mo&fran

Must be real old, we turned D+ just before they changed C&A to days. First time on Oasis, it was served in the CL.

As a Pinnacle, Chops' or whatever venue is open for breakfast is great. JR on Oasis is good too, toss up with Chops.

I did get a kick out of him talking about reporters claiming the west coast storm being much more powerful than anybody was predicting. Kind of like the local south Florida TV guys going into Publix and taking a picture of an empty shelves where there would be water, of course reporting empty shelves. What the do not say is they walked by multiple pallets of water just inside the front door, not to worry.

While I enjoy seeing cruise pictures, after all , this is CC and it is about cruising. But I looked at this picture, and said, wait, we have been there. Sometime in 2019, probably in April, my wife called out from the livening room, "I want to go on a cruise". Well, she does that. So I look at cruises from FLL, nothing. Sane with MIA, even PC. But, I looked at TPA, and yelled back, "found one". May 4th, TPA to AMS, 15 nights, stoops in Azores, 2 in Ireland (of course Waterbury), Belgium, and finally AMS. Now we had done, I think 7 TA cruises, all west bound, because I did not want to fly back from Europe. And most of those cruises embarked from BCN. And most of the flights to BCN connected through AMS. Been to the airport, not the city. Wife fully approved. Booked a hotel thru an online booking site, Air2sea flight back to TPA , and we were good to go. And we did go the bank and got some Euro's. While we don't remember what we did in Waterford, some sort of ship tour, the other stop was in Cobh. Had no plans, but I said to DW that it would be good if we could find a drugstore. There is a train station right next to the dock, and the train goes to Cork. So off we went. Now in Cork, how the hell do you find a drugstore. As sometimes happens , this really nice lady sees us looking confused, and asks what are you looking for. Drugstore. She says, "I am my way to work, I will show you". Thank God we are in an English speaking country, the only language we speak. Well, except DW wanted Tylenol. Nope. Acetaminophen. nope. paracetamol . bingo. Thanks to our Canadian friends for that one. Things you learn on CC. We have looked for drugstore in Spain, and that is a challenge. That little excursion will be one we will always remember.

That is the car you buy and store till the auction prices go through the roof. We have seen it before with some of the Ford GT cars they build, and they are not Mustang GT's.

Do they even do 8 days out of Texas?

We have always tried to wait a couple of years or so before sailing on a new ship, particularly a new class. We don't want to go that bad. Since we have experienced and enjoyed Grandeur, no ship class is off our radar now. For years I said only balcony, but we have an ocean view booked on Gr, so that will be OK. But , I still cannot stand an interior.

Holy cow.

That is a bummer. Never tried it , still learning something new every day.

Surcharge or deposit. Thought that refundable deposit only changed the size of the deposit.

The last tractor we had had much larger wheels, probably geared the same as the others, but with bigger wheels, 23mph sounds about right. One of my driving lessons was always be mindful of the traffic behind you, and pull over when you can and allow them to pass. We frequently drive across Fl, to the kids house on the west coast, mostly country roads. Tractor driver here did not get that same lesson. They could care less how much traffic was back there.

Companies like Weather Channel use meteorologists with PHD's in their fields, not TV personalities. If he had those qualifications, we would call him Dr, not Mr.

I grew up om a working farm in Pa. First you learned how to walk. Then you learned how to drive. We were making hay one day, I was just a little guy at the time. Dad put me on the seat of the tractor, put into low gear, with one instruction, don't run over the hay bales, while he and my cousin loaded the hay on the wagon I was pulling. Wasn't big enough yet yo work the clutch and brakes yet. It was a flat field. By the time I was a teenager, i was driving those tractors on the highways, usually towing something. I have no idea what Pa. laws are like now, but farm tractors were not licensed, did not require drivers license to operate on public highways. Of course, they would only go about 15mph. Our trucks were licensed, so I couldn't drive them on highways till I had my DL at 16. You learned a lot. Pa. fields where we lived were very hilly, and often you would have a tractor with a wagon load of hay you have to go down the hill. And the load was more than the tractor could handle, and the wheels started sliding. You learned to find a path to steer and not have the load fall off the wagon, because you would have to reload the wagon all by yourself if it did. It was a good driving school.

True story, I have never driven to or parked at a port to go on a cruise. In fact, our first , that was out of Palm Beach in the early 90's, and now that we live here again, we still use the same car service for our ride to the port. And airport when flying.

@Arzeena My that Explorer cruise started the Saturday night the previous week when I woke up at midnight to use the toilet. I fainted, fell on the toilet, and had 4 broken ribs, and a punctured lung. I got out of the ICU on Thursday, having received 2 units of blood. Friday, i showed the doctors the path we were going on, they not only said I would be OK, they gave us their cell phone numbers, and said if there was a problem, the ship Dr could call a any time. On the way home, got a supply Percocet and a rollator walker.

I usually only cruise out of FLL, it is an hour away from where I live. So, i have no plans.

If you are wearing them, it feels great to take them off for the night.

when we first moved into our home here, we had an elderly ( like almost 100 yo) living next door. She asked for our phone number . We just had our cell phones, and they have CT area codes. Turns out, she had worked for the phone company, and I guess one of her retirement benefits was free phone service. She was concerned that the call would be long distance. I don't know if it really was, but she thought that it was. We ended up getting a land line, and gave her the local number.

Winter 2025

I was wondering about next October, so I went online, and one of my favorite ships in scheduled for 7 day cruises again, good old Freedom. (as in of the Seas) . Very nice price. Thanks, Ken. Another 4 weeks. And looking into the following January, looks like some interesting choices out of FLL. Might just look into those as well. I don't usually book that far ahead, but the very best buy I ever got was a cruise booked well ahead that I knew I would really want to do. That cruise was the one where Explorer left Bayonne to make room for Quantum. Funny to see Anthem leaving for Asia with Odyssey replacing it in NJ.

I will say, I feel much better about the care I am receiving back here in Florida than I ever did in Ct. I had a PCP and Cardi guy prescribing meds on their own, no matter how much I pleaded with them to talk to each other, that did not happen. Even here , my PCP is the only one doing the prescribing. The PCP office has 2 Dr's, and when in the hospital , the partner visits the patients. At one point, he talked about changing a med, but he said there would be an effect that didn't like, and he didn't change it. My subsequent office visit, my guy wanted to make that same change, so I asked him to go talk to his partner before he did it. And, he didn't make the change. Scary.

May years ago, when I was first diagnosed with high blood pressure, the Dr prescribed a diuretic. I did not pee, i sweated off the water, and really did not like the effect. Since then , I have resisted any time a Dr tries to prescribe any medicine that includes a diuretic.

Westmoreland county, 50 miles east of Pittsburgh

If you were turning the crank, inserting any body part into hole would not be a good idea.

My grandmother had a butter churner on the farm, nothing like that. Jimbo's guess sounds good, you could put you ears of corn in to remove the corn from the cob, then grind the kernals into meal to make corn bread.