Smokey

Her late Majesty had the benefit of a childhood that Charles, William and George could never have. Not the seclusion and privilege that wealth afforded, they all share that, or shared, even though the weight of that privilege has lifted somewhat. Until she was 10 years old, her future was that of a minor princess with a life that promised comfort and the freedom to do much as she wished. At 10 her life suddenly changed to presage the one she became destined to live, she became the heir apparent and had to prepare for a different life to the one she may have thought awaited her. Her heirs were destined to the future they now have from the moment they were born.
For many years, Charles knew, or at least hoped, that his reign was in the distant future so was able to combine his preparation for it with the freedom to develop his own ideas and values. As his time approached he adjusted to the strictures that would then face, one which he now seems to have grown into and carried out with a sense of duty.
Willaim and Harry grew up with different futures, roles that came to be confirmed when William and Catherine had children, William the duty that he would assume, tempered by the years he has and would have before that time came, and Harry with the relative freedom that Elizabeth had in her early years. That has shaped the men that they today are. If the unthinkable happened and he were to ascend to the throne, from a distance I can see a man who would understand the new weight of his position and be able to meet its demands.

HOW I LEARNED I WAS GAY.
I was 17 years old, and had stopped to use the men's room in the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan. Suddenly a note was thrust under the divider from the next stall: "Meet me outside." Curious, I left and was approached outside the men's room by a young man who emerged from the door. He looked to be in his early to mid 20s, and he introduced himself with a name that sounded vaguely foreign, possibly French.  He was cute, slender and a little taller than I was, with dark hair and a tiny mustache. He asked, "Are you gay?" but I didn't know the word except in its normal usage as a term for being happy, so I said yes. When he asked if I would like to go back to his place, I thought,"Why not?" I had never done anything sexual with anyone, but even though I had a steady girlfriend,  I already knew I was attracted to other males. So I went with him to a room he was renting in the East Village.
When he locked the door behind us, he asked, "What are you into?" I told him I didn't know,  so he told me to take off my clothes and get into bed, and he did the same. For the next couple of hours he introduced me to the basic sex acts: sucking and fucking, as both top and bottom. When we were finished and I was getting ready to leave, I said, "Wow! I didn't know these things were possible!" He gave me a puzzled look and said, "But you said you were gay?" I looked confused, as he realized that I didn't understand the term, and he had just initiated a neophyte.

https://www.aol.com/7-best-frozen-chicken-pot-140000722.html
Best Frozen Chicken Pot Pies 
Marie Callender’s Chicken Pot Pie
Chances are that while you’re reading this, there’s a Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie sitting in your freezer, waiting to be microwaved. Do it! This is the frozen pot pie that everyone points to as the closest thing to the real deal.
The single-serve version is around 10 ounces, featuring a golden double crust that flakes when baked in the oven. Inside, there are chunks of white-meat chicken, peas, carrots, and diced potatoes all swimming in a creamy, salty gravy. The filling leans heavily on potatoes sometimes, but it’s still hearty enough to pass as dinner. Family-size versions stretch the same formula to over 40 ounces, though fans say the meat-to-gravy ratio can slip in the bigger pies.
Stouffer’s Chicken Pot Pie
Maybe Stouffer’s Chicken Pot Pie is the backup plan for when the freezer aisle is out of Marie Callender’s, but it’s still a solid backup. It’s a single-serve, 10-ounce pie with a double crust and the usual mix of chicken, peas, carrots, and potatoes in a creamy sauce. The crust can turn chewy instead of flaky, but there’s enough chicken to keep it from feeling skimpy, and the sauce is rich enough to make it filling.

In most jurisdictions photography is usually prohibited where people would have an expectation of privacy, like bathrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms. Signage only goes so far however to counter ignorance and boorish behavior.

