Pricey Fruit, Cheap Vacation

Monday, a sheet of ice twice the size of Manhattan broke off from the Greenland glacier. An opportunity. Homestead waterfront property, tourist resort with igloos, offshore gambling. Airport for small planes flying out from the mainland. Mine glacier ice-cubes for sale to prestige restaurants. As it drifts south and melts thinner, shift the business to ice fishing.    

A vacation is a state of mind, and my vacations are spent at that oceanfront hotel at Waikiki Beach where the Navy sent me for a week's TDY in 1966, sitting in the breakfast cafe watching the waves and surfers while sipping coffee and enjoying half a papaya. Linda gets them for me at Publix. 

At Bill’s funeral, Fred told something that rang a bell. In a restaurant, pay two or three or four dollars for iced tea when ice water is free? When Fred told it, people laughed, but I nodded my head, been ordering water only for years. Dr. Oz said order it without lemon though, because GOK where the lemon was stored in the kitchen, and what crawled over it during the night and did what on it, and what somebody did with their hands and fingers before they picked up the lemon, cut your slice off, and stuffed it on the rim of your glass: a series of lab tests on lemon slices on glasses of ice water in many restaurants proved super grossening: you do not want those floating and swimming around in your beverage, crawling around your mouth and throat, and colonizing your stomach and intestines. Ice water, no lemon.

Kristen’s bill has come from Emory University, send donations care of the poorhouse. TG, debtors prisons still exist only in Charles Dickens. Dickens himself spent time in debtors prison as a child, which explains their prominence in his writing. Debtors prison culture of everybody coming and going except the “resident” -- family and friends in and out daily to visit, off to work, going for groceries and ale, just make sure to get out before lockup at night. No photographs or ID cards, the gatekeepers memorized the face of each “resident” immediately on incarceration. Some families lived there, children born and growing up in debtors prison. Pathetic, but apparently a fact and facet of life, not the torment, shame and disgrace in which Bernie Madoff will spend the next hundred and fifty years.

Last week was so overwhelming emotionally that I didn’t even think to get a picture of Joe, Joe’s Ducati, Joe on his Ducati, Tass on Joe’s Ducati, Caroline in her new cap -- Caroline loves wearing caps. Her newest cap is adorable, and so is she wearing it. The girls nearly always open a restaurant while they are here, writing menus on paper and on a chalkboard, cooking in the playroom that was mama’s sewing room, finding you wherever you are in the house, taking your order, and serving you in doll house dishes. My order: blue tea and mushroom ice cream. Charlotte waits, Caroline cooks. No calories, fat or salt.

Year’s Mind July 17. Up at three, early prayers and meditation, read, write Nonsense and post on +Time, read NYT, WP online, comics in PCNH, office and phone calls, lector training, hospital visit, glass of Australian Durif with lunch of rutabagas and okra, nap through violent thunderstorm, stop for gasoline, supper at Gene’s Oyster Bar: free ice water no lemon, dozen (13) steamed oysters, one softshell crab, four sides of mullet. Barstools no tables, no plastic; cash or local check only. Asleep by nine o’clock.

T+ in +Time