Cancer and Surgery, February 2025

My stomach had been bothering me a bit in 2024. I did a virtual visit with my GI Doctor in April. The PA told me I could double up my Omerprazole for a few weeks and see if it helped. It did and that was that. It was bothering me again in December though and after a virtual visit with the doctor, he ordered an ultrasound. 

I took the test on the last Friday morning of the year. We were driving to Houston to visit my brother and family that day. The doctor called me himself. I had a large lesion on my liver and more tests would be required. Initially he said we'd need to do an MRI. I was a bit nervous about it. He didn't know what it was and said he wouldn't know more until we did more testing. That night I was fearful of dying. And also fearful of having to go through chemo. Finally I realized that it's not really something I can control. If I'm going to have to die, there's nothing I can do about it. 

I can't get an MRI as I have a prosethesis in my left ear from a long time ago that's probably stainless steel. They won't risk an MRI as it can deform it. I made plans for a CT scan pretty quickly. It confirmed a large lesion and next I went in for a biopsy. The biopsy at St. David's South wasn't bad at all, in fact they gave me nice drugs for it. It confirmed that I had a Hepatocellular carcinoma. I was referred to Texas Oncology. 

Went to see Dr. Chadha, a nice guy. He sent me to get a PET scan and referred me to Dr. McKenzie in his practice. Dr. McKenzie was great too. After the PET scan, which showed no spread of the cancer, he told me we had plenty of time to go to Cancun before the surgery. We'd planned a 4 night trip there to an all-inclusive resort a few months earlier. Our trip to Cancun was great. I'd bought 10 expensive protein drinks the doctor wanted me to drink (2 a day for 5 days prior to surgery). They cost $10 each. 

I got dropped of at the hospital pretty early as they wanted to do some pre-surgery tests. St. David's Medical Center was really good. They took great care of and before I knew it, I was up and a little groggy from anesthesia. There was another guy in the recovery room groaning loudly "My God, Oh My God!". The nurse told me they'd move me up to a room shortly which they did.

I got a room on the 5th floor Oncology Ward. I wasn't very comfortable. They gave me a pain pump that gave me a small dose of something every 8 minutes if I pressed it. I kept pressing it and eventually felt a bit of relief from the pain. They helped me to the bathroom and asked me to pee, but I couldn't. Apparently they couldn't get a catheter in during the surgery. A nurse tried and couldn't get it in. The head nurse came in and stretched my dick out and got it in. That wasn't much fun.

The second day the Doctor came in and told me that the pathology showed that no cancer got into my small blood vessels and I was basically cancer-free. Apparently I had Stage 1 liver cancer.

I ended up with ileus, where my digestive system wasn't working. My abdomen was pretty distended and a day or two later they put a tube into my stomach through my nose. Initially I felt some relief but not for long. Because I had ileus, I couldn't eat food and they were giving me pain meds via IV every 4 hours. I went into the hospital on Monday. Thursday and Friday nights I was really uncomfortable and waking up after about 2 hours. It seemed like I'd never get through those two nights but I did. By Saturday I wasn't quite as uncomfortable. 

Eventually they gave me another CT scan to see if there was any blockages, which there weren't. Then they had someone use an ultrasound to put in a special IV to give me nutrition. Finally on the 9th day they took the catheter out and I could pee. I also started pooping a little liquid. On the 10th day they discharged me. I had been walking up and down the hallway with a walker but didn't need one when I got home.

It felt great to be home. They sent a woman to show us how to change the IV bag once a day. A bit of pain. I had to carry this bag with me and sleep attached to it. After a few days I went to see Dr. McKenzie. He wanted me to keep the IV nutrition for another week but only for 12 hours a day instead of 20. That was a bit easier. After another week, he took the IV out and I was on my way to recovery.

I got better and stronger pretty slowly. My abdomen was a bit sore and although I was eating by now, I didn't have a great appetite. Eventually my appetite started to improve. My pain levels dropped pretty quickly and I got off the powerful pain meds I had been taking the week I was out of the hospital with no problem. 

At 3 months I took another CT scan and had bloodwork that showed I didn't have cancer anymore. I'll go get that done again in another 4 months. I was very lucky!

Our amazing trip to Japan, May 2017

We were going to take a trip to the British Isles for our 10th Anniversary but Joan's niece Stephanie moved to Tokyo in February. She just started a job teaching English but had most of this week off and let us know we were welcome to come and stay with her.

We ended up driving to Houston the day of the trip. Had lunch with friends and a short nap at their house. Parked at Houston Intercontinental airport and got onto a small jet to Mexico City.

In Mexico City we had to move our own luggage to another conveyor but that and going through customs wasn't a problem. We boarded the first jumbo jet (a 787) I'd been on in a long time. We shared 3 seats with a nice young woman who had the window with Joan in the middle. The seats were not too bad. With lots of first run movies and me able to get up and walk about a bit, the fourteen and a half hour flight wasn't terrible. We both took a sleeping pill. Although Joan slept for a good portion of the flight, I was only able to manage a couple of hours. We were served two meals and a snack in between. They had a card they showed you that had the food choices. We both had the Japanese meals and they were surprisingly good. It was a tri-lingual flight. All announcements were made in English, Japanese and Spanish. Watching the map brought home how amazing it is to fly 8,500 miles, one third of the way across the globe, in a night.

