"Felice Navidad"...Gung Hoy Fa Choy

The following is a comment I received as appended to the Birthday blog.

My subscription to your blog will soon expire. If you continue to skip days without any news, I will be forced to terminate my subscription and ask for money back.

This is the thanks I get for writing 110 or so blogs for my readers' edification, entertainment, and education? ? A crank who probably has delusions of adequecy wants his money back? And this is the season to be jolly? This artichoke, this onion, this infected radish, this spongy melon should put on an ill-fitting Santa suit, get on his reindeer sled and fly back north with the other snowflakes and have his nose turn into a carrot and his eyes into two black coals!

I'm truly sorry that some of you have been spoiled rotten into expecting a blog-a-day. At times I need a rest in order to think of more words that I've forgotten. I do, on occasion, have a memory loss.

Last night we went out with Marylyn and Dick to the Chinese Garden. When we got there, it was more like a forest than a garden what with parties of 8, 10, 12, etc. with obvious great grandchildren, plain grandchildren, parents, grandparents and great grandparents milling around outside--overrunning the parking lot waiting for their number to be called to get a table. We finally did. I thought we would get a good deal for dinner because I had a coupon calling for 10% off , good Monday-Thursday with exception of weekends or holidays. When we sat and looked at the "special" menu we found that the prices for all dinners were doubled and nothing available for less than $16.99. The 1 1/4 lb. lobster that previously was $11.99 was now $22.99. Ah! but my coupon said "10% off". Rhoda said they wouldn't take it because it was a holiday; I said it was Dec. 24 and not a holiday. Dec. 25 was the holiday. I was fully confident that I was in the right. But when I showed the coupon to the waiter he laughed in my face with gales of laughter and all the other tables roared with glee at my chutzpah. I reminded the waiter that Dec. 24 was not a holiday, but he claimed it was a Chinese holiday and therefore the coupon was not viable. So much for the season being "jolly".

After dinner and grudgingly paying the check, we four came back to our place about 9pm and chatted animatedly until about 12:30 am. Of course we had pictures around the house including a few of Rich Higgins, and they were curious to know some of the details about him. I did have a video of CNN news in 1991 when the hostages were brought home including Richard's body along with Bill Buckley's at Andrews Air Force Base in Md. Marilyn and Dick were fascinated by the video and so Christmas Eve wore on. I gave Dick a copy of Robin's book which he said he would love to read. As I write this, it is now Christmas Day, 2007, and I slept till almost 1pm having worked on a crossword puzzle until about 2am. Rhoda is making a brisket. I had brunch consisting of a baked apple, 2 mallomars, and coffee. Such is life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBIN

Hi--Although my PC is still disabled, today is my daughter Robin's birthday, and so I'm determined to write this blog celebrating her achievements even tho' typing is a frustrating attempt. I cannot reveal her age, but suffice it to say, she can join AARP. She is an amazing daughter and one of my best poems. Her work career has exceeded all my expectations. She retired from the USMC as a Lt. Colonel. She was an Ass"t. Secretary of Labor in Daddy Bush's administration. She was appointed by Jeb Bush after her retirement as the Executive Director of the Florida Dep't. of Veterans' affairs. She was instrumental in getting a national cemetery approved for So. Florida. On her watch a Veteran's nursing home was built and opened in Ft. Lauderdale with her name on the plaque. She also has her name on a building in Oneonta Unversity--Robin Ross Higgins Hall--her Alma mater where she was awarded an honorary doctorate. Her husband, Col. Rich Higgins has his name on a guided missile destroyer, the USS HIGGINS. During the present Bush Administration, she was appointed as an Ass't. Secretary of the Dep't of Veterans' Affairs in charge of all the National Cemeteries in the United States. She normally lives now in Tallahassee, but she does have a house and a ranch in Montana where is currently celebrating her birthday and the the holidays with her friends, her neighbors, my granddaughter, Katrina, and Sophie, Robin's dog. What more can I say but HAPPY BIRTHDAY HONEY!

Intermission.....

1. Well do I still have the trojan Vundo? Yes and no. JR sent me a new link to an Adware site selling software for $19.95 so I opted to buy it because I'm becoming desparate. The postcard thingy alerting me to a "trojan" disappeared after I exited a quicktime icon on my taskbar which is a mystery to me because I never had a quicktime icon there before so I don't know why the alert disappeared after the quicktime icon was deleted from the taskbar. Although I can still access the internet, everything has slowed down and it is very difficult to type anything. You can type 3 words won the keys but the words don"t show up right away. Right now we have to go to Rho's sister and see Samantha, the new baby whose parents are Brian and Janine....Brian being Howard's son, and Howard for those who need to know is Geri's husband and our brother-in-law. I'll be back.

