personal – Page 16 – Retreading for Retirement

The Love-Hate Challenge

One of the bloggers I follow is Andrea at My Spoken Heart. Yesterday I read her post in response to The Love-Hate Challenge. I haven’t been formally challenged, but I liked the idea so much that I’ve decided to use it today.

The Love-Hate Challenge as us to write two lists of 10 items each: Things I Love and Things I Hate. I’m going to start with the hate list so that I can end on the positive note of listing things I love.

Things I Hate

1. Being around negative people

I recently wrote about ending a relationship with a narcissistic friend (scroll down to the question right before the bonus question). At that point I had decided that it was necessary for me to surround myself with only good people. My narcissistic friend didn’t make the cut.

A 2,100-mile retirement relocation gave me the opportunity to meet new people and make new friends. Most of the people in our retirement community are gems. There’s only one woman, whom I’ll call L., who is not. L. never stops talking, and she talks about only two subjects: other peoples’ shortcomings and her own superiority. I do my best, short of being downright rude, to avoid being near her. Most other people seem to have the same feeling, as no one ever voluntarily sits with L. at gatherings. L. is a constant reminder to me of how much better life is when I’m surrounded by pleasant, polite, caring people.

2. Brazen ignorance

All of us are subject to confirmation bias, the tendency to believe and remember information that confirms what we already believe or want to believe while at the same time denying and forgetting any information that contradicts our pre-conceived biases. A good many people, though, can look at something with an open mind when confronted with strong evidence and other points of view. It’s the people who stubbornly refuse to listen to any other points of view that I hate being around.

I also hate being around people who vociferously express opinions based on brazen ignorance. An example was a man, B., a fellow traveler on our recent European trip. After we had toured a Benedictine Abbey in Melk, Austria, that was built in the 16th century, B. sat across the aisle from me on the return bus ride. Here’s what he said to the person sitting next to him:

That was really something. Five-hundred years ago, when they were building this abbey, American Indians were still digging arrowheads out of the dirt. And in Africa they didn’t even have language yet. But look at what these Europeans were doing.

There’s nothing I can do but step away from such people.

3. Racist behavior

Someone might want to point out to me that this is the same as brazen ignorance. But this particular kind of brazen ignorance is so repulsive that it demands its own category.

4. Shoes that aren’t flat

Despite being short (5 feet, 2 inches), I have never wanted to wear shoes to make me look taller. Add to that the fact that I have a bad back, and you get my long-time refusal to wear shoes with any kind of a heel. If I can’t find a flat shoe appropriate for a particular occasion, I either don’t go or I go in inappropriate shoes.

5. Life without treats

I’m talking about food here. I refuse to live in a world that does not allow for the occasional order of french fries, two-scoop dish of ice cream, or piece of cake with frosting. Or blackberry cobbler. Or blueberry pie. Or chocolate-covered cherries.

6. Hot, humid weather

For 40+ years we lived in St. Louis, MO, the nation’s capital of hot, humid summers. We turned the air conditioning on in April and didn’t turn it off until October. I was known in my neighborhood as the summer recluse because I almost never left my air-conditioned house to venture into the heat and humidity.

7. Bland white fish

When I was a kid, my mother would put pieces of cod in a baking dish, add about 1/2 inch of water, and bake the fish in the oven. She’d serve it just that way: not even a dash of paprika to give it some flair and flavor. To this day, the only kind of white fish I eat is swordfish, which I actually like a lot.

8. Getting up early

I hate it when people say something like “Get up early and get more accomplished during the day.” I am a night owl. Getting up earlier doesn’t make me more productive. It makes me more miserable.

9. Boring chores

These include vacuuming, dusting, cleaning up the kitchen, and folding laundry.

10. Forced socializing

When I was last in graduate school, we had to attend a five-day conference twice a year. We attended workshops together, ate meals together, and had more meetings and classes together after dinner. After a couple of days I felt frantic.

