Ned Luce

You are probably wondering why your new Bentley is taking so long to arrive, aren’t you? 

Well, it is one of the 4,000 cars on “Felicity Ace,” a cargo ship on fire near the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Reports are that the fire may be based in the lithium batteries of some of the electric vehicles being shipped to North America from Volkswagen Group in Germany. Reports also indicate there are several high-dollar Porsches on board. OK, get over it, it will be some time before you can straighten out the curves on “Egg and I” road. I am actually only told about this. 

My “Personal Pandemic News” includes a trip up to Tri Area Pharmacy to get my next booster shot, you know, the fourth overall. 

My enthusiasm was ambushed by a little education. I was over a month early because one needs to wait at least five months after shot number three and I was only four months past it. (Damn medical scheduling advice from BJ.) 

In addition, I thought someone as ancient as I now qualified. Not yet, kid, maybe later. 

The nurse at Tri Area told me I had plenty of COVID antibodies floating around my body and I asked how many there were and how did she know. I suspect she went looking for a foot-long needle to use on me the next time. 

Since BJ and I are now informed that we have all these antibodies we decided to try a bit of the “old normal” by taking in a movie, in person! 

We chose “Dog” being shown down in Silverdale at the AMC theater with those big reclining leather seats. 

After all this time watching movies at home, one gets a little sensitive about being in a theater with a small crowd. Well, you get even more sensitive to it when the folks sitting next to you tend to talk more than you might think necessary. 

Hey, maybe I just need to get used to it? Not really. 

The movie stars Channing Tatum who provided enough visual beefcake to hold BJ for the next five years or until I take my shirt off. Right! 

Tatum plays an Army Ranger veteran who is charged with transporting a Belgian Malinois down the West Coast. Of course, one driving scene includes the song “On the Road Again,” being sung by Willie Nelson prompting my seat mates to obnoxiously sing along. Come on, give me a break. We liked the movie, though.

There are several places around Port Ludlow where you can encounter your neighbors or local friends. I am thinking about places like the Convenience Store, Active Life physical therapy, the recycling center, and so on. 

I was doing our recycling the other day when a woman walked by with a bag containing several glass items, apparently wine/beer/alcohol bottles. She thought I was taking note of her load so she jokingly muttered, “My husband is an alcoholic.” Just another example of transference of accountability. BJ knows this nice woman so I will let her absorb the blowback from this story. 

So, the Olympics are over and you can identify your favorite sport. 

BJ and I talked about this over the weekend and came to the conclusion that curling became our “go-to” event. There appeared to be no illegal drugs involved and even though there were a couple of “quarantines” most of the teams had plenty of members available. I wonder if, in a pinch, they can operate with fewer “sweepers”? BJ looked up the rules so, for the first time in our lives, we gained a rudimentary understanding of the game. 

Of course, this will help us the next time we go to Canada and we turn on the television in the hotel. 

The hockey events had genuine competitive flair but that puck is still hard to see on TV. 

The skiing events had drama aplenty, with surprises, disappointments, high winds, political drama with an eighteen-year-old from San Francisco on the Chinese team, and much more. 

Curling seemed to have reasonable people sliding rocks at other rocks rather than people. Just sayin’. 

In a paraphrasing of a David Letterman quote, “Does it seem strange that a significant portion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the pandemic is fake?”

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week!

(Ned Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident, and advises that when your ship finally does come in, you better make sure your Bentley still has that “new car smell.” Contact Ned at ned@ptleader.com.)