We landed in Tokyo Narita Airport and had no problems getting our luggage, going through customs and finding the express train into Tokyo where we were to meet Stephanie. It was about 8 am but the 14 hour time difference would catch up with us.

After a nice train ride on an immaculately clean train, which also had a drink machine on it, which amazed me, we made it to Ueno Station and found Steph just where she said she'd be.

We put our luggage into 2 lockers and she took us upstairs into Tokyo. She pointed out a park, a Ramen Noodle place and a few other things. She had to go to work so she said we'd meet up at 6 pm. Due to the fact we were going to get tired way before that she gave us the key and a map with instructions on how to get to her house. We went to explore.



First we explored the beautiful park and a couple of Shrines. One of the first things I noticed was how incredibly clean the city was. Almost NO litter, cigarette butts or anything. Very nice! Nice, friendly people everyplace.





We finally went to the Ramen place. You have to buy a ticket from a machine and we were a bit perplexed. We let a guy and his kids go ahead of us and of course then there weren't any seats left in the tiny place. So we left and went to another one a few door down. After seeing the size of the bowls, I typed a question in Google Translate and after buying one bowl, showed my phone to the cook, asking if we could split one bowl. He was nice and did it for us. Glad we did too, the bowls were still pretty big (and VERY tasty).

We walked around the narrow streets a bit and went into a cool arcade as well.

Eventually though we got tired and retrieved our luggage. We didn't have a problem finding the first train and getting off the correct stop. We weren't so sure of the second train though and asked. Then once on the train, I realized we were going in the right direction. Steph had given us a pretty good map except she showed us her house being right after a store. It wasn't right after it, it was a couple of blocks further. I did try her key on someone elses house, but it didn't even fit into the lock.

We finally found the right place and it felt great to put our bags down (it had been a reasonably long walk from the train station and my huge bag was bottoming out in a few places where the road wasn't that smooth).


Steph's cats, Fanny and Alex were a little nonplussed to have other people in their house, especially Fanny. We relaxed and Stephanie finally came home.

We walked to a neighborhood restaurant that served Okonomiyaki which a friend of mine in Austin had suggested we try. It's a cabbage pancake, cooked by you on a cooking table. We had a short wait at the restaurant and then cooked this incredibly tasty meal. Although Stephanie had tried (and liked it) previously, the server prepared it for us. It was delicious and although we thought we'd never finish it all, it wasn't terribly filling. Just very tasty.

Servers in Japan come when you summon them, either through an electric bell on the table or by gestures. There's no tipping and every place we ate the service was excellent. People take pride in doing a good job in Japan.

After a great nights sleep we got up relatively early and took the train(s) to a beautiful shrine the next day.

Stephanie was quite knowledgeable about Japan, and many customs. Nice to have our own tour guide! I took a picture of an adorable class of little kids, but the teacher crossed her arms (which means no) and I stopped.

We walked around quite a bit. I have back and leg problems from an old injury of often found a place to sit while the women walked around. We had Ramen for lunch again. Really tasty and inexpensive. By the afternoon I was running out of gas and got directions and the key to Steph's house. I took the train home by myself and relaxed for a bit before the ladies came and joined me.

Joan was pretty beat and stayed home while Steph and I went out for dinner at a local restaurant. We went to two that were full and finally got seated at the third. The menu was hand written in Japanese so Stephanie pointed to a few items. They brought  out a little charcoal brazier and two plates of strips of meat. With tongs we cooked our meat, mine quite well done. Very fresh and tasty too with some nice rice.

We had another good nights sleep. Joan had left the States with a pretty nasty cough and it didn't get much better during the trip. The Japanese are much more stingy with energy. An "instant on" hot water heater was over the kitchen sink and in the bath for the shower. No 40 gallons of hot water always heated like the US.

On this day Stephie's friend Mikki, a native, came with us. She was a really sweet woman,

with a huge smile on her face. She took us all over some different neighborhoods. We got to see some very interesting Japanese cemeteries. We had lunch at a very nice cat themed cafe. The hamburger steak lunch  (actually tofu burger), with rice and mushroom gravy was delicious. The cat shaped desserts were great too. I insisted on buying Mikki lunch and she seemed very touched.

At one point, during some shopping, I  showed her Google Translate on my iPhone. I pointed the camera at some Japanese characters on a package and it translated them to English on the screen. She went nuts, screaming like she had seen a ghost. We really had a very nice time with her and were quite tired by the time we got home.

After about an hour at home, the doorbell rang and it was Mikki. She brought us over a gift

of some amazing little cakes (cheese flavored was my favorite).

We went to the Skytree one day. The views of the city were amazing. We got to see the area that shows up in all the movies where everyone crosses the streets from every direction. We did lots of shopping and went back to the fabulous little neighborhood restaurant 2 more times to have cabbage pancakes.

Mikki and her Husband Katsumi picked us up one night at Stephanie's house and drove us to a very nice sushi restaurant in their new Toyota minivan. They drive on the opposite side as the US and the roads are very narrow. The whole time we were in Tokyo I heard about two people barely honk their horns, possibly just to let someone know they were there. Not much like our incredibly nasty US traffic.

