h20skibum

Anything grape based, so that means I have to suffer through drinking all the wine we bring onboard. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it!

Never raisins in our house. My wife is allergic to them. That’s why we always had trouble with the apple pie on Royal. She is so glad they went to the apple blossom deserts, which is what she orders almost every night.. No raisins in them.

@sgmn Sue, your photos look fantastic. It looks like you had great weather for your cruise.

It seems like our days are so filled, it is hard to keep up here. This morning, I was out doing some prep work for the First weekend of summer party tomorrow. Our grandson was busy helping make some cookies. You can tell he likes lots of chocolate chips, just like Susan After making some small ones He decided he wanted to make a really big one. Baking out of the way, we decided to grab some lunch and eat on the boat It was a beautiful day, with very little boat traffic This was the maiden voyage for this season, and everything was running smoothly for a boat that we have now had for 38 years. Finished off our evening as we do most nights. Drinks in the hot tub while streaming something. Tonight it was just my grandson and me, so we watched the first five episodes of Man vs Bee, the new series on Netflix with Rowan Atkinson. If you like his humor it is worth a watch. We were both laughing.

Greg, sounds like a great day with your son, and a really nice gift. Have fun experimenting. Great news about Owen. Hope he has a short time to full recovery.

I tried posting this yesterday, but CC wasn’t uploading the video. Anyhow, we got our one grandson home in time for his golf tournament. He has been playing in several already this summer, and recently beat all the 7th graders in a tournament in Youngstown. Not bad, since he will be going into 4th in the fall. From yesterday’s tournament. Putt for Eagle. His first Eagle. IMG_4577.MOV

Welcome back, Dani. Looking forward to hearing about your trip and seeing some pictures. Love that pirate outfit! Take notes. Before long, you will have a little one to take on outings.

After learning about bees yesterday, why not move on to geese and fish today? Today’s adventure took us to the Linesville Spillway. Picked up 15 loaves of bread to feed the wildlife, and it is encouraged here. Lots of geese And lots of fish Susan says she has nightmares about falling into this mass of fish We moved on to the fish hatchery, but there isn’t much to see this time of the year. I did spot a nice Lilly pad Then it was off to the Safari Bar in Meadville. The kids gave me their best frightened looks as they posed in front of the polar bear.

So today, we had all the grandkids at Apple Castle. They have different topics for kids to learn about during the summer. Today’s topic was bees 🐝, and they all listened intently. All aboard the farm wagon. By the way, that is a 1950 JD tractor. Past a few hives. With a stop to see farmer Steve, who showed off his bee outfit, and explained more about how the bees pollinate their orchards. Once they got back from the wagon ride, all the kids got to decorate some pots, and they planted some sunflower seeds. Inside the castle, they had a display case with the bees at work. I learned that inside the hive, there are only a couple male bees, and the female worker bees would feed them and call on them for, ahem, good times. The males don’t have anything else to do. ( It was sounding like a pretty good life to me). Other than when they get kicked out of the hive at the end of the season. On the way back, we saw one of those new “green” vehicles at the gas station.

+1

Inside guarantees were running around $229 for a 7 night on Voyager for October, but those went up to $299 now. Of course taxes and fees are higher for those sailings from Boston than they are for the grandeur sailing from Miami. Still not bad prices.

After following along on John’s gastronomic adventure, I was intrigued by the app that gave some data linked to his scale. I don’t think I had ever heard of a metabolic age (MA), so I had to do a little research. I found an online calculator that will tell you what yours is, so I had to run it to see what it came up with for me, and also for Susan. So it tells me that my MA is 14 years younger than my actual age, and that Susan has an MA that is 20 years younger than her actual age. I don’t know what the significance of this is, if any, because it only considers age, gender, height, weight, and percent body fat. All I know is that appears our age spread is getting larger.

Not AC, but something similar. I scheduled one of my vehicles for service today. I have always had it serviced at the dealership, and when I called last week for the appointment, I found out the dealership sold to new owners. I thought it was odd, because when I dropped off the car last night, there were only a couple cars in the service lot, and 5 service people hanging out in the office. It didn’t appear that any of the old employees were kept on. So move forward to today, and I get a call from them. They say, “Oh, your car doesn’t need anything for inspection, but because of the mileage, we could do…..”. And they list four more things they are trying to upsell. The thing is, I had those things done within the last six months at the old dealership. And when I picked up my vehicle, it was the only one in the service lot and five service people hanging out again. I don’t know if their lack of customers is due to people cutting back on service, or some other reason. The old dealership was always busy. I need to do some research on this dealer to see what their reputation is now. Maybe they just didn’t have access to the old records, or they did, but didn’t look them up. Sometimes, change is not good.

