Are We Having Fun Yet?

Well, 2020 couldn't end soon enough for my liking, but despite that, I'm a bit surprised that it's 2021 now. More truthfully, I can accept that it is 2021, but I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that it is now January. It feels like it should be some other month. Odd.

So far, all of us have avoided covid-19. The county went into lockdown again in December, so there's no dining-in at our restaurants and schools have gone back to remote exclusively. I'm a bit surprised that gyms are still open, but they are now capped at 25% occupancy. Vaccines are being distributed but it's still just groups 1a and 1b: front-line medical workers and the residents of long-term care facilities. I'm not expecting a shot at a shot until late spring at best.

I was awarded my black belt in karate in mid-December. Like other belts I've earned since the dojo closed in March, I consider it to be provisional since we haven't been able to meet in person to do sparring, teaching of juniors, etc.. I plan to re-test when we finally get to practice together in one space once again.

Our ten-day Amsterdam to Bern river cruise last August was scrapped because of covid-19. However, Viking River Cruises offered us a 20% bonus credit if we rolled over to a 14-day Amsterdam-to-Budapest cruise in 2021, so we took them up on it. If we can't go because Europe is still closed to American tourists, or if we haven't been vaccinated by then, we can still get our money back, but I'm choosing to be optimistic.

Travel to Canada is still blocked. At this moment, I could enter Canada as a citizen, but I'd need a negative covid test within 72 hours to be able to board the plane, and submit an extensive quarantine plan electronically before arriving. Once there, I'd be quarantined for two weeks. I have plans ready in case I need to make urgent trips to southern Ontario or northern Ontario, but I'm hoping we get clear of this damn plague before I need to test either one.

Work continues. Our company is cleaning up all of the various bonus programs and performance metrics into a single cohesive plan, and it's not a bad plan at all. My next pay (Jan 8) will pay the last of the three year signing bonuses from our purchase by Enterprise Holdings Inc.; under the new plan, I'll be eligible for up to 20% of my base salary in annual bonuses. In the next month, all staff should receive a comprehensive benefits statement, including any pay adjustments due to title changes, adjustments to responsibilities, or to keep pace with industry averages. I have no idea what if any raise I might get, but the bonus is nothing to sneeze at, even if it's only half of what my last installment from the old plan will be.

Speaking of work, I've been on vacation these past two weeks. With Christmas and New Year's on Fridays, and with the regular company holidays, it only cost me seven vacation days. There is currently one more full day off before work resumes on Monday, and I'm savouring every hour.

I wish I had more to report about the plague year of 2020, but covid made it pretty boring. No square dancing, no travels, no skating, no visits, no bar nights, no day trips, no weekends away (except to the trailer where we'd self-isolate anyway), etc.. I have no idea if square dancing will bounce back, or in what form. I just want to be able to return to Canada again to see family.

We had a great trip to Amsterdam this past week: it was a fun & fascinating place, and I'd return in a heartbeat.

Norway had some interesting aspects of its own...

Our flights took us from JFK in the US to Amsterdam via Oslo, Norway. The airport was very, very nice, but the food was very expensive: a simple lunch for the three of us went over $75 USD. The more interesting thing though was what it did to my mobile phone.

As we approached Oslo to land, my phone's wifi stopped working. I don't mean it suddenly wasn't communicating to the wifi access point, or that it couldn't get access to a wifi access point: it stopped working. The wifi portion of my mobile phone shut down and refused to restart. Any effort to activate my phone's wifi was met with a single pop-up message: "Error". Since I had an international plan with Verizon Wireless, I still had phone, txt & data services via the telephone network, but I could not activate its wifi.

Multiple reboots solved nothing. Any attempt to turn on wifi was met with the same error message. I was severely bummed: not having wifi ability while in Europe meant potentially burning through my regular data plan fairly quickly, and at a surcharge of $10/day.

As we flew out of Norway a few hours later and somewhere over the North Sea, my mobile phone spontaneously activated its wifi services and all was well again. Huh. Brief operating system issue, I thought.

While we were in Amsterdam, the wifi worked beautifully, as did all other mobile phone services. But when we flew home via Oslo, I once again had the same wifi system failure as we approached Oslo. And it resolved itself again as we departed Oslo.

