ivman's blague

today’s instant vacation…

My wife and I have long since gotten over the initial sting of when we first started being offered seniors discounts. What bothered me when I was offered a discount for the first time, I wasn’t yet old enough to be eligible! (So what does that tell you?!) Now we actually ask if we’re eligible! Quite the reversal, huh? Today’s iv is a couple of my favorite bits of senior humor.

The 84-Year-Old Bride

A local news station was interviewing an 84-year-old woman because she had just gotten married for the fourth time.

The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 84, and then about her new husband’s occupation.

“He’s a funeral director,” she answered.

“Interesting,” thought the newsman. He then asked her if she wouldn’t mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living.

She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years. After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she first married a banker when she was in her early 20s, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40s, later on a preacher when in her 60s, and now, in her 80s, a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

“That’s easy, son,” she smiled. “I married one for the money, … two for the show, … three to get ready, … and four to go!”

***
This is Rob again. We actually learned recently that a long-time friend, a widower, will be getting married in August. This octagenarian met his wife-to-be on eHarmony.com! Neither of them is living in what are typically thought of as places where retirees choose to live, where these senior romances seem to abound. Here’s the second bit of senior humor:

In Florida and Arizona (where retirees abound), the personal ads have become rather long-in-the-tooth. Here is a sampling:

FOXY LADY: Fashion-conscious, blue-haired beauty, slim, 5′ 4″ (used to be 5′ 6″), searching for sharp-looking, smart-dressing man. Matching white shoes and belt a plus.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT: Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot. Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.

SERENITY NOW: I am into solitude, long walks, sunrises, the ocean, and meditation. If you are the silent type, let’s get together, take our hearing aids out, and enjoy quiet times.

WINNING SMILE: Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flosser to share rare steaks, corn on the cob, and caramel candy.

GROOVY: I still like to cruise in my Camaro on Saturday nights. If you were a groovy chick, or are now a groovy hen, let’s get together and listen to my boss collection of eight-track tapes.

MEMORIES: I can usually remember Monday through Thursday. If you can remember Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let’s put our two heads together.

MINT CONDITION: Male, 1932, high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves. Doesn’t run, but walks well.

***
Our latest reminder of being seniors was yesterday at the World of Coca Cola in Atlanta, where 55+ is considered “senior.” My wife and I spent the day in Atlanta yesterday to see friends who were visiting from France. They lived in Greenville in the mid 1990s and we got to know them well. The last time we were in France with a team of students in 2001, these friends came to see us one weekend in Rouen. We had a wonderful time together, renewing our ties with them. A new Atlanta experience for us, in addition to being in Atlanta in the summer and having the temps be in the mid 80s with low humidity, was getting all over the place on MARTA. It got us very close to everywhere we wanted to go - including to a bus stop right across the street from one of our Atlanta favorites the Dekalb Farmers Market. The MARTA workers were extremely friendly and helpful - several even spoke French to us! What more could you want for an eight dollar, all-day pass?

Back to the World of Coca Cola for a second…. The new museum has some neat new features, but we still prefer the old Coke Museum. Do any of you who have visited both the old Coke museum and this new one share our opinion?

quotation…

“Bad people don’t become good people by rules.” - J. D. Crowley

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Rob

Senior pick-up line… A well dressed gentleman in his mid-eighties enters a local diner. When he spots an immaculately groomed lady in her mid-seventies seated at the lunch counter, he goes directly to the counter and sits down on the stool beside her. He looks at her slyly and says, “Say, do I eat here often?”

Tags: aging, Atlanta, France, senior citizens, weddings and marriage

My wife and I have been wanting to go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta ever since it opened two years ago. We decided that that was something we wanted to do during our Christmas break this year. As we talked about it, we decided that yesterday would be the perfect day for us to go there since it was a weekday and would be before most schools would be out for Christmas break. We went to their website and bought our tickets in advance.

