Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Four

Good Morning All,

M, from the outside, Canada seems a safe place to be and I guess it is always difficult for anyone to make sense of stats. Bad things increasing can be explained by anything from a genuine increase to a combination of more stringent rules to more people reporting or better recording. But greater firearms control is always a good thing. Except in America .... :)

Lovely sunny day here. Wifey spent some hours reading through the detail of the latest SS brochure for 2019 and concluded with a request I book her perfect trip which was a ten nighter Greek Island trip on Whisper, her favourite. I duly went onto the SS site to see "what is what" only to find that having printed and sent out the brochure they have already cancelled that cruise to increase the number of 7 nighters and her trip no longer exists - even by combining two 7 nighters. This clearly hasn't been cascaded to SS's TAs who are still advertising the original one.

SS can be utterly perplexing at times.

Sorry about the disappearance of Mrs. J's cruise pick J! Disappointing!

Here's a link to a humourous article by Jonathan Beckman on his take on the Instant Pot.

https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/test-drive/put-a-lid-on-it

Enjoying our time down under immensely! Highlights have been so far: A full day in the Barossa Valley, with lots of wine to taste. Bumbunga Lake, a pink salt lake that you can walk on. And the incredible coastal scenery here at Southern Ocean Lodge.

Full day planned for today. Happy Spring all, and hope the latest storm is kind to everyone.

Great to hear that Chris and J.P. are enjoying these wonderful Adelaide and Kangaroo Island areas. We could not reach the Platinum level to afford Southern Ocean Lodge, but it looks so super spectacular from the pictures. Even better in person?? Excellent that you are enjoying K.I. Look forward to more details and lots of pictures. Smart to escape the snow hitting New York State.

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

Enjoyed a 14-day, Jan. 20-Feb. 3, 2014, Sydney to Auckland adventure, getting a big sampling for the wonders of "down under” before and after this cruise. Go to:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1974139

for more info and many pictures of these amazing sights in this great part of the world. Now at 198,930 views for this posting.

Hi everyone..........got a new laptop and using it now:D........an HP..........I am not going back to Dell. I really

like this one:)

G’Day All......it’s feeling more like spring here....so lovely.

Had a huge rubbish skip delivered yesterday and have been ruthless with clearing out...why do we keep so much just in case stuff!

New utility room and cloakroom coming along well now so another month should see the end 😁

Jeff, that’s such a pain with the SS voyage Mrs Jeff chose and very disappointing......doesn’t give me much faith at all and their customer services are dire....it’s taken me three months to have an extra name removed from my snail mail.... a gentleman’s name that l neither knew or had ever heard of suddenly became associated with me and it really pickled me off!

Saw a brilliant programme about Ashford Castle in Ireland the other night and it’s rather attracted me...mainly because l could take four paws...I’d love a driving holiday with him by my side and would also love to explore Ireland......just a thought!!

Car died on me yet again this morning so the good old RAC came to my rescue bless them....they can find no fault but have recommended a trickle charger which I’ve now bought from them so hopefully ‘Happy Motoring’ will resume.

Happy Day 😊

Hello all.

Chilly here at 57 F. Went from 80s to cold. It's invigorating.

Recuperating and recovering.

Thanks for concern and good wishes.

Lots to look forward to, especially upcoming cruise.

Easter is a week away and some houseguests arriving that day with smallish children. Eloise will be elated to have small ones to trot after and herd.

DD birthday this weekend.

Life is good.

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Greetings Coolers!

Miss S. Enjoy your spring-like weather! We're getting closer to it inch by inch. A road trip with four paws sounds wonderful! I say...go for it! And I do understand about the "stuff". We made a start last year and will need to knuckle under again soon.

Interesting article about a restaurant with a 180 page wine list. Bern’s Steak House is a bland, white, two-storey building tucked in a semi-residential neighbourhood of Tampa, Florida.

https://www.1843magazine.com/food-drink/crate-expectations

From the article:

"For the oenophile, Bern’s is one small step below heaven. With more than 500,000 bottles in its cellars, it has the largest-known private wine collection kept by a restaurant. But it’s not just about quantity: Bern’s also stands apart from its peers in its list of aged wines that can’t be found elsewhere.

Bern’s was launched in 1956. Having to be canny about what wines he bought, Laxer consulted experts, who encouraged him to explore the wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy and the emerging vineyards in California’s Napa and Sonoma Valleys. He soon got the appetite to seek out treasures, buying wines that are rarely seen today, such as the 1961 Chateau Verdignan from Bordeaux.

