Scattered Thoughts . . .

Kenzie and Lukey spent some time with us this past weekend and, as always, we had a great time with them! For dinner, I prepared Kenzie's favorite meal which is a recipe I obtained from my grandmother almost 40 years ago. When I was in high school and college, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. My sailboat was kept in their backyard because they lived on the water on the south shore of Long Island so I would go there to go sailing but I also visited frequently to help them out and just say hello. Gramps was still working at the time and every now and then I would go to work with him. My grandmother regularly needed help around the house since having serious heart problems a few years earlier so I would spend some time with Gramps on the weekends when he was home from work and I would spend time with my grandmother during the weekdays as I helped out around the house, mowed the lawn, and ran some errands for her. My cousin, William, and I would make sure one ...

As I wait on a phone call from my doctor's office, I figured I would write about something more lighthearted than all this depressing health nonsense.  In early January, I shot some photos of the grandkids while we were playing "Life Junior". We bought this game for the kids for Christmas and we erroneously expected it to be exactly the same as the original game of "Life" but perhaps simplified and shorter (which sounded good to us!) . It actually is quite a different game than the Life game we played all those decades ago when we were kids.  The game board in the Junior version is physically smaller. Money is always in the single digits and transactions are rather rare (we'll save those constant transactions for Monopoly) . That being said, it still hurts when you need to pay for something and you only have a dollar sitting on your side of the board. Instead of money being the focus of the game, there are stars to collect by accomplishing productive tas...