Sarasota Sunset

We're packed and ready to leave Sarasota for the summer season, We'll be traveling 23 days on the Princess Regal to the Russian Federation...

The only thing we have to fear is that a suicidal Captain will lock himself on the bridge and ram an iceberg in the North Atlantic...

 Jam session last night at the Clam Factory....the basic group consist of four electric guitars and a drummer...Saxophones, trumpets and piccolos join in from time to time...

 Less than a week to departure....flying out of Russia to Berlin....no return plans yet...playing it by ear....I'm giving up on seeing a green flash in my current lifetime...

I Was a Prom Queen

...and it nearly ruined my senior year!

They decided to hold the senior prom at an abandoned brewery this year. In a unanimous vote, the theme was: Let's Go To The Hops.

I tried to make some prom clothes out of duct tape, but just couldn't seem to stick with it.

Farmers in Ohio agreed to phase out tight confinement of livestock, underscoring the clout of the animal welfare movement. I say that isn't really tight confinement!  Tight confinement is trying to squeeze into the tuxedo pants I bought last year.

I would show you some of my awkward prom photos, but my daguerreotypes have disintegrated.

I got the "prom night dumpster baby" song stuck in my head...this is why I don't have nice things.

  Here's a picture of Mrs. Phred's first senior prom....I would have asked her out  if only I had known her back then...

Cash in the Grass

This is an entirely self-congratulatory blog, so if you don't like people patting themselves on the back...stop reading now...

I walk seven miles almost every day to try to keep the weight off...I'm down 45 pounds, but my goal is another 19....when I stopped smoking again two months ago, I backslid 15 pounds...away from my goal...

As I walked down a busy highway on Saturday, I saw some cash in the grass and picked up a dollar....my senses went on high alert and I found a $100 bill next and wondered if I was on candid camera....

Soon I found two more hundreds stuck in the grass and some $5s and $10s...At this point I looked down into the curb and saw a lot of loose identification (EMT badge, drivers license, concealed weapon carry permit, SS card, tickets for a Miami concert, credit cards, insurance cards).

So I dropped off the all the ID at the closest fire station. I left a note about the $320 in cash...four days later I haven't been contacted so I navigate through the county bureaucracy and get a message to the guy...

He called back 30 minutes later, while I'm on my walk, and I met him on the side of the road and handed him the cash. He had filled up with gas an left his wallet on top of his car....the traffic beat the crap out of his ID and scattered it and the cash around...no sign of the wallet....it might have gone down a storm drain...he was on his way to the Miami concert and turned around 100 miles south down in Naples when he realized his wallet was missing...

So lucky me..I got to play the existentialist role again....it's on my teenage air force dog tags as my religious preference ...look it up...feeling good about yourself is even better than finding money...BTW the kid with the dark glasses in these pictures is my oldest grandchild...I was much younger than him when I got my first dog tags....he's about the age that the lady with the lipstick was....is that just pluperfect or what?

This Parrot is Deceased!

Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

Owner: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

Mr. Praline: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!

Owner: No no! 'E's pining!

Mr. Praline: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!


Owner: Well, I'd better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the shop, and uh, we're right out of parrots.

Mr. Praline: I see. I see, I get the picture.

Owner: (pause) I got a slug.

As I finally fast dance with Mrs. Phred down at the pool, the 1964 movie "Doctor Strangelove" comes back to me. I scream, "Mein Fuhrer, I can dance!" and she cracks up...you had to see the movie to get the reference to Peter Sellers' best performance....I shouldn't have waited 50 years to fast dance with her...

Ken takes us sailing on the Coyote. Mrs. Phred steers the boat.

We pull into Marina Jack's in Sarasota to fill up on diesel and get the holding tanks pumped out.

Ken at rest

Suddenly life is complex again . We're taking a cruise in April from Fort Lauderdale to Saint Petersburg, Russia.. After that we train back to Paris though Moscow, Minsk and Berlin...so I have two months to learn Cyrillic characters, the Russian language , Polish and German...book hotels, understand the subways, learn train schedules and identify cultural points of interest and good restaurants...my head is exploding...

After the .French open, we fly back home and take the RV cross country to Seattle for a flight to Alaska on July 20th for the halibut and salmon...

We plan to spend August and September driving across Canada to New England and down to Florida by October 1st.

Gordon and Bob's Excellent Adventure

 West Palm Beach

Gordon and I leave at 6 AM for a dive trip on the East Coast. This is the third time we've done this trip and used the Pura Vida dive operation.

I don't have an underwater camera anymore so I've dug into my archive for a few shots that sort of represent the drift dives in West Palm.

The water temperature is 78 F on January 2nd and the visibility is about 85 feet, both of which are pretty much OK with me.

We can see the Kennedy compound and the Kellogs and Posts. This stretch of Florida Beach is a pretty snooty place. In the 80s they tried to pass an ordinance where the hired help had to wear armbands to get on the island.

Bernie Madoff was a member of the Palm Beach country club. Money doesn't always buy happiness. The following excerpt from the Huffington Post was written just after the Madoff Ponzi scheme collapsed.

People in Palm Beach sort themselves out into the group in which they belong based largely on how much money they have. Even the poorest of the islanders seem to have everything yet joy proves elusive, even for the country club members, because there is always someone richer or better socially connected. Joy is driving out of your 35,000-square-foot mansion in your Bentley and tooling up to the entrance of Mar-a-Lago for your fifteenth ball of the season, the valet parkers salivating at the chance to take your car and the prospect of a twenty-dollar tip. Joy is having a wife younger and thinner than any of the other wives at your table. Joy is subtly announced during dinner that your hedge fund scored 33 percent last year, while that of the arrogant son of a bitch across the table with the fat wife scored only 17 percent.Those with the biggest financial gains generally had their money managed by Madoff. It was an honor having him handle your fortune. He didn't take just anybody. He turned down all kinds of people, and that made you want to give the man even more of your money. When he took your fortune, he told you that he would tell you nothing about how he achieved his returns. He was a god. He had the Midas touch.

Joy is being 71 and still able to climb the ladder into a wildly rocking boat with 100 pounds of gear on your back and fins on your feet. Joy is ending the dive with more air left than the kids.

So the shot below is actually from Puerto Rico...