservation. We're eating at the Bouchon Bistro (French...another Thomas Keller restaurant) on night 1 and Bottega Napa Valley (Italian) on night 2. We also have reservations in San Francisco at Fang (Chinese). Micheline wants to eat there because of the House of Fang TV show. I'm looking forward to the food as much as the wine!

@Sea Dog Congrats Greg! It was one of the better Super Bowl games that I can recall seeing. Most are boring games. Although I hated to see it end on a call like that. Eagle fans are probably upset this morning, but the scoop and score in the first half is what really cost them the game. I wasn't impressed with the halftime show (I'm not a Rihanna fan but she has a great voice) and I wasn't impressed with most of the commercials. I did like the Caddyshack ad, but I don't even remember what it was for. 🤷‍♂️

I'm rooting for the Eagles since one of my friends is a huge Eagles fan. They are actually favored and I think they'll win. The Eagles offense can score almost as often as the Chiefs...third in yards and second in points scored (Chiefs first in both). The Eagles defense however is much better than the Chiefs. Eagles have the second best defense vs. 11th for the Chiefs. Eagles have 4 guys with 11+ sacks, a record. Chiefs just have Chris Jones who is very good, but the Eagle offensive line is one of the best (maybe the best) in the league so they'll definitely have a plan for Jones. I think it will come down to whether the Eagles can pressure Mahomes into a mistake. And whether the Eagles can contain Travis Kelce. Mahomes, as always, is the X factor. He can come up with some crazy good plays at key times, like the final 13 seconds of the game (not that I'm bitter or anything).

I wouldn't expect the Super Bowl to be finished until at least 10:00...probably closer to 10:30. A typical game takes at least 3 hours these days and with extra ads and the halftime show, this game will probably be 3.5 to 4 hours long.

With the current discussion on mystery books, I wanted to mention the show that we've been binge watching called Only Murders in the Building. It's about True Crime aficionados (Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez) trying to solve a murder in an upper west side NYC apartment building. Although it got good reviews and several Emmy nominations/wins, I didn't have great expectations. Martin Short can be a little too over the top for me, and Steve Martin can sometimes head in that direction also. But we are really enjoying it. Not at all what I expected. They get some interesting guest stars...Nathan Lane, Tina Fey, Jane Lynch, Shirley MacLaine, Amy Schumer, and even Sting. Worth watching if you have Hulu.

That's good to hear. I love it when technology actually works for you rather than against you. Hot swapping is one of the benefits of RAID but like you saw, it takes a while to rebuild. I wasn't familiar with SHR and had to look it up. Looks like a great idea that will let you take advantage of drives getting bigger and cheaper over time. You don't need to worry about all drives being the same size. 👍

I was going to say that you never know when you'll need a cheese steak at 4:00 am, but who am I kidding...those days are well behind me.

Tell him to try this.

I've been told that this is like asking someone from Buffalo if it's Duff's or Anchor Bar for wings. Most today would say neither. These are the famous places that the tourists go.

I'm definitely stealing that idea!

The steak and potato look great. But peas to me are like raisins to you. 🤢