I’m an introvert. I need periodic time alone to process what’s going on around me and to recharge my batteries. I’m more comfortable with three or four people than with 150. I’m also a highly sensitive person (HSP). Too much stimulation—crowds, noise, movement—also makes me crazy.

The world is run by extraverts who think that we should all love getting together in large groups. And corporations favor group projects so much that schools now insist on teaching kids to work in groups. The world is not kind to those of us who require periodic solitude and quietness.

Things I Love

1. Spending time with family and friends

I’m sure this tops everyone’s list of things they love. But really, what would life be like if this weren’t true?

2. Reading

Reading has been my favorite activity ever since I can remember. I’m always fascinated when somebody says something like “I started reading at age 3.” I have no idea when I started reading. I just can’t remember a life when I couldn’t and didn’t read.

3. Book groups

The joke about book groups is that they’re often an excuse to get together, drink wine, and talk about life. But if you can find a good book group, one that actually talks intelligently about the book, there’s nothing better. I was fortunate to be in two such groups for several years, and I found most of my closest friends there.

When I moved from St. Louis, MO, to Tacoma, WA, one of the first things I did was to look for book groups. I was appalled to learn that the entire Tacoma Public Library system sponsors exactly one book group, which met at a time and place inconvenient for me. I tried a group run by one branch of the Pierce County Library system, but none of the people there were close readers who could talk about anything deeper than “I liked” or “I didn’t like” the book.

Finally, I found a classics group that meets at my local independent book store. The members of this group are informed and interested in the books. I’ve been attending this group for about 15 months now and have learned a lot.

4. Purple

Deep purple is my favorite color. I always wear something purple (although you might not always be able to see it). My nails are always purple.

Purple clothes go in and out of fashion, so, on years when purple is in, I buy whatever I find that I can wear. That allows me to weather the times when there isn’t a purple item anywhere in sight.

5. Being “of a certain age”

When I turned 50, I decided that I was old enough to speak my mind. So I’ve been speaking my mind for quite a few years now, and I feel a lot better, thank you very much.

This is my favorite shirt. Notice that it’s purple. I like it so much that I own two.

And there will be no facelift for me (although anything in a bottle, tube, or jar is fair game). I’m proud of these wrinkles. I endured a lot to get them. I’ve earned every one.

6. Having short hair

Really, life is too short to spend time fussing with my hair. It’s wash-and-go for me.

7. Writing

I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always been pretty good at it. But I haven’t thought of myself as “a writer” until recently. I have challenged myself to write a blog post a day in 2015 to establish the habit of writing daily and to convince myself that I am a writer.

8. The Pacific Northwest

My husband and I lived in St. Louis for about 42 years. Our daughter was born there. When it came time for her to choose a college, she chose the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. She loved the area so much that she stayed.

Since she is our only child, it made sense for us to move here when we retired. We had been visiting Tacoma for about 15 years, so we knew we liked the area. As retirement approached, we became more and more eager to move out here.

Now we’re here, and we love it. We particularly like the more moderate climate. Also, we live near the city’s largest park and can walk to the zoo and aquarium.

9. Facebook

I know many people complain about Facebook, but I’m glad it exists. It allows me to keep in touch with friends we left back in St. Louis. It has also allowed me to reconnect with several of my cousins whom I had lost contact with over the years.

Perhaps I don’t get as annoyed as other people because I have a very small number of friends on Facebook. All these friends really are my friends or family, not some mere acquaintance I casually interacted with somewhere. I’m also careful about the kinds of information and photos I post.

10. Going to the farmers’ market

Most Saturdays during the summer we travel down to Puyallup, where our daughter lives, and go with her to the Puyallup Farmers’ Market. The Puyallup River provides a fertile growing area, so there is a lot of good local produce available there. This routine also allows us to see her at least once a week, which is, of course, the real reason we do it.

