never again....

This morning I had a manicure, and, since it's getting close to Christmas, I decided to do some holiday grocery shopping on the way home.  It happened that the route to my house took me past the huge Kroger Superstore on St. Joe Center Road so i decided to stop there. I live near another perfectly good ordinary Kroger grocery store but the superstore was, as I said, on my way home. 

I did find everything I was looking for at the superstore and the checkout clerk was very friendly and nice.  The only thing missing in that store was convenience.  Almost everything I wanted was separated from everything else by at least five or more wide aisles. 

I may be exaggerating a little bit but not much.  So I am making an early New Year's resolution.  I will always shop at my normal size local Kroger's.  If by any chance I can't find what I want there, I will change my menu, or, better yet, send my wonder spouse to the super store for me.  

He enjoys a challenge.

The big project...

 Sometime last week I gave you all a sneak peek at my Christmas poem for this year.

Well, let me tell you, the finished project will wow you!!

My wonder spouse has combined my poem with an assortment of pictures from our two trips this year to provide you with a veritable travelog of pictures and captions.  It is indeed a work of art. 

The finished product will be winging its way to you via the USPS early next week. meanwhile.....

                                    The Step pyramid of Giza

                                        The great sphinx

                        Our balloon ride over the monuments.

These pictures didn't make the cut, but I think they are worth seeing.

Don't put it off.

 I attended a meeting this evening where we watched a very interesting TED talk on procrastination.  I always thought I was a champion procrastinator but this speaker had taken it to a whole new level.  

I won't go into all of his theory on why we procrastinate (including the little monkey in our brain who leads us into time wasting activities) but I did appreciate his explanation of two different types of procrastination.  The first is what I was most familiar with from my school years - putting something off until the big scary panic monster scares the monkey away and you finally get something done.

I can well remember some sleepless nights in college and even some in high school which I spent finishing up projects due the next day.  I'm currently working on a weaving project that needs to be finished by March.  March seems like such a long time from now.  Plenty of time to get it done.

The second is the procrastination of something that may never need to be done at all. For example raking leaves.  They all blow away, or get covered by snow, or chopped up by the lawn mower eventually. 

My greatest excuse for procrastination is that I love to read.  I can remember my mother saying to me, when I was about 12 years old, "You can't read your life away."

Well I did get my head out of the books long enough to get married, raise a family, enjoy my grandchildren, get married again, enjoy more grandchildren and all of that is still going on.  But guess what Mom?  In retirement I do have plenty of time to loose myself in a book without feeling much pressure to get anything else done.  Life as a procrastinator is just fine.

It helps me avoid senior moments (at least sometimes)

I read this on a Senior Moments calendar this morning:

"Walking with a friend one day in New York, Fritz Kreisler, the Vienna-born violinist and composer, passed a large fish market.  The fish, mouths open and eyes staring, were arranged in rows like a comatose audience.  Kreisler suddenly stopped, looked at them, and snapped out of a senior moment. "Heaven!" he exclaimed to his friend. "That reminds me, I should be playing at a concert!"

Curious, I Googled Kreisler and discovered that he lived from 1875-1962 and died after a couple of car accidents.  I don't know who was driving.  He started playing before audiences when he was a child.  

This may explain why, having seen many many audiences with people staring up at him, possibly with mouths wide open and eyes staring, but hopefully mot comatose, the fish lined up in the market reminded him of a concert commitment.

Poor guy, he should have had a cell phone calendar like mine.  Much nicer to look at than dead fish, and it beeps at me a half hour before any scheduled commitment.  

new fangled...

 I am frequently reminded, intentionally or unintentionally, that I am not as up to date with the way things are done these days as I would like to be, but I am learning.

The most recent example of how things have changed since I was a young woman is the invitation we received to my grandson and granddaughter-in-law's baby shower.  Their baby is due in March and the shower will be on January 10.  

The first obvious difference from "the olden days" is that men are invited to the shower.  My spouse isn't wildly excited about this. 

The second difference is that the invitation, which did arrive by snail mail - very traditional - has a QR code attached which we can scan to get to the gift registry.  When we scanned it my spouse and I were taken to my.babylist.com, a collection of many things I had never even heard of.  I figured if my wonder spouse is going with me to the shower, he should have some say in the gift choice.  I did recognize the item labeled baby bottles, although these were evidently 'new and improved.' 

The one thing I did understand is the diaper raffle.  If we bring a pack of diapers we are entered in the raffle.  Not sure what we will win if we win, but traditionally it would have been a baby gift that would then be handed over to the mother-to-be. 

Maybe that's how it will be, maybe not.  We shall see.

Woops...

 I stand corrected.  A sharp eyed reader has pointed out to me that I misspelled Chile in the draft of my Christmas poem that I shared in this blog a few days ago.

I appreciate the correction and want to make sure that everyone knows that we traveled to Chile in South America in February.   While we experienced some interestingly rough seas on that cruise, we did not find ourselves afloat in a sea of chili.  

We were, at one point, afloat in a sea of ice chunks (baby ice burgs?) with a view of a beautiful glacier.  It was definitely chilly there.

The moral of this silly story is eat your chili while it's hot, wear a sweater if you're chilly, and visit Chile when you get the chance. 

Restaurant review...

 Today I took a friend to lunch and then to do some Christmas shopping.  I expected things to be busy three Saturdays before Christmas and it was, but everyone was polite and cheerful.  

We had decided to try a new place for lunch.  I should have know better.  Fort Wayne citizens love to try out new restaurants.  If their first experience is good the place will probably stay in business, if not, people will go back to their tried and true favorites and the new restaurant will fail.  I'm pretty sure that Bubba's 33 is going to succeed, although it has only been open for three weeks. 

It is part of a national chain which helps I think.  About the waiting, their organization was interesting.  When we went into the restaurant there were lots of people waiting to be seated so I knew we would have a wait but my friend really wanted to eat there so I gave the host my name and cell phone number.  He dialed the number right away to make sure it worked, said it would be 15 minutes to a half hour, and suggested that we wait in my car.  My friend wanted to just wait on one of the benches in front of the restaurant but, after being assured by the host that, once I was called, we would have plenty of time to come in from the car, and considering that it was 25 degrees out, I insisted that we wait in the car. 

As it turned out, the wait was only 15 minutes, we were seated promptly when we came in and it just got better from there.  The ambiance would not have been my first choice (TV sets all around the perimeter broadcasting sports shows) but I did appreciate the display of emblems of all our armed forces. Our waiter was excellent, the menu was extensive (I recommend the loaded tater tots as a side) the food, advertised as made from scratch, came in a very reasonable amount of time and was served piping hot.  The manager stopped by to make sure we were being well taken care of.  We assured him we were.  

All in all it was an excellent eating experience.  You should give Bubba's a try.