Charlie

After my spouse and his brothers took their mother's car away because she was no longer fit to drive, she would frequently call the police to report that her car had been stolen from her driveway. The police quickly learned to just say, "OK, Mrs. K, we will look for it," knowing that she would soon forget about it.

Old people also tend to want much less food than one gets from a service.

There is a difference between not wanting to cook for oneself and not being able to do so. If the advertising is any indication, those meal and grocery delivery services are aimed mostly at busy younger people, not people who are unable to shop and make their own meals. If you can't make toast or scramble an egg for breakfast, or pour the milk into your oatmeal before you microwave it, GrubHub is not going to be of much use to you. As Unicorn mentioned, those who no can longer cook for themselves probably can't do a lot of other things for themselves, which is why they opt for assisted living.

It depends on a lot of things. Because I retired at 60 in good health, I wanted a house with a yard and a pool, in a beautiful warm location, so I moved to Palm Springs. A colleague who also retired at 60 in good health wanted a cottage in a small town on a spectacular Northwestern coast, and he got that. I loved to visit his place, but I wouldn't have wanted to live there, because I would have been bored (and cold and wet). Also, as he aged, problems of transportation and lack of amenities--like a supermarket or any medical facilities, not even a pharmacy--became more important. As he became infirm, just getting in and out of the cottage, which was small but had stairs leading up to the front door, much less strolling on the beach, was problematic. Eventually, that Midcentury Modern home with the pool and the yard with its beautiful trees began to need too much maintenance, and we moved to a new house (still all on one floor) in a gated retirement community on a small plot that required little maintenance, with pools as part of the community amenities. The next move will probably be to assisted living, more than likely in an apartment, which is not what appeals to me, but what makes sense. I already own the little grassy plot that will be my final retirement spot.

The first of several times I saw her she was in her 20s, singing Elisabeth in Tannhauser at Covent Garden. The sound was glorious, but she just stood there like a statue most of the time. A friend of mine had interviewed her in Paris a short time before, and she admitted to him that she was frightened of staged opera performance, and it showed. She got better over the long career, but she was always better to listen to than to watch.

Were there Macedonian subtitles? The last time I was in Skopje, they didn't have CNN available.

Shake...and shake...and shake...and shake........

A recent analysis has shown that the most important reason why residents leave CA for other states is the cost of housing. The median home price in San Diego is $592,300; the median home price in Erie is $78,600. Just sayin'.

Many years ago, I had sex with an escort who claimed to have fucked King Baudouin in a three-way when he was still a prince. I didn't know whether to believe him, but it was an odd enough claim, out of the blue, that I thought it could have been true.

That is exactly the same way I do it!

Why, yes, which is why I am so fond of his financial advisor.

Wait a minute! Airbnb made me that offer! Am I going to be rubbing elbows with the general public?

I get these invitations regularly, even though I have been retired for seventeen years, so it's a little too late to start "planning" now. My spouse has had the same investment manager for thirty-five years, and the retirement account has more money in it now than it did when my spouse retired back in the last century; we are praying that he doesn't die before we do.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had pretty much the same ideas.

"Gays" are no more monolithic in their preferences and prejudices than any other social group. That's why it is always a mistake to assume that just because a man wants to have sex with other men, he will think, feel and act the same as every other man who has the same desire. The "gay community" is a convenient categorical construct, not an objective entity.

One caution about the family circle boxes. I happen to be someone who is more interested in the music than the visuals, and most of the operas I saw at the Met were ones I was already very familiar with. I would not recommend the boxes for an opera like Akhnaten, or for something where you really cared to see the full action. Something else I forgot to mention was the possibility of standing room if seats aren't available for something you really want to see, if you can handle it.

When I lived near Lincoln Center I didn't have a lot of money, but I liked to go to the opera frequently. My favorite seats were always in the balcony boxes or the family circle boxes. I didn't mind seeing the performance from the side angle rather than straight ahead, because one was also much closer to the front of the stage, though unfortunately one can't always see the back of the stage. I preferred the front seats for a better view than the elevated back seats, but what I liked best about the boxes at any level was that the seats were real movable chairs rather than the fixed seats everywhere else in the theater. I noticed that many regular fans who came to multiple performances, including the legendary Lois, also often sat in the family circle boxes. Unfortunately, I haven't been back to the Met in almost a decade, so I don't know how things may have changed. In April, one can get anything from snow to heat in Manhattan.

That may be true, but my friend who recently died at home at 88 had to have a fulltime paid caregiver (she was a gem, BTW), but the cost had reached the point that the house itself would soon have to have been mortgaged to pay for the care. Finding a good in-home caregiver was also not easy.

Djokovic has never really been a favorite with the fans, because he came along and overshadowed Roger and Rafa's tennis bromance by actually outplaying both of them. I would not be surprised if he ended up passing some of their most cherished records, since he is a few years younger than they are, provided he can stay healthy.

Aren't the Eskimos reputed to have done that--put granny on an iceberg? Seriously, though, I think I would go crazy on a cruise till the end of my days. I get antsy on a ferry boat.

Barcelona, of course.

I occasionally get a call on my landline phone that identifies the caller as myself. I never answer, and I never leave me a voicemail.

People are always surprised by the sound of their own voice. ("Is that what I sound like?!")

The last time I got a quote of $60 from a real escort was in 1978.

At least one male in every generation of my mother's family seems to inherit a congenital heart condition, but it skips around in odd ways. My grandfather died of it at 55, and his grandson (my cousin) died of it at 30, yet my uncle (the male in the middle) lived to 91 with no heart problems. Luckily, I have never had any heart issues.