Nancy calls me Markie when she is feeling funny. Since she is in Costa Rica and I’m not, I miss her. Yeah, awwwwwww, well you try living in a 90% empty house with two mutts and see if you don’t get lonely too.
So this is my Markie Post.
Markie? Blog Post? Markie Post? Like the actress?
I kill.
I liked Night Court. I had a thing for Markie Post.
Hope she’s happy. She’s Going Like 60 now and will be 61 November 4. Maybe she will read this. Tweet me Markie: @goinglike60.
Why isn’t Night Court on reruns?
That was a damn clever show.
Nanc’ also calls me Marcus. Never was a big fan of Marcus Welby, M.D., but that doesn’t mean a Marcus post won’t show up to compliment this Markie Post.
I was named Mark – with a “k” – after General Mark Clark – my dad has aspirations to become a General in the Army. He almost made it. Not Marc with a “c” which is pretty classy, but forever a pain in the ass for people to get right. Hell, half the people think my last name is Patton. Imagine having to get the first name with a “c.”
I like Mark as a name. Hard to get a really effective insulting nickname… unless you include Darkie Markie which really lost favor in the Sixties.
Moving to Costa Rica is just full of milestones. Today there were two:
the shipper made contact to confirm that the driver will be a Haus de Bow-Wow at 7 a.m. on June 28. Which is what our Costa Rica shipper told us.
Bin/box number 400 was packed today. It was my Costa Rica rocking chair which we purchased on our first house-hunting trip. Wasn’t purely planned that way, but when I got close to that number I figured it was time for the chair to prepare for the second half of the round-trip.
As I sat in the backyard eating lunch, Sedona and Derby were with me… they aren’t far away now that their pals are in Costa Rica. There was a mama Robin and a baby getting food. The baby was in the hoppy stage with limited flight capabilities. It wasn’t long before Sedona noticed and took off after the baby. The lil Robin Red Breast flew to safety about six feet above Sedona’s head. Mama did her thing and divebombed Sedona and lured her away so her baby could be safe.
I love the yin/yang of nature. I think I’m gonna like it in Costa Rica – can’t wait to see Sedona interact with a Toucan! or Laughing Falcon aka/ Orgasm Bird.
My friend Jeremy gave me some excellent tips on off-the-beaten path sites that he found during his 2 week vacation in CR. He says he could see himself retiring there someday.
No big deal to give them up. I started on a whim when I was Sixty. Since I’m moving to Costa Rica (! did I mention that before!?!) I’m gonna give them up.
I only smoked a couple a week – at the most. Only on the weekends and only in fair weather. But there is one immutable fact:
Cigars stink.
No really. I would be sitting about 30 feet from the backdoor and the smoke would still creep into the house. When the neighbor kid was tramping on the trampoline with her friends, I asked if she could smell the smoke. With a little reluctance she admitted she could.
I didn’t stop. Kids gotta learn that life is dangerous.
I smoked them on the river and people a mile downstream behind me could tell that I had lit up.
Even the dogs would stay away when I lit up.
And then there is the morning-after taste. Eeeee-yuck.
But cigars do have one thing going for them. They are great way to waste an hour. I found that I was a mild-mannered cigar man, ie: I wanted a mild cigar.
I learned that I liked a cigar that was a Churchill length with about a six ring size. But I sure wasn’t anal about it. I bought my cigars on the cheap online. The cigar shops always had a sample deal or a box deal, so I seldom paid more than $3 a stick.
(Stick – that’s cigar-speak for stogie.)
I did enjoy the sampler packages. Turkish, Dominican,Nicaraguan, Honduran… and others… I tried them all because the prices were cheap!
I can see how a geezer could enjoy the hobby of smoking a cigar.
Names like Oliva, La Perla, Cuba Libre, Morro Castle, Bahia Maduro Panchos,Vegas Series ’A’ Artisan, Gran Habano, Pioneer Valley Maduro Torpedo, Padilla Hybrid Maduro Gordo, Sancho Panza Double Maduro Lancero… what’s not to like about that?
I had a couple of “Cuban” cigars given to me. I never believed for a minute they were real Cuban cigars. I just can’t see anybody smuggling in cigars to Bowling Green, Kentucky. But then again, I never figured there were terrorists in Bowling Green either.
The guy that gave the “Cubans” to me also pointed out that I shouldn’t be lighting my cigars with a lighter. Of course, only a wooden match should be used. The flame must be fully devoid of any chemicals lest the chemicals in the cigar have their flavor compromised (I’m paraphrasing here.)
We talked about ring size and length and firmness of ash density of smoke, blah, blah, blah. Good lord, put cigars with bourbon drinkers and the air would be thick with varying opinions.
