Bath, Stonehenge, Windsor
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
With a grand total of about five hours sleep, my night’s rest on Monday, going into Tuesday, March 30, 2010, held the record for the most consecutive minutes of shut-eye during the week of my London trip. Bob and I got up that morning at around 6:30am, got ready, and headed down to the continental breakfast in the basement floor of the Central Park Hotel. I was very disappointed that it was so skimpy. For some reason, I had expected the amazing buffet that we had gotten in Guatemala and I had seen in many of the hotels in Europe. But this week, I survived on a couple of buttered croissants and the occasional bowl of mushy raisin and bran cereal. Read the rest of this entry »
In addition to being one the most popular and acclaimed sitcoms of all time (and certainly one of my favorites), Seinfeld boosted the fame and recognition of many up-and-coming performers. There are few who are more recognizable for playing one single role in one episode (plus a cameo in the series finale) as Larry Thomas, who portrayed The Soup Nazi in the episode of the same name. Granted he did a great job in this role, and was even nominated for an Emmy for it, but I’m guessing that he has made more money in peddling his autograph over the past five years or so than he ever made in this solitary role. 
Since the Summer of 1997, I had been making some sort of initiative every day to attempt to secure one autograph or another. As we began to sink into the heart of December, Christmas preparations no doubt deterred me from continuing this effort. And then as we got into 1998, my efforts began to falter, so it wasn’t until around April of that year that I resumed. The initiative that had been going on from July thru December 1997 came to it’s climax and close with my last successful effort being Bettie Page. 
In doing this posting, it is going to be necessary to admit that I have not watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy from director Peter Jackson. I’ve seen some of the first one, but that’s it. Yes, I know that one of these films is an Academy Award winner for Best Picture, and that these movies have been acclaimed and loved world-wide. But although I own them, I have never watched them. Having said that, I can in fact claim that I have met one of the principal players from the film. 
I had my work cut out for me after I got back from Gatlinburg, with lots to do and little time to do it. I would be leaving for my next big trip in two weeks and the countdown was on. For starters, Ashleigh’s 1995 Chevy Prism had died while I was in London. Mom and Bob had hooked her up with a used 1996 Toyota Camry and I needed to go through all the rigmarole of getting the title transferred and all that good stuff. The grass had been growing and growing all this time as well, so I cut it for the first time of the year on April 12 – despite the sputtering, stalling mower that couldn’t capably deal with such long grass.