I don’t need a personal trainer so much as I need someone to follow me around and slap food out of my hands. #PlanetFitness #ExerciseCheckIn #45MinutesElliptical #Done
Three 50-word stories about getting Invisalign® braces in my 60s.
Before | During | After |
I had very-visible metal braces in 1986 when I was 29 years old. 35 years later, on September 30, 2021, I got new-fangled, Invisalign® braces to re-straighten my teeth. Recommended by a friend, I got them at Zaytoun Orthodontics, and the estimated time to complete my treatment was 6 months. | Being the overachiever that I am, I finished in 4 months. I swear that the biggest contributor to that was using bite sticks many times a day (instead of just the recommended 3 times), because it was a satisfying substitute for biting my fingernails, which I could no longer do. | I got retainers on February 3, 2022, which I’ve now been wearing for 3 years. I’ve only forgotten to wear them 3 nights (unsurprisingly, each after a night of drinking) over those 3 years, and I’ve never once done the proverbial accidentally tossing of them into a McDonald’s trash can. |
Exercise check-in
Not to brag or anything, but I finished my 14-day diet in 3 hours and 38 minutes. #PlanetFitness #ExerciseCheckIn #CoreStrengthening #UpperBodyStrengthening
Quick with a joke, or to light up your smoke
Bob recently got out an old glass ashtray and put it on his nightstand intending to keep his lip balm in it.
Seeing no lip balm in it after several days, I got the idea to put something in it myself.
I went looking for what I wanted in these stores in this order:
- Ace Hardware (they have a small, old-fashioned candy area, oddly enough)
- TJMaxx (only looked there because it was next on my place to run errands)
- Dollar Tree (the place I really expected to find it)
With no luck in any of those places, from the Dollar Tree, I googled “Nearby old-fashioned candy stores,” and lo and behold there was one a little more than a mile from me. It’s a place I’ve never heard of:
And finally, I found what I was looking for for Bob’s ashtray:
Mostly Social Book Club books read in 2023
Our Mostly Social Book Club has been meeting for 32 years. We all worked together (at IBM) when we started the group, so now we’re all “of a certain age”—let’s just call it “retirement age” since we all are now.
We read 16 books in 2023, and at yesterday’s meeting, we thought about picking our favorite book of 2023, but when we started going through the list, we ended up happy enough just to remember what each book was about.
The 16 books we read in 2023 are on our web page.
Current NYT puzzles I’m doing—Connections & Wordle
Connections
In June of 2023, the New York Times introduced a new game called “Connections.” I started playing it in July. Here’s how it works and how the July 9, 2023 puzzle worked out for me to give you a feel for how it works if you’re not familiar with it.
Here are the rules:

Here’s the puzzle ready to start:

Here’s my first guess grouping guess:

Here’s the confirmation that my first grouping guess was correct, along with what their “connection” is, and my guess at a 2nd grouping:

Here’s the confirmation that my second grouping guess was correct, along with what their “connection” is, and my guess at a 3rd grouping:

Here’s the confirmation that my third grouping guess was correct, along with what their “connection” is, and choosing the only remaining items for the 4th grouping:

Here’s the confirmation that the remaining four were correct and what their “connection” is:

And here’s the image they provide to share on social media to let others know how you did without revealing the answers:

Wordle
I have been playing Wordle for a long, long time—since it debuted in October of 2021. Here’s how the July 9, 2023 puzzle worked out for me to give you a feel for how it works if you’re not familiar with it.
Here are the rules:

Here’s the puzzle ready to be started:

Here’s my 1st move on the July 9, 2023 puzzle:

Here’s my 2nd move on the July 9, 2023 puzzle:

Here’s my 3rd move on the July 9, 2023 puzzle:

Here’s my 4th move on the July 9, 2023 puzzle:

Here’s the image it gives you to share on social media without revealing the answer:

