Only 21 days to go until our Egyptian journey, as we also celebrate our second anniversary of moving to Venice, Florida. ‘May the fourth be with us’ as we board a Tampa United flight into Newark, fly across the pond to Frankfurt, and finally land in Cairo the next afternoon. We’ve waited a long time for this great adventure, while threats of war and Covid delayed our initial plans for nearly four years. 

“Matinee Monday” was moved to “Theatre Tuesday” and today will become “Feature Friday,” as we try to work in our weekly movie. We’ll couple it with “Date Night,” and make it a special outing. We hope to see the movie, “Air,” another story about our one-time Portland, Oregon home. This Nike tale happened long before we even thought of moving to Oregon, but shaped the future of the iconic company that now employs my wife’s daughter. 

Michael Jordan was never one of my favorite basketball players. He was the enemy of I.U. in route to a Championship and a rival of my hometown Indiana Pacers. I leaned more to Reggie Miller and Larry Bird and was therefore never attracted to the Air Jordan brand. I remember it being the most expensive and desirable shoe of my day. Many think of MJ as “THE GOAT,” but I don’t agree. He was certainly one of the greatest of his era, but records are meant to be broken. 

My Oregon friends recently attended the Nike Hoops Summit, a high-school All-Star game (USA vs. World) that I would have certainly attended with them, if I still lived there. We had already gone to the PK80 events at the Moda Center and saw our share of University of Oregon venues that Phil Knight built, including Matthew Knight Arena and Haywood Field. LeBron James has taken the shoe role of Michael Jordan, while his son Brony was featured in the Nike Hoops. I watched it on TV, and he certainly doesn’t have the physical prowess of his father, as yet. He also hasn’t decided on a college program, pro career, or even a shoe contract. 

My daughter-in-law took me on a tour of the Nike Headquarters in Beaverton. Only there are Michael Jordan and LeBron James forever teammates, each with their own building. MJ was LeBron’s favorite growing up and wears the #23 in his honor. His ‘Airness’ retired the year before James’ rookie year. However, in 2003, LeBron attended Jordan’s basketball camp in Santa Barbara where they reportedly played on the same team. Will Brony get a Nike campus building and shoe of his own one day? His future is in the Air!
 

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I’m getting ready to celebrate my 72nd Easter Sunday, although I have to resort to my diary to recall our whereabouts over the last twenty-five years. Before that time, it’s all a blur, including the annual competitive battle with my sister as kids to collect the most hidden eggs. I know for a fact that I’ve attended the church of the pavement the last fourteen years, getting a run in before the feast. It’s the only place of worship where the rafters wouldn’t fall in at the shock of my being there. I’m just not a believer!

Many an Easter my wife and I have spent on the move, but this year we’re hosting my son’s family in our Florida home. As for just the two of us, our first Easter together was nothing more than a rendezvous, while on April 23, 2000, tornados filled the news, yet it was three more months before I would be responsible for the TV news operation in Lafayette. A year later, we spent the Easter holiday telling both sets of parents about our upcoming Las Vegas wedding plans.

In the first few years of marriage, we then visited Elkhart or Rochester, our hometowns, to be with family. In 2003, we visited my son in a Tampa, Florida hospital, never suspecting that we would ultimately end up in this area 18-years later. We went to Bern’s Steakhouse on Easter Sunday to celebrate our second wedding anniversary, relieved that he was doing better after the car accident. Business meetings took us to New York City in 2004 and 2005 before returning to family in Rochester and Elkhart the next year. In 2007, we joined my wife’s sister in Indianapolis for an annual Easter affair, until we moved to Austin, Texas in 2009 and dined by ourselves in the company provided apartment on deviled eggs. Tinker, our schnauzer who had ears like a bunny, had just completed her first Mighty Texas Dog Walk the day before.

We came back to Indy the next year to see my wife’s eldest daughter. In 2011, she then came to us for an Easter brunch and to see the peacocks at Green Pastures. The next year I went back to Florida for Easter with the grandkids after attending the Marlins vs. Cardinals game in Miami. We didn’t stay home the next year, either, choosing to spend our Easter in Napa sampling wines. Our last Easter in Austin was in 2014, doing little more than binge watching Breaking Bad episodes.