Joan and I split a dinner and weren't able to finish it either. Most was excellent, but we didn't like the herring egg sushi and one other piece. We said we wanted to pay for our own, but they sneakily got the check and paid without us even being aware of it. After they took us home, they came back with yet another gift, two beautiful pieces of pottery. We insisted Stephanie keep one after they left. What amazingly nice people.

We went around to quite a few interesting shopping areas, mostly very crowded. We had

some cooked eel and scallops on sticks, but I didn't much care for either, they were a bit too fishy. One lightly fried dough stick with crunchies on it, filled with cream was amazing.

At one point I was sitting on some steps in a very busy shopping area while the women spent money. A young Japanese guy asked me in broken English if I was waiting for someone and I said yes I was. A little while later he brought me a small canned coffee and asked if I wanted to try some sweets from his shop. The niceness of people was frequent and refreshing. Little kids on the train were always looking at me because I was Caucasian, invariably they smiled hugely when I smiled or waved at them.

Stephanie had to go back to work the last two days. We took a couple of trains to the

electric bazaar area. We had a little confusion when we left the train and couldn't find the area at first. Joan told me to ask someone and as I was a little frustrated I told her to ask someone. The thing is when you asked, the people would go nuts trying to help, so neither of us wanted to try. We eventually found it and walked around a bit. We didn't do that much and went back to the house pretty early that day, both of use reasonably tired.

Because of the distance to the airport from Steph's house (over 2-1/2 hours and 3 trains), we had booked a hotel near the airport the last night. We said a sad goodbye to Stephanie as she went to work and got packed.

Mikki and Katsumi came over and walked us

to the train. Then they rode 2 different trains to the 3rd express train to the airport. They made sure we were in our assigned seats and waved (she was crying) as we pulled away. Forty minutes later we were at the airport and took a 20 minute shuttle to the Radisson we had booked. For a Radisson, this hotel was one of the most luxurious I ever stayed out. Our 11th Floor room had a beautiful view. The had cool cotton slippers and kimonos to wear. We had a really nice lunch at the restaurant and walked around the manicured grounds. Dinner was an exceptional buffet that was great and reasonable. The hotel was really quiet and we had a great sleep there.

After a short shuttle ride to the airport, we checked our bags and relaxed. We bought a few

more souvenirs and some ice cream. This Tokyo Narita Airport was possibly the nicest, cleanest airport I've ever seen. There are rooms you can rent by the hour to sleep and shower in.

Finally we boarded and had a pretty comfortable, non-eventful flight home. The plane wasn't that full and we each ended up  with our own 3 seat spread for the 12 plus hour flight. I didn't sleep very well but watched 4 movies. After a short 2 hours in Mexico City, the 2 hour flight back was quick and comfortable. We picked up our car after customs and drove straight home, happy to sleep in our own bed that night.

We both suffered a good amount of jet-lag when we got home. When I researched it I found that generally it's usually worse when traveling East. It took us each a good week to get back to normal.

Some thoughts that I had about Japan:

• Extremely nice and polite people
• People are very clean, well groomed and hardly any are overweight
• Exceptionally clean city
• People dress quite modestly
• People seem to love children and animals very much
• Kids seem very happy and polite
• Drink machines are EVERYWHERE
• Trains and stations are amazingly clean, including the bathrooms
• Yellow panels inlaid all over the city and trains for blink people follow with canes. How amazingly accommodating
• Bidet seats on almost all of the toilets. What a nice thing. We're going to put one in our house.

We got a couple of nice Texas Baseball Caps (one red, one blue) which we mailed to Stephanie, with a copy of "Shogun" for her. The caps are for Mikki and Katsumi, the book for Stephanie. The amazing memories of this fabulous trip will be with us forever.

My attempt at a simplified explanation of Computers

Computers are tools.

Because electrical switches can either be off or on, transistors and then silicone chips were able represent information with a series of on and off switches. A single piece of information, like say the letter “a”, can be represented by something like 8 bits of “off and on” settings. They call that single bit a "byte" of information. Computers compile bytes and can do pretty much anything with the information. Bytes are so small, that most information consists of at least some kilobytes (thousands of bytes). The next unit of measurement is megabyte (millions of bytes), then gigabytes (billions of bytes) and terabytes (trillions of bytes)...and higher.

Every computer has to have the following components to be able to function:

CPU (Central Processing Unit): the “brain of the computer". The CPU is usually in the box and has the circuits and chips that do the calculations (the heavy lifting) and control all the functions of the computer.

Storage: Information has to be saved by the computer and the ways computers have stored information and the amounts of information has changed a lot too. Today there are quite a few different ways. Most computers have what is called a hard drive. That’s like a super fast tape recorder (but works on round magnetic discs, rather than tape). The hard drive is usually built into the computer. It holds all sorts of information. There’s a different type of storage that all computers have called RAM (random access memory). This solid state memory storage on silicone chips is much faster than hard drives (which have to spin for the computer to find the data on them). It is used by the computer to put information that programs need quickly. Then there’s removable storage. This is sometimes just written to and once written, it can be read, but not re-written to. This is often CDs, DVDs and BluRay disks. They hold varying amounts of data that can also be music or movies.

