Don't you wonder sometimes where you were when you seemed to be there? Wherever. I was recalling two excursions that I took to beach resorts where it rained and we had to sit under shelter until it was time to return to the ship, once by a boat assigned to pick us up and take us back to shore, once on a bus with instructions to the guide not to come back until suchansuch a time. Beach resorts are not designed for rain. At the first one there were no chairs, only benches at tables where we were served lunch, but no place to relax until we were rescued. that is, no lounges or sun cots, no backs to lean on, nada. I was stiff the next day and I wasn't the only one. The second place had chairs with backs but the canvas under which we sat billowed once in a while and sluiced water in sheets to the ground/chairs/people below. This is not worth describing but I recalled these two trips because of the guide in each case. Do you remember my report? One guide proudly pronounced herself a Catholic and I forget why but she sang and led us all to sing (on the way back in our rescue boat) "Amazing Grace". The other guide was very large, about the biggest person I have ever brushed up against. He proudly told us that he had lost 82 pounds and was now down to 502 pounds. He also told us that he had earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and qualified to be a guide. He spoke Samoan, his native language, so his English was a real accomplishment, too.

I'll have to go back and re-read my own blogs but I remember these two people very well, not the places but the people. When tourists say they've "done" a place, that doesn't mean a thing, does it? People make the places.

Can you believe it? August already and I'm still working on April. Leading a double life, that's what I'm doing, with one foot still on the ship and one foot at home, except that it keeps bobbing back and forth between then and now.

Ah, but my BB (Beloved Balcony) is helping me re-cover. I still have the NYT online and I've been sitting out most of the morning reading and thinking. It is a constant source of ideas and blogs, also of more time and work and things I have to look up and check and follow up on: books, and movies and plays and people and words, oh my, yes, words. I'll just give you a sampling of the notes I have taken this morning:

* RBF - that's short for Resting Bitch Face. It's your face caught in an inadvertent selfie, the one you see when you catch yourself on the computer camera -- aarrgh! Apparently, this is the resting face we all assume -- not assume -- the other, public face is the one we assume. This is the one you are stuck with forever, unless you train yourself, as some women have done, to put on a happy face. Men expect it of you. I remember I was going through a boarding line-up, handing in my boarding pass, eager to get to my seat, quite early in the morning. The man who was taking the passes (it's usually a woman, isn't it?) said to me, "Come on, give us a smile." Women don't say that. And no one says it to a man.

* ghrelin (sic) My SpelChek wants to change it to gremlin. No, thanks. Ghrelin is a hormone, an enzyme produced by stomach lining cells that stimulates appetite." I don't think I want to know any more about that.

* THE BLUE ZONES SOLUTION by Dan Buettiner, a new book about the longest-lived people on earth (in five different countries), with lists and recipes from a cookbook, The Plant Power Way: Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes and Guidance for the Whole Family by D. Rich Roll and Julie Platt. Roll was named one of the 25 Fittest Guys in the World in 2013. I checked one of the sample recipes, for potato salad. Not much different from what I do except that it used Vegenaise, an eggless mayo. Oh, dear, where do I find that? If you want to know the five countries, you can look them up on the net. The NYT reporter (see below) sampled Sardinia Stew (one of the countries). It's Minestrone and it's supposed to make you live to be 100.

* That reporter (Jeff Gordinier) called wheatgrass "penitent hedge clippings" Cute.

* "THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (the tale of Minnie Goetze), an illustrated novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, based on her own diaries, was produced as a play first, by Gloeckner and is out now as a film earning some good comments. I love women's diaries; I have to own it.

*chatbot - it's a robot designed to keep you company and talk to you, like Siri or like HER (in the movie). Yeah, it's the stuff of movies,novels, plays, you name it, you write it.

There's more, always more, but that's enough for now. Have a good one.