The weekend is upon us, Gentle Readers.
Speaking of that, I'm a little over a hundred pages into Hamnet.
What are you reading these days?
While you conjure up a good answer, let's get down to the business of the day, shall we?
One of the bloggers I've begun following fairly recently, Tasker Dunham in Yorkshire, posted the other day a review of a book he'd just read, "The Great Railway Bazaar" by Paul Theroux.
I think it was the first of many books he wrote about travel and, specifically, railroad travel.
It was published back in the 1970's and I had read it shortly after it came out.
All of which put me into Throwback Mode and reminded me of a photo of Judy and I when we were doing our railroad travel in Europe in 1985.
(Lordy, lordy, that was 37 years ago!)
On one leg of our Eurail adventure I inveigled someone to take a photo of us as we were about to board a train.
In my faded memory it was a train called the Orient Express, though it wasn't that Orient Express but a new train named that, no doubt, for the impressionable American tourists.
But, though my memory was that there was a sign on the outside of the train car carrying that name, I find no evidence of it in the surviving photo.
But there we are, anyway, about to join fellow passengers on a train that ran from Paris, France to Salzburg, Austria, at least.
We were both train buffs and became enamored of the trains that shuttled us around Europe for a few weeks.
I remember a marvelous meal with wine in a dining car between Innsbruck, Austria and Florence, Italy.
I recall the wonderfully scenic trip through the Alps going to Innsbruck.
And seeing the beautiful golden mustard fields around Dijon, France while speeding our way on a bullet train from the Mediterranean coast up to Paris.
Those were good times and while we never achieved our aim of getting back to Europe we made many memories to last a lifetime in that glorious month of April, 1985.
(Some memories are fuzzier than others but . . .)
Yesterday morning my wife commanded me to come to her room and bring my camera, pronto!
Being as she is She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO), I responded with alacrity.
Also with my camera.
She directed me to her slider door and said "Look at these clouds."
I did and this is what I saw, peeping over our neighbors' HVAC unit.
Waffle Clouds!
The odd and unusual pattern, we surmised, must have resulted from contrails left by many aircraft passing high over our turf.
We are in an area that sees planes overhead flying into and out of Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
And a little to the left of this mix, there was proof of our theory.
The sighting of those "waffle clouds" had an effect on me.
Early this morning I went to our freezer and pulled out a previously baked item for my morning breakfast.
Am I late or are you early?
A Friday enigma.
Whatever the solution, it is time for the weekly Cavalcade of Comedy from Catalyst!
So here goes.
That last one is for the groaners.
You know who you are.
I hope you all know who you are on this bright, shiny weekend and that you will expend all energy to enjoy it to the fullest.
And always remember to keep laughing!
Here, kitty-kitty . . .
(Oh, yeah, I've felt like that a few times . . .)
If you were one of the very kind people who happened by this blog a couple of days ago and read about my first meeting with Judy some decades ago, thank you for your many kind words.
As the title of this post states, all those years later we're still together and I'm still smitten by this lovely lady.
And as I'm about to show you, she apparently knew how good she looked in those black turtlenecks because they remained a staple of her wardrobe through the years.
When we were living in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1990, our friend Walter Nixon was quite obviously taken with her appearance too.
Walter produced some beauty himself - he was the father of the actress Cynthia Nixon.
Several years later we had moved back to the U.S.A. but had made a return trip to Mexico to visit friends.
Once again, Judy had donned a black turtleneck and was showing her affection for one of many cats that turned up in our lives.
She'll scold me for showing the next photo but I had to post it, of a much older couple giddy on possibly too much good wine.
The sweaters are still there though mine has gone to gray at this point.
Finally, speaking of alcohol abuse, I'm taking you back to Mexico, some time in the late 1980's, to a somewhat zany New Year's Eve celebration in a hotel in Guadalajara.
Oh look!
The black turtlenecks had disappeared and we were both in white!
But she was still beautiful and I was still smitten.
And judging by that chapeau on my head, the margaritas were working their magic.
Some of you may remember the second part of a post I wrote recently.
You can find it here.
Well one of my regular contributors to the Humor Vault certainly remembered it and, just to rub my nose in it a bit more, he sent me the following comic strip this morning.
He added that he hoped lots of folks would also send me the clip.
Maybe this will forestall them!
Harrumph!
