In a blog post from November 2017, I announced to my wide world of readers (all 50 of you) that I was embarking on a continuing education program whereby I would train myself to like whiskey. Up to that point, I was a firm wine or gin drinker, with an occasional bloody mary or margarita thrown in for variety. I was surprised at the amount of support I got on my endeavor. I don’t know if people are just happy to see someone my age taking on new adventures, or if more people than I realize own stock in the adult beverage business.

Unexpected people started giving me bottles of their favorite whiskeys. I got an interesting whiskey called Tincup from a friend who likely doesn’t drink anything stronger than sherry. Tincup has the distinction of being made in Colorado using Rocky Mountain water. While visiting Bill and me for Thanksgiving 2017, my nephew Christopher, also mostly a nondrinker, showed up one afternoon with a bottle of Makers Mark bourbon, determined that bourbon should be my whiskey of choice. Bill’s son David gave me a bottle of fine Glenfiddich Scotch whiskey for Christmas that year, telling me the best way to drink it is with a touch of water. Pretty good recommendation from another nondrinker. My nephew Erik took me to a very cool whiskey and cigar bar and bought me a lovely rye to give a whirl.

I have tried them all and more, and have come down on the side of a favorite. More about that later.

If you will recall, my interest in whiskey can be attributed to the television program Blue Bloods, in which Police Commissioner Frank Reagan drinks a glass of whiskey on almost every program. He just looks so cool. In the most recent episode, he went into a bar and ordered a drink. Here is what he said, verbatim: I want an Irish, neat, with a glass of ice. 

I’m telling you, I’m going to do that. I’m going to go into a dark bar with leather seats where there are people sitting at the bar hunched over their drinks, and say Give me an Irish, neat, with a glass of ice. 

A few months ago, Eddie (who is Jamie’s fiance from the same television series) went into a bar and said Give me a glass of Irish whiskey with one ice cube. One ice cube. That threw me. I mentioned this to my son Court, and he explained that the ice cube she was talking about is really big, and cubes that size are good for whiskey because they melt slowly.

So I went into a bar in Fort Collins with Bill and my sister Jen, and ordered a glass of Jameson with one ice cube. The bartender poured me a glass of Jameson and gave me one teeny-tiny ice cube. I’m pretty sure he rolled his eyes when he had his back to me.

Yesterday as Bill and I were driving to Total Wine and Liquor so I could stock up on Tanqueray and the whiskey which I have declared to be my favorite (again, more about that later), I told him I wanted to go to a bar in San Tan (the upscale area where Total Wine and Liquor is located) and order an Irish, neat, with a glass of ice on the side. Bill smiled patiently and explained that I should refrain from saying “on the side” as that was redundant and sounded stupid. He didn’t say stupid.

So, finally I am going to tell you what I have decided is my favorite whiskey. The winner is: Crown Royal, with Jameson coming in at second place. The Jack Daniels is for Bill….

I announced my decision to Bill, adding that I was somewhat embarrassed that Jameson didn’t come in at first place. He told me not to be embarrassed; instead, be a proud drinker of Canadian whiskeys. After all, Canadians are really nice.

I just wish the makers of Crown Royal didn’t use so much packaging for their product. Seriously, I want to figure out how to recycle the Crown Royal bags, maybe into newborn baby caps.

By the way, we did go to a bar in San Tan, but I drank a Diet Coke.

Cheers.

I know practically nothing about about football, except that I like to watch it. I never see holding. I can never remember the difference between offsides and encroachment. I just look at which side is cheering. I say this so that you understand that representatives of the ownerships of the Denver Broncos and the Arizona Cardinals did not call and consult me on matters of whether or not to fire their head coaches, and subsequently, provide suggestions on replacements.

Despite my coaching inexperience, I believed it was time for recently-fired Denver Head Coach Vance Johnson to go, and also couldn’t argue with the decision of ownership of the Arizona Cardinals to fire their coach considering they ended up last in the NFL.

Having said that, I will also relay to you my surprise that the Cardinals chose someone with the decidedly millennial name (and spelling) of Kliff Kingsbury to be their head coach. He has a full zero years of NFL experience, and recently was fired for coaching the losing Texas Tech football team. Not a stellar resume, I would say. He looks like he could be on The Bachelor.

We learned yesterday that the Cardinals eagerly selected Broncos cast-off Coach VJ to be their defensive coach. I don’t know. Maybe they know something we football plebes don’t know.