My mobile phone's wifi service shuts down & refuses to start only in Norweigian airspace. Why?

Michael & Kent both have Samsung phones: they had no problem starting wifi, seeing & using the local wifi hotspots. Kent's uses the same Verizon Wireless plan I do.

So far, my Google searches have come up empty as I try to understand what is going on. It's an Asus A006 runing Android 7.0, latest patched August 1, 2017. If you have any ideas why/how a portion of a mobile phone would be automatically disabled like this in Norway, please let me know.

We have officially checked into the weirdest damn hotel ever. Good thing it’s free.

Michael won a trip to Amsterdam with three nights at the Lloyd Hotel. From its general appearance inside & out, it feels like an old warehouse was renovated into a hotel, but it was indeed built as a hotel a century ago to house those in the process of emigrating to South America via Amsterdam. The most recent renovations however make some interesting design choices…

We’re in the 6th floor, in what the hotel describes as one of their best rooms. Let’s be clear: it’s a loft: it is a single large room with exposed beams, posts & rafters on a cement floor. We do have some throw rugs here & there to spare one’s feet too much strain, but it’s a cold surface first thing in the morning. We have a large wooden table with two benches. There is a small chair & coffee table. There is a large king bed. Everything however is minimalist and white. It feels like a museum art installation.

In the far corner of the room is a walled off water closet: it is the only thing closed off from full view but it makes up for it with superlative acoustics. You can here every toilet paper tear –and worse.

Beside the WC in the main room is a deep bathtub. There is a shower head, but no shower curtain or enclosure: if you are bathing, you are putting on a show for everyone present, whether you want to or not. And if the shower head slips in your hand, you will be spraying water across the room and possibly your luggage, as I accidentally noticed this morning.

The bed itself is fine, but in its space there are no bedside tables or shelves of any kind, so there is no place to have an alarm clock if one needed such. I usually use the alarm function of my mobile phone but there is no place to put it. And even if there was, there is no place in that area of the room in which I could plug it in: the only two outlets are at opposite ends of the suite.

Next we come to a full length mirror, but it’s recessed in its own cubby and box frame. With no lighting whatsoever. I can see shadows of myself move in the mirror, but there isn’t enough light for anything else.

And finally, the last item in the row is the bathroom vanity. Note that: it is no where near the toilet or bathtub. Indeed, after doing one’s business in the WC, you have to exit the toilet and walk the length of the suite to wash your hands. At least the vanity has good lighting and fast hot water.

We paid extra for the breakfast, which is running about 17 euros per person. I accept that expense as a convenience, but it certainly isn’t for quantity. The breakfast buffet offerings include several types of bread & croissant, some shavings of salmon & specialty cold cuts, tea/coffee/juice, and some cereals. Anyone who actually worked for a living would be starving in an hour from such a meagre offering.

The breakfast buffet did have one saving grace however: a pain au chocolat to die for (or indeed which would kill you if consumed too frequently). Usually a pain au chocolat is a croissant with some chocolate baked inside. The hotel’s version however is a plain croissant which is dipped into a pot of chocolate to be entirely coated. At least the croissant won’t go stale if it’s encased in solid chocolate!

Given that the place isn’t costing more than our breakfasts, I should be less critical of the hotel. But if we were paying for this room, I would quickly have asked for a more conventional place. If I wanted to sleep in an art installation, I’d check in at MOMA.

I identify with raccoons. They have great manual dexterity, they are incredibly adaptible, they're primarily nocturnal, and, when they're not raiding your garden late at night, they're pretty cute. And like me, they sometimes eat a lot of garbage.

Visiting Toronto is my opportunity to indulge in the nostalgic favourites of my childhood or young adulthood. Not all of them would be considered healthy habits. Well, practically none of them. But they taste sooooo good!

Me: *standing on the sidewalk, woofing down a slice of meat supreme pizza from Pizza Pizza*
Friend: You know that's trash pizza, right?
Me: Yes, but it's the trash pizza I used to eat at 2am during my walk of shame home from the bars in my twenties. Don't take that away from me.

In other guilty pleasures, I had a double burger from Harvey's, a small burger from A&W, the Thanksgiving special from Swiss Chalet, and any number of not-found-in-the-US chocolate bars. There was also a visit to the Bulk Barn which would bring shame to my ancestors as well as my Visa. Best not to talk about that.