On our way to the Atlanta area we stopped at one of our favorite places along I-85 in Georgia - the Mayfield dairy visitor center in Braselton, GA - get off at exit 129 and follow the signs. We both enjoyed a favorite - a scoop of turtle tracks ice cream. The folks at Mayfield had decorated their cow outside for the season…

Our plan for visiting the aquarium could not have been better. We sat in the car in the parking structure and ate the lunch we’d brought along since Becka had seen online that the food prices in the aquarium’s food court were too high for our tastes. After eating we walked to the building and arrived 20 minutes before the entry time we had signed up for, but no problem. There was no line outside at all and we were able to go in early. There were plenty of people there, but it was by no means crowded at all. Bliss! As I share some photos we took, I apologize for the quality of some - I was trying to do them without flash (sometimes mandatorially and sometimes optionally). But since it took longer for the pictures to take, either my subjects moved or I moved the camera slightly, both of which motions altered the clarity.

Throughout the day I just kept praising God again and again for His creation! It was wonderful to see such a huge display of the infinite creativity of the Lord in the creatures He made to inhabit this planet with us!

The first exhibit we visited was the Ocean Voyager exhibit. What a great way to get started! The observation window in that exhibit is the second largest viewing window in the world at 23 feet tall by 61 feet wide and the acrylic window is 2 feet thick! The scene behind the window is amazing with schools of beautiful fish, several kinds of stingrays, enormous goliath grouper and several kinds of sharks, including hammerhead sharks and zebra sharks. The tank itself - the size of an American football field and containing 6.3 million gallons of water - was built to be large enough to house whale sharks, the largest known fish in the world. Below is a picture of one of their whale sharks…

On one of our visits back to that exhibit, we were fortunate to be there at the whale shark’s feeding time. The whale shark would be no threat to people since the opening of its throat is the size of a quarter. That kind of shark is a filter feeder, sucking in large amounts of water to filter out the krill and other creatures small enough for it to swallow. There’s also a 100-foot-long underwater tunnel through which you can walk and see the inhabitants of that tanks swim all around you and above you.

Each of the other four exhibits was interesting and unique, bringing to our inspection creatures from all over the world. The creatures we saw were extremely varied and fascinating. We saw horseshoe crabs, shrimp, Amazonian tropical fish, sea stars, African black-footed penguins, sea anemones, Australian leafy sea dragons, a giant Pacific octopus, seahorses, Japanese spider crabs, California sea lions, sea otters, and on and on I could go.

I’d like to share with you some of the things we found the most amazing or amusing. We saw some odd little creatures called garden eels. They live in little holes they’ve dug for themselves in the sand. They are about 16 inches long, but the most we ever saw was about the 6 inches that peeked out when no fish were nearby. Here’s the best shot I could get of the garden eels…

Other strange creatures we saw were the jelly fish. The colors and their movements were really cool….

The loggerhead turtles were really fun to watch and kind of made me think of the turtle tracks ice cream at Mayfield’s dairy…

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the antics of their five Asian small-clawed river otters. They moved about so quickly that I really had a struggle to get a clear shot of any of them. Here’s my best shot…

Another really cool observation window was the one for the beluga whales. (BELUGA! for those of you who remember the “Bulbous Bouffant” thing that was popular a could of years ago.) The aquarium has three belugas - one male and two females (a mother and her daughter.) Here’s a picture of the three beluga whales…

We enjoyed watching them for a long time - it was just so soothing! They can swim upside down. Here’s a shot of Nico, the male, swimming upside down.

Nico seemed to enjoy swimming near the front of the tank where people were watching. The guides told us that the creatures inside could see us, just as we could see them. Here’s a shot I took of my wife Becka watching Nico…

Our advice to anyone who’s thinking about going there and has never been before:

1. Forget the 4-D show, unless you’ve never seen a 3-D show before. It was cute, but it was a cartoon, rather than real sea creatures. There was another “dimension” to the show that made it 4-D, but since the place is already expensive enough, it’s not a necessary part of a positive visit to the Atlanta Aquarium.

