All Over the Place

Does jumping to conclusions count as exercise?

Sometimes I think Marie Antoinette was talking to me when she declared, “Let them eat cake!”

Speaking of cake, can anyone explain who left that cake out in the rain in the song “MacArthur Park?”  Look, I wouldn’t want to pass up cake in any form, but a waterlogged one would never be acceptable.  What is that song about anyway? 

There was a very spirited conversation going on at the nail salon today between the owner, Kim, and one of the technicians.  I wish I knew what they were discussing, but since it was entirely in Korean, I didn’t have a clue.  I’m guessing they weren’t saying that my nails looked fabulous or that I was one of their favorite customers, but that would have been nice!

I could have a free dinner at a nice restaurant about once a week if I were willing to suffer through a seminar on retirement.  Really, I could GIVE a seminar on retirement, but I wouldn’t serve food.

Have you ever noticed that the word “egret” is only one letter different that “regret?”  Not that I would get them mixed up in a sentence, but just one of those quirky English language things.

Why is it that I always forget to put a new bar of soap in the shower until I am in the shower?  I know, I know, that is the most obvious time.

I am now using Informed Delivery, a service of the post office, to see what mail is delivered each day (I covered this last month).  The only problem is that the daily email I received showing me scans of the actual mail also tells me to let them know what is missing.  How would I know what is missing?  I don’t know what mail is coming.  If I get 8 birthday cards and figured I would get 10, should I tell the post office?  I’m not sure they thought that one through.

When my house phone rings now, I get 6 alert rings on my cell phone to let me know I have a call at home.  How this happened puzzles me.  I have Comcast phone service at the house but my cell phone is through Verizon and there are two different numbers with two different area codes.  I didn’t get an offer to enroll in this kind of service, and I didn’t link the 2 numbers together.  Now my home voice mail started not only being available for listening on my cell phone, but there is also visual voicemail, which I also didn’t order.  Maybe it is a trial offer and will go away.  These processes just seemed to start on their own.  Ironically, if I had seen them offered and signed up, they probably wouldn’t work!

Speaking of ringing phones, I have reached the point in life that when I hear a phone ring on TV I think it is actually my phone, just like my father did.

I must admit that when my printer randomly makes noise – as if it is about to print something I did not request – it freaks me out just a little bit.

Recently, I was on the phone in my office when I heard very loud music coming from the family room.  Apparently Alexa was craving Laura Nyro and just started randomly playing “Stoned Soul Picnic” without any outside suggestion (I wasn’t in the room and the TV was off).  The mystery was solved to some extent when I checked my Alexa history.  She decided on her own to “suggest” that Laura Nyro had some music I might like (and I did), so she played it.  I’m just glad she didn’t decide to “surprise” me at 3 AM.

I don't get the concept of Snapchat filters.  What’s so exciting/entertaining about putting funny ears, flowers or whiskers on your head?  I must be too old to appreciate this craze.

Do you forget the names of the books you read?  I’m in a book club in my community, and thankfully, someone is now keeping a list.  I’ll go one step further and include the name of the book on my calendar with the meeting, so I know when we read each book.  That’s what started my movie blog – I couldn’t remember all the movies I had seen so I started writing them down with a synopsis of the plot not only for myself, but for people who asked me for movie recommendations.  Please don’t expect the same treatment for books!

I am nothing if not consistent in my typing errors.  I always seem to make typos on the words “business,” and “Chicago,” for example, and the errors are always the same – Bsuiness and Chciago.  Every time.

Just wondering: Why DID Billy Joe MacAllister jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Remember when you were a kid and you went somewhere with your family and your mother always had hard candy to suck on?  And tissues, which sometimes stuck to the hard candies.  I miss those hard candies. And Mom.  I miss her more than the hard candies.

Did you know that Dominos offers pizza insurance?  That way, if you have an accident and ruin your pizza before you get it home, Dominos will give you a new pizza.  I wonder if you have to call a claims adjuster or take pictures of the pizza to put in your claim.

It was probably not a good idea to attend my photography club meeting while suffering from jetlag, particularly since the meeting mostly takes place in a darkened room!

And speaking of jetlag, the reason for mine is that I recently went on a river cruise to Holland and Belgium.  This was my first river cruise after having taken a number of cruises on much larger ships, and I would highly recommend it.  I went with two friends on the Ama Waterways line, on a brand new ship that was comfortable, very clean and well thought out.  We had an interesting itinerary and great tour guides.  I learned that the entire area relies on careful management of water – hence locks on the rivers/canals and plenty of reclaimed land where new structures exist in places where canals once were located. You have to be a real expert navigator to get a boat through a luck with only 4 inches clearance on each side!  You take your life in your hands in Amsterdam, where the entire city Amsterdam is filled with people riding bikes for transportation (gas is pricey and traffic is everywhere).  You have to carefully look both ways before crossing a street, but the bikes seems to peacefully coexist with buses, cars and trams.  And there are plenty of canals for those who prefer small boats to get around.  Good chocolate is easily found (yum), along with Belgian waffles (which are nothing like those found at IHOP here) and, since we intentionally went during tulip season, we saw gorgeous fields of tulips that made for colorful and impressive pictures.  We went to a tulip processing farm, where the flowers are stripped and each bulb is x-rayed for the record because the real money is in creating and selling bulbs, especially new varieties.  The trip home included a 10-hour delay because of malfunctioning toilets on our plane from Amsterdam, which was diverted to London for repair.  The plumbers were unable to “rectify” the situation, which meant we had to rebook onto another flight after sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow for three hours.  I probably don’t even have to tell you the flights were on United Airlines, which has a justifiably bad reputation all around, although they were helpful and polite (and the passengers were cooperative) during the ordeal.  The happy ending was that we made it home that day, tired and cranky but with lots of memories of a great week.