I don't know that I've gained any weight from this shameful extravaganza --mostly because I've avoided stepping on a scale-- but there is much atonement at the gym in my near future, and possibly for the rest of my life. If there's any consolation to be found, it's that I had a clean bill of health recently before leaving the US so it's unlikely that this binge will kill my body. My soul might be is another matter, but hen again, it's been safely kept in storage for many decades so it should be mostly OK.

And now I'm hungry.

Life is moving apace. Baby Edwin is now over two weeks old and is doing very well, especially considering he was about 4 weeks early. He's much more active & forceful than I anticipated from a baby of his age & development: that child kicks a lot, and it's a firm kick. He's also pretty good at swatting things away from his face he doesn't like. In short, he's in great health, growing & gaining weight exactly as he should.

Elodie is doing well too. She's a happy & active two year old toddler who loves to run, usually with little grace or coordination, just as one might expect of a toddler. She's accumulating her share of scrapes & bruises from her adventures, but all minor and easily remedied with a kiss and a cookie. I swear she's grown an inch since she moved in with us in late July.

And yes, the wee ones and their mother are still living with us. Maurita is still feeling some discomfort from her c-section and isn't allowed to lift heavy objects (eg. Elodie) yet, but is quite mobile, able to drive, and is easily tending to Edwin's needs. We expect they will be with us for at least another two weeks, perhaps longer if medically recommended.

Their move to their new house near us is complete, and their old house in the next county over is sold. The painting & floor refinishing in their new place is done, and while much furniture and kitchen stuff has been unpacked, there is a long way to go before all of the boxes disappear.

And looking to my own extended relations, I'm heading to Toronto October 4-10 to spend Thanksgiving with my gene pool, and to collect some personal items from my sister in Mississauga to transport back to DC. Michael has also given me a shopping list of things to acquire while in Canada... I may need an additional suitcase.

I'm not planning to die any time soon, or at all. While I'm assured that my death is inevitable in perhaps 40-50 years' time, I'm personally against it. I am by nature a cautious person so it seemed prudent to ensure I'm prepared for my theoretical demise.

We already have wills in place to dispose of my earthly assets. And while I'd prefer to be buried body intact and in a nicely appointed coffin (dark wood finish, brass fixtures, free wifi), getting my hydrocarbons across an international border would require significant effort by my executor, not to mention a great deal of money. It would be vastly easier to cremate me and carry my ashes in one's carry-on bags.

While we were in the Charlton area, I stopped by the township hall to talk with the clerk, Gisele Belanger, to enquire how one goes about being placed in the Brentha Cemetary near my childhood farm.

My parents (also still alive) have a plot there, I-16. Gisele informed us that a plot may contain a coffin & three cremains, or a total of five cremains. My parents are planning to be cremated so as long as my parents stop by the office to officially RSVP me into their plot, my position is guaranteed. There is an administrative fee of $265 if it were to happen today, but otherwise all expenses are covered.

The cemetary contains a lot of childhood memories for me. Rather, it contains a lot of people I knew. I went to school with several occupants. Some I knew through church. Some we shared a telephone party line with, while others were merely neighbours we sometimes saw. There were parents or grandparents of my childhood friends. There was my bus driver for my first & second grade, as well as the fellow who was the janitor of my elementary school, buried with his late wife. There was the couple who owned sold us our farm, and their extended family. There was the local telephone switchboard operator until the systems went digital in the early 1970s. And so on. I could give a mini-biography on nearly 2/3 of the people at rest there. And I'm intrigued by the ones I didn't recognize: there are no more families named Goldstein, Schultz or Kiehna in the area, and I'm curious what brought them, and why happened to their descendants.

Like any good story, I'm left with a lot of answers, but a few extra questions too.

It's been 10 days of touring so far, and I should write a few notes about the highlights (and lowlights).

Hop-on/Hop-off bus tours: Yup, you'll see a lot but surface traffic is so horrible that every circuit takes hours. Wear a hat and bring a drink. Best views from the upper deck, of course; the lower deck sees practically nothing.

