So Long 2016

Last posting for this blog in 2016. As I've said from the beginning, these musings are more a journal than anything else for my own edification and remembrance. As someone once said, you should maintain at least a nodding acquaintance with the person you used to be.

I am glad that a few of you have enjoyed the (mostly happy) journey with me, while enduring my occasional grousings, rants, and pet peeves.

As I write this on Friday Dec. 30, Southwest Florida is experience what for me is some blessed relief from unseasonably warm temps. It has been in the high 80s for most of December. Fort Myers has set several temperature records, and we (sister Dawn and I) have been running the AC near constantly to maintain an indoor temp of 72 degrees. This, by the way, is considered "sweater wearing temperature" for most native Floridians, but for us two northerners is quite pleasant. So today will reach 68 degrees. It won't last long. By Sunday, it is predicted to be back in the mid- to high 80s and will stay there.

There are certainly worse things that could be happening (see earlier comment about grousing), but I miss the winters past down here when I could open all the windows and let the fresh, 70-to-low-80s breeze blow through.

Dawn and I had a very low-key but nevertheless festive Christmas at the condo. As we've done in the past, we agreed not to exchange gifts. However, I couldn't resist the temptation to buy two tickets for us to see a production of "Anything Goes" at the Broadway Palms Dinner Theater here in Fort Myers. We'll see that in March. I guess you could say it was as much a gift for me as for myself ... these are some of my favorite "gifts" to give!

For Christmas dinner, I went kind of full throttle on the menu. I cooked a prime rib roast ... my first. I cooked it by time rather than a temperature because I've never had any luck with those damned meat thermometers anyway. It turned out a little more rare than I would have preferred, but it was still very delicious. We each had a generous portion. Gross weight on the roast was 2.6 pounds, but I figure we lost a pound with the bone and trimming away the visible fat once the slabs were on our plates. We had baked potatoes and a pear/Gorgonzola salad for sides. And for dessert, a "Tuxedo" 3-layer cake procured from the incredibly sinful bakery at Fresh Market at the nearby Bell Tower shopping center. If there is a devil, one of his lieutenants surely resides at the Fresh Market Bakery.

We experienced a couple of power outages here this week. Weird because they occurred almost at the same time (3:30 p.m.), two days in a row, and both lasted approximately two hours. Florida Power and Light (FPL) has a neat online reporting procedure in place that sends you text alerts to notify you of what the problem is, approximately how many people are affected (so I guess you don't feel you are alone), and when they expect to have the problem resolved. In both instances, the outage was blamed on "a small animal causing power wires to short." I guess a couple of squirrels decided to commit suicide. The holidays are rough on everyone, I guess.

For exercise this week, I've been to Planet Fitness twice for 1 hour/20 minute workouts, and once to Lakes Parks to walk the perimeter, which comes to 1.25 miles door to door. I must confess my fitness goals mentioned earlier in this blog have fallen on tough times. I blame this partially on the fact that my knee has been acting up ... patellofemoral pain syndrome which has plagued me for several years. But it's mostly laziness on my part. The knee problem mostly aggravated by  bicycling. I can still walk, work out, and swim in our condo community's beautiful swimming pool; none of these has any ill effects to the knee. I need to get back on a more regular exercise routine again and -- here's the key -- STICK WITH IT!

I completed a nifty little craft project this week. Since October, I have been toting this carrying case in my car:

I got it at Delaney's Surplus between Baraboo and Sauk City for the bargain price of $7. Orascoptic is a company that makes optics for dentists so they can see their patients' mouths/teeth more clearly. I think Orascoptic reject the boxes because they printing is upside down relative to the front of case where the latches are located. Thus, they ended up at Delaney's. The box is nicely lined with foam rubber, and I thought it would make a nice carrying case for watches, so I bought one for me, and one for my friend Mario who is also a watch collector. I have been trying to figure out how to economically turn it into a watch display case, because foam rubber is quite expensive if you must buy it new in the craft stores. Well, after watching a Youtube video of a gal making a display case for her fashion watches, I came upon the idea of using a "pool noodle" to make spindles upon which the watches could be mounted. The result looks like this:

I realize it looks a little "cheesy" with the blue pool noodles, but hey for $1, how can you go wrong? If I want to class it up, I can always cover the noodle segments with black faux leather later on. Anyway, this will be a nice way to take some of my watches to shows, including the upcoming show in February at Lakeland, Fla.

Also watch-related, I wrote a story this week for one of my other blogs on budget watch collecting. The topic is "Care and Handling of Vintage Watches" written mostly for beginner collectors. I have been asked to comment on this a number of times from customers and window shoppers, so I finally decided to write a blog on the topic, and you can read it HERE if you are interested. Anyway, I wrote the entire blog entry while downing three high-test caffeinated coffees at Starbucks because now that I am in their "club" I get free same-day refills on brewed coffee. My fingers were flying across the keyboard, and it took me nearly three hours to unwind once I left the store. It reminded me of Cosmo Kramer in that episode of Seinfeld where he settles a lawsuit with a coffee shop for free lifetime cafe lattes.

Whew! I  wasn't quite as tweaked as Kramer, but even Dawn commented that evening that I seemed a little more chipper than usual. Happily, the guy for whom I specifically wrote the blog entry replied to thank me profusely, and and now I have all that good information down on the blog for all to see.

I am also working on my presentation for the Florida Mid-Winter Regional watch show in Lakeland. I'm doing this completely on Powerpoint, which I have never done before, so I am learning Powerpoint as I go along, and it's proving to be most enjoyable. I should have done this years ago.

Well, it's been a good 2016. I know a lot of people are grumbling about what a crappy year it's been. Yes, we lost a lot of amazing people this year, from Leonard Cohen to Leonard Nimoy. And a former reality TV show host is about to be our next president. But we have a lot of amazing people left, and more are coming up the ranks every day. Most of them are not famous and never will be, but are nevertheless amazing. And we will survive Donald Trump. We live in amazing times; we truly do. I was introduced to a comedy skit this week performed by the comedian C.K. Lewis on the talk show "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." The skit is titled "Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy."  The skit is brilliant and I think puts in perfect perspective our modern day "problems." Check it out; it's only four minutes long:

So may your worst problems of 2017 be the occasional slow Internet connection and 40 minutes spent on the tarmac on your next flight.

Bruce