Why I Hate Yahoo

I usually don't use this blog to rant but every once in awhile something is so incredibly irritating that I feel a compulsion to vent a little, and also to warn any readers who stumble onto my blog about a company or agency that I think is grossly negligent or abusive.

Yahoo now qualifies.

For a long time Yahoo was the provider of two email addresses I used including my my old business domain name.  In the years since I largely shut down my practice the domain name became less and less important but partly out of laziness and partly out of general satisfaction with the service I never dropped either Yahoo Business (where the domain name was hosted) nor Yahoo Plus premium email service.

Last summer though things changed.  For a period of almost a month, nothing worked properly with my email accounts and I discovered that there was essentially no way to contact Yahoo to get things reported, explained or fixed.  I eventually tracked down a way to contact Yahoo Business but they told me that had no way to communicate with other parts of the Yahoo family and consequently could not or would not help me. 

I had just been billed $40 for their hosting the domain name and decided that this was a complete waste since I really didn't need to use it any longer so I terminated that service.  I was assured that the bulk of that money would be refunded since only about 1 week of the year they had charge me for had elapsed.  Needless to say, I never saw a penny of the promised refund.  

Recently I got a notification from Yahoo Mail Plus that they would be billing the annual charge for that service to my CapitalOne account.  I attempted to terminate the service using their online link but it didn't work.  Each time I tried to click on "Cancel Service" all that happened was that a new blank webpage opened but the service was still shown as active on my account page.

As most people who have dealt with Yahoo (and in fairness, many other big Internet companies) know, there no longer is really any way to reach customer service.  All they provide is a link to user forums where you are supposed to be able to get all the help you need.  

Eventually I succeeded in finding a phone number for Yahoo.  I spent 45 minutes on hold before a woman named

Christina answered.  She was very polite but figured out pretty quickly that I needed to talk to someone in the billing department to terminate my service and said she was transferring me.  Another 30 minutes passed with my having to listen to endless recordings of insipid music and promotions for Yahoo's website where they are deluded into thinking that all your problems can be solved.

Eventually a man named Fred came on and after going through the same information I had discussed with Christina he informed me that I needed to be transferred to the billing department.  I explained that this was precisely what Christina was supposed to have done but Fred said that somehow I had ended up back in the same general assistance section as before but said that he would transfer me.  He also gave me a direct phone number (866-562-7228) for the billings department in case I got cut off in the transfer (which I did).  When I called back I once again ended up on hold but gave up after a bit more than 30 minutes.  I had started the process of trying to terminate the service at 8:45 in the morning, had made the first call at 9:00 and gave up at 11:15 having never successfully canceled the service.

At that point I contacted CapitalOne where the charge was going to appear and attempted to dispute it but learned that you cannot dispute a charge until it has been posted.  It appeared today on my account so I called again to try to dispute the now visible charge.  At this point I can't do it because it is only a pending transaction and not an actually posted payment.  Some merchants and providers can be blocked from billing an account but due to agreements with MasterCard, some cannot.  The people at CapitalOne won't know until the bill is actually posted whether they can do anything about it although the customer service woman there had the gall to suggest that if MasterCard wouldn't allow blocking all charges from Yahoo I would have to provide proof that I had canceled the service.

This almost sent me over the edge.  I repeated, for what seemed like the thousandth time, that there is simply no way to get in contact with Yahoo and that there is no way for me to provide proof that I have canceled when Yahoo won't let me cancel.

We all deal with these horrible corporate behemoths almost daily in our lives.  I suspect long time readers of this blog remember my huge battle with Sears from a few years back that resulted in their providing me with a new $3,500 range because they couldn't come up with a part worth about 50 cents that was in the new range they delivered.  

I believe that at some level these giant corporations make a decision.  They decide that the vast majority of American consumers have no time to deal with the unending barriers to getting the products and services we pay for properly delivered to our homes either physically or electronically. 

They realize most people will just accept getting screwed by corporate America because it is so hard to avoid.  It is clear to me that Yahoo made this same decision and as a consequence I will stop paying them.  Maybe they can prevent me from canceling my service but they cannot make me pay for something I don't want.  In the end, I can terminate the only credit card account for which they have billing information and then they will have to sue me for the money they will, no doubt, continue to try to collect.  