Laxer wanted only the best. His steaks were the finest cuts. His waiters underwent months of training. Long before chefs turned farm-to-table cuisine into a religion, he set up an organic farm to grow his vegetables.

But the wines stole the show. By his retirement in 1996, the wine list was 2,500 pages long. David Laxer, working alongside Renaud, a former fighter-jet mechanic, has slimmed it down somewhat: today’s list stretches to around 180 pages, which feature some 6,500 different labels.

French wine makes up the greater part of the list; there are more than two dozen vintages of Mouton Rothschild, going back to 1907. New World wine is well represented, as is the stronger stuff; Armagnac, Cognac and port, a Taylor-Fladgate Scion Tawny Port from grapes harvested in 1855, is on the menu at $450 (£334) for a swallow (1.5 ounces)."

Have a great day all!

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood", as Mr. Rogers would have said......

We have been spared another dumping of snow from the latest Nor'easter...only a couple of inches, which I could almost blow away with a breath! Others, south of us, did not fare so well....

We are taking yet another trip to Newport to look at houses. Saw a cute one in a small town about 20 mins from the kids, so that could be a possibility....We're seeing 4 different ones.....sooner or later the right one must turn up, right?

Good Afternoon All,

S, you might want to look at the CTEK I mentioned some while back for your battery plus one of those magic jump start boxes. They are life savers. SS is weird and so patchy. I sent a note re our bar set up on the upcoming trip - all simple straight forward stuff so hopefully it will be handled. Wifey has been buying me clothes so that I want scare anyone. I have been told I must remember to keep my shirt tucked in and my flies done up. :)

It sounds Like JP and Chris are having a great time .... they certainly have no fear of long-haul.

Mysty ..... our wine list contracts simply to stuff we like and that is quaffable.

Spins, good to hear that everything went OK. Speedy fully recover and enjoy the birthday weekend.

Muds, hope you find a place soon.

We had our man in to look at two toilets today. He was the one that remodelled our house many years ago. It is weird because I helped him rethink his business and he says it transformed his life. I basically felt he wasn't charging enough for his skills and showed him how to charge silly money to people that had it. To everyopne else that is .... He makes so much money out of it now and says it wouldn't have otherwise happened and he is so appreciative. He has holidays and has saved for his old age. So we have an odd situation when he does things for us with him asking for less cash than he should and me always giving him more. He beats me down and I beat his proce up. Odd and lovely.

I am using one of my home-made frozen shepherds pies today with brussels!

Spins...happy to hear that you are recovering. Hope it goes quickly! :) Enjoy all your celebrations!

Good luck with the house hunt Linda!

J...I found the article fascinating. It's not something I would want for myself. Just intriguing that there are bottles around from the 1800's. :)

Interesting approach to protecting schools from gun violence.....turn them into prison-like institutions.

"When Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students return from spring break, they'll be required by the local school district to use clear backpacks and wear identification badges at all times.

Parents district-wide were told reinforced safety protocols will include expediting "single point entry" measures for visitors, locking all classroom doors and upgrading surveillance systems."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/stoneman-fla-school-shooting-return-1.4587681

Jeff

I have been looking at a 9 day Spirit cruise in the Med in late September so it will be interesting to see the result of my inquiry with my TA🤨

SS did this to me last year ... we had almost booked the cruise when it disappeared of the listings ... private charter I believe.

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Interesting approach to protecting schools from gun violence.....turn them into prison-like institutions.

 

"When Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students return from spring break, they'll be required by the local school district to use clear backpacks and wear identification badges at all times.

 

Parents district-wide were told reinforced safety protocols will include expediting "single point entry" measures for visitors, locking all classroom doors and upgrading surveillance systems."

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/stoneman-fla-school-shooting-return-1.4587681

Hi Mysty, I try to the follow the news pretty closely but this is the first time I have heard about this............

I know on Saturday they are marching on Washington (along with many other cities).......I know some of these

young adults will be old enough to vote for our mid term elections in November while others will be old enough

in 2020..........sometimes change can be a slow process but I have a feeling 2020 is going to really be different

(one can only hope).

Jeff

I have been looking at a 9 day Spirit cruise in the Med in late September so it will be interesting to see the result of my inquiry with my TA🤨

SS did this to me last year ... we had almost booked the cruise when it disappeared of the listings ... private charter I believe.

 

 

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Mike,

On our upcoming trip, the SS page and the published journal welcome passengers to two places not being visited .......

You get the impression that there is little checking of basic stuff.