Input Devices: these are way for your to put information into the computer, keyboards, mice and today there are lots of others like scanners, which take a picture of a piece of paper, or cameras, which bring photos and movies into the camera.

Output Devices: are used to get information out of the computer. The monitor is a very important one, it allows you to see what you’re inputting. Today there are many others. Printers, projectors. I have some very nice speakers attached to my computer. there are two on my desk facing me and under the desk a 40 lb. sub-woofer for powerful bass. If I’m in the mood, I have all of the music I love on my computer and I can play it loud enough to almost shake my house (which to me is the only way to listen to music, if you’re going to listen).

I’ve just explained the basics of the hardware portion of a computer very simply. Today most people in the US carry Smartphones (I use and prefer iPhones). Smartphones are amazingly powerful computers that can do most of the things desktop computers can do, including making telephone calls and so much more with a GPS (Global Positioning System) chip in them. This chip allows you to know exactly where you are by triangulating with satellites that orbit the earth. More on this later too.

Software: is information that controls the hardware and tells the computer what to do.
There are two types of software:
Operating systems: The OS controls everything and lets it all work together. There are many different operating systems. Because they're different, they're like the different personalities of people.

Microsoft made the first operating system to get worldwide acceptance, before Windows, it was called Disk Operating System, or DOS. That first one (and the one I used on my first typesetting computer) was completely command based. There were no graphics, only words on a monochrome screen. You had to type words to get anything done.

Xerox had an amazing research center in Palo Alto, California (called PARC for Palo Alto Research Center) and in the early 70s they invented the Graphical User Interface, or GUI. This was a computer operating system that had pictures and images you could move and interact with using a mouse. This made it much easier for a normal person to operate a computer as they didn’t need to type in complex code. They showed it to some young computers geniuses back then and one of them used it to create first GUI that was accepted universally. That was Steve Jobs of Apple and he made first the Lisa then the Macintosh Computer. It was a very important early change in computers. Shortly thereafter Bill Gates pretty much used the same idea again, and created the first version of Windows, which was a GUI as well (and it didn’t work half as well as the one Apple did, Apple later sued Microsoft for stealing the software idea that Xerox gave them both, I don't think they won). Microsoft and Bill Gates did a better job of selling their operating system and it’s by far the most dominant one in the world today. Probably 90% of all personal computers run some version of Windows.There are other operating systems like Unix and Linux, but they're way less mainstream.

Windows can be run on many different brands of computers like Dell, HP, Acer, etc. Apple’s OS on the other hand will only run on Apple computers. For that reason, they’re quite a bit more expensive, but they also run better in general, in my opinion anyway. Additionally, with special software you can also run Windows on Apple computers, but not the other way around. I hope his explains operating system software somewhat.

Another type of software is application software or apps as they’re called today.

Applications: are programs (software code) that “teach” the computer special tasks. If the CPU is the physical brain, and the Operating System is the personality, then apps are like thoughts or thought processes. Sort of like using one to play sports, another to write books, etc.

I use a page layout software program, called Indesign that is used to assemble type and graphics into pages for printing or other things. I prefer it for letter writing as well, although there are many programs just designed for “word processing”. As I type, words that are misspelled will be underlined in red and I can either let the computer correct them or make the choice myself. I can make this type bold, italic, bold italic, smaller, larger and so on... I can put pictures in here:

My grand kids

There are apps for just about anything. I have one that I use for editing photos, one for doing illustration. I have one for doing math, another for my checking account. I manage my music with one, another for watching video or movies. There’s little I can think of that there isn’t some sort of software for.

You can connect your computer to another computer or computers through a network (most of the large companies I’ve worked for have their own networks, so that everyone is connected to each other there). They figured out how to have computers that anyone could connect to, and that became the World Wide Web, or Internet. You use special software on your computer to view those other places and there are probably trillions of them by now. Now you can send and receive electronic messages to others called email. You can attach pictures, movies, files, etc. as well.

The Internet: has evolved amazingly fast since if first became mainstream in the mid 90s. Many people don’t really use their computers to do much more than “surf” (means to look at places) on the Internet. Today you can buy and sell just about anything from your computer. You can place ads with pictures of your stuff and have people bid on or just buy it. Then you can either ship it or have them pick it up. There’s an amazing company called Amazon.com, that started selling books and now sells anything you can possibly imagine online. I bought the 24” monitor I use with my computer through them, as they had a good price. You can access a tremendous amount of information online today.

When Apple invented the iPhone they made a “smart” phone that could access the Internet easily and  fit in your hand. The uses of smartphones are really right out of Star Trek. With the GPS chips in them, they really are astounding devices. I can use an App on my phone to give me directions, on a map, to go anyplace. If I have to visit someone in another city, like say Houston, I can have my phone direct me there. I have a little holder with a suction cup that holds my phone to the inside of the windshield of my car, at eye level. I get in the car and after “telling” the phone where I want to go, it actually speaks and says “turn right on highway 10”. And so on and so forth. It will help me avoid traffic and tolls if I want it to. Because it speaks as well as shows me on a map, it’s incredibly handy on my motorcycle, when I can’t look at a map. I plug in earphones and listen to the directions. I can glance down at the phone which I have on my handlebars with a little rig I put together with Velcro.