Good luck Yahoo.  This is why I hate your company and will not be surprised a few years out when I read that you are going bankrupt.  You will have earned it.

Pictures will follow soon but this is what I felt compelled to write tonight as we enter the new year.

It’s New Years Eve, December 31^st, 2013 and as arbitrary as it is, this is the kind of milepost that causes humans (or maybe just me) to look at the past and try to organize it in our minds so we can understand what all has happened.

For me the year began in California where I was essentially hiding from my pain.  Abner had died in late September of 2012 and two weeks later I found myself waking up from 6 hours of spinal surgery.  I had a piece of crap trailer that I had bought with high hopes of traveling all over North America accompanied by my best friend and companion. 

Dealing with recovery from the surgery was probably a blessing because for a while at least it took my mind off of how badly things were turning out for me.  But the physical aspects of recovery were relatively quick and by the beginning of December I was off to California to divert myself with a couple months surrounded by my old friends.  This worked well while it lasted and on New Years Day of 2013 I was busy and reasonably happy, all things considered.  The surgery I had feared had passed although my pain had not.  I was missing Abner’s companionship but being busy with so many people who were important to me allowed me to feel the loss less acutely.

Eventually though, I had to go home. . .back to my real life.   As short a month as February is, it was a long one for me.  Suddenly, after two months away, finding myself in a home that was as silent and still as any tomb could ever be, I had to come to grips with how big a piece of my life Abner had been, and believe me, this was a shock.  I had lost dogs before, and each time I thought there could be nothing worse, but actually losing Abner was worse, and eventually I figured out why.

When Arlo died I was buried in a struggling architectural practice (1992 was a bad year for architects), had decided with my usual flawless timing to build a house for myself just when my business (and the income it had been producing) vanished almost completely, and soon after was dealing with serious health issues as well as the return of what would be fatal cancer to my friend Bernice.  Then in early 1993 my father was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer (he is quite healthy today, 21 years later) just as business was starting to come back.  In short, there were so many other things going on in my life, as well as having a couple decades worth of close friends all around me with whom I had entered adulthood, that painful though the loss of Arlo was, I did get past it.

In 2002 when Harvey died the opposite conditions were present, business wise.  I was as buried in work as I had ever been, was working hard on Design Review, and had another decade’s worth of relationships surrounding my daily life, so while the pain was intense and the house was frighteningly empty, there was a lot for me to focus on.  Jonathan and Dan jolted me out of my introspective grief by taking me climbing outdoors for the first time, and in relatively short order, I decided to get another dog, which was how Abner came into my life in October of 2002.

What was different when he died was everything.  I found myself living in Asheville, where I had come just under 8 years before.  Since I retired before moving here I had no work issues (too much, or to little) to distract me and everyone I knew here knew me as half of a couple, albeit an unconventional one.  Abner and I had spent almost every waking moment together the whole time we were living here.  Most of the people I knew I had met because I was always accompanied by this extraordinary dog, and most of the activities that brought me joy involved him.  February made me start to recognize that there was very little left.  It was a hard month although I had begun the process of weaning myself from the medications that I had been on for almost a year to control my pain so I had that one glimmer of hope that things were improving.

In March I made a trip to Massachusetts to visit Nicole Blum and her family, and on to Vermont to see my friend Rob Rives and his girlfriend Carolyn Loeb who was a few months into her apprenticeship year at Merck Forest and Farmland Center.  The trip was wonderful and diverting and once again allowed me some time away from the still oppressive silence of my home and the feeling of emptiness in my day to day life.

Shortly after my return from that trip I drove down to Florida and visited my friends Ann and Bowers at the beach for a bit less than a week and had a great time there as well.  Ann and I have been friends since 1974.  We have so much shared history it doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed since we were together.  We are always able to start up like we had seen each other the previous week.

Spring then hit Asheville and I was happily inundated by a series of guest visits that started when I returned from Florida and continued until the crowd that arrived for my nephew Jonathon’s birthday all went home in June.  July came and went with little drama aside from my abysmal failure as a tomato grower, details of which readers of this blog already know.  In August I drove up to see Rob in Seneca Rocks, WV where he was teaching and guiding climbing for the season, and then went to Radford, VA to meet a couple of Pyrenees breeders who had been recommended to me as possible sources for a new pup.