I am still trying to play catch up on this thread. Keeping a nine year old seems to take a lot of time and energy. First, wishes for speedy healing or good test results for many here, and I hope I am not missing anyone. @A&L_Ont hope things are progressing for Owen and your mom @Momof3gurlz hope Andy is doing better. @aussielozzie18 hope you are managing well with your cast @grapau27 hope your shot for your knee gives you some relief @Sea Dog if you are walking a couple miles, it sounds like your knee is progressing @BonTexasNY hope you are progressing with your ankle recovery, but it will take a while. And finally……… @Sunshine3601 hope you recover fully from birthday partying. Happy birthday!

Use one almost every day. And yes, sometimes it can involve drinking This isn’t far from one of those turn left jug handles.

So since we are talking drinks, I tried making a Union Jack lava flow tonight. It didn’t turn out too bad, but you almost need two blender cups for these. You have to be really fast between blending the strawberry, cleaning the cup, then blending the pina colada, before they start to melt. Of course, I have to blend the strawberry without alcohol first, because grandson loves to take the frozen strawberry drink portion in the hot tub to drink while watching some videos. All the grandkids like watching a show called Wild Kratts, that teaches them about many types of animals. A good series if anyone is looking for shows for young kids.

Car show….. Sharon has hosted a Father’s Day car show for a number of years. You could not have asked for a more prefect day for a show than today. It was 70°, sunny, and very low humidity. It brought out a huge crowd for the hundreds of cars there. A few shots from the show. Grandson liked this BMW Isetta that was just about his size. Did someone say wine? I really like the wine merchant vehicle. How about a patriotic paint job on this old corvette? Someone even brought a boat to a car show….. A few flashy street rods. And a nice 55 Porsche 550 Spyder, although I believe this was a replica. All in all, a nice day out.

This may be a Father’s Day, multi-post. Today, we were in Sharon, PA for the Father’s Day car show. But before the car show, where to go for lunch? Sharon is home to the original Quaker Steak and Lube. I lived in Sharon after I graduated from college, and I remember when Jigs and Moe opened the place in the mid 70’s. A restaurant in a converted gas station, it was THE place to be, and my single buddies and I frequented it several nights a week. It has gone down hill since it’s prime days, and there are not nearly as many cars on display in the restaurant after it was acquired by Travel Centers of America, but they still have some good food and drink. Grandson played the duck claw machine in the restaurant, and scored three with his first drop. Guess I am ready to hide some now. Drinks……When I saw one that said Caribbean Cooler, I had to try one. And the price was not bad. It was pretty tasty, and as a bonus, it came with a souvenir fish. I went with a standard pulled pork sandwich. You have your choice of heat in the BBQ sauce. Since I like things hot, I went with the Buckeye BBQ. At 5,000 scoville heat units, I can’t imagine what the Eat Heat at 500,000 would be like. I mean, I have eaten habaneros which are around 300,000, but it was quite a jump from 5 to 500 that they offered. Onward to the car show….,

Sorry to hear about Owen. Hope he heals quickly, and doesn’t have any lingering problems. Heck of a way to spend Father’s Day!!

It appears we will have our cat sitting duties extended by one day. Daughter and her family are stuck at Disney due to a flight mixup by Southwest. I don’t even know how it would happen, and she was on the phone for a couple hours while they tried to sort out what happened. They had booked round trip tickets, non stop for the four of them. At some point, SW changed the return flight to a different time, but only included two of them. They found out today when they went to check in, and only my daughter and grandson were listed. At least they were able to stay in the same room for an extra day.

I thought this was one of Rick Wakeman’s more eclectic albums. In fact, back in my early days of making videos, I used the lead in to the track “Arthur” to mix the audio to overlay the titles on a VCR tape. (Think VCR cameras circa 1982) I built a mixer to link my stereo components to the VCR camera. I can’t believe I still have that original “black box” laying around. It was a movie I shot with me and my son when he was about a month old. I even incorporated a little movie magic, making us disappear and reappear from a rocking chair. I remember my grandmother was amazed by the video, and couldn’t figure how we did it. I must admit that cell phones and iMovie have made things much simpler.

It looks like we dodged the bad part of a storm the other night. Lots of hail damage and downed trees. It passed a couple miles north of us, but we didn’t even get a drop of rain. It is 52° this morning with a high in the mid 60’s today.

I always said that I want “Who wants to live forever”, by Queen, played for my funeral. And with apologies to Buddy Holly… Everyday, it's a gettin' closer, Goin' faster than a roller coaster Now I am getting different songs stuck in my head.

If you are walking, go early to beat when Royal drops off their excursion

You and me both, Lenny.