Buckingham Palace: Great tour, including a temporary exhibit of the Queen's fashions over the decades of her reign. It's the Queen's town home and working residence, as well as reception & welcome halls for state visitors. If you've seen photos of the Queen greeting heads of state, it was probably here. We also saw the changing of the guard, kinda: the interesting stuff is inside the grounds and walled off from public view so regular tourists have to be content with watching the guards come & go.

London Eye: It's a big ferris wheel, but you can't call it that and still charge about $50 USD to go up. It's a half-hour slow revolution with spectacular views. Still, you might get better views from the dome of St Paul's Cathedral for less, if you can handle the stairs.

Walking tour of the Victoria & Albert. I was grateful to have a guide to show off a few highlights of the collection and give a lot of background information about the facility and the exhibits. That said, the place is huge and being part of a tour means that you can't just drop out to examine a gallery which strikes you as fascinating. And did I mention there's no air conditioning, something I find a little horrifying in a museum dedicated to preserving the past? Go, but consider skipping the guided tour.

Jack the Ripper tour: lots of fun! We only visited two of the murder sites as the others have been built over since 1988. Still, the nighttime walk and tour through some of London's legendary back alleys was a thrill.

The Tower: this was one of the best tours I experienced. Yes, the crown jewels are impressive (as well as the other accoutrement of the coronation process) but for me the good stuff was the chapel where you'll find the burial sites of Anne Boleyn, Catharine Howard, Thomas Moore and others, as well as the chance to stand at the site where Anne and Catharine lost their heads. The White Tower, the oldest part at nearly 1000 years, was fascinating in its structure & style. Go do this; personally, the trip would have been worthwhile if I never saw any other tour.

Kensington Palace: huge disappointment. You have a self-guided tour of some of the apartments of George III, Queen Anne and Queen Victoria (she was raised there), but the rooms are unimpressive, the exhibits forgettable and the chronologies of the signs & displays were hopelessly jumbled. You will see little about the day to day life of the residents and nothing at all about the infrastructure of royalty or the work of the non-royal staff. Skip it, but visit Hyde Park around it.

Churchill War Rooms: See this. These are the underground rooms from which Churchill ran his government during the height of World War II, including the map room, communications room, BBC broadcasting room, personal rooms of Churchill and his senior staff, the kitchen of his personal cook, etc.. Bonus: they have a separate hall which is dedicated to a birth-to-grave biography of Churchill.

Walking Tour of Old Westminster. This outdoor walking tour pointed out some interesting items about Westminster Palace (Parliament), the buildings nearby, and some of the side streets. Yes, I learned a lot but I'm unsure still it was worth the money. It's kinda interesting to know that PM Wilson didn't live at 10 Downing Street because his wife objected to being physically close to the secretary with which Wilson had an affair, but I didn't really need that info.

Day trip to Avebury and Stonehenge: OMG, totally worth it! We had a two hours bus drive out a prehistoric grave barrow, now a heritage site, then on to the village of Avebury which is built entirely within a henge of standing stones. Great pub, too, and very scenic. Stonehenge itself was another half-hour away and has an excellent interpretation center and shuttle buses up to the stone structure. It was smaller than I was expecting but very impressive. Go see it.

Walking tour of St Paul's Cathedral: great tour. There was lots of good info, a lot of highlights and, for the brave & strong, a chance to walk 500+ steps up into the dome of St Paul's. It's not actually that hard since the first half gets you to the whisper gallery, a viewing area around the inside of the dome looking into the church's interior. The next 100 steps get you to the spacious lower outdoor viewing platform, and then you can make the final run up to the very narrow and crowded top viewing platform (with a view from a landing directly down into the church, to the very center of the floor a couple of hundred feed below. Completely worth it, just for the views.

"The Mousetrap" I saw this in 1979 or so as dinner theater in Toronto but had long since forgotten the plot and the identity of the murderer. It call came back to me half-way through the first act, but it was a still a fun performance.

Walking tour of the British Museum: same issues as the V&A (too fast, no air conditioning, no chance to pause to examine thing which catch your interest). It didn't help that our tour group was twice as large as it should have been so our guide couldn't be heard from the back, and I think simply gave up on crowd management 20 minutes in. Disappointing. Go see the museum, skip the guided tour.