This visit was a turning point because, as related earlier, I found myself surrounded by 14 of these glorious, beautiful, sweet-natured calm animals and was jolted into the realization that after almost a year without Abner, whether or not I was over his loss (or ever would be), the time had come to get a puppy and start a new relationship.  By the time I left Radford I was officially first in line for a male puppy from a litter Janet and Joan had planned to breed with a young female of theirs in September.

Soon after I found myself back in California for a couple weeks and then on to Denver for my nephew Ben’s wedding.  The trip went quite well aside from getting a crappy cold the day before I headed home.  Shortly after getting back though I started getting nervous waiting to hear from Janet about her pregnant Pyr mom.  Unfortunately it didn’t happen and I was without a plan to once again have a significant other upon whom to shower my affection.  It hadn’t occurred to me that every time dogs breed they don’t necessarily succeed in becoming pregnant.

Finding out that I could not transport a puppy from the breeders in Southern California from whom I had gotten Abner threw a wrench into plans to get a puppy from their kennel, and yet another breeding I had hoped to benefit from in Salem Oregon also failed to produce a pregnancy.

So now I find myself in the odd situation of having lived 15 months without the companionship of a dog.  That is, I believe, the longest I have gone since getting Arlo in early 1978 and it hasn’t been easy.  At this point there are probably a half dozen breeders all of whom know that I am anxiously looking for the right puppy so, no doubt, one of these days something will transpire and the pages of this blog will once again be filled with too many pictures of a big fluffy white dog.

I did survive the year, and have to admit that things are probably better than this time last year.  I don’t have my dog yet but I know that getting one is the right thing for me.  I am having nerve pain problems again but had an MRI yesterday so I will probably know soon what can or cannot be done about it and that is better than not knowing.  Besides, I am now on Medicare so even if I need more surgery, at least this time I won’t be hit so hard financially.

Late in 2012 someone bought my rolling turd of a trailer so I will never have to deal with that disaster again.  I am getting ready to travel to New Hampshire, Boston, New York, and Washington for almost two weeks (yeah, I know. . .no one does this in the dead of winter but who every claimed that I do things other people do?).  Then I will be home for a week before I head off for a week in Puerto Rico to hang out with my parents.  In mid-March my good friends Faye and Jay are coming for yet another visit and this time I am planning on showing them the area around Beaufort, SC and Savannah. 

I also have joined the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute at UNC Asheville where I having gotten into playing bridge with a bunch of other geezers twice a week, and believe it or not that is proving to be an entertaining pastime. 

The summary then is this.  There are still some pretty big things missing in my life and I certainly don’t know how my nerve pain will be resolved, but I go into 2014 in what I think is a better situation than the one in which I entered 2013.

I hope my friends who read this blog, as well as all the strangers who stumble upon it for reasons that remain a mystery to me, have a wonderful New Year filled with health and happiness.  And to my friends, all I can say is that the last couple of years have taught me to value you even more than I did before.

Happy New Year.

Much has happened and unfortunately in some cases, not happened since my last post.  Shortly after I published my August remarks I was on a plane to California for my almost annual reunion with old friends at Winesong. . .the fundraiser I have attended for more than 20 years in Fort Bragg, CA which, for the uninitiated in California geography, is a small town in Mendocino County on the North Coast.

I flew out at an ungodly hour of the morning, long before daylight broke in late summer in Asheville.  Since it was unfair to ask anyone to take me to the airport before 5:00 in the morning I drove out and left my car in long-term parking but had made arrangements with my friend Ben for him to pick it up later in the day.  This meant having enough presence of mind to note where it was and to send him an iMessage letting him know.  Wandering around parking lots looking for cars is no fun and while it is true that Asheville Airport’s long-term parking isn’t like Atlanta, it still is big enough that finding my car could have taken a little time.  In spite of the early hour, I managed to send Ben the message and then got on the expected tiny plane to Chicago.

