A Real Life Conversation

 Daughter #1

Dad. What do I do with Pickled Garlic?

de-I

     Put into a Martini
    Chop into salads
    Add as a condiment to curry
    Puree into a facial scrub
    Okay I just made that up

Daughter #1

    Lol
    Those all sound good
    Except the last one

de-I

   Pickled garlic scrub was used throughout Southeast Asia as an aphrodisiac. Not really.   

 Seriously pickled things like garlic tend to be much less potent in flavor than the raw. The Spanish put    them in olives. I think any stuffed vegetable would benefit from some chopped pickled garlic
   

 AND Is also very useful against pickled vampires!
    😵‍💫

Contemplating The Next Big Transition

Wife and I have been doing a lot of talking about what happens next now that it seems the world has decided we are just going to all be getting Covid all the time so let's go back to life as is was before. I will be turning 75 in six months. Wife is a year + behind me.

The pandemic years cost us (and most everyone else) two valuable years (in terms of age) of travel. Equally significant for our quality of life, it, along with other events (political policies, demographics) has led to the diminishing of the availability of people to do work. This has been written about relating to all types of situations (such as businesses being unable to find help). But for Wife and I, it is hitting us at our ability to stay in our house.

Long time readers know, the many years of additions and renovations to the Tower have led to an environment that Wife and I truly love and don't want to leave. The problem becomes maintenance. Whether it is the yard, cleaning, necessary repairs, things that 10 years ago we might contemplate doing ourselves, are now becoming physically more difficult due to age related deterioration. It is not hard to project out a continuing deteriorating trend. 

So much thought is going into the problem. No solutions yet.

The One And Only Rotary Convention

 I think everyone knows I am a part of a virtual, cause-based Rotary Club, the Club to End Human Trafficking. We are young, ambitious, way too white, and in need of getting better diversity of nations around the world. 

Each year Rotary International holds an annual convention. Prior to Covid these would attract up to 40 thousand Rotarians from around the world. But in 2020 and 2021 they had to be virtual. However, the convention scheduled this year in Houston, Texas, was going to come off in-person. Sadly because of the U.S. Government's breakdown in ability to process visas due to the prior administration and Covid disruptions, many who wanted to come couldn't. There were only 10 thousand in attendance. Including your truly.

You would ask,"de-I, you are notorious for not liking anything with crowds of people. Why the hell were you there?" A very valid question.

It started last February when my club president suggested this would be a great opportunity for members of our far flung, virtual club to actually meet each other face-to-face. I decided that was true so committed to go. Then over the next three months everyone else from the club backed out. I seriously thought of backing out too. BUT, there was this opportunity to do international recruitment that would never come again. As our Membership Chair, I felt a responsibility. There will not be another Convention in Northa America until 2025. Plus I thought it would be a good chance to promote Theodora as well. So I went.

I was helping man a booth of a related organization (The Rotary Group to End Slavery) which we are associated with. This gave me the venue with which to network. And I did. I was at the convention for two days solid, 10 hours each day, talking things up. I got a load of names. And was totally exhausted.Many in my circle (family, my Theodora participants) tell me I work too hard. Mostly they are not correct. I am on my butt making video calls. I am sorry, this is not hard work. Being on your feet, selling, non-stop for 10 hours a day is hard work. I will go on record as this was my first and last such venture.

And as a reward for my efforts...I came down with Covid! Thankfully have not been too bad (Thank you Pfizer Covid anti-viral drugs!). So I am writing this from my quarantine quarters in the Tower. 

On a more positive note, the high point of the convention was a social event, a 'drink-up' hosted by a Rotarian I know from Ghana. Yaw is our landlord. I didn't even know he was a Rotarian until just a few months ago. He invites me to this event. I have no idea what to expect other than he tells me important Ghanaian Rotarians will be there. Turns out to be a big ole BBQ with all kinds of Rotarian bigwigs. Yaw is promoting the hell out of Theodora. And I am (literally) the only white person in the room. It is very cool.

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #22 - Post Trip Analysis

 It is once again time for us to evaluate all that took place on our trip with the all knowing, all seeing eye of discrimination. Navel gazing as the beloved #3 calls it.

• Can the value of the whole be less than the sum of the parts? Yes evidently.

There was so much when taken individually that I liked in Portugal. The wine was phenomenal. Seriously it was nearly impossible to not get a bad pour. And they were generous with the pours. Even in the supermarket, the most expensive wines were hardly above U.S. low to moderate prices. 

 

Driving was easy. There was a clear set of rules that pretty much all drivers followed. The major highways were well marked making navigation easy. Our GPS generally worked quite well. The houses and apartments we rented were nice. The bread was great. Even supermarket bread. The food we bought at the markets was high quality. Prices in general were not expensive. English is widely understood.

 

What was not great? The food! Eating out was a big disappointment. Even the best we had was just okay. That was a major downer for me. Plus most of the areas we went to where extremely oriented toward the tourist market. It was hard for Wife and I imagining ourselves staying in any of them for very long.

• We still love to travel 
  

Why? It is the whole experience. The finding, exploring, figuring out, making something unknown your own. Every time we find a spot that was not on the list of major sites but turns out to be cool, is a reward. Just figuring out over 3 to 5 days how get around a place is stimulating

• However!....

 …The limitations of age continue their relentless reduction of what we can do – like the steady erosion of the water on the earth. This was so very evident when we were confronted with dealing with the hilly nature of Porto.

• We are done with mountains, hills, inclines…Give me Flat! And Water!

For the vast majority of my life, I have loved the mountains. Early on I ached to be in them. When we moved to New Mexico, they became part of our daily live with hiking a mainstay. When we travel, I looked for having the mountain experience. But as our capabilities have diminished, driving, walking and getting around these environments has become a bigger and bigger challenge. 

Now we crave a different experience. We want to be close to the water. We want flat. Yes we want challenge but challenge that our age depleted bodies can handle.

• Still showing signs of our ADD tendencies.

At each of our stays during this trip, we found the places we wanted to visit, went out, did our exploring, our photographing. And then it was, 'we're done'. Time to move on?

• So can we change?
  

We have a big experiment coming up. We have (in our minds anyway) that we would like to live somewhere other than the United States. So we are going back to Cefalú Sicily for two months this fall. Will the Cefalú experiment leave us finding a new path or will we be bored out of our minds? We will find out.

• Farewell to Frites
  

Daughter #3 is leaving Amsterdam after 16 years moving to Copenhagen, Denmark. The Netherlands in general had great Frites, what we call French Fries. But there was one place at the end of a large open air market called the Albert Cuypt that had, what we believed were the best we ever had in our life...period! Every time we visited, we would go there. So for this last visit to Amsterdam, we went three times! Eating these most wonderful frites probably for the last time. Smothered in Dutch mayonnaise of course!