The first computer I had had a 5 megabyte (5,000,000 bytes) hard drive. Now I have a 3 terabyte 3,000,000,000,000 bytes) hard drive. The amount of data that computers routinely process and manipulate quickly increases by orders of magnitude every few years. Because they’re so much more powerful, they can do many more things.

The things a person can do with a smart phone are miraculous. Out of all the technology I’ve been fortunate enough to use over the 35 years I’ve been using computers, nothing has changed the way I interact with the world more than smart phones. It allows me to do my job remotely. I work from home, but can do a lot while out and about.

In terms of available information it’s incredible. My wife and I were watching a movie the other night and we were curious as to how old the actor was. I actually asked my phone and got the answer. Today phones and computers can hear and understand speech pretty well. They can also talk back to you, with artificial but very understandable voices. This is very handy when you’re driving and don’t want to take your eyes off the rode.

You can listen to music, watch movies, read books and the newspaper on your phone. My Wife and I share our location information with each other and I can look her up on a map and see how close she is to home in the evening. Same with me, but not good if you’re lying about where you’re supposed to be. Same for my Grandson, and that’s handy if we want to see where he is. I can take pictures and movies with my phone and send them to anyone, instantly. I can do video phone calls with others like in a science fiction movie (it surprising how rarely I ever do this though). I can take pictures of codes on packages and check prices at other places. I get great weather information (important for playing tennis outdoors). Check my bank balance, take pictures of checks I receive and deposit them in the bank from my phone! Get sports scores, use the built in camera flash as a flashlight.

At home I have a laptop computer, with Windows on it that my company gave me to use (it belongs to them and I have to give it back if I quit or get fired). I have it hooked up to a second monitor so that I have 2 screens to use (see the picture below).

I also plug it into a full size keyboard that I prefer to type on. When I go someplace, I can take it with me and use it remotely. I have another laptop computer that my 12 year old stepson mostly uses (to play games, and there are some amazing games out there, but I don’t bother with them, too many more interesting things for me to do with computers).

I also have an Apple computer that I prefer to use for most everything. I recently got it and I love it. I have to use my work computer for some things as it has an encrypted hard drive. There are some applications that I have to use over the Internet for work that require greater than average security. My Apple Macintosh computer however is beautiful, with a 24” monitor, great speakers and is smoking fast with a powerful CPU and lots of extra RAM. For the work I do, it’s the best. I do a lot of graphic layout work on it and move it over to my work laptop for sending and storage. I also keep my personal stuff on it too.

I hope this explains computers a little, thanks for reading.

Summer Vacation 2013

We left at 4:00am to have time for our 6:10 am flight. We picked up my wonderful Sister-in-law, who got up early to take us. The airport was pretty quiet and we got through security and onto our JetBlue flight very comfortably. We had acquired an iPad and really enjoyed watching a movie rented from iTunes on it. It make the almost 4 hour flight go by quite quickly. Was a Ryan Gosling thriller that took place in Schenectady NY.

We got to through Kennedy Airport and to the Dollar Rent-a-Car place pretty easily. She only had one car, a mid-size Dodge sedan, so we got the free "upgrade". I had gotten a very good combined deal on Orbitz for our airfare and the car for 8 days, for $767. The car was pretty dirty and I complained when we were checking it out. The guy gave us the option to run it through the car wash, but we just blew that off.

We drove out to my Sister's house on Long Island with no problems, using my iPhone 5, and a little suction windshield holder, with Google Maps for navigation. My Sister had my Brother, his Wife, Daughter and her Husband over. Her Son and his Girlfriend. Her Stepson, Wife, Grandson and other Stepson. We had a nice deli lunch and relaxed for a little while.

We then went over to a local Holiday Inn and checked in. We napped and everyone else relaxed.

We went into the big conference room for my Sisters' party, celebrating her 10th wedding Anniversary. Nice appetizers and over 100 people. Many from my Brother-in-law's family, I didn't know. They had an oldies band that was quite good and the dinner was nice too. I took a ton of pictures for my Sister with our new point and shoot camera. The most fun I had was with my former next door neighbor, who is still beautiful and one of the most vivacious, dynamic people ever. It was just great to talk and laugh with her and her husband.

We got a good nights sleep and had a nice brunch before checking out. We moved into my Sister's house and the family spent the day together. We all visited one of my two 94 year old Uncles, who's in the Nursing Home my Sister works at. He looked pretty good, but wasn't all there mentally. He told us they had a party for his 70th birthday last week. We went out for a great seafood dinner that night.

Everyone left the next day and it was just us and my Sister and Brother-in-law. We had a nice time visiting and I took them out to a great Italian Restaurant for their anniversary, with an old friend of ours.

On Tuesday we drove to my old neighborhood in Flushing and parked the car. We took the Q27 bus to Main Street and then rode the No. 7 Flushing IRT train to the USTA Tennis Center for day 2 of the 2013 US Open. It was packed. We didn't really watch much of any specific matches. We did split a surprisingly great lobster roll for lunch. We saw Sam Querry, John Isner and a few other not terribly notable players.