While I’m slow-traveling, I’ve been keeping up with the situation back home.  Yes, Las Vegas survived downturns like the Great Depression (then a small town, it actually boomed thanks to the Hoover Dam construction) and the 2008 GFC, but this downturn is all of its own making.
The appeal of old Vegas was that middle-class tourists could come and feel like VIPs.  Sure, you lost money gambling, but pit bosses were generous with the comps.  Even when Steve Wynn changed the business model with 1989 opening of the Mirage, visitors still felt like they were getting decent value.  Restaurants were pricey, but most were really good.  Comped or at least discounted rooms were common, and free drinks were a given.
First came the resort fees, which started small and have been climbing ever since.  IMO, the snowball started rolling down the hill when the casinos ended free parking.  The old-timers said tourists would boycott, but nope they kept coming, just grumbled a bit.  That gave the bean-counters the green light to start death by a thousand cuts, nickel $ dimeing visitors with service charges at every turn and even charging a high-roller ($25K a hand!) for a $10 smoothie.
Of course, the high-rollers (refusal to comp the smoothie aside) are still treated like royalty, as are high-end business travelers, but according to numerous reports, the average Vegas visitor is treated like sh!t.  For a while, the top-tier spending more than made up for the loss of the nurse from San Antonio and the plumber from Chicago, until the desertion of the middle-class became so great that there simply weren’t enough 1 percenters to offset.
I’ve heard that the casinos are realizing their error and are trying to lure back the middle-class they so recently scorned.  Unfortunately, once you really piss off a regular customer, it’s just not that easy to get him back.

It's encouraging to know that there is still someone here who is older than I am.

In most jurisdictions photography is usually prohibited where people would have an expectation of privacy, like bathrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms. Signage only goes so far however to counter ignorance and boorish behavior.

While i believe it was fairly common knowldege that Linda Lavin was a bitch, it astounds me that people would leave a good paying regular gig only because they could not get on with a co worker.  I have had a few co workers along the way that I said good morning to on the first day and good bye to on the last day and spoke only business otherwise.  One can be professional and continue to do good work while not seeing eye to eye with coworkers.  It is hard to envision a series with good enough casting and good enough writing to give a second dimension to a one note character such as Flo.  

In 2001, I lived in Middletown NJ and owned a walk in medical facility.  I was supposed to attend a conference in Las Vegas and the original flight I had was at 9 05 AM out of Newark.  I changed to a later flight, 11:20 AM.  The 9:05 flight which I did not take, had several colleagues and had taken off and then circled for 6 hours waiting to land.  The passengers on that plane were not informed of what had happened and they were all questioned by government officials when they exited the plane.  I was driving to Newark airport and saw the second plane hit the tower.  I turned around and headed to my office in case people coming back to NJ needed medical attention.  The air was thick with black smoke and an acrid odor that made it difficult to breath.  As it turned out, the wind was blowing debris across the river and pretty much over my office.  Many hours later, the first people came in for medical attention.  Many people in Middletown worked at the World Trade Center and the Middletown train station had about 75 cars which were not picked up for many days.  I forget the exact number of residents of Middletown killed, but it was the highest of any neighborhood out of NYC.  
For days and then weeks, people came in with respiratory complaints and anxiety and depression.  I was shocked then and horrified now that Christine Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey made the announcement that people could return to the area safely with a day or two.  The foul odor lingered and debris flew around for about a week.  
The stories told to me then still bring tears to my eyes when I think of them.  The most surprising information concerned the people screaming as they came down the stairs trying to escape.  I never heard the news mention it and for some reason I did not consider that as likely to happen.   In my mind it was an orderly evacuation and the news did little to dissuade us of that notion.  The people with whom  I spoke, and there were more than 100 of them,  who came down the steps, certainly had a different take on it. 
A patient i had seen the day before and who had come in with a cold asked if it was okay for him to go to work. He was a chef at the Windows on the World and with my permission, he returned to work but never returned nome.  September 10th was just another work day and another patient with a cold.  September 11th was gut wrenching  and the effects on  that area of NJ were as devastating as one can imagine.  

I truly like big guys, and older guys, and big older guys. Grandpa bears have their fans! 

I was at work on the other side of New Jersey. Tried to follow events on our computers but our internet connection was overwhelmed; relied on reports from family members calling. My niece was performing with the NYC Ballet in Italy; the company had to wait a week before being able to return. My nephew, a police officer, was asked to go into the city to assist, but was told to turn around when he was halfway there since they were “locking down” access to Manhattan. My oldest brother and his partner were finishing packing and awaiting their ride to JFK airport; when the driver arrived they had to tell him what was happening and said they weren’t going anywhere. I remember a sense of disbelief and dread as well as concern for my scattered family members.