Lunch Bunch: C.I. Shenanigans

3017 Ruston Way, Tacoma, WA 98402
Phone: (253) 752 – 8811

The first Friday of every month our activities director at Franke Tobey Jones offers us the opportunity to go out for lunch. Today’s destination was C.I. Shenanigans, on beautiful Ruston Way. Shenanigans advertises that it features sustainable seafood, Harris Ranch beef “from cattle that spend approximately 80% of their lives grazing on grass,” and artisanal cocktails.

I can vouch for the cocktails. My Moscow Mule (vodka, ginger beer, and a splash of lime) was delicious. There were five people at our table. I had a cup of their lobster bisque, which turned out to be delicious. My husband ordered the crab-stuffed mushrooms and pronounced them quite good as well.

For our main courses, the gentleman who ordered mac and cheese said that it was too dry. Two women liked their salads, which were generously sized. My husband and I both had Columbia River King Salmon, “simply grilled,” which was cooked through but not dry. Our vegetables—green beans, wax (yellow) beans, and broccoli—were also good, not overcooked.

Our only complaint was that it took a LONG time to get the food. We had a group of 20, so it’s understandable that we might have put a strain on the staff. But our activities director always lets restaurants know well ahead of time how many people will be coming, so I’m disappointed if an establishment doesn’t prepare adequately for us. My husband and I have eaten at Shenanigans a couple of times on our own, and I don’t remember the service being particularly slow.

I see that Shenanigans gets three out of five stars on Yelp, 3.5 stars on Trip Advisor, and 4 stars on Open Table and Facebook.

Ruston Way hosts a huge crowd every Fourth of July. Early in the day the road is closed to traffic, and people pack the place. On our way to and from the restaurant we saw city workers setting up out rows and rows of blue portable toilets all along Ruston Way to accommodate tomorrow’s crowd. They were also setting out many huge plastic trash receptacles. We’ve never gone down on the Fourth because it’s just too crowded. And tomorrow’s high temperature will be about 88 degrees. So we’ll stay home tomorrow and let all those other people enjoy the day along Commencement Bay’s beautiful Ruston Way.

Three Things Thursday

It’s time once again for Three Things Thursday, the purpose of which is to “share three things from the previous week that made you smile or laugh or appreciate the awesome of your life.”

1. Farmers’ Market

We hadn’t been to the farmers’ market in three or four weeks because of our European trip. And, because spring arrived about a month early this year, when we went to the farmers’ market last weekend it was much different than the last time we were there.

I’m kicking myself for not thinking to snap any photos. You’ll have to use your imagination to picture all the festive colors of the produce:

vine-ripened tomatoes
snow peas
red and golden raspberries
green beans
carrots
green and yellow zucchini
Rainier and Bing cherries
blueberries
red and golden beets

And, of course, flowers galore. It was certainly a feast for the eyes.

2. Paprika

Before we left for our trip, our daughter surprised me by saying, “If you visit Hungary, you’ll have to try goulash.”

Now I’m sure I made goulash a few times while she was growing up, but I was still surprised that she took such an interest in it. We didn’t buy many souvenirs, but we did buy her a tin of paprika in Budapest:

Paprika can range from mild to wickedly hot. We were careful to get her a container labeled sweet. Now we’ll just have to get her to make us a big batch of goulash.

3. Miska Jug

The only other souvenir we brought back is this wine pitcher from Budapest. The shop was full of variations of these, but we finally settled on this one.

It’s a Miska (which I think is pronounced mishka) Jug:

Click on any photo for a larger version.

Blog a Day Challenge: June Report

I anticipated that June would be a challenge for me because for the first two weeks of the month we were on vacation in Europe. I knew that both internet connectivity and time to write and post would be limited.

The reality turned out to be even worse than I had expected. Internet connectivity was very limited (see last month’s featured post, linked below). In addition, both my husband and I caught the cold that we shipmates so generously shared amongst ourselves. I spent a lot of my free time sleeping in an attempt to recover. These two factors combined meant that I didn’t publish any posts and wrote only outlines and bare-bones notes for each day’s entry.

I have therefore spent the last two weeks of June frantically trying to catch up on travel posts at the same time I was writing new daily posts. I just made it.