Then we watched the last few games of Caroline Wozniacki's match in the big stadium. The place might have been a third full when she finished. Soon though people starting coming in. Why? Well the great man player of all time, Roger Federer, came on to play a very lowly ranked opponent. His match the night before had been cancelled due to rain. I was very happy to see one of the two professional tennis players that I've admired a lot (the other was Bjorn Borg and I was fortunate to see him at the US Open, way back in the 80s, the last time I had been there).

We didn't stay terribly long though. Took the subway and bus back to our car. It was about 5:00 but surprisingly traffic though somewhat heavy, moved nicely all the way back to my Sister's house. 

The next day we left quite early and drove straight up to Cape Cod to catch a ferry to Martha's Vineyard. We got there quite a bit earlier than our ferry reservation, but they put us on the next ferry anyway. The ferry ride was about 40 minutes and very pretty. Neither of us had been to Martha's Vineyard before.

We found this B&B that we had a one night reservation for. An old, cluttered little house with no one around. No internet, no TV, but it was quaint and somewhat charming. We went out and drove around the Island a little, didn't see much though. Went back and met our 90 year old hostess, who was having a jolly time drinking with her friends. I hadn't heard from my old Junior High School friend, who was the main reason for our visit, but knew he was playing golf and would get in touch later and firm up our dinner plans. We ended up going to a cute little town and walking around. I finally called him and he was apologetic. He didn't see my earlier email message and couldn't find my number. It wasn't a problem to me, and it turned out they were a few blocks away. We walked over and met them at this restaurant. I hadn't seen my old friend in over 30 years, nor had I ever met his Wife.

He looked great and she was warm and beautiful. We had a great dinner and caught up on so much, very comfortably. They insisted on paying for dinner and we walked them back to their car leisurely.

When we got back to our B&B, everyone else was either asleep or behind closed doors (it was about 10:00). I was dismayed to find that our bathroom was out of toilet paper and I was unable to find any (and I looked). I did have a small pack of tissues in my bag, which we were able to use.

We slept very well in the large, old and slightly musty smelling bed. When we got up our Hostess and her lovely old friend made us a very nice breakfast of eggs and English Muffins. The coffee was horrible thought, way too weak. We packed and said good bye.

We went over to my friends. He had a beautiful house that he built himself on 5 acres. He rents it out during the Summer and he and his Wife sleep in a tiny cottage. He had pigs and chickens that they raise. He had a lot of junk on the property, but took us through the house which was amazing. The only thing we weren't crazy about was the flushless composting toilets (which didn't smell).

We went over and met his Wife at the headquarters of their catering company (they do some very high-end catering and have been written up in the NY Times). Then we said goodbye and caught an earlier ferry to the mainland.

We drove to Boston, planning on finding a hotel and doing some sightseeing. The weather changed and in Boston it was pretty cool and raining. We had lunch at a place "The Clam Box". Fried oysters and clam strips. The clam strips were amazingly great! By now it was mid afternoon and we decided to head out of Boston as sightseeing wouldn't be fun in the rain.

Next stop Hartford, CT. By then we had driven out of the rain and it was nice. We stopped at an assisted living facility and visited my other 94 year old Uncle (they're twins, my Father's older Brothers and the last of his Family). He thought I was my Father at first. We didn't stay long, but gave him a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Finally we drove to Norfolk, CT and spent two hours with my other Junior High School friend, who I hadn't seen in at least 25 years. Met his Son and Girlfriend and really enjoyed talking and nibbling on some cheese and crackers.

After that, a comfortable drive back to my Sisters. The nicest part of the trip so far was that we didn't hit any bad traffic so far, the whole trip (nor did we later either).

We relaxed for the next day or so. Did some shopping at Huntington Mall and in the old town of Huntington. Enjoyed visiting with my wonderful Sister and her Husband. Our flight back home was uneventful (which is how we like it), got in a little early. Sister-in-law picked us up, we got home and have more great memories to enjoy.

New York Vacation May 2012

We got up very early on Weds. morning and finished packing and cleaning out the house. Drove over and woke Mom-in-law who dropped us off at the airport. Had a nice egg and ham sandwich at the Salt Lick Restaurant and an uneventful flight on JetBlue to NYC. Watched a movie on the iPhone. It wasn't formatted quite right and was letterbox with too much space top and bottom. Funny when a few subtitles came on and were too small to read. It did keep us entertained and unlike the laptop didn't eat up the battery in just over an hour.

Enterprise Car Rental had a Honda Civic, which would have been great except for the fact that it was a two door. They gave us a free upgrade to a Ford Fusion. It was a very nice car with Satellite Radio and Voice Commands. When I plugged my iPod into the USB connection it started playing the audio book I was listening to right through the speakers. Unfortunately when I switched to something else it wouldn't play at all. I had to use an auxiliary plug through the headphone jack to listen to it. The Bluetooth paired with my iPhone but turned off the voice on the GPS program. The whole voice control system was powered by Microsoft, which I guess explains why it worked so poorly. The only thing it ever said, after I connected the phone was "your phone is connected but you haven't enabled the 911 function". I did look at the manual, but it was too complicated and pretty stupid. The climate control had a million buttons and they were so small, it made them very hard to see. When I got back into my car I appreciated the simple, 3 button interface, with large graphics.