Northern Europe cruise | Port 4 | Olden, Norway
It’s Tuesday, June 20, 2023 and our 11-hour port call today was from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Olden, Norway.
6:00 – 8:00 am: Sailing the Norwegian Coast. Enjoy scenic views from Observation Lounge (Deck 17), Surfside Café and Grill (Buffet, Deck 17), Sun Deck (Deck 18 forward), or from your own balcony cabin.
We didn’t get any pictures pulling into this port.
8:00 am – 7:00 pm: In port.
9:45 am – 2:00 pm: Amazing Briksdal Glacier excursion Meet on the dock and look for the BearCruise group. Excursion leaves promptly at 10 am and returns at 2:00 pm.
Amazing Briksdal Glacier excursion:
The excursion will depart from the village of Olden. Head out through the valley along Lake Olden to Rustøen, all the way at the end of the fjord. Here you will find many colourful farms and waterfalls.
From Rustøen we go to Briksdal Inn. This is where we’ll walk to the Briksdal Glacier. A beautiful trail surrounded by waterfalls and mountains will lead you to the viewpoint at the glacier lake. The walk to the viewpoint normally takes approximately 45-60 minutes.
Following your time on the glacier we’ll head back to the ship.
Photos of the excursion
Some sites right at the dock:
Scenery during our 1.5-hour bus ride to the Briksdal Glacier. That 5th picture is of beautiful Lake Olden, which we made at stop at on the way back for a photo op. (More of those pics below.)
At Briksdal, we had a fairly easy 45-minute hike—although it was all uphill and a little steep in a couple of spots—of about 45 minutes—with several waterfalls along the way. Some were quite high and a bit of a way from us; others were right upon us:
Us at various points along the hike:
of the glacier
at the area at the top
of the glacier
Some very short (5-10 seconds) videos of waterfalls we saw during the hike. Bob is waving to me from that bridge in the last video. I love how his head bobs from side to side after a bit. 😃
Here are some shots of the “reward” for making it to an open area up close to (what’s left of) the glacier. This is my second time seeing a glacier—I saw several on an Alaskan cruise in 2024—and they always look so unreal.
of the glacier
at the area at the top
of the glacier
Some roadside scenery on the drive back from the glacier to the ship. Norway is very open and you can pretty much camp anywhere there.
We made a stop at beautiful Lake Olden, which we’d passed by on the way up to the glacier, for a photo op. I’d have to say this was the most beautiful place I saw on this trip. That’s our friends Al (also our group’s cruise director) and Ken in the last picture.
6:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
I actually took a few pictures at our cocktail hour gathering today. Just some bears relaxing and catching up about their days.
7:00 pm: Dinner—Specialty Restaurant of the Day‐Hasuki Japanese Grill, Deck 7
This was one of Bob’s and my second “free” restaurant in one of the ones you usually have to pay for, and it was a “Kanki-like” restaurant if you’re familiar with it. You sit in groups of 8 around a hibachi and your own private chef cooks for you. They sat our group of 6 with this straight couple who was already seated, and it was a fun, fun time, with a great chef and most-delicious food.
ice cream dessert
8:00 pm – midnight: Disco Party – BearCruise group meet-up at the ship’s disco party, Prima Theater, deck 6.
I went up to the cabin and bed right after dinner, as it was late by then, and I was tired. Bob “took a twirl,” seeing if any of our group were at the disco.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 3 | Ålesund, Norway
It’s Monday, June 19, 2023 and we had an 11-hour port call from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in Ålesund, Norway.
9:00 – 11 am: Sailing the Norwegian Coast. Enjoy scenic views from Observation Lounge (Deck 17), Surfside Café and Grill (Buffet, Deck 17), Sun Deck (Deck 18 forward), or from your own balcony cabin.
Here are a couple of pictures from our balcony as we pulled into the port:
11:00 am – 10:00 pm: In port.
Bob and I had a leisurely breakfast and morning, since our meeting time for today’s 7.5-hour excursion wasn’t until 12:15—for a 12:30 departure.
12:15 – 8:00 pm: Fjords, Trolls, and More or Ålesund Ultimate Sightseeing excursions. Meet on the dock and look for the BearCruise group. Excursions leave promptly at 12:30.
Bob and I were scheduled to to on the 7.5-hour Fjords, Trolls, and More excursion, described as:
From the cruise ship, we’ll make our way through the beautiful area outside Ålesund, to the land of the trolls.
After a scenic drive we will arrive at the breathtakingly beautiful Gudbrandsjuvet ravine. You can walk over a bridge from one side of the ravine to the other. From here the bus will drive through the National Park Reinheimen, to the Trollstigen plateau. Enjoy the amazing view over the Troll Road as well as the waterfall Stigfossen. When driving down the Troll Road, the driver will safely drive the bus through 11 hairpin bends. At the bottom of the Troll Road, there will be an extra photo stop from where you will be able to take the best pictures of the day!
Next up is a visit to the Troll Wall, Europe’s tallest vertical rock face, and the impressive Romsdalshorn. After this stop, it is time to head back to Ålesund.
However, we arrived at the meeting point on the dock at 12:10, and it was eerily empty. Thinking we might have the wrong place, I asked nearby NCL staff if he’d seen a large group of guys meeting nearby, and he said there was one about an hour earlier. Ugh!
Turns out we “didn’t get the memo” to set our clocks ahead yet another hour, so we missed the excursion’s departure an hour ago. Apparently there were two time changes over the past two days, which you may remember they tell you about with this card in your cabin.