Whitehall Palace Banquet Hall: The original Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire centuries ago, but the banquet hall survived. Charles II converted it into a reception hall, moving the masques to another location. He also commissioned Reubens to pain a series of enormous paintings which were then installed in the ceiling of the hall, giving it grandeur and awe-inspiring beauty. It's an odd self-guided tour: just lay back on the provided beanbag chairs and let the pre-recorded audio walk you through the art, the architecture and the history as you take it all in.

Tour of the new Globe Theater. This is a faithful replication of Shakespeare's Globe Theater which was originally located only a few hundred feet away in the early 1600s. We didn't see a play but we did sit in the seats to watch a tech rehearsal, and the exhibition hall was fascinating. If you have any interest in theater or Shakespeare, go see this.

"Kinky Boots" Many friends have loved the show but I knew nothing about the plot or content. It wasn't until the orchestra was warming up that I realized it was a musical (I suspected, but...). It was a great show and members of our group who have seen other productions thought it was a superb presentation.

Windsor Castle: so worth it! We had to take the train from Waterloo station down to Windsor, a trip of nearly an hour. Compared to years of Via Rail and Amtrak, this was the smoothest, quietest and most comfortable train I have ever been on, and it was only about 15 pounds for an open return ticket. The palace itself was everything you'd expect a royal castle & residence to be: extremely awe-inspiring, historic, and beautiful. Hey, Kensington Palace: this is what a real palace looks like! And you must tour St George's Chapel on the castle grounds: so much history!

Westminster Abbey: totally worth it! This was one of the most expensive tours we went on, but it was worth every pence. There are so many famous people buried in the Abbey: I'm still wrapping my head around having stood by the graves of Elizabeth I, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, Edward III, Edward the Confessor, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Dirac, Herschel and more. The list is too extensive to place here. My greatest regret is that photography isn't allowed because (a) it's an active church and (b) it would cut into book sales at their shop.

Hampton Court: go visit. It was a half-hour train ride out of Waterloo station but I enjoy the rail system here. We saw the living quarters of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon (Wife 1), the public halls, the kitchens and the gardens. We also spent some time in the Georgian wings, where William III had initiated major renovations & updates. Actors walked our group through the investigation & interrogations into Catherine Howard (Wife #5)'s affair with Culpeper, culminating in the death sentences issued by Archbishop Cranmer. (Side note: only three women have been executed at the Tower in London: Anne Boleyn (Wife #2), Catherine Howard (Wife #5) and Lady Rochford, one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting who was said to have assisted her affair with Culpeper, or at least kept Catherine's secret. Last week, we visited that very site at the Tower.)

Our tours are done. Saturday morning, ten hours from now, we depart our hotel and head to Heathrow for our flight home.

Dear London:
Why do you have Pret A Manger on every street? What is this obsession? Not even the US has this many Starbucks.

It's been a great trip so far... so many things to see and do! And naturally, so much history.

There's been weird stuff too, things I hadn't considered previously but should have foreseen, as well as somethings which are just off the wall.

I knew people drive on the left side of the road and the driver's seat is on the left side of the car. I should have thought through the logical conclusions: most on-ramps and off-ramps are logically on the left and the fast lanes would be to the right. Obvious, if I had bothered to think.

On the other hand, the entire service industry seems to be Polish, not British: the front desk staff at the hotel, the serving staff in the restaurant, the bartender, the shop clerks, the servers at the local restaurants, even a couple of the tour guides. The only British folks I've encountered were the staff of the Underground, and most of the tour guides.

Having employees from other EU countries is natural, but I don't understand the propensity for Polish workers to come to the UK. Are they also congregating in other EU countries? Why isn't London attracting Greeks, Czechs, Romanians, etc., in the same numbers? Or are they, but I'm not seeing them yet?

I'm delighted my credit cards are working well here --what a great time to be alive-- but I thought "pin & chip" tech was more advanced here. Yes, the machines like my chip cards, but then they spit out a receipt and summon an attendant to verify my signature as I sign the slip. WTF?! The UK seems to be the middle tier between Canada (who does it right) and the US (which is paleolithic).

Grocery store are filled with sadness. I have never seen such huge shelf & refrigerator space dedicated to single, prepared meals before. Dinners for singles, not dinners for couples. It is fridge after fridge of loneliness. They should stock the sugar next to them to offset the bitter taste of their dinner.