"What? Gone without a word?" (Two Gentlemen from Verona)

Well yesterday my computer was attacked by a vicious virus called a "trojan".. Don't ask me why. I tried every thing I knew, which isn't much, to get rid of it, but nothing worked. I can barely type this. It's very slow. Then today Joel sent me a tool to remove it--and after the thing ran for an hour, it stopped and a pop-up said "Vundo removed". Vundo is the name of the virus. But it's still infecting my computer. I ran Joel's link again while we went out to dinner & when we got back the popup said "Vundo" removed once again, but the damn thing is still here. Tomorrow I'll call a PC techie, and try to get this thing out of here. Meanwhile I can only write shot blogs until then. I will not be intimidated by this mystery. See you manana.

"There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient..." (Winter's Tale)

I have a big postcard size "alert" on my monitor which says "Trojan Detected" but when I follow the directions to remove the "trojan" it doesn't get removed and the big alert remains on my screen and I can't get rid of it. I am ahaving an awful timejust typingt these lines as you can tellll. I willl have to get this fixed before i can write any more blogs. sorry.

"Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home!" (Julius Caesar)

We sailed the ocean blue, and our saucy ship was a beauty. (Courtesy G&S).. This ship, the Emerald Princess was three football fields long, and consequently caused me many, many painful walks from the bow to the stern, and from the stern to the bow. Could have used one of those scooter thingies...as I saw several of them scooting around the decks. We left Ft. Lauderdale on Dec. 6 and after two days at sea, we docked at Aruba. I didn't go ashore, but Rhoda did. Then on to Bonaire, Grenada, Dominica, St. Thomas and a private island. We got off the ship in Bonaire whose claim to fame is thousands of Flamingos and the production of salt. We were on a bus tour around the island which was lush with a rain forest and very mountainous...but we did see wild Flamingos in the various lakes. When they are first born, they are white, and later when they are barmitzvahed they are grey. And when they leave home, they are pink. As far as salt is concerned I saw something I've never seen before...pink lakes...and I do mean pink. Apparently, the color is caused by the quantity of salt. They were beautiful. All lakes should be pink from now on. So between the Flamingos and the salt lakes, Bonaire is what I call the "Pink Place".

In Grenada, another island paradise...except for the bumpy roads and driving on the wrong side...we took another bus ride--this time for 3 1/2 hours and all we saw were different kinds of flora and fauna. I couldn't wait to get off the bus and back to the ship. And the first bus we got on had to go back to the terminal for a different bus because the A/C konked out. So, the tour started an hour late. When we got back to the ship, it was dark and time for dinner. The company was very pleasurable because we sat at a table with four other couples from Huntington Lakes who were good friends of ours. The food was very European and I could barely find a dish I liked, so for 3 nites in a row I had fettuccine Alfredo. And as Robin would say--Oy Vey.

Our next port was Dominica, and since from the ship to the town was a very long walk on a bumpy wooden pier, I opted not to go. But RH wanted to walk to town. She never got there because she tripped over one of the wooden pier planks and split her chin wide open and colored the pier crimson with her gushing blood. Fortunately, people were very helpful. One lady had a towel and covered Rho's chin with it while someone summoned the medics from the ship. A South African doctor then had to put four stitches in her chin. Yesterday she went to our own doctor who took out the stitches and discovered that her wound was infected so he put her on anti-biotics.

All in all, we did have a very good time. The shows each nite were very professional and entertaining. The Pina Coladas were excellent. The ship's crew was extremely helpful and friendly. The Casino was very relaxing, fun, and costly. There were very few activities that were geared toward seniors and the ship was much too big for me to get from one place to another, and from one deck to another without pain. So--smaller ships from now on.

"Fair Seas and a Following Wind" (USN Motto)

When I got home from our cruise this afternoon, we got a telephone call from my granddaughter, Katrina, who now is living in California. Katrina recently graduated from the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Phoenix. Her father, Bobby, who also happens to be my son is a sales agent for Harley-Davidson in Virginia. Well, you could have blowed me down when she said she had joined the United States Navy! She said she was going to Boot Camp at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, Il. where I did my training in 1942. I just knew that one of the grandkids was going to carry on the military tradition that seems to be the lot of this family--but I never suspected that it would be PK--Princess K, that is. When asked what she would like to do in the Navy, she said she wanted to work on jet engines. Why not? To tell the truth, I was absolutely flabbergasted at this turn of events, but nevertheless delighted that this grandchild made an important decision about the direction she wishes to take in her life.

Now I was supposed to write about our cruise in the Caribbean, but when I got this news, I decided our reaction to it had to come first. Tomorrow will be time enough for news about that event in which Rhoda fell on the pier in Dominica and gushed blood from her chin. Medics got her back on the ship and she had four stitches to sew up the wound. She's a strong lady. In order to disembark from this huge ship, she coerced me into a wheelchair kicking and screaming. More about that later.