Cigar smokers and bourbon drinkers subtly illustrated here:
None of those opinions of cigar smokers or bourbon drinkers mean anything, because:
Cigars taste bad. But they are fun to handle. Each cigar must be trimmed with a guillotine blade at the shoulder. The other end of the cigar must be glowing red on all edges when first lighted. There is the debate on whether or not it is gauche to smoke a cigar with the paper band in place. Something about showing off… as if puffing on a long stogie could be anything but show-offy.
I never was able to keep the humidity at the proper level in the free humidors I got buying 20 cigars at a time. It had a little doo hickey that was supposed to be kept moist so the cigars stayed at 70% humidity.
I never got the humidity above 60%. Hells bells, I should have just left them outside – the humidity is always higher than that this time of year.
There is some crapola gel that is supposed to help maintain humdity. About $6 – that never worked either. So these last few cigars are a little crunchy to the touch. That’s another charade cigar-lovers go through. They roll the cigar between thumb and forefinger feeling for firmness and no crunch.
Pfffbbbt. Gimme lots of smoke that takes an hour to burn.
I had to stop the special arrangement I had with the Pretty Divorced Neighbor.
It wasn’t that Nancy found out, she actually approved of our arrangement.
I had been aware of my desire even when the neighbor lady was still married. I thought about approaching Pretty Divorced Neighbor (PDN) before she was divorced but I was sure her husband wouldn’t approve and wouldn’t allow a “special arrangement.”
Soon after he moved out, but even before the divorce was final, PDN she was teasing me with her equipment. I finally got up the nerve to ask Nancy if I could ask PDN for a special arrangement – but no more than once a week.
Nancy said she thought it was kinda stupid, but she gave her approval to approach PDN.
PDN at first was kind of reluctant. To make my offer more attractive to her, I said I would provide the gas.
She was reluctant at first, but eventually even let me do her back yard.
She has a riding lawn mower. I don’t.
Once a week I would mow her yard andmy yard using her riding mower.
My “special arrangement” with Pretty Divorced Neighbor must end. Not because any of us were dissatisfied, to the contrary, it was a very satisfactory arrangement. The riding mower always left me tingly all over.
In Costa Rica, I will have a “special arrangement” too.
Nancy has left the building. She is offline for a while and I guess I need to oil up…
I’m doing my version of a road crew and am packing up what she thought she needed to put on her daily show.
Thirty seven bins of fabric/sewing notions and three sewing machines are ready to go.
Nineteen bins of Christmas clothes, holiday (Christmas and Halloween) lights, and holiday decorations (name the holiday and we have decorations) – including two artificial trees are ready to go.
And 318 bins of miscellaneous are logged and ready for the container.
A couple weeks ago, I suggested that we might want to start eating up our stockpile of food.
“Good idea! But let’s go to Guadalajara tonight. I’m going lunch with the knitting gang, and then Terri is having the bunco and bowling bunch dinner. Saturday Velma and Jim are having us over and Friday Rick and Gayle are having us over want to feed us some BBQ.”
And I would come home to a dozen boxes that had been packed and of course, could not ask: “What’s for dinner?” No way Jose. So we had a lot of BLT’s, Kroger bake and eat pizza, tuna fish sandwiches, drippy eggs, etc. etc.
The pantry and freezer did not get much attention.
Until she left. Her instructions: You take care of it.
So far:
Trashed:
3 cans of evaporated milk – the newest expiration date was 2003
7 cans of sweet condensed milk – the oldest expiration date was 1993.
4 cans of tomato pieces – expired
2 cans of tomato chunks – expired, and how are chunks and pieces different?
3 cans of tomato soup – rusty
4 cans of mushroom soup – rusty
5 boxes of opened, stale, variety of crackers, graham, saltine, snack.
6 boxes of frozen pea pods
2 bags of frozen fruit
1 bag of frozen tortillas
1 eighteen pound turkey
1 twenty-two pound turkey
(and don’t yell at me for not thinking of the food bank – believe me, I WAS thinking of them when I trashed this stuff.)
Current inventory (from memory, no I didn’t make a list!):
2 cans of icing
3 cake mixes, white, banana, and blueberry
1 Nestles chocolate bits
Oreo cookie pie shell
8 boxes of pudding mix: chocolate and vanilla
Melange pour geteau du fromage – Margarita – sans cuisson
3 boxes of spaghetti noodles
2 jars of spaghetti sauce (Nancy makes a killer spaghetti sauce, but it takes forever)
4 quarts of canola oil
and more.
Much of this will make the move – except for what I eat. Last night I had a dinner of champions: The Oreo cookie pie shell with vanilla filling.
Since I sold the stove, the spaghetti will make the move. Not sure about the sauce since it’s in glass jars. The Nestles morsels will be gone for sure. Same with the icing. I would eat the cake dough, but that takes eggs – which we have none. Would be a good use for the canola oil, though… maybe a dozen eggs is in order?
Nah. I’ll just oil myself up and text Nancy. She will have phone soon, seems that this would be the perfect first text right?
