Guest Post: Not today. Paul Curran died

There’s no Sunday guest column from Paul Curran this week. He died. Warning. Several glasses of wine have gone from hand to mouth in the production of this blog post. We don’t know why our friend Paul Curran passed away. I found out that the man who lived im Ottawa, Canada, the writer who graced…

We’ve lost Paul Curran, our master guest columnist and prolific comment-leaver

Those of us who’ve grown to love the lively words that bounced from the head and fingers of Paul Curran will never be the same. The writer from Canada has died, according to his neighbor Steve Watson. I received this email on the contact tab from my blog: With great sadness I have to tell…

A theater big enough for all sorts of shows fits Freedom of the Seas

The Arcadia Theater is a busy room on Freedom of the Seas. Our happy group went there after dinner every night. Royal Caribbean International made sure to put a fitting exclamation point of a showroom on this big ship of theirs. To me, it looked like the nicely decorated joint holds around 1,000 people in…

A balcony room brings the really great outdoors to my dear wife Karen and I on Freedom of the Seas

If we were going to take the big ship Freedom of the Seas to St. Thomas and St. Martin, my dear wife Karen said, we were going to go for it big time. She told our cruise buddy leaders JoAnn and Brenda to book us a balcony room when they were putting the gang together…

Somehow the Freedom of the Seas seems roomy

With somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 folks on Freedom of the Seas, I had the notion that the ship would seem more crowded than any of the cruises I’ve taken with my dear wife Karen. Not so. Somehow, the space planners made this shop seem roomy, from the promenade lined with shops and restaurants…

On Freedom of the Seas, we take off on our biggest cruise yet

My dear wife Karen and I have enjoyed many fantastic cruises together on a bunch of really nice ships. I believe the biggest we’ve been on were the two that took us to Bermuda, the very first I ever took, which left from New Jersey, and the second out of the Port of Baltimore. Different…

Before you can cruise you gotta get there

My dear wife Karen and I booked this vacation 15 months ago. That’s when our fearless vacation-on-the-seas leaders Brenda-and-JoAnn told the group that they’d like us all to go on the big ship out of Port Canaveral to Coco Kay, St. Thomas and St. Martin, and my dear wife Karen surprised me very pleasantly by…

Which mind will master the most laughs in this corny caper?

The stars are aligned for big laughs. Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon are the two main women in the tale, and Leslie Jones has a major role as well. If you’re keeping score at home, that means Masterminds employs three-quarters of the cast of the latest Ghostbusters – and the ones that were funnier than…

Action, camera, Lights?

My dear wife Karen and I are fans of Lights on the Lake. The past several years, we’ve taken the chance to stroll along the path at Onondaga Lake Park when they’ve opened the annual blazing-lights tradition along the trails on the shore. We’ve even taken Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle. Now that I work…

It’s looking like autumn outside Nichols

Yes, the temperatures are falling when the sun goes down here in Central New York. There hasn’t been frost on the pumpkin yet, as the saying goes, but as the calendar flips to the month of that orange gourd today, the folks at Liverpool grocery Nichols are ready for the season. Fall, that is. Autumn.…