I knew that there would be nowhere near an equitable distribution of posts across my three blogs because all the travel posts belonged on my personal blog, Retreading for Retirement.

For all these reasons I’m not at all concerned with this month’s statistics, although I include them here for uniformity in reporting and for contributing to my end-of-year summary.

Here are my statistics for last month:

Number of posts written: 30

Shortest post: 110 words

Longest post: 800 words

Total words written: 13,840

Average post length: 461 words

Distribution of posts across my three blogs:

The total of posts here may not equal the number of posts written last month because I occasionally publish the same post on more than one blog. However, I have included each post only once in my total word count.

Last month’s featured post:

4 Out of 5 Stars to Viking River Cruises

Three Things Thursday

I’m really excited about today’s Three Things Thursday, the purpose of which is to “share three things from the previous week that made you smile or laugh or appreciate the awesome of your life.”

Tacoma Rainiers Game!

Our new activities director took a group of us from Franke Tobey Jones to a Tacoma Rainiers baseball game this week.

The Rainiers, of the Pacific Coast League, is the AAA team of MLB’s Seattle Mariners. That means that players stop here just before being called up to the Major League Baseball team. In fact, we watched Franklin Gutierrez play in Tacoma on Tuesday, then saw him on television with the Mariners on Wednesday, just after being called up. Fortunately, it’s a short trip from Tacoma to Seattle.

Tuesday nigh was a beautiful night to be at a baseball game. It was a sunny day, but our seats were in the shade of the high stadium wall up the third base line. The temperature was just right. Here are some photos. (Thanks to my husband for photo #3).

1. Stadium Hill

Hill along first base side of Cheney Stadium

The grassy hill next to right field, up along the first base line, is a popular destination for families with young children. Both young and older fans can spread out and relax while watching the game. A lot of foul balls end up there, so if you go, you should bring your glove.

2. Rainiers’ Mascot: Rhubarb

The Seattle Mariners’ mascot is a moose, and I used to think that Rhubarb, the Rainiers’ mascot, is also a moose. But this week I discovered that Rhubarb is in fact a reindeer. It has a nice alliterative ring to it: Rhubarb, the Rainier Reindeer.

Rhubarb, Rainiers' mascot — Rhubarb, Rainiers’ mascot

But be honest here. Could you really tell from those antlers that Rhubarb is a reindeer and not a moose?

Cheney (pronounced chee-nee) Stadium, home of the Rainiers, is a very family-friendly place, and Rhubarb plays a big part in creating that atmosphere. He dances on top of the dugouts, and mingles and schmoozes with fans up in the stands. And after every Sunday game at the stadium, Rhubarb brings kids down onto the field and leads them in running around the bases.

3. Tribute to Ben Cheney

Ben Cheney was one of the community leaders responsible for getting a stadium built in just three months and 14 days, in time to open as the home of the San Francisco Giants’ AAA club in 1960. Since that time Tacoma has been the home of a number of minor league teams. The Rainiers have played at Cheney Stadium since 1995.

Cheney Stadium underwent a massive remodeling between the end of the 2010 season on September 2 and opening day of the 2011 season on April 1.

The spirit of Ben Cheney attends every home game at the stadium named in his honor.

U.S. Open: We Tuned in for the Scenery But Stayed for the Drama

I have absolutely zero interest in the sport of golf. But the U.S. Open is being held at Chambers Bay, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump from our new hometown of Tacoma, WA. So I tuned in to Fox this afternoon to see if the Goodyear blimp (which we’ve seen, as a far-off speck in the sky, circling for the last couple of days) would provide some shots of our beautiful local scenery.

And it certainly did. The weather here has been clear and just gorgeous all four days of the tournament. The blimp caught postcard-perfect shots of Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. But what surprised both my husband F. and me was that, between the gorgeous scenery shots, we got caught up in the tournament drama.