Portland was our next career stop, with a 2015 Easter brunch at Urban Farmer in the Nines Hotel, followed by a red eye to Florida for an egg hunt with the kids in 2016. The next Easter Sunday, we were in Maui on a boat looking for whales. In 2018, Easter was also April Fool’s Day in the Rose City, so we went to Cracker Barrell, while the next year’s Easter holiday was spent enjoying a quiet Easter morning at the Atticus Hotel in McMinnville. We had sold our Portland home and moved to a downtown apartment, before the Covid outbreak of 2020 limited us to neighborhood activities, but Easter was a “five peak” day.

As we then made our move to Florida in April of 2021, a most memorable Easter Sunday was spent at Kit Carson Memorial Hospital in Burlington, Colorado. It was sadly our second Easter visit to a hospital together, this time the result of my wife’s kidney stone. On a more positive note, last year, the grandkids enjoyed the Easter-eve egg hunt in our new Islandwalk community with a seven-foot-tall Easter Bunny, including the ears. Today, the kids each collected a bucketful of candy, cash, and stuffed bunnies after our family sit-down meal. Looking ahead a year from now on Easter Sunday, my wife and I will have just left Dakar, Senegal on a cruise ship headed for Casablanca. “Here’s Looking at you, kid.” Happy Easter to all!

It’s a profound moment when you discover that in retirement you now have to pay for office supplies. All of a sudden, a lot more money is going out than coming in, so you begin to keep track of what was taken for granted. For example, pens from the office that made their way home in your pockets are now a Costco purchase. The other day my wife and I were at the insurance agency, and they were offering pens, chip clips, and pads of paper that I turned my nose up at. She reminded me that we need to grab onto these freebees that we used to hand out ourselves. Money gets tight on a fixed budget, and there are no more weekly paychecks, expense reimbursements, bonuses, and commissions – just a pension check, Social Security, and an IRA account that we’ve too generously dug into for the new house and extensive travel. 

It’s time to tighten the bootstraps, as spending habits are hard to break. It looks like we’re now officially retired, looking for discounts, happy hours, dining deals, and free stuff. Honestly, we never paid much attention while we were working, now we have too much time not to. We would probably think twice about this upcoming trip to Egypt if it hadn’t been paid for years ago. A more conservative approach to travel will prevail in the future. Maybe a part-time job to offset the luxury that were used to experiencing? Will we eventually resort to stealing toilet paper from the public restrooms?

Egypt, London, Portland, and Indy, along with maybe a Marriott Vacation Club weekend in the Fall are our remaining excursions for the year. We’ve also paid most of the costs of a Southern Hemisphere cruise next Spring. New dining room furniture has been discussed, but at the expense of giving up other travel. After all, we do live in a resort community with plenty to do. We don’t have to go somewhere to find paradise – just to the store to buy home office supplies or to an event where they’re handing out free pens. 

Friends of mine named their daughter, Lexie. It’s short for Siri’s counterpart, Alexis. The other “Lexie” in our lives is the nickname of my wife’s Lexus convertible. It’s also the name of the company that bought the Bose hearing aid division. Over a year ago, I purchased the recognizable Bose brand, thinking it was probably their speakers that caused my hearing problem in the first place. I wore them daily, but the most annoying aspect was the “Battery Low” voice, at the most inopportune times, that indicated a necessary change. Several months ago, they stopped working, so they gave me a full refund, strongly suggesting that I buy the new Lexie product, powered by Bose. I put it off for as long as my wife could tolerate.

I tried to get a hearing check through Florida Blue, but I kept getting referrals from out of network sources. Supposedly, this insurance policy entitles me to an allowance on purchases but couldn’t find a local source. Most of my friends were paying $4-$5 grand for hearing aids, but my original purchase was less than $800. Lexie and their B2 model, was offering a rechargeable option for $999, and I went ahead with the purchase. At first impression, they seem to fit comfortably, hold a charge, improve my hearing, and are Bluetooth compatible. I’m not ready to invest a ton of money, so I’ll give these a try until my wife begins to complain again. 

The biggest problem for me in not being able to hear is the sound of my own voice. My vocal cords are damaged, so my vocal projection is weak and gravelly. It’s a strain to speak in a noisy environment, and the hearing aids only marginally help. I hear no evil and speak no evil, not to mention pee no evil and shake no evil. These are the four issues of old age (ears, throat, tremors, and prostrate) that I face on a daily basis. I’m seeing a urologist and trying out these affordable hearing aids in an attempt to mitigate half of my problems. I’m very fortunate their are only four. The sound of a healthy stream, like a bubbling fountain of youth, will soon hopefully become a welcome step forward in my current state of troubling personal issues. Can you hear me, Lexie?