Well, since there’s no date on the card, or any other identifying mark that it’s a different card, we thought it was the same one from the previous day laying around our cabin, so did not move our clocks ahead an additional hour.
Of course the editor in me has all kinds of suggestions about how to communicate this better. I get that they probably want to reuse them, so don’t want to do something as obvious as to date them, but they could do something like adding to the bottom of them, “First of two,” and “Second of two,” or they could mark one “The end of the day we leave Iceland” and the other one “At end of our day at sea.” Anything to let us know that the second one is a new/different card.
But we’ve let all that—and the $280 we paid for a tour we didn’t get to go on—go. Right at the port, we saw a tourism company offering a 1.5-hour “train” ride, whose next departure was about an hour away, so we walked around the port a little, and then took that.
It was a guided tour, recorded in various languages with yours selected from a choice of 8, listened to with earbuds, and it was well done. Its biggest takeaway, from people getting off the previous tour, at least was the song playing on the recording between talking, which sounded like maybe some city anthem.
Hear it for yourself:
It turned out to be a real nice tour whose highlight was the mountain town, Aksla, with a great viewpoint for pictures,
In the port area right off the ship:
In this area, there was also a mall, with gay flags out in front of it, and since we had some time we went in it to check it out. There were several stores with pride displays, and one of them had a translated Spare by Prince Harry. The translated title of the book says, “In The Shadow.”
That site at the top of the mountain is where this little “train” tour took us:
Shots of the panoramic view at the top of Aksla mountins:
Since our group would be gone until 8 PM—you know, on that excursion that we paid $280 for but didn’t get to go on but have let go— back on the ship, we took advantage of the fantastic weather by enjoying the jacuzzi.
Before we got in the jacuzzi, that lady in the last picture was at the bar and I heard that she was waiting for a beer on tap that had run out. “Draining the keg again, are ya?” I asked.
The bartender asked me what I wanted, and I told him that I didn’t mind waiting for him to change the keg and get her drink, to which she offered, “Go ahead and order yours, and I’ll bring it to the jacuzzi for you.” Very sweet.
After a little while and a couple of drinks in the jacuzzi, another member of our group, John, joined us. While talking, he asked if we’d been on the waterslide that was right next to us, and I indicated that I hadn’t but wanted to.
“I’ll go again with you if you want to.” he offered, and the liquid courage was at just the right level to seal the deal.
Bob didn’t want to do it, but he followed us up there to get a picture of me on it, but once we got all situated, John and I got to the entrance at the top only to find it closed.
While we were up on top deck of the ship, deck 20, I took a few pictures:
6:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
Some of The Whiskey Bar offerings:
7:00 pm: Dinner—No specialty restaurant of the day due to late port call departure
After happy hour, we ate at The Hudson, one of the ship’s main dining rooms. Even though we didn’t get a picture of it, appetizers did happen: Bob got the cheese ravioli (with lobster cream sauce), and I got their Caesar salad. An adorable little girl sitting next to us reminded us of a child version of our friend Jaleh.
(cheddar and corn grits, trio of peppers)
Parmesan cream sauce, mushrooms)
(Strawberry Sauce)
8:00 pm – midnight: Disco Party – BearCruise group meet-up at the ship’s disco party, Prima Theater, deck 6.
We did not make it to the disco party tonight, but it happens in the 3-story Prima Theater, where the shows are. Once the show is over, they fold down all the seats, which then collapse back toward the wall, opening up the area as a dance floor. Here’s a 2.5-minute video of how it’s done.
After dinner, I went back to our cabin and watched The Book Club, while Bob went to join our group for our 10 pm sail-away. He found the designated bar for the event closed, with no one there, but eventually found them in The Whiskey Bar.
Northern Europe cruise | At sea | Iceland to Norway
It’s Sunday, June 18, 2023, and today was an “at sea” day, which means no port call—and extra BearCruise-organized activities! We were en route from Iceland to Norway.
Noon: If you are looking for someone to join for lunch, meet at The Indulge Food Hall (Deck 8 Aft) or the Surfside Café and Grill (buffet, Deck 17 Aft). Form a small group and find a spot to enjoy lunch together.
Bob and I had lunch in The Indulge Food Hall, comprising various “stands” named: Tapas, The Garden, Nudls, The Latin Quarter, Q Texas Smokehouse, Seaside Rotisserie, Tamara, Coco’s, & Starbucks (Ugh!) Here’s what a couple of them looked like:
& Tapas (right) stands
A quirky little thing about this dining area was that if you sat at the seats at one of the stands, you could only order food made at that stand. But if you sat in the general seating area throughout the place, you could order from any (or all) of the stands. All of the food in this dining area was complimentary, so you could also order as many items as you wanted. Here are some of the various seating areas where you could order anything:
tablets to place your order
And this is what Bob and I ordered for lunch today. (We both had the tomato soup.)
(crème fraîche)
iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato, blue cheese, red wine vinaigrette)
garlic croutons, Caesar dressing)
1:00 pm: Games at The Stadium, Deck 18. Games like miniature golf, dart rooms, beer pong, foosball, tabletop shuffleboard, ping pong tables, and a pickleball court! Here’s what they looked like:
There’s another game area near The Stadium called the Galaxy Pavilion. Here’s its description and a 12-second video giving you a feel for what it’s like:
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You can see all of the virtual reality games in this area in this 5-minute full walkthrough tour.
2:00 pm: The Rush Slide Bear Races! Deck 18, Starboard, pick a partner, and race on these dry slides 10 decks down to the finish line!
I didn’t join the group today to do The Rush, but later in the week, I did do The Drop. There are three slides aboard the ship—a wet one, called The WaterSlide, by the pool and hot tubs, and 2 dry ones (The Drop and The Rush), which extend down the side of the ship for 10 stories
3:00 pm: Hot Tub Take-Over, Infinity Pool, Starboard Side, Deck 8, Oceanwalk
Bob and I didn’t join the group for the hot tub & pool takeover today.
5:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
Our daily cocktail hour / happy hour is always fun. People were raving about the Old Fashioneds they make here, so we had one today. Normally we drink either Buffalo Trace & Soda or 1792 & Soda.