The Brits seem to adore crowds & queues, even when they don't have to. When given an option to space themselves out in a large room, they still form up in a concentrated smaller space. Groups of friends still cluster together in groups, but then push the clusters against each other rather than taking up the space of the room. Even in stores with multiple registers open, they seem happier to line up behind one rather than spread themselves to the available spaces.

I'm impressed how clean the city is. I haven't seen seen any homeless folks and no one has begged me for spare change: I get accosted multiple times per day when walking in DC, and Toronto is little better.

I rarely hear car horns here. In the instances where I did hear them, the situations were fully justified. By contrast, I wouldn't recognize DC or New York City if the horns ever stopped blaring.

But the traffic! So many cars and so little space for them. I think walking is faster than driving in most instances, and the tube is better than both for distances.

I love the tube. It's well-lit and, well, working, unlike DC. And it doesn't make me want to scrub myself in bleach or use ear plugs like NYC. And it goes practically everywhere, unlike any other place I've ever visited. On the downside, the exact rates seem to be a state secret: no signs are posted anywhere and only some stations are equipped to display your fare charge and remaining balance as you depart the station. It's all distance & zone-based so the calculations are complicated and would be difficult simply display in a poster, but some hint would be nice.

We still have a week to go so there's still so much more to see & experience!

There isn't much to say about today, travel-wise. We slept in a bit, then joined some of the clan at the Alma Country Diner for lunch.

I've noticed a pattern in Florida dining establishments: When they tell you the wait for a table is X, it is most likely to be 2X. I have never been seated immediately at any establishment, but that says much of our poor timing concerning peak dining hours here (see prior post). My general rule is that I'm willing to wait 15-20 minutes for table; beyond that, I would prefer a different establishment, grab a bite through some fast-food drive-through, or visit a grocery store.

In each instance this weekend, we were quoted a 30 minute wait. The quickest of these waits however was 58 minutes, the longest 74 minutes.

I'm unsure if the staff are blissfully unaware of their actual turnover of tables, or perhaps they lied knowing that customers wouldn't wait an hour. Or perhaps by some random chance we managed to hit a genuine timing mistaken/clerical error with every restaurant visit we made.

Aside from the late lunch, we went to a local manatee preserve to see some of the local wildlife. Alas, the viewing season for the manatees in this location is January-February so we saw nothing but the park itself and its waterfront. At the moment, the river is too warm for the beasts as they prefer temps of 65-70 degrees F, so the manatees are out among the gulf shallows. Still, nice park.

This evening at dusk, we distributed the rest of Kent's mother's ashes. We had previously scattered some in Frederick, MD, an area she loved but at a particularly beautiful site with a view to their home in the distance. Today, we scattered some at the RV park's memorial pavillion and at their RV site. No tears, just happy memories.

Dad will be coming back to Maryland in the first week of April and we will be aggressively preparing the house for sale. I'm sure he just wants the project over & done, although he's not going to be taken for a ride concerning the pricing of the house. There's priced-for-sale and then there's priced-by-a-moron, and he's not a moron. We'll help move some of the contents, distributing pieces to relatives, getting surplus items to charity and shipping the items which Ralph will keep. My personal goal is to ensure everything is ready for a sales close well before Labour Day to get the best possible timing for a good price.

As we returned to our motel room tonight, I noticed yet another cultural activity I had never seen before: some families in our motel had parked charcoal grills in the grassy strip in front of their motel rooms to cook. Interesting.

I have several theories about this but have no information or experience which would indicate which is correct. It could be that the family simply prefers home-cooked meals, perhaps for cultural, religious or dietary reasons. Alternatively, it could be a cost-saving measure as dining out as a family regularly while also paying for a motel may stretch one's resources. Or it could be that some are semi-permament motel residents, sheltered & subsidized here by the county authority, but since the rooms lack a kitchen, this is an improvised way of cooking at home as desired, again saving precious money. Or perhaps it's simply fun, a planned part of a vacation as much as visiting parks or events. Anyone have guidance for me on this?

Tomorrow, we meet up with the clan for breakfast after we check out of the motel. Our flight home is at 2pm and we should be home by mid-evening. And much laundry will await us.