Boats on the beach

Big props to Lake Lanier Islands resort - 45 minutes out of Atlanta and you're in another - well managed - world.

Question to the boat-owners: you were all there, sitting on your speed boats, with drinks and music and friends. And you didn't move. At all. All day. Which is what I did. On the beach. Without having to pay for a boat. So my question is: why do you have a boat?

AT - Southern Terminus

A hike down to the Appalachian Trail southern terminus, then up the Benton Mackay trail and around to the AT starter point. A night at Amicalola Falls Lodge. A morning hike to the waterfalls and up the AT approach trail. And home.

My Hobbies

Include:

• Pub trivia
• A bocce league
• (Inordinate amounts of reading followed by) writing book reviews in limerick form
• Learning most FIGS languages on DuoLingo
• Making ice cream
• Walking / Hiking

It's a superficial miracle that I have any friends at all

Atlanta Memorial Day

When you enter the weekend with almost no concrete plans but you end up with birthday drinks at Skylounge, your morning park walk with Dr. P. preparing to benevolently take over the world, grill and whisky and freshly picked fruit at a friend's house, the Champion's League final, a hike in Sweetwater Creek Park, pizza on the patio, jazz fest at Piedmont Park, grilling again and mainly learning how to grill on the deck like a proper American and then just please let me go home and eat my home made cocoa ice cream.

Libertarians at election time, 2016

Prepping for the TV show about our Private Eye/Publishing business

This:

+

 =

Working title of my future auto-biography

Du' Coccole e un Campari

One of my jobs is with a translation agency, somebody at Acahi please find the appropriate English language version of the above

The Biebs and me

Lives paralleled, once again

24 Hour Opera Project

5 composers
5 librettists
5 stage directors and 5 musical directors.
20-25 singers.

5 teams: each team is given a theme and 2 props.

Composers and librettists have 12 hours in which to compose an opera.

The following day, musical directors, stage directors and singers have another 12 hours to stage, rehearse and learn their given opera.

At 19:30, on the SCADShow stage, they performed. For our entertainment.

5 operas, composed learned and rehearsed in 24 hours. Each one 15-20 minutes long. It was phenomenal. My vote (there was an audience appreciation winner) was for the Purple team, the first performance. Reasons: their use of props; rather than working them in to a story, they made the story entirely about the props. The music; operatic, highly pleasing and strongly thematic throughout. The performance; flawless on the part of the singers.

As we waited for judges' deliberations, the team staged 3 improv operettas. I had never seen anything like it, and it was simply wonderful. Humorous, of course well sung, highly entertaining. I could watch this every week.

Bocce

We won.

And I mean properly won. Points ahead through the whole game, with the occasional display of skill.
Our opposing team were not amused. The seemed annoyed by our apparent flippancy, but as they did not raise this with me directly, this is only hearsay.

But who cares we won.

Trivia

That time our team was two non-US-raised people and we didn't come in last.

#Winning!
Or close enough

Jetlag Jems

I just told a colleague how happy I am to be "in a time zone"

I should get more sleep now.

Powerball update

We did not win.

PowerBall planning

My lovely significant other caved and donated $2 to the crowd tax of lottery tickets.

So, here we are, awaiting the number extraction tonight. And what would I do with the biggest lottery payout in US history?

1 - upgrade our health insurance plan to silver
2 - set aside a couple of hundred to take my husband on a shopping spree (I can do it, I'm the master of bargain shopping). 
3 - invest the rest in a retirement savings fund.
4 - continue life as before.

Ok one caveat: time permitting all around, I would jump on a plane for a 1 week visit to the Taiwan family branch.

Bocce victory

First one in two seasons thanks in part to this beautiful 4-point round.

Helpful People

And adventures in road tripping.

Half way between Atlanta and Charleston we discover a broken headlight (yes the sun had set) and a flat tire.

Many thanks to the owners and workers of the I20 Marathon petrol station in Batesburg and the kindly driver who happened to be present for helping us pump our tire, diagnose a problem, call their mechanic friend, host as as we waited for all our car problems to be fixed, and to the mechanic for his work and fair price.

People are good.

Busy Week

It turns out 6 people all in one house is busy and chaotic even if they are all adults.

So here's the drill.

A Friday drive with stops in Covington and Aiken - hello America - and arrival in Charleston. Saturday strolls and night at the symphony with featured R2-D2, storm troopers, Obi Wan, and Bob Gebhardt, concudcting

 

Sunday Christmas Carol service - sing along! - and Monday shopping for last minute gifts. 

Spotlight: entering the cinema to see a film you know nothing about is always fun. When the film is Spotlight it makes for quite an impact. See this film. It is important. 

Have I mentioned the food? Food, wine, limoncello, nocino. And more food. 

Some work, more errands, more food, more presents. More chocolate. Star Wars, of course. And so it goes.

Women's Awards

This leaves me perplexed. A "Best Woman Anything" award already bothers me: it is saying women can not compete on an open stage and need their (our) own special category where we only compete against ourselves.

So much for empowerment.

Take, just as an example, woman author awards. You have Author Awards, and then Woman Author Awards. Because Women Authors are not... Authors?

Admittedly I know nothing about the American "Woman of the Year" awards other than the fact that they exist. It seems to me though that the only thing that makes a "woman" as opposed to anything else (i.e. a man) is giving birth and lactating (I know, I know: Caitlyn, right? stay with me and I will get there). So Woman of the Year awards should be who gave the most birth and performed the best lactation? Perhaps?

Give me an engineer of the year award, scientific breakthrough of the year, athletic achievement of the year, book of the year, charitable action of the year, community service of the year, etc etc etc and let the best person win.


Conclusion? Base awards on accomplishments.

Based on this post Caitlyn Jenner is a very worthy recipient of the Woman of the Year award, as for her it was, indeed, quite an accomplishment rather than a fluke of birth.

TurboTax Nightmare

Enter Kafka:

I am trying to file my US taxes using TurboTax. There is a god of paperwork somewhere laughing at me with great joy.

Where to even start?

It demands a telephone number, but will not allow a foreign number to be used.

It demands a social security number for my husband, who is not American and does not have one.

It requires that I upgrade in order to add foreign-earned. Then, when I try to pay for the upgrade, it demands a US billing address. Really people: the clue was in the "foreign-earned income" part.

I have now paid but can not print the documents or complete my filing because it still wants a SSN for my Italian husband.

TurboTax might work great in the US, but if you are filing from abroad it's one nightmare after another. Not to mention a huge waste of time!

I would try HRBlock instead but they promised me a call back I never received.

Ooh there's a wall, excuse me while I bang my head against it.

Brain Re-wiring II

In case you were wondering: I was prescribed anti-migraine pills.

Anti-climactic, I know.