Author Archives: Sparky
PCL2 Day 2: Princess Cays, Bahamas
Princess, like most other major cruise lines, has its own Bahamian island. This makes a lot of economic sense as there are no docking fees and all souvenir shops are run directly or indirectly by the cruise line. They have a captive audience for a day, while providing the illusion that you have visited the … Continue reading
PCL2 Day 1: Embarkation
Carl and I spent Friday night as guests of his friend Tom in Ft Lauderdale. Tom has a lovely mid-century house in a quiet neighborhood and a lovely new Mercedes S580 in the garage. He gave us a tour of Ft Lauderdale Saturday morning, which gave me a better sense of the city than my … Continue reading
PCL2 preparation
I don’t normally highlight the preparation needed for a cruise because, frankly, very little preparation is generally needed. Pay the fare, provide the documents, get on board. Simple. With PCL2 it wasn’t quite so simple. Why? Two things: COVID and the Medallion app. I don’t have to explain COVID to you, I hope. But Princess … Continue reading
A Jett-less cruise: PCL2
In case you haven’t noticed, I will tell you that cruise vacations right now are CHEAP. A vacation that cost roughly $2000 two years ago (like the MSC1 cruise that Jett and I took in February 2020) can now be had for about half that much. What that means is that a solo cruise now … Continue reading
Sparky and Son, movers
I helped my son empty out his storage unit in Ocala last week and move it all to his new rented house in North Fort Myers – a 3-hour trip each way. Add in about 3 hours of loading and unloading the U-Haul truck and what you have is a very long, exhausting day. His … Continue reading
“Sundays at Tiffany’s” by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
Book copyright 2008 by James Patterson. Audiobook copyright 2008 by Hachette Audio and published by Books on Tape, Westminster MD. Narrated by Ellen Archer. I don’t normally review audiobooks because I feel that listening to a book while I drive both avoids the effort of actually reading the book and allows my mind to wander, … Continue reading
“Licosa” by Nick Goulding
Copyright 2021 by Nick Goulding. Published by Libel Press. Full disclosure: the author is my nephew. Nick Goulding is one of the finest young men that I have ever known – a charming husband, dedicated father and a talented and successful chef and entrepreneur. Now I have to add “skilled author.” The man is going … Continue reading
The blog about nothing
With apologies to Seinfeld – the “show about nothing.” Well, a lot of people seemed to like the nothingness of that show, so I will list a few of the “nothing” things that I have done in my first month at my home base in Ft Myers: I got Rusty professionally groomed. He no longer … Continue reading
One year gone
Yesterday was the first anniversary of Jett’s death. I knew it was going to be a difficult day so I didn’t make any plans (except for the 6-month cataract surgery checkup – all good – which happened to fall on the same day). But I wanted to keep busy and, coincidentally, the task next on … Continue reading
My $553 faucet
I think I have mentioned that both of my bathroom faucets were useless for the entire 51 days of the TS7. The upper bathroom faucet was useless even longer – it was reduced to a dribble mid-summer. So my first RV maintenance priority when I got to Ft Myers was to fix the faucet problem. … Continue reading