Category: Uncategorized

Of course, I love it when one of my children or grandchildren show up for an overnight visit, but that just doesn’t happen often enough.  However, I also welcome a visit from their friends.  Seth’s friend Doug lives in San Francisco, but visits his mother’s grave in Boston every year on her birthday, and stays…

Long ago (and I mean long ago!) there was a memorable (to me) Sunday funnies page cartoon in the Pittsburgh  Press. It showed two odd characters with a quart of ice cream.  They had just discovered that there was a fake bottom to the carton that from the outside made it appear that it contained…

Harvard graduate student workers are on strike.  Because the professor of the course I am auditing did not want to cross their picket line, she moved our class to a building off the main campus.  Fortunately for me, a student in the class who mistakenly went to the regular classroom alerted me to the change…

I was determined to add nothing to my quite sufficient possessions in my current apartment.  But I couldn’t really leave my TV on the floor.   So, I ordered an item (hard to describe) that would hold the TV and some other possessions.  Of course, the website said, “easy to assemble”.  You’d think that by now…

The 61st annual three-day Head of the Charles regatta is one of Boston’s not-to-be-missed events, attracting about 400,000 fans along its route, including me. A mind-boggling number (approximately 12,000) of rowers participate in the largest 3-day regatta in the world. And my new apartment’s balcony that overlooks the River is the hottest ticket (although it…

I think giving up driving is on the mind of lots of 80-somethings and/or their kids.  Children worry about their elderly parents on the road (hurting themselves OR others).  But public transportation is easy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I made the decision to give up my car because finding on-street parking was, shall-we-say, inconvenient. The…

I said good-bye to my car when I gave it to my grandson Grady two months ago.  And I have been regularly congratulating myself on my easy adjustment—no need to look for a parking space and no worry that I will forget where I finally got a spot on any particular day It’s also been…

I couldn’t find anyone I know to go with me to see “Eleanor,” a play about FDR’s wife, that was playing to sold-out audiences in Central Square in Cambridge and about to end its run.  So, probably for the first time ever, I bought a ticket for just me. It was a little strange listening…

I think I have a working new TV.  It arrived yesterday in a nice big carton that I managed to get into the elevator of my apartment building.  Rather than take a chance on installing it myself (which was supposed to be easy), I had Comcast send someone.  The new TV was working when the…

Whether one is a huge TV fan or not, one needs a working TV.  I remember when, as a kid, a neighbor got the first TV on our block. Not long after that, my parents gave in and bought a monster-sized piece of furniture that played records, radio and TV.  And I have never been…