6:00 pm: Dinner. Specialty Restaurant of the Day—Palomar Mediterranean and Seafood, Deck 17
As part of our package, we got to choose 3 specialty restaurants to eat in, but the one designated for the group tonight, Palomar Mediterranean and Seafood, wasn’t one of the ones Bob and I chose, so we had dinner at The Indulge Food Hall, choosing items from several different “stands.”
10:00 pm – 11:30: Summer: The Donna Summer Musical This is the ship’s current theater offering, playing twice during the cruise, on each of our days at sea (i.e., today and Thursday). It’s a touring production of the closed Broadway show.

We were only marginally interested in seeing this show, and definitely wouldn’t have if we had had to pay for it.
It was only about 15 or 20 minutes in, which included some sound effects that made me think of a laugh track, and we were not at all impressed, when all of a sudden a loud explosion-like sound happened, and for the next several seconds we could only see the lips moving of the 3 characters who were saying their lines at the time.
The lights came up, and an announcement was made to the effect of, “Ladies and gentleman, your safety is our highest priority and we want to bring you the highest quality entertainment experience on the NCL Prima. We have experienced a catastrophic technical event that is causing us to have to halt the show while we address it.”
Since the wording was such that you couldn’t tell how long they thought it would take, or if they were sure it could be fixed at all, and we weren’t enjoying it, we took advantage of the moment to leave.