Rob Hopkins (via a TED.com video) reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out
This Onion news clip on The First Openly Gay Racehorse is great
If you’re not looking at Awkward Family Photos every day, you should be.
The Sports Geezer tells us how to walk off a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving. He says:
A typical Thanksgiving meal delivers 4,575 calories. Yes, Virginia, the numbers are discouraging. If you start walking at 7 p.m., you will burn the last of your Thanksgiving-related calories just before sunrise, about 5 a.m., just in time to say goodbye to the in-laws.
Indefatigable Donny Osmond was named the winner of the ninth season of Dancing with the Stars. I like to see a 51-year-old (like me) beat out a bunch of younger competitors. Bravo!
My cousin Dan (you know him — he’s Dan the Early Retired Man who has written a whole bunch of posts for this blog) and our families spent every childhood Thanksgiving together at his house. Well, almost every Thanksgiving. Read Dan’s post:
Thanksgiving was always at my house. I never gave it another thought until 1971. That year, as a 16-year-old kid who had just started his first job with the Postal Service, I had to work on Thanksgiving.
The large mail processing plants of the U.S. Postal Service never close. There are no locks on the doors because the mail moves 365 days per year. In 1971, I reported to work at 4:00 in the afternoon. My extended family was at my house as normal and I was sitting on a stool in front of a “Benjamin Franklin” case sorting outbound mail. I had been an employee only a few weeks and I already hated sorting mail. Sometime that night I realized what I was missing, and declared Thanksgiving my favorite holiday.
One year my mother stated that she would like to enjoy Thanksgiving by going to someone else’s house. I relented and we all went to a cousin’s home to celebrate the holiday. I hated it. A few years later and now married, I went to one of my wife’s relatives for Thanksgiving. The doorbell rang and the turkey was brought in by a caterer. I hated that even more. I’m sure both of these Thanksgiving dinners were fine but it wasn’t my mother’s chicken soup, it wasn’t my mother’s stuffing and it wasn’t my mother who was forgetting to put the cranberry sauce on the table. I soon decreed that all future Thanksgiving celebrations MUST be at her house.
Eventually, the responsibility of Thanksgiving was passed down to me. I clean the carpet, dust the chandelier, and remember to put out the cranberry sauce, but the real work falls to my wife. To her credit, my wife has taken the Thanksgiving baton and run with it. Of course, my wife has made some changes. Mashed potatoes instead of baked; gravy; wide noodles in the soup instead of the thin ones my mother used; and her mother’s green bean casserole. My mother made an apple pie, my wife makes a fanatical buffet of pies, cakes, and cookies. It is a tryptophan-laced, carbohydrate- infused, sugar rush fit for a king.
We now cook two turkeys, my wife’s traditional roasted turkey and a deep-fried turkey. My son and I had talked about frying a turkey for years so I finally bought the equipment. Last year my wife’s turkey was still better than our deep-fried variety, so this year I’m going all out. Minnesota is one of the largest turkey-producing states in the country so I’m driving 120 miles west for a Minnesota- raised, free range, organic turkey. My wife’s turkey is a formidable opponent so I need all the help I can get.
As my kids grew up, I made another Thanksgiving declaration; ALL CHILDREN MUST BE HOME FOR THANKSGIVING. You cannot go to friend’s house, you cannot stay at school, and you cannot work, even for double time. Now with a newly married daughter 1,200 miles away, I understand that I might have to make exceptions to this decree, but not this year. This year at least, my married daughter and new son-in-law are following my rules and heading west on the worst flying day of the year.
I now view the Thanksgiving spectacle from the head of the table. Actually, it’s my mother’s dining room table, the table that I grew up with. It’s a little too big for our dining room but I insisted on having it after my mother passed away. Sitting at the head of the table is one of my favorite things to do, especially on Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and I haven’t missed one since 1971.
This is not a new topic around here, but the Pew Research Center has just released a study that reveals that 10 percent of adults younger than 35 have moved back in with their parents because of the recession. According to the study, of all grown children who lived with their parents, 2 in 10 were full-time students, one-quarter were unemployed and about one-third said they had lived on their own before returning home.
According to the census, 56 percent of men 18 to 24 years old and 48 percent of women were either still under the same roof as their parents or had moved back home.
