Charlie

He must need those down payments a few days ahead in order to pay for his Acela ticket to NYC.

Your comment about Fischer-Dieskau sounding like "someone worth knowing" reminded me of a story a friend told me about running into Walter Legge, accompanied by a quiet woman whom my friend described as looking like a particularly dowdy Hausfrau, in a railway station. It wasn't until he and Legge had been conversing for several minutes that he suddenly realized the woman was Schwarzkopf.

(Enthusiastically raises his hand)

I don't have trouble with eye/hand coordination--I am a tennis player--and my fingers are fairly skinny. However, I have never learned how to manipulate buttons with my thumbs (I have arthritis in both thumbs), which is apparently the key to using a smart phone. I use a cell phone the same way I type on any keyboard: I am a hunt-and-peck typist, so I do almost everything with my index finger.

Thanks for all the advice so far.

I think it is time for me to (very reluctantly) get my first smart phone. I have little competence with electronics of any kind. I currently have an LG flip phone, which apparently is capable of accessing the Internet, but it is too complicated for me. I have a 5 year old iPad which I take with me when I travel on vacation, so I can access my email and some travel information, and read my regular newspapers online, but I don't use it for much else. I carry my flip phone with me whenever I leave the house, but almost never use it, and when I do, it is only for making and receiving phone calls. I don't know how to text. I have an AT&T account because the carrier I had in the 1990s was taken over by them, and my very cheap monthly account was grandfathered in; however, the fee has been rising, and I now pay $40/mo for a device that I rarely need. Therefore, I have been looking at cheaper ConsumerCellular plans. If I am going to change carriers anyway, it may be time to consider a smart phone. One of my reasons is that I suspect that in the not too distant future I may need an Uber or Lyft app to get around. ConsumerCellular also sells a variety of models, especially older models at very reasonable prices. I have looked at their selection, and I think the iPhone SE might be a good fit for my needs, because it is small enough to carry in a pocket. I don't need lots of bells and whistles--I don't take photos or stream videos, etc.--but I assume that it is similar enough to an iPad that I will be able to learn how to use it for the basics. Any cautions, recommendations, or whatever?

Wombats have very sharp claws. An adhesive one could be pretty painful.

I did the majority of my hiring when homosexual activity was illegal and the Internet didn't exist. Where there is a potential market, it will be developed somehow.

I wish I could think of something comforting to say, but I'm crying too much.

The heading threw me for a second, since I once worked in Bogota (New Jersey).

Why, isn't that....Brodie Sinclair?!!

I used to have a 1954 Mercury (actually, I can't tell from the photo if it is a '54 or a '53, because they were the same except for the taillights). I used to spend as much money on oil as on gas for it, although I never looked quite like that guy.

George Orwell lived in that row of houses at Highbury Corner, but he was not at home when the bomb hit it. When I lived in London in the 1970s, there were still many abandoned buildings that had suffered damage in the war and still hadn't been repaired after three decades. Now London property is so valuable that there is no sign of them anywhere.

I didn't realize she was that old. The first time I saw her was in Il Pirata in Philadelphia about 1965, before she made her Met debut. She held the high note at the end of one scene for so long that she apparently fainted, and they had to hold the curtain longer than scheduled before she could continue. I saw her several times after that, but she did cancel often. The last time I saw her was at Carnegie Hall, at a birthday tribute for Marilyn Horne about 30 years later, and the voice had hardly changed.

If they are "good friends" of yours and don't need anything, presumably including money, I would give them a small art or craft piece that suits their taste. They will always say, "Oh, cany10011 gave us that as a wedding gift;" they won't remember your gift whenever they look at some $100 bills.

Those were all the same advantages that led me to live on Canonbury Rd near the Essex Rd tube stop, except that when I lived there 45 years ago, it was also fairly inexpensive (there was still WW2 bomb damage to nearby buildings).

Here in the desert the highs through last week were still in triple digits. It was only 74 when I got up at 6am, so I wore a jacket to walk the dog, but the a/c was running, because the house holds warmth for a long time. We only use the heat for a few months in the winter, when the lows are in the 40s and the daytime highs around 70.

I used to live a short walk from Upper Street, which is now a lot more gentrified than it was in my day.

Those who know that I am basically an opera fan might be surprised that two of my favorite popular singers were Edith Piaf and Janis Joplin. I guess it was the incredible drama in their voices.

I remember going to see the film when it first came out, mainly because I had heard about the gay subplot.

Interesting: I have recently read Jean Edward Smith's biography of Grant, which I thought was quite good. I am currently reading a history of the first hundred years of the Rocky Mountain News by Robert L. Perkin, written in 1959, which I bought for $1 at a thrift store. It is 593 pages long, but I bought it only because I was interested in an incident involving my grandfather that was in the Denver news at the turn of the century. To my surprise, the book is a fascinating history not only of the newspaper itself, but also of Denver, Colorado, and the West , and I haven't been able to put it down.

Oh dear! Another red pencil moment: an escort is hung; a murderer is hanged.

The problem, Gman, is that what appears to be a "glaring" error to you is minor and unimportant to many people, if the evidence of most escort ads is considered. I wonder if there is even some auto-correct glitch in the sites' programs that turns "dominant" into "dominate." And it is human nature to resent having one's errors pointed out by a stranger, or even by a friend. Let it go. Those of us who have been here a long time understand your quirks.

Tsk, tsk. Don't you know it should be "Screw grammar if I were hiring for an hour."? (You will never impress an escort if you don't recognize the need for the subjunctive form of the verb.)

I never got to the north, but I visited all the places you mention in the south. In general, I preferred the south, especially Kerala.