I hope you are right Lois. All signs seem to point to a different outcome though. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope.

J...has the itinerary for your upcoming cruise changed?

Hello friends, FB research. I do use FB as I still have family and friends in PR and in different states, and I got worried regarding Cambridge Analytica. If you do FB, please go to Settings...Apps...and you will see all that's embedded to harvest your info...begin removing all you don't want or need. I had about ten, but my sister-in-law had 75!! She would answer every quiz and click on attractive links, and these would trigger the data harvesting apps. Hope you can share this with family and friends that might be using Facebook.

J...has the itinerary for your upcoming cruise changed?

Hi, it had a change of one port which was changed shortly after we booked it. It was the one that we most wanted to revisit but the substitute was somewhere else we would like to see so initially annoying because we weren’t informed, as I found out purely by chance that I looked at the updated page.

The two ports that they say we should look forward to on the SS site and journal was never afaik a port on it’s schedule.

Hello friends, FB research. I do use FB as I still have family and friends in PR and in different states, and I got worried regarding Cambridge Analytica. If you do FB, please go to Settings...Apps...and you will see all that's embedded to harvest your info...begin removing all you don't want or need. I had about ten, but my sister-in-law had 75!! She would answer every quiz and click on attractive links, and these would trigger the data harvesting apps. Hope you can share this with family and friends that might be using Facebook.

Hi Cams,

Sadly I do not believe that what you have seen and believe is your marketable data is no more than a small part of the picture and I’m not convinced you have control of the data footprints and footpaths travelled. When signing up to FB you have given permission for your data to be harvested and used and stored in any way they wish and for as long as they want it. That is why some of us have never signed up for it.

A part of your data footprint will be details of everything you have liked, all your friends and their likes, all the music and organisations listed or visited etc. etc. Sophisiticated algorithms will produce an eeringly accurate idea about you than most people seem to accept or perhaps understand.

Oh Jeff, I am then doomed!! I have no more than 40 friends on FB, who I enjoy communicating with.... I only hope that I would be considered marginal....

Cams, I doubt that. I don't think for a moment that anything you have followed, liked or said would be in anyway harmful.

I've always tried to encourage my kids to understand that anythig they say on the net should be assumed - unlike paper - to stay with them for their lifetime (and after) and that for example when it comes to employment your internet footprint will be at least as important to an employer considering employment as your CV or references and that they should never say or associate themselves with anything that might in the future become harmful to them.

And also in the future when security becomes even more fragile than it is now, then it will be a primary source for governmental profiling to segment people of greatest risk and a lot of innocent people will find themselves in receipt of unwanted attention. The abuse of computers isn't a new phenomena is it. I was extremely upset when I discovered that IBM - my employer - had worked with the Germans and supplied the technology (punch cards and readers) to "process " people in WW2. Even at that stage the punch card was considewred to be a 50 year old techology. This has never been denied by IBM.

The problem is that no one predicts what might originally have been intended to be a good idea will eventually be used for.

Good morning.........I don't do FB at all...........I think I may have been on it a couple of times some years ago

but it is not something I do anymore and haven't done in a long, long time. I know I am in the minority though.

Greetings Coolers!

Interesting issues relating to FB. My daughter convinced me to "enlist" years ago to be able to share pictures and updates. Over the years I have found that it was become more and more invasive...suggesting pages, places near me, friends. I have reached the tipping point and I am wrestling with the decision to stay or to go. I am also thinking that it is time to withdraw from the news. It is doom and gloom everywhere I look. But as a responsible citizen of the world, can I retreat into ignorance of world events? Is it possible to turn off, tune out, drop out?

Today's funny...which may explain some of my posts....

Have a great day all!

Good morning.........I don't do FB at all...........I think I may have been on it a couple of times some years ago

but it is not something I do anymore and haven't done in a long, long time. I know I am in the minority though.

Then I guess, I'm in the minority along with you!

Did it only briefly many years ago....after it came out and then quit.

For once, I'm so glad I didn't follow the crowd!

Have a good weekend, all.

Good Afternoon All,

I had an idea about a different mussels dish and it had to be tried. Mussels gaeng leung pak Tai ie Thai yellow curry with a ton of curly parlsey, onions, coconut milk, garlic, ginger, chilli and garlic ciabatta and a bottle of Grüner Veltliner. Wifey says it was the best mussels I’ve made and that she likes a man with mussels.

This was how it went ..... Fresh and cleaned .....

......... cooked and eaten ....

...... and debris .....

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