Wow does ‘proper’ mean something different where you are @Vegas_Millennial? I didn’t realise that. 
As a Brit I use ‘proper’ in the correct way because I speak ‘the King’s English’ …the standard, correct and educated form of the English language. 😉. But if the client wants it I can also do proper cor blimey London cockney…just like Dick Van Dyke 🤪. 

In most jurisdictions photography is usually prohibited where people would have an expectation of privacy, like bathrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms. Signage only goes so far however to counter ignorance and boorish behavior.

To carry on a theme of how the best hash browns are made-- -when my parents went to New York City years ago-possibly for the  first time-they wanted to go to a Kosher Restaurant as there weren't any in the medium size Texas town I grew up in. There might not even have been any in Dallas at the time.
 
They find one, and I think the waitress (if that's not too politically incorrect in these more enlightened times) talked up the chicken soup. So my Dad orders it. At the time for the bill, the waitress comes up to the table and asks my Dad how it was. Dad said something like it wasn't as good as my Mom's (Note: My Mom was present during all this. But Dad wasn't just buttering my Mom up. My Mom always made excellent soup and matzo balls (in case anyone is interested-hers were delicious floaters (vs sinkers-IYKYK)-except possibly one time when I have no idea what the heck happened).  
 
So the waitress says-you know why our soup isn't as good as your wife's? It's because she makes it with love. 
 
Exeunt

On the morning of 9/11, I was in my home in Philadelphia, where my spouse was waiting for the van to take him to JFK for his flight to South Africa later in the day, to begin a scheduled  "Cape to Cairo" tour. The phone rang, and a somewhat upset-sounding young woman said, "We can't pick you up. The van has been cancelled." Surprised, I asked, "But how is he supposed to get to the airport?" "The airport has been shut down," she said, and hung up. Baffled, I looked at my spouse, and said, "I think we should turn on the news." We turned on the TV, just in time to see the first tower fall. (Ironically, my architect spouse and I were living in Manhattan when the towers were built, and had watched every day from our south-facing window in Chelsea as they rose against the horizon; we couldn't imagine them disappearing in our lifetime.)

For a quirky and unique look at London check out this site:
https://joolzguides.com/

I make chicken paprikash all the time, provided you've got real Hungarian paprika in the pantry it's a sure-shot. You can still make it if you don't, it just won't have that black magic.

I was never in the closet at work--I was a college professor--but no one I worked with actually asked whether I was gay (I think they may have taken it for granted, because I lived in the center of the city with another man). When I proposed to teach an elective class in gay literature, the department chair didn't ask about my qualifications, but he wondered whether anyone would sign up for it, so I said, "We won't know until we announce it, will we?" So we did. To my surprise, most of the students who signed up for it were straight (or claimed to be) but curious about the subject. A young woman who was a student in a previous class of mine was the only person who asked me--privately--if I were gay, so of course I said yes, and she signed up. To my relief, enough students signed up for the course to run it, and on the first day of class I expected that someone would raise a hand and ask if I were gay, but no one did.  We were a couple of weeks into the class when I was explaining something,  a student raised his hand and asked, "How do you know so much about that?" so I matter-of-factly replied, "Well, I'm gay myself."  A few students exchanged knowing looks with one another, but no one said anything about my answer. By the end of the semester, only one student had dropped out, and the question of my orientation never arose again in class.

Realizing that I have to deal with decades of accumulated possessions in order to move to the next phase of my life.  I GOT TOO MUCH STUFF!

Although I consider myself 1000% Gay, I do confess to having occasionally fantasized about having two women at the same time; one to cook, one to clean.
My thanks to Jimmy Carr for this delightful insight.

There’s Julia Child lore that the original Caesar in Tijuana never put anchovies in his namesake salad. He did use Worcestershire sauce - which if you look at the ingredients has anchovies in it. Julia’s theory was that subsequent chefs added anchovies as personal improvements.
People are often surprised the salad originated in Tijuana, Mexico.
Of course a table-side prepared Caesar has egg! Again referring to Julia’s recipe it a “coddled” egg, so very mildly cooked, but basically raw. If you’re just getting bottled dressing you won’t see egg.

And apparently it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

It’s a tale of two cities 

If you insist.  Here's two pics of mine... you'll notice the second one is more erect.