If you’ve been reading The Boomer Chronicles for a while, you already know that I’m an RV enthusiast (at least the kind of compact, camper-van-style RV that I took on a trip last fall as a loaner from the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association). RVs, like most other high-ticket items, have taken a beating in the last couple of years. They are expensive, and who can secure a loan to buy one? Yet, these days, RV industry leaders are feeling optimistic.
Next week, the industry is holding its 47th Annual National RV Trade Show, at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville. The event, called “Outlook: 2010: Let the Sun Shine,” will draw about 1,000 RV professionals on Dec. 1. The sponsor, the RVIA, says: “There will be plenty of realism mixed in with our optimism, but we have a lot more good than bad to report. Richard Coon will give the latest shipment forecast. Go RVing will debut new television commercials and new web video content. RVIA’s public relations team will deliver a report on the ’state of our image’ following the economic blizzard the RV industry is digging out from.”
Frankly, I think it’s way too soon to celebrate. What say you?
My cousin Dan from Minnesota, who retired early from the U.S. Postal Service this year at age 53, has loved planes since he was a kid. He even flew them for a while.
I was driving past the airport today when I noticed a Northwest 747 parked by the maintenance hangar. Instead of the usual silver and red paint scheme, this particular 747 was painted in the much older Northwest scheme of gray and red. Airlines need smaller more fuel-efficient airplanes so I can only assume this plane is here to have its corporate logos removed. Once stripped of its identity, she will be flown to the airliner boneyard in the dry desert heat just north of Tucson, maybe to never fly again.
My first flight on a 747 was in the early 1970s. American Airlines just received its first shipment of 747s but could not fill them up with passengers, so American installed a baby grand piano in the aft cabin. After the fasten seatbelt light was extinguished I could hear piano music playing behind me. You then could get out of your seat and have your favorite beverage served to you at the piano. A piano bar in an airplane — we will never see this again!
On my retirement trip to Thailand this past spring, I was able to fly on a 747 again but this was a much different experience. First of all, I was flying on the upper deck. Even taxiing at the airport is a different experience from three stories above the tarmac. My seat had 16 adjustments and would lie almost flat. Instead of that baby grand piano, I had my own personal entertainment center complete with on-demand movies, multiple music channels, video games and a map that would tell me exactly where in the world we were as well as how fast and how high we were flying. There was an electrical outlet in the seat to plug in alaptop or charge a cell phone.
I once toured the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington. From the gallery of the world’s largest nongovernmental building, you could watch these behemoths being born. At one point in the assembly process the airplane is so heavy that Boeing used air to float the plane through the plant until the wheels were installed. Before the engines are installed, Boeing hangs large heavy weights on the wings so the plane will not tip up on its tail. The tour was so popular, you had to make a reservation weeks ahead.
It bothers me that with the retirement of graceful giants, the United States where aviation was invented, will no longer produce the world’s largest airliner. Instead, the government-backed European consortium Airbus now claims the world’s largest, with its Airbus A380.
My office window used to face the approach of Runway 30 right. When the wind was out of the north, I could see a lot of planes coming in for a landing but I would stop and watch a 747. Its wheels down and locked and flaps outstretched, these giant birds seem to float slowly toward the runway. A few times a year you would hear someone on my side of the building shout, “Here it comes,” and we would gather at the windows to watch the 747, better known as Air Force One on approach. We would differ on the politics of the man on board but we would all agree that Air Force One in flight is a beautiful truly American sight.
I can only hope that the Airbus A380 is a huge commercial flop so Boeing will bring the 747 back, maybe with some new more fuel-efficient engines so the United States can reclaim the crown.
This week Vaboomer.com is hosting the Carnival for baby boomers. So clear your desk and head over to the Carnival now.
If you can’t get enough of the antics here at The Boomer Chronicles, you can always sign up to follow me on Twitter. You’ll get lots in intriguing (NOT) and worthwhile (NOT) updates. So if you have time to waste, be sure to join me on Twitter.
Do you have to live in an RV in order to retire early?
Bicyclists: here’s a blogger who says running red lights is not safe (I think it is safe in certain circumstances)
A sweet little video about a New York woman who travels to chilly Gloucester, Mass., harbor in the middle of November just to take a dip in the water
Should couples separate for a while in order to jazz up their lives together?