We drove out to Long Island and were starving. My Sister had recommended a Chinese Restaurant that we found and ate at. It was marvelous. I miss bowls of crispy noodles and duck sauce on the table. NY is the only place I've seen that.

We had a great dinner with my Sister and a dear childhood friend of ours. We had Lobster Bakes with lobster, clams and mussels.

In the morning we drove to the neighborhood I grew up in, Flushing, Queens. I parked on the street but when we went to the bus stop I found that the bus I used to ride only had a route during rush hour. We drove a few miles to another route and got a bus into Main Street, Flushing. The bus was full by the time we got to the Subway and we were the only Caucasians on it.

We rode the Subway into Times Square. Then took the 8th Avenue train down to 14th Street. We were going to this High Line Park that was on some old elevated railroad tracks. We got out of the train and I looked around for some street vendors hoping to get a couple of cheap umbrellas. There were none. We walked around the block, but then I turned around and went into a CVS Pharmacy and we got a couple of small, folding umbrellas. By the time we left the store it was pouring. So we stood under an awning and called a friend we were going to meet later. She suggested that we go to Chelsea Market, which was a block away.

Good choice. We spend an hour or two admiring some amazing food and stores in an old warehouse that had been converted into an indoor market, very upscale and interesting. We walked from there up to Macy's in Herald Square. Although I felt like having deli for lunch we didn't find one on our walk. There was a Coffee Shop right across the street. It started raining hard again and we were lucky to get two counter seats. We had a marvelous turkey club sandwich that we split with some coffee.

Joan shopped in Macy's for a while and then we walked up Broadway and met my old friend. The three of us walked up through Times Square and got our picture snapped and posted on one of the huge screens there. We had a laugh over that.

We met my Sister and her Husband and had an excellent Italian dinner. Then we walked over to the Neil Simon Theater for "Jesus Christ Superstar". I had seen it in the 70s when it first came out and hadn't been familiar with the music back then. I know it very well now. The play was fabulous. Besides one short song, I knew every lyric and most of the music by heart. It was done as only a Broadway play can be done. We  saw the spit fly out of "Jesus'" mouth during one of the songs. We all loved it.













A long wait at a poorly managed parking lot didn't dampen my spirit. My Brother-in-Law drove us back to my car in Queens and we followed back to the house in Long Island for a good nights sleep.

On Friday my Sister took the day off and we went shopping at an amazing DSW. We all got shoes and had an amazing lunch at Ben's Deli. The half sandwich/soup special came with a huge bowl of soup. None of us could finish our half sandwiches of pastrami, corned beef, barley or chicken noodle with matzoh ball soup.

We had dinner at great little seafood restaurant. Joan and I split a 2 lb. lobster that was out of this world.

When we got up, we packed, ate our left-over deli, said good bye, then got on the road. Traffic was pretty bad trying to get on the Bronx River Parkway and it took at least a half hour or more to pass an accident by the Zoo.

After the Tappan Zee Bridge, signs warned of long delays on the NYS Thruway, so I took the Palisades Parkway hoping to avoid the traffic. Went to Bear Mountain and my iPhone lost it's signal there (which meant no GPS). When I went over the bridge I asked directions. I had to turn around and when I got to the traffic circle that would take me back to the Thruway, it was stopped dead. I turned around again.

We stopped in a little town but couldn't find a map. I stayed on 9W North and ended up in Newburgh. From there it wasn't hard to get onto 84 and the Route 17. We got off to go to a camp reunion at the camp I attended in the Catskills back in the 60's. There was no sign at the exit and I went the wrong way for about 4 miles before I used my phone to see the mistake. Turned around and made it to the camp pretty easily.

We walked up the hill and visited with quite a few old friends, many who I hadn't seen in 45 years. One guy, who'd been my counselor the second year told Joan I had been the worst camper in the history of the camp. One of the older counselors was really nice and warm and we talked to him more than anyone.

We nibbled on burgers and then walked around the grounds a bit. The camp was getting pretty run down. It had been closed for a few years after being rented to some Hasidics for a short time. Sad to see it so, but it's a bygone era. I found it hard to visualize modern young kids enjoying a place like that. It seems to me they'd want A/C and WiFi today. Not the beautiful outdoor Summers in the Catskills.

We left the camp and drove through Wurtsboro and Ellenville towards Kingston and then Albany. Our dear friends who had just gotten home from almost a full day traveling back from Alaska called and told us that we were welcome to stay with them in Albany, but that we'd have to entertain ourselves as they were half dead from the travel. We really didn't want to impose, but enjoy their company so much that we agreed (we don't mind Motels at all, but it's really more fun to stay with friends).

We stopped at a diner in Kingston for dinner. We decided to split a dinner, which was a really good idea. We couldn't come close to finishing our own halves of salad, meat loaf, baked potato and chocolate pudding.

We got up to Albany with no problems and settled into the very comfortable room at our friends very nice home. We went to bed early and had a good sleep. In the morning we had a good breakfast at a diner on Western Avenue. Then we walked around Crossgates Mall a little and I showed Joan around so she could go there on her own.