Even though I don’t follow golf, I am interested in other sports, notably baseball, basketball, NFL football (which you are required to like when you move to the Seattle-Tacoma area), and tennis. But I’m not much into personalities and statistics. Even though baseball is my first love and I watch the World Series faithfully every year, no matter who’s playing, sometimes, come January, I’ve forgotten who won.

What I like is watching games. I love the way games unfold and the way players react to and cope with changing situations. This is why I prefer National League baseball to American League play: because the AL use of the designated hitter means that managers don’t have to make key decisions about whether to pinch hit for a pitcher who’s working well to take advantage of a potential scoring situation. I love to see which players step up in clutch moments and which ones choke, which athletes are able to recognize and adapt to what their opponents are doing and which ones stubbornly keep doing what they’re doing and hoping for different results. I love the pressure of the moment, the opportunity to step up or shut down.

And the final round of this year’s U.S. Open golf tournament provided some of the best sports drama I’ve seen in a long time:

one player who was completely out of the running until an amazing string of birdies brought him within one stroke of the lead
three or four players who kept tossing the lead, or a share of the lead, around among themselves
a player who made a seemingly unbelievable putt near the end of his final round
another player who could have won the tournament, then could have forced a playoff on the following day, and then finally lost the tournament, all because of his inability to putt

I admit that I can’t putt either—or I assume I can’t; I’ve never tried—but that’s why these guys were at Chambers Bay while I was watching on TV in my living room just a few miles away. But even though we got caught up in the drama, I don’t anticipate watching too many more golf tournaments—unless the U.S. Open comes back to Chambers Bay one day.

What I Learned on My European Trip

My major reason for traveling is to learn about other people and their world. I learned a lot on our recent trip to Europe.

Build Your Fortress on High Ground

I knew that early people built their fortresses on high ground for two reasons:

So they could see their enemy approaching
So that they would defend their city by shooting down, not up, at their attackers

But it wasn’t until I saw with my own eyes so many castles built on high ground that I fully realized the truth of this dictum:

Thanks to my husband for this photo, which well illustrates the advantage folks in the castle would have if invaders moved in, particularly if those invaders came by river.

European History, Culture, People

I didn’t know much about European history before this trip, and I learned a lot about how different cultures developed. I particularly enjoyed recognizing how people who we think today live near each other developed differently. Distances were much greater 500 years ago, and people who now live a short train ride apart developed different values, beliefs, and customs. Yet there are similarities, too, in language, religion, food, and culture.

I love “it’s a small world” stories, and this trip presented one after another.

Many Europeans Speak at Least Some English

In shops just about everywhere we stopped, someone spoke enough English for us to converse and do business.

My husband and I both caught a cold that ran through most of the people on our ship. In one German city we visited, we went into a pharmacy to get vitamins A and C to boost our immune systems. As soon as I asked the pharmacist if he had vitamins A and C, he said, in perfect English, “Oh, are you from the States?” He asked what I needed and why, then went over to a shelf and pointed to two packages. “This is what we take over here.” We left the pharmacy feeling we had gotten exactly what we wanted.

Most Europeans speak a second language because their schools start them early on studying another language in addition to their own. Although English isn’t usually their only option, some people we spoke to said that many choose English because it’s nearly universal. And it’s not unusual to come across someone who speaks at least a bit of three or four languages.

Our city guide in Budapest, Eszter (pronounced like the English name Esther), told us she speaks three languages. She also said that when she was in school during Russian rule of Hungary, students were required to study Russian. She and most others refused because it was the language of the oppressor, and their teacher let them sit in the back of the room and do homework while she worked up front with those who wanted to learn Russian. Eszter said that she now regrets not taking advantage of the opportunity to learn another language.

It is only here in the United States that we think learning a second language is unpatriotic. One of our fellow travelers said that his seven-year-old grandson attends a school in the U.S. where he’s learning Chinese along with English. I’ve always thought it extremely arrogant that we think everyone should learn our language while we make no effort to learn theirs.