This went without a hitch.  That is an unusual remark about flying these days, which I have come to loathe but the first brief leg of this trip really was trouble free.  The plane left roughly on time and in spite of its small size, with an aisle seat and a flight of less than two hours it wasn’t so bad.  We got to Chicago with plenty of time for me to make the casual stroll between terminals to catch my flight to San Francisco.  That was, by the way, the end of the part of the trip that was trouble free.

When I got to the departure gate there was no plane yet but that isn’t particularly unusual these days.  It seems that as the airline industry has figured out ways to milk every last penny out of these flights, one of the things they have decided to do is cut down on the turnaround time they allow.  I am certain this puts additional pressure on already grumpy personnel not to mention most passengers who now almost universally hate air travel.

When I arrived at the gate for the outbound flight I was very disturbed to discover that United had elected to change aircraft from the 737 that was listed for the flight when I booked it and selected seats to a small Regional Jet.  It seated 4 across so everyone had an aisle or window but once again it was very small and this time very uncomfortable.  Because the airline now arranges your boarding based upon whether you are on a window or an aisle, my aisle seat had me getting on in the last group.  There had already been a delay because a member of the flight crew was quite late arriving at the gate but once she arrived they hurried us on.  I was slowly shuffling up the aisle toward my seat when I noticed a morbidly obese man sitting part of the way back in the window seat and thought to myself “please don’t let that be my row” but sadly, my wish went unfulfilled.  I arrived at the row in which this unfortunate man was sitting and realized that I was his seatmate.  This was in the truest sense since his enormity wouldn’t fit in a single seat and a substantial portion of him had lapped over the armrest into my seat. 

As I deposited my extra clothing and carry-on in the overhead I analyzed how I was going to wedge myself in next to him and decided just to sit down and see how it could all work.  Not well was the immediate answer.  In fairness I don’t think there was anywhere he could move any of his bulk but I ended up with my right upper arm and shoulder wedged behind his sweating back fat for the entire trip to San Francisco. 

In spite of his having trouble breathing, he fell asleep before the flight left the ground.  I was very uncomfortable immediately and while we were still at the gate but with the door closed I asked the flight attendant if there were any other seats unoccupied on the plane but she shook her head.  Clearly the only spot that I would be able to occupy without being underneath this beast was the toilet, and they won’t let you spend the entire flight there.

We took off and I sat virtually pinned to my seat with my shirt soaked from this man’s perspiration but I decided that once we achieved 10,000 feet I was taking out my iPad and would do what I could to co-exist.  Unfortunately for Big Guy every time I did something on the iPad the movement of my right arm disturbed his sleep as we were in constant contact for the 4 hours it took to get to San Francisco.  It was particularly unpleasant when I took out the bagel I had bought on the concourse to have a snack partway across the US.  Every time I brought the bagel to my mouth for another bite he groaned.  At a certain point I was so uncomfortable and frustrated since I felt like he was trying to make me feel bad for disturbing his sleep that I was close to letting him know what I thought about grossly obese people who couldn’t fit into a single coach seat being allowed to buy only one.  I vacillated between being angry with him and at the airline for allowing behemoths like this one to occupy more space than they pay for.  Besides, I am not at the point where I have to weigh my check bag before I leave home just to make sure I won’t end up being one of those people sitting on the airport floor desperately trying to stuff items from their checked bag into their carry on in order to not be charge for overweight.  Really?  If my luggage weighs 53 pounds I will get charged an extra fee on top of the outrageous amount they get now for bags anyway, but this blimp doesn’t pay a penny extra to occupy about 20% of the seat I have paid for.  Does this make sense or seem fair?

The flight, mercifully, arrived early in San Francisco and for some odd reason my luggage was already there.  I guess it went on an earlier flight than I did so at least I didn’t have a long wait wondering if my bag was lost between Asheville and SFO.  Unfortunately, in keeping with United Airlines seemingly infinite ability to screw up everything, their website had indicated that the flight was 45 minutes late rather than about 40 minutes early so Faye and Jay had stopped to pick up snacks rather than come straight to the airport to get me.  Consequently I found myself waiting at the curb for almost a half hour but the weather in San Francisco was beautiful and at least I wasn’t underneath Big Guy any longer.