I met my Stepson and played tennis on the great clay courts at his club. I played terrible and lost two sets which we enjoyed anyway. We showered and he, his daughter and I went back to our friends where we met Joan. He decided to go home and got directions to the place we were going to on Warner's Lake. Joan and I went back to Crossgates and had a light lunch at a pretty good healthy cafe.

We drove up to Warner's Lake. Another old friend has a beautiful camp cabin on that pretty lake. We hung out, visited with many other old friends and had a very nice dinner that one of the guys grilled. We went back to the house we were staying at reasonably early, soon after it got dark and again, went to bed pretty
early.

In the morning we were to meet yet another friend for breakfast near the house. Surprisingly, he didn't show. We had a nice breakfast and Joan dropped me at my stepson's tennis club. She went to Tawasentha Park to do some hiking and jogging. It turned out all the clay courts were booked so rather than pay $24 to play indoors, we drove to Union College. It appeared that their courts were locked so we drove to a little park in Scotia. Interestingly there were a bunch of people playing Pickle Ball, which I'd never seen before. It's played on a much smaller court, painted on the tennis courts, with short hard paddles and a Wiffle type ball. We got a court and played a nice match. The Pickle Ball lines were a little confusing, but we got used to them. I blew him away the first set. He blew me away the second set. We played a short third set which he won, but we both enjoyed the good quality of play and sportsmanship.

He took me back to the club. We showered and he dropped me off. We drove up to Round Lake where we met with some dear ex-neighbors. We walked around that beautiful village and had a little bite for lunch that she was nice enough to prepare. We visited for a couple of hours and then headed to farm out in Guilderland that the friends we were staying with Mother lived on. An old exchange student of theirs from Italy was in town and they must have had 30-35 people there for a fabulous Thanksgiving style dinner. The whole afternoon was magical. We visited with old friends and made some new ones. The meal was great!

We didn't stay too late. When the dinner broke up we helped as much as we could (which wasn't too much, the people who put this on knew what they were doing). We visited with our friends for a little while and went to be pretty early as usual.

One of our friends was going to work in the morning, the other had some errands. We packed up the car and started towards NYC and JFK airport where we had a 5:00 pm flight back to Austin. We had most of the day to kill and I figured getting to the airport at 3:00 would give us at least a half hour to wait for boarding. We stopped at a McDonald's as soon as we got onto the Thruway and split an Egg McMuffin with coffees.

Then we stopped at this nice little bakery in Kingston an hour or so later and had a really good breakfast of waffles, eggs and sausage. I've gotten into the habit of eating breakfast at this bakery, Dieslings, in Kingston, whenever I'm passing that way and they do have really nice food.

We next stopped at a big mall in Westchester. Joan shopped in Macy's for a while. We had a couple of lousy smoothies from a surely jerk at "Mr. Smoothie". Possibly the worst we've ever had, we both threw them out after a few sips. Finally we got back on the highway for the final leg of our drive.

We stopped for gas near the airport, in a neighborhood I wasn't familiar with, off the belt parkway. Had to ride parallel with the highway before we could get back on, but made it to Enterprise and dropped the car off in a jiffy. I really like that company, they seem to try harder. We road a shuttle to the Airtrain and took that right to the terminal.

American Airlines terminal was a mess. Rather than having everyone in line for the next agent they had agents at stations scattered all over the place. We got self-serve boarding passes and paid to check our one bag, but then had to wait 20 minutes to get a tag for the bag, so we could take it to the carousel.

When we walked over to security, it was a little scary. The lines were very long. Nothing to do but get on the back of one though. It moved faster than you'd think and we were finally in after about a half hour. Then quite a long walk to our gate. We stopped at a kiosk and got two vegetarian chicken salad sandwiches, two cookies, some candy and drinks. By the time we got to the gate, we just got right onto the boarding line and got our seats. We had cut it much closer than we planned and if there had been any traffic on the way, we might have missed the flight. My Sister told me that they give NY airport 3 hours, not 2 and I can see why. We'll know next time.

A woman moved to the seat in front of and across the aisle from me, with a 10 month old and I groaned mentally. As it turned out, the little girl was very taken with me and kept on looking at me and breaking into a huge smile every time I looked at her. Adorable little kid. We watched a movie on the iPhone and the flight got in 20 minutes early. Although the sandwiches sucked, we ate both, although we took the huge amount of very hard lettuce off the second.

I didn't call my Sister-in-law until we got off the plane because she lives pretty close and we had to get our bag. By the time we got downstairs, the bag was already there, the fastest I ever got a bag at our airport.

We waited a few minutes and my lovely Sister-in-law picked us up and took us to her house, where we had parked my car. She told us that she was getting ready to call and complain about the car being parked there until her Husband told her it was my car.

We had a couple of holes cut in the walls of our dining and living room for a leak that occurred a few weeks earlier in a pipe that went under the slab. I had hired a guy who we'd used before to fix them and do some painting, hopefully while we were away. On Tuesday, driving home, I tried calling him several times, but got a busy signal. I guess his phone wasn't working. So we had no idea whether the work was started or not. When we walked into the house we were pleasantly surprised to find it was done and done beautifully. You couldn't even tell there ever was a hole. The colors looked great and Joan was thrilled.

All in all, this was one of the best vacations we ever took!