When I heard the news about the hiring of Vance Johnson, I couldn’t help but text my brother — a loyal, if disheartened, Cards fan: Vance Johnson: Tag, you’re it!

His response?: Gee, thanks.

Being his older sister, I added: If there is a beauty contest, you guys got it nailed!

He quickly came back with Our new slogan instead of “Rise up Red Sea” is “We look good losing.”…..

New Cardinals Defensive Coach Vance Joseph and New Cardinals Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury.

That made me laugh for awhile. Good thing it’s only football.

Have a great weekend.

Vindication
My mother was a bit on the cautious side. That is not a criticism, because I am exactly like her, and proud of it! She taught me many cautionary lessons, but the one that perhaps sticks in my mind the most is her rule that one should never put on or remove the beater of a mixer when it is plugged in. The chance of mangled fingers is waaaay to high. As a result of hearing her say this over and over, I have never — not once — removed or placed a beater on a plugged-in mixer. I have also been known to yell at Tricia Yearwood or Ree Drummond (on the television, of course) that they should be unplugging the mixer before they remove the attachment. They don’t listen. The other day, I had my Kitchen Aid mixer out to make a carrot cake. It was the first time out since we arrived. I put on the attachment, and then plugged in the mixer. It turned on immediately because evidently the power switch had been turned on. Had it not been unplugged, I wouldn’t be typing this blog because my fingers would most assuredly be mangled. Ha! Vindication for my mother. And a caution to you all.

When the Cat’s Away
Bill has been out of town for a couple of days, having to go back to Denver for a doctor’s appointment. Though he doesn’t sat much, he simply can’t understand how I can sit and binge watch a television program. Over the summer, I binged seven seasons of The Closer. He would walk in the room and shake his head. While he was gone, I binged all the episodes of The Innocent Man on Netflix, a program Bill would have hated. I went from one episode to the next, until I thought my head would explode. But it was AWESOME to be able to watch a program like that without feeling rather than seeing someone’s eyes roll. If you’re into true crime, I recommend it.

One Checked Off
One of the good things about watching The Innocent Man is that now I can cancel my hold for the book by John Grisham upon which the television series is based. It is the author’s first foray into nonfiction, and I have had it on hold at the library for a while. Normally I would prefer a book over a screen, but I am so backed up on library e-books right now that being able to remove one from my holds is a relief.

Hold Still
In Bill’s absence, my brother Dave came over to my house and cooked carne asada on the grill for me. His daughter Kacy joined us, along with her four kids — Kelsie, Lexie, Jenna, and Ava. Before they left for the evening, I managed to get them to hold still long enough to shoot a photo…..

Ciao!

A blogger whom I follow made an interesting New Year’s resolution, and challenged her readers to consider doing likewise. Her resolution? Going to the grocery store only once a week.

For years, I — along with every other parent who had a full-time paying job — faithfully shopped only once a week, generally on Saturday. When I was first retired, it took a bit of time before I could convince myself that I no longer had to shop with the masses; I could shop on, say, Thursday afternoon or Tuesday morning. I had few obligations to inhibit shopping choices.

And yet still, for the most part, I shopped once a week. I chose Monday morning as my self-designated shopping day. Soon I figured out that Monday morning was not a good choice, since the shelves were empty from all of those working stiffs who had shopped on Sunday. It also seems that grocery store management apparently is no longer willing to pay for a night stocking crew. So I spent a significant amount of time dodging stocking pallets while the crew stocked shelves between customers’ legs.

I think it was after we bought our home here in AZ that shopping every day slowly became my normal. There is a Basha’s grocery store about a three minute walk from my house. So while I would generally still make a grocery list and buy my big items at the local Kroger store or perhaps Costco or Walmart, it seems like I would forget something or other, and find myself walking to Basha’s.

Before I really paid attention to what was happening, I found that I was shopping on a daily basis — both in AZ and in Denver. Tsk tsk. I know that is killer on the budget. That’s why the above-mentioned blogger is challenging herself to only shop once a week.

When Bill and I traveled in Europe for those three months in 2008, I noticed that Italian women generally go to the market every day for their groceries. They walked to the closest markets pulling a grocery cart, which I came to call a nonna cart. At the meat market, they picked out a chicken or some sausage. At the vegetable market, they looked at all of the vegetables and decided which looked good to them. No squeezing was necessary because if the vegetables weren’t ready to be eaten, they wouldn’t be in the market. Believe me, I know this because I — being an American — was a guilty vegetable squeezer. I got the evil eye from many Italian women because of this practice. Next they marched to the bakery to choose bread and a sweet treat.