2. Don’t take any child younger than about 7 or 8. We saw a number of children younger than that thoroughly not enjoying themselves. Children under 3 are free, but really don’t take much of it in at all and can be downright annoying to those who are trying to enjoy their experiences. (Read: we saw and heard plenty of crabby babies and toddlers, and the only crabs should be those inside the acrylic. And children 3 to 8 really don’t know enough to fully appreciate what they’re seeing, unless your (grand)child is a prodigy, of course….

3. A good starting time for your visit would be at noon or maybe 12:30. That way, you could eat your lunch before going in, yet still have plenty of time to visit all afternoon.

We ended our Atlanta experience by eating dinner at the cafeteria at the Dekalb Farmers Market and shopping for some great produce and specialty items before heading back to Greenville.

What a pleasant day! We’d do it again in a heartbeat! We’d love to hear that this has inspired some of you to go visit it too.

Tags: animals, Atlanta, educational, math and science, travel

So far, so good on the wellness program. Saturday, the first day of the program, was a little more challenging because my wife and I spent about 5 hours of the day in the car, making a mad dash to the Atlanta area for an hour or so to see the Dekalb Farmers’ Market we’d heard about on PBS. It was pretty cool, and definitely worth the detour if you’re already in the Atlanta area. We got some neat veggies we can’t find here in Greenville - even found some stuff we enjoyed in China!

Sunday will probably be the hardest day of the week for the wellness program with the different schedule involved with Sunday School, church, choir practice, and church again. I got on the stationary bike late Sunday evening, and just couldn’t make myself do it, thereby losing a point. Week days and most Saturdays should be much easier, though. I already have earned 14 of the 15 points earnable by this time, and my scales say I’ve dropped a pound or two already! And drinking all that water each day is already a lot easier! Those of you who read my last blog post will appreciate this - my personal trainer Becka still looks gorgeous!

BTW, I *promise* that, after this, I won’t often mention the wellness program in my blog posts. It’s still so new that it’s on our minds more at the moment than it probably will soon be. If something funny comes up in connection with it, though, that will be a good time to capitalize on it with a blog post.

If this wellness program makes me feel younger, that will be great. I think some of my new freshmen think I’m Methuselah’s older, surviving brother, even though I’m not a day over 60! I recently received some good stuff about aging that seemed appropriate at this time.

(I don’t know who wrote the following account, but it was not I….)

I felt like my body had gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over!

***
A reporter interviewing a 104-year-old woman asked, “And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?”

She replied simply, “No peer pressure.”

***
Jacob, age 92, and Rebecca, age 89, living in Florida, are all excited about their decision to get married. They go for a stroll to discuss the wedding, and on the way they pass a drugstore. Jacob suggests they go in.

Jacob addresses the man behind the counter, “Are you the owner?”

The pharmacist answers, “Yes.”

Jacob: “We’re about to get married. Do you sell heart medication?”

Pharmacist: “Yes, of course we do.”

Jacob: “How about medicine for circulation?”

Pharmacist: “All kinds.”

Jacob: “Medicine for rheumatism and scoliosis?”

Pharmacist: “Definitely.”

Jacob: “Medicine for memory problems, arthritis, jaundice?”

Pharmacist: “Yes, a large variety. The works.”

Jacob: “What about vitamins, sleeping pills, Geritol, and medications for Parkinson’s disease?”

Pharmacist: “Absolutely.”

Jacob: “How ’bout Depend, Poise, and other adult incontinence products?”

Pharmacist: “We have crates of them - so you won’t run out … so to speak.”

Jacob: “You sell wheelchairs and walkers?”

Pharmacist: “All speeds and sizes.”

Jacob: “Good! We’d like to use your store as our Bridal Registry.”

This all made me think of a cartoon I’ll share below….

quotation…

“Being is more important than doing. But being what we are has an impact on what we do.” - Dr. Gary Weier

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Rob

Young at heart, but slightly older in other places.

Tags: aging, Atlanta, senior citizens, wellness