Faye and Jay eventually arrived and after packing me into their SUV we headed for the Golden Gate bridge.  On a Friday you don’t want to be in afternoon outbound traffic on the bridge or the first 60 miles or so of highway 101 headed North.  The amount of Bay Area traffic that heads up to Napa and beyond every Friday is simply staggering.  Even though we were on the bridge shortly after noon it was already quite crowded so once on we drove to Petaluma before stopping for a bite of lunch.

After a sandwich and a brief break in the sunshine we got back in and headed up 101 to 128 through the Anderson Valley.  This is a really beautiful if somewhat neglected part of the Northern California wine scene and is, in my opinion, one of the prettiest drives between highway 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway (1).  Faye wanted to make a stop at Breggo Winery to taste a few wines and buy a bottle or two so we had a little afternoon treat on the way up to Ft. Bragg.  The day was still sunny and gorgeous and already I was past the horror of the trip out and was really enjoying the company of my good friends and the lovely late summer feel of Northern California.

We finished up at Breggo and headed over to the coast and then up PCH to Ft Bragg.  Faye and Jay and I were all staying at our friends Rick and Louise’s house in Ft Bragg so we had only one destination.  We arrived at around 5:00 in the afternoon and fairly soon other people from the group that gets together for this event pretty much every year started drifting in.

Without belaboring a description of Winesong weekend, since in past years I have covered this event with some detail, suffice it to say it was wonderful.  There were a few regulars missing and a few newcomers.  The albacore, salmon and abalone at Rick and Louise’s were, as usual, spectacular along with all the rest of the food that constitutes this annual orgy of consumption.  The weather at the Mendocino County Botanical Gardens where the event is held every year has never been better and all in all it was a terrific start to my visit to California.

On Sunday morning after a somewhat leisurely start, Jim Sundquist and I headed out for our trip to Sacramento.  It was an easy drive and we arrived in town at a perfectly civilized hour and I, once again settled into the guest room at Jim’s.  I have formed a somewhat odd relationship with this room.  This is, I believe, the only place that I designed where I have spent so much time as a guest so it is starting to feel a bit like home away from home.  I have occupied guest space at Ann and Bowers’ beach house in Florida as well and at Rick and Heather Degen’s place in Truckee but in neither of those have I spent as many days and nights as I have at Jim’s.  I am actually starting to know where to look for things like kitchen utensils and I am pretty good at doing laundry and ironing there.  Now if I can only learn how to be a decent pool player. . .

The time in Sacramento was a whirl as it usually is.  With about 10 days or so to spend there, San Francisco, and Lake Tahoe and lots of people to see, it was a busy time.  I spent a day or so in Sacramento and then headed to San Francisco to meet Josh and Lanny and to catch up with a few people I had missed when I had to cancel the SF portion of last winter’s visit.  It was great fun and I particularly enjoyed getting to show Josh and Lanny a few things in the Bay Area as they had never been there before.  SF virgins are always fun to initiate in to the pleasures of the Bay Area.  This included the Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, Mt Tamalpais, the view point on the North end of the Golden Gate, and some yummy food.  I also got to spend time with Ingrid and Larry and with my very old friend Risa, whom I hadn’t seen in several years.  Again the weather cooperated quite well in San Francisco, as it did everywhere in California while I was there.

After a brief couple days back in Sacramento where I got to see John and do a little business, I was off to Lake Tahoe for a weekend with Faye and Jay.  Again it couldn’t have been nicer.  Jim came along and Rick and Louise came up for the second part of the weekend so it was almost an extension of Winesong weekend from a week earlier.  The scene at Tahoe was as good as it gets.  I have never understood how so many people leave the lake in September when it is as beautiful as it ever can be.  The lake was largely still and the sun was out almost 100% of the time.  We didn’t accomplish much other than eating and cruising around the lake on Faye and Jay’s boat but that was fine.

Then it was back to Sacramento with a stop at Boeger Winery on the way down from the mountains.  It is always nice to pop into this fabulous place to see Greg, Sue and Lexi and/or Justin when they are around.  Sue provided a terrific lunch and Jim, Greg and I hung out in the tasting room long enough for me to decide what I needed to replenish my red wine supplies.