Always Buy Travel Insurance That Includes Medical Coverage

I don’t know about other American health insurance, but Medicare is not in effect outside of the United States.

The old streets of many European cities are paved with very old, very uneven cobblestones. One of our shipmates, K., who is not particularly infirm, got wrong-footed and fell down, breaking a bone in her ankle. It can easily happen to anyone.

I did not ask K. about the details of payment for seeing a doctor and having her leg casted, but what happened to her did make me think about medical coverage. We recently booked a trip on a different cruise line. When I asked about medical insurance, the cruise line rep told me that they have two levels of travel insurance: one that includes medical coverage and one that doesn’t. We snapped up the one with medical coverage, even though it’s a bit more expensive. It’s comforting to know that if we get sick or injured and have to be helicoptered off the ship, we’re covered up to $10,000.

No, You Probably Can’t Check in Online for Your International Flight

We felt lucky that we could get a direct flight to Amsterdam via Delta Air Lines for our European trip. When Delta contacted us by email, my husband followed the link to the Delta web site and filled in preliminary information such as our address and passport numbers.

The day before we were to leave, he got another email telling him that we could check in online for the next day’s flight. Again he followed the link to the Delta web site, filled out all the forms, and printed our boarding passes.

I thought it all sounded too easy for an international flight. Nonetheless, we had boarding passes with assigned seats. When we got to the airport, there was a sign at the Delta counter saying that you could get in the “check baggage only” line if you had a boarding pass. I even asked the Delta rep standing at the sign if this applied to international flights, and she said yes.

So we stood in line. When we finally got our turn to check bags, the agent looked at our boarding passes and passports, and said, “Oh, you two are in trouble.” She pointed to the top of our boarding passes, where very tiny letters said “document verification required.”

Fortunately, she was very nice. She sent my husband over to the self-check-in kiosks and told him to scan both passports and print out new boarding passes. She put our bags aside and let me wait near the baggage check area while he did this. When he came back, the new boarding passes said, in the same very small letters, “documents verified.” She then checked our bags and we were on our way.

But what I want to know is this: Why did the online check-in process never indicate anywhere that we would have to scan our passports at the airport? In fact, why did the online process even allow us to print out boarding passes, since they weren’t valid boarding passes anyway and had to be replaced at the airport? Why did Delta put us through the whole online check-in process and lead us to believe we had checked in properly when we hadn’t?

Next time we’re flying out of the country, we’ll know better.

4 Out of 5 Stars to Viking River Cruises

I give Viking River Cruises four out of five stars for our Grand European Tour. The only thing that kept me from giving the experience a five-star rating was the unreliable internet access.

Here are the categories of the experience that were important to me:

Value

This trip was a great value. Many companies nickel-and-dime you for everything, especially meals. But, except for our days of arrival and departure, our trip cost included three meals a day. Of course we were always free to eat meals on shore, but that was a choice, not a necessity. Beer and wine were also included with meals.

Our additional expenses included goods and services you would have to pay for on just about every tour: liquor and soft drinks consumed outside of meals, laundry, local postage, optional excursions.

Educational Opportunities

In this area, also, our tour was a great overall value. We had a local guide who spoke English on a free guided tour at every location along the way. All the guides we had discussed the history, culture, art, architecture, and language of their region, and they knew a lot. They also pointed out the major local points of interest for tourists so that we could explore them more on our own during our free time. Discussions with our cruisemates revealed that everyone thought their guides did an outstanding job.

There were also many optional excursions available at additional cost, including the Mozart and Strauss evening concert we attended in Vienna. The variety of these optional activities throughout the cruise allowed people to choose aspects that particularly interested them. The prices of these excursions were reasonable, and the guides were as knowledgeable as those on the free city tours.

When we had to travel by bus, the local buses Viking employed were large, air-conditioned, and comfortable. Drivers were helpful with people who needed a hand getting onto or off of the bus.

Staff

I cannot say enough good things about how friendly and capable the Viking staff was. The ship’s hotel manager, concierge, program director, and reception desk staff all went out of their way to interact with passengers and to help in any way they could. The dining and housekeeping staffs were also attentive and professional.