While admittedly, we ate the majority of our meals at restaurants for those three months, I did cook meals when I could. I recall one trip to a market in the small Italian hill town of Roccatederighi in Tuscany…..

Roccatederighi

With a population of about 850, Bill and I couldn’t hide the fact that we were tourists. My Mickey Mouse baseball cap and Bill’s All My Exes Live in Texas t-shirt hinted that we were Americans. (Just kidding, but only barely.)

I decided I wanted to make dinner for us that evening, as it was a drizzly day. The communication between the local grocery market owner and me was a sight to behold. I remember asking her for olive oil, basil, tomatoes, and spaghetti in Italian (olio d’oliva, basilico, pomodori, and spaghetti), and her looking at me like I had two heads. I guess my Italian wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. But we were able to work it out via my dictionary and lots of hand gestures, and I went home with the correct ingredients.

I digress, I know. But I have sort of modeled my grocery shopping behaviors after those nonnas that I saw in Italy, down to even buying and using my own nonna cart…..

So, while I gave the blogger’s challenge some consideration, I don’t plan on limiting my shopping to one day a week, though hats off to those who do. Instead, I will lose weight, eat healthy, and get more organized.

Yeah, right.

I have long since come to grips with the fact that television commercials aren’t directed at Baby Boomers. This, despite the fact that there are a hell of a lot of us out here, and we have a fair amount of disposable income. Many of us no longer have house payments, our grocery bills are significantly less than those of our children, and our clothing budget is more affordable because velour pantsuits don’t cost that much.

Having said that, it still flummoxes me that so many commercials totally escape me. Not only that, but so many of them take an annoyingly long time to even tell you what product they’re pushing. For example, there is a commercial that seemingly runs 20 times an hour, and every single time it catches my eye and ear. It is a lively commercial featuring hundreds of people wearing brightly-colored jumpsuits running together. Running running running. There is a catchy tune playing in the background. It isn’t until the very last few seconds — a full 60 seconds since those very in-shape people started running — that you learn that the commercial is for the new Apple iPhone. Why the people are running is never disclosed.

The problem is that I never remember what company has paid millions to run that commercial. Each time it plays, the tune catches my ear, but being a Baby Boomer, I can’t ever remember what’s being advertised. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. But as a person who spent years in a marketing-related position, it goes against everything I was taught. Get your name right up front, I learned. Your audience might give up if you wait too long.

I am reminded how often I can remember a commercial, but can’t remember the product. If it’s funny, I can usually count on it being a Geico commercial. (Speaking of Geico, isn’t it fun that they are running their old commercials? I forgot that Geico commercials were funny even before the lizard — er, gecko — became the star.)

I don’t think marketing folks give Baby Boomers enough credit. Those of us who forget which is the accelerator and which is the brake are not representative of the majority. Baby Boomers are gamers. Despite our inevitable aches and pains, we don’t give up. When our hips or knees fail, we just replace them. That’s why God invented Medicare.

I believe I have mentioned that Bill gave me a new computer for my birthday. Last week, I went to Best Buy and purchased the newest version of Microsoft Word. Despite the salesman assuring us that downloading it was a breeze — couldn’t be easier — a few hours later we were visiting Best Buy’s Geek Squad. As we waited for our technician with the assuredly non-Baby Boomer name of Stacy to become available, I took the opportunity to glance around at the others also waiting. Down to the very last person, we were Baby Boomers. I kid you not.

We grew up with typewriters that dinged when you came to the end of the line, signifying that it was time to manually move the roller. Our first television experiences were with black and white screens that were about a foot by a foot in a counsel that was bigger than a ’57 Chevy. We were stupified by transistor radios.

But see above. We are gamers. We are not about to let the fact that our new computers have touch screens and more memory than I even comprehend stop us. (Seriously, my new computer’s hard drive has a terabyte of memory, a word I was convinced Bill made up.) So while we have no idea how our computers work, we do know the way to get to Geek Squad.

We may not know why those folks are running, but we are the champions……of the world! Here are two really nice Baby Boomers…..

See how high-tech my telephone looks.

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