In Sacramento for the rest of the week I mostly caught up with a few old friends and had a couple meetings with lawyers and a landscape architect as favors for friends who had asked me to participate in projects for them.  I tried to keep things low key since I have concluded over the years that if I am in town for only a few days I have to limit who I see and just accept that it is impossible to catch up with 33 years worth of friends in a few days.

From Sacramento I flew on to Denver on Saturday to attend the wedding of Ben Barefoot, my eldest nephew.  I had never met his fiancée (now wife) nor any of her family so this was one of those events where one doesn’t feel particularly strongly connected to the goings on, but it was really nice to see my family and to see Ben cementing this relationship which is clearly important to him. 

I also got to make a brief visit to Boulder which I hadn’t seen in probably 30 years, and to Red Rocks which I had never visited before.  Boulder has changed significantly since I was last there.  The University seems bigger than I remember and downtown is filled with slick new buildings and pedestrian shopping areas that attest to its emergence as one of the trendier spots in the US.  On the whole I think I would still rather be in Asheville but Boulder definitely has its appeal and is worth a visit if you have never been.

Red Rocks, on the other hand, a brief drive West of Downtown Denver, is spectacular and demands the short trip out of town if you are in the vicinity.  This is a small but beautiful park with a fantastic outdoor performance venue built into the sandstone monoliths for which the park is named.  One cannot exaggerate the beauty of this spot and I can only imagine what it must be like to attend a really great concert there at night with the lights of Denver off in the distance.

After three days of hectic wedding events I flew home to Asheville with considerably less discomfort than on my outbound trip.  At least United is flying full-size planes between Denver and Chicago so, while still uncomfortable in coach seating, it wasn’t the misery of the flight to San Francisco.  Besides I had more than three hours to kill at O’Hare where Wicker Park, my all time favorite airport restaurant is located.  This is a very good sushi place that is located between concourses that I have been frequenting for probably 3 or 4 years now when I have to fly through Chicago.  The space is actually quite pleasant, the service is attentive and friendly, and the sushi is almost universally superb.

When I got home I dealt with all the kinds of things that one deals with after a 3 week long absence.  I had a delinquent bill or two and some issues around the house to attend to but on balance it wasn’t so bad.  There was the frustration of one of my rentals being empty again but I guess this is simply something that happens when you own rental property.  I actually hate having these houses but the timing is not right to get rid of them yet so I just have to grit my teeth and deal with them.

The biggest thing I was hoping to do when I got home was firm up my puppy plans including a trip up to Boston, North Conway, NH and Ithaca (to see my niece and her husband who both teach at Cornell) with a drive home via Radford VA to pick out a puppy from the women I had met in August.  I called and emailed a couple times and eventually talked with Janet, only to find out that the breeding of their female Pyr had not worked and there were apparently no puppies to be had.  I feel a bit foolish for having gotten myself emotionally so attached to the idea of a puppy that didn’t exist yet and will try not to make that mistake again but it has now been more than 13 months since I lost Abner to cancer and I really miss him and miss having the companionship of a dog.  The house is just terribly quiet and empty, and hiking and all the outdoor activities I have enjoyed all these years with Abner seem pointless without the company of a dog.

At this point I have begun the process of looking for other alternatives but have not been able to settle on any.  There are possibilities from a couple of litters on the West Coast but transporting a puppy from California or Oregon isn’t a simple process.  Many airlines no longer allow them at all and some, like Delta, inexplicably have a restriction on taking them after November 1^st if they don’t qualify to fly in the cabin.  It seems odd that the airline would be concerned about the impact of cold weather on the ground since the temperature for the 4 hours you would be at high altitude would be about 65 below zero.

I am still hoping to do the visit to New England in January to see the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and go snow shoeing for a few days in New Hampshire with Rob.  It would appear that seeing my niece isn’t going to happen because she will be out of town until the end of February.  I have hopes of having something firmed up on getting a puppy before any of this traveling occurs so it is possible that these plans will change, or at least the timing might.

Fall in Asheville is very pleasant.  The sun shines most days and the weather has, for the most part been mild.

