How to fill time in retirement

Today is the last day of the year, and not feeling 100% well, I do not plan to eat out today. So I can give a statistical anlaysis of the last two years of a bucket list item. Not really a true analysis, I am retired as a mathematician and statistician. But I do have some data to share. Two years ago I realized that I was always eating at the same places. There is nothing wrong with that, there are advantages at being a regular at a place. But what I wanted was to try more new places. So I made a bucket list (yes, I have a list on my computer) to eat at one new restaurant every week. That was 2015. In 2016, I changed it slightly and said I wanted to eat at 52 new restaurants, but it could be five one week and none for four weeks. Same number, different approach. Each restaurant I ranked on a zero to five scale. Here are the totals for the last two years... Summary of Restaurant Visits for last two years Although I did not get the 52 I needed in 2016, my total over the two y...

The last two days of the cruise were at sea, heading back to Port Canaveral from Sint Maarten. Nancy and I did some interesting things, and I will talk about them in a future post. But today I want to talk about the International Belly Flop contest that was held  at the outdoor Aqua Theater off the Board walk. Located on the stern of the ship, there different shows in the theater that we missed, but I made the effort to stop in and watch the contest on Friday at 1 pm. The whole contest was being filmed and played on two large screens on either side of the 15 foot deep pools. Every other row was beach chairs interspersed with wooden benches. I got myself a good seat in a chair with my camera ready... One of the screens at the Aqua Theater There was bar service so I oredered myself a Corona, and I took a few pictures of the climbing walls and local area. Climbing wall on Port side of Oasis of the Seas The area  behind the Aqua Theater is called the Boardwalk. Complet...

We are not sure what time we left St Thomas, but in the morning on Thursday, we arrived in Sint Maarten. The island is the smallest piece of land in the world that is governed by two countries.  The bottom 40% is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The northern 60% of the island constitutes the French overseas collectivity of Saint-Martin. We docked at Philipsburg, which is the capital, on the south side of the island. Map of St Martin/Sint Maarten  This is a satellite image of the city of Philipsburg... Satellite View of Philipsburg in Sint Maarten The docks are located on the right peninsula. We backed into the left dock with our starboard side toward the dock. On our arrival, there were three other ships in dock. One more arrived while we were ashore. Ship off our port side while backing into the dock in Sint Maarten Again, I had gone to the Sun Deck on 14 for the pictures. I got the first glimpse of Philipsburg while we were still ...