Just about everyone working on the ship—at least those who interacted directly with passengers—spoke English. It is arrogant of us Americans to expect everyone to speak our language, but I appreciated their ability to speak English because it allowed me to talk with some of them a bit about their own countries, which included Serbia, Romania, the Philippines, Austria, and Germany.

Food

The food was outstanding. After just a few days on board, passengers were joking about how we all planned the rest of our day around meals. There were several dining options available: open-seating sit-down dining, with both a buffet and menu, in the restaurant on the middle deck; lighter fare in the lounge and the enclosed terrace on the upper deck.

At dinner each evening the restaurant featured dishes that originated in the area we were visiting, such as goulash during our time in Budapest. Open-seating in the dining room allowed us to sit with lots of different people over the course of the trip.

Internet Access

This is the only area that caused me to give the trip an overall rating of four stars instead of five.

I expected not to have an internet connection when the ship was moving, but I also expected the connection to be more reliable than it was when we were docked. Many times my computer (Apple MacBook Air) indicated that it was connected to the on-board wi-fi network, but Apple Mail could not connect to download my email. I had intended to publish a few blog posts during the trip, but I gave up that intention early on when I discovered how unreliable internet service was.

Overall, this was a wonderful trip. I now recommend Viking Cruises whole-heartedly to anyone who will listen to me rave.

Home Again, Home Again

Today was homecoming day for us, via a 10-hour Delta direct flight from Amsterdam to Sea-Tac (Seattle-Tacoma) International Airport. We were on an Airbus 330, which has entertainment screens for each passenger (on the back of the seat in front of you). This entertainment system provides music, games, and movies.

On the flight out I had planned to do a lot of reading and had packed my briefcase with everything I thought I’d need. As a result, my briefcase was too heavy for me to carry any distance, and my husband F. valiantly volunteered to tote it around for me. For the flight home I had learned my lesson and had packed little more than my laptop and my iPad in the case. I still hoped to do some reading, but this time I knew that I’d be able to plug my iPad into a USB port in front of me when it began to run low.

However, both F. and I decided to check out the entertainment system, which we had resisted on the flight out. Among the movies F. discovered The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington. I usually go to see any movie that Denzel appears in. I had wanted to see this one when it was out in theaters, despite the violence, but never got there. So we both tucked into this one.

After The Equalizer, we discovered the whole Taken series, starring Liam Neeson, available. We had seen the original Taken, but not 2 and 3, so we both went through those. It’s definitely time for this series to end, as Liam has noticeably slowed down in the action sequences. Next we watched The Drop, written by one of my favorite mystery writers, Dennis Lehane. This was the best of all the movies, as it had at least a bit of character depth and an intriguing twist at the end.

One other nifty feature of the Airbus 330’s video system is the section labeled “this flight,” which shows you a world map with the plane’s projected flight path and current location. Somewhere over the cold North Atlantic I took a break from my movies long enough to raise my window shade and snap this photo:

The only thing worse than a long plane flight is a long plane flight with whining, crying children. One row ahead of us in the middle four-seat section of plane was a group of four children who looked about 12, 10, 8, and 6. There was no sound at all from them for the entire flight as they, like us, sat enthralled by their personal entertainment systems. It must have been kid nirvana: endless movies, music, and games interrupted only by the occasional delivery of meals, snacks, and beverages.

I didn’t get any sleep on the flight, but I didn’t expect to. Despite the entertainment, it’s been a long day for us. We had to get up at 4:30 AM to have our suitcases out by 5:15, and our bus left the boat for the airport at 6:15. We got home by late afternoon and are now just about ready to hit the hay for several hours.

Unlimited mindless entertainment stunts human growth, but sometimes a limited dose of it is exactly what the circumstances require. Just ask those four kids if you don’t want to take my word for it.

Things I Hate

Things I Love

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Tacoma Rainiers Game!

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