I was visited by Jake Leineke (huge surprise) Eli Rose and Tracy Borneman, and Dave and Carla Frenznick all during the month of October, which made the month go by quickly.  Eli and Tracy had been here before but only briefly and the others were newbies to Asheville so I have been playing tour-guide a lot.  I am once again intimately familiar with the inside of Biltmore House.

I have also had new nubby tires put on my bike so I have started doing a little off-road biking.  Asheville is hilly and old with relatively narrow roads so limiting oneself to the terrain you can do with road tires doesn’t really offer much use of a bike here.  It will be interesting to see how much I can handle with this new setup.

I have also been playing bridge with a couple groups of people at the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute.  This is a facility for seniors on the campus of UNCA that used to be called the Reuter Center for Creative Retirement.  I never joined it when it had that dubious title but somehow it seemed more palatable with the new name.  So far the only activities I have opted for there are a couple bridge games but I am considering signing up for Spanish classes for the winter semester.  We’ll see how that goes.

Now that we seem to be past the bulk of the fall tourist season things will start to get quieter here.  I have no scheduled visitors at this point and probably will do little or no travel prior to the trip up North in a few months.  I am going on Medicare in a few weeks so the process of shopping around for supplemental plans and getting everything set up has taken some attention but that is now all settled and I am looking forward to having this great coverage.

I am also more than two months into lifestyle experiment.  I am living without cable TV.  Actually I have no broadcast TV of any kind.  I have a couple streaming services that I am subscribing to and watch the occasional program using a tiny Roku device attached to my television but for the most part I have to say I don’t miss it.  I committed to myself that I would try this for a minimum of 6 months before making any decision pro or con.  I had really felt ripped off by Charter Communications, the cable provider here.  For almost 9 years, in order to get HBO and Showtime, which were almost the only channels I watched, I had to pay for more than a hundred channels I never watched and it finally seemed like an inexcusable waste of money.  If they are unwilling to offer a la carte pricing I am no longer willing to pay for a bundle of channels 95% of which I don’t want.  I suspect with the increase in what is available through these streaming services, the cable companies will have to either modify the way they price their services or they will fold.

So that brings you up to today.  I think I will eat something and then go ride my bike.

 Above is the view of Faye and Jay's dock and the boat awaiting us but missing its swim step.  Below is one of the monoliths that flank the performance venue at Red Rocks outside Denver.

 Tracy and Eli getting wet at Looking Glass Falls

 Above are Dave and Carla at the highest point East of the Mississippi.

 Matt and Amy and I did our 3rd Segway tour at Biltmore only this time we ventured over to the West Side.

 Biltmore House above from the West Side and one of the barn and silo complexes at Alta Vista farm on the West Side.

 Jim Sundquist and Faye Stone resting after a long day of consuming at Winesong.  Below is the morning view of Lake Tahoe from Faye and Jay's deck at Rubicon Bay.

 These are all mixed up but the above shot of the stage at Red Rocks shows you the setting.  Off in the distance you can see Denver.  The photos below are various scenes from the hike I did with my brother Michael at Red Rocks.

 The above shot just was classic Asheville.  I saw this repurposed hearse in an Ingles Market parking lot.  The poor raccoon below was kind of a shock on a recent hike Matt and I took.  There was no visible harm done to the poor critter but he was definitely dead.  Neither of us could come up with a plausible explanation as to how he found himself in this spot.

 The above shot is the view of the French Broad River as you cross from the East to the West Side of Biltmore Estate.  Below is a shot of some of the vineyards that surround Long Lake.

 The shot above was probably the only decent one I got at Ben's wedding.  Ben and Elizabeth clearly are getting married at this point and the two people with varying degrees of white hair to the left of where Ben is standing are his parents.

Below is another of the amazing monoliths that dot the landscape at Red Rocks.

 Cocktails at sunset at Rick and Louise's house in Ft Bragg.  Below is another early morning shot from the Stone's house at Lake Tahoe.

 This is one of the more remarkable early 20th century structures near Camp Richardson at Lake Tahoe.  Below are two shots of Faye and Jim looking pretty content during our Saturday on the lake.