2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Mike

Animals and more opera. Continue reading →

In the summer of 2023 I spent more than a day gathering information from every source that I could think of to try to determine exactly when Sue and I took the trip to San Diego. At first I thought that it was in 2002; I even wrote about one thousand words based on that assumption. I later found evidence that made me place it as late as 2009. As I was in the process of rewriting this to reflect the new date I came upon a set of Word documents labeled SD01 through SD07. They contained the notes that I had taken while on the trip, and they were dated. So, I can say with no fear of contradiction that the trip began on Thursday, March 23, 2006 and ended on Wednesday, March 29.

The notes were evidently intended to be expanded into a readable write-up of the trip and then, along with a sampling of photos, posted on Wavada.org along with my other travel journals. Evidently I must have gotten either busy or lazy; the readable journal never was written, and nothing was ever posted.

The good part is that the notes were a lot better than the septuagenarian memories that I would have needed to tap. Unfortunately, the photos have been lost. If I had integrated them into a journal, I would still have the best of them.

On the same day that I found the notes I rummaged through the bottom shelf on the bookcase in my office and found a paper bag with the imprint of the San Diego Opera on it. Inside was a receipt for the opera tickets, the program for the performance that we saw, and many other items from other places that Sue and I had visited. I would have preferred to find my photos, but this find greatly increased my enthusiasm for working on this entry.

Preparation: In March of 2006 we had two cats, the youngster Giacomo (introduced here), and my best buddy Woodrow (introduced here). The notes stated that Woodrow “purred in my ear”, which is how he often told me that it was time to get out of bed. We planned on leaving the cats alone in the house for a week, but we were not worried about them. Woodrow was well past his prime, but he was very self-reliant and quite tough. Besides, if things got bad, they could go outside through the cat door and make mischief. Sue’s father-in-law Chick Comparetto¹ promised to look in on them to make sure that they had food and water. Woodrow was not afraid of strangers (or anything else). He would certainly greet Chick at the door and ask to be petted. Giacomo in those days was quite shy. Chick probably would never lay eyes on him.

I had a Frommer’s guidebook for San Diego that I purchased in 2000 for the business trip that I took with Denise Bessette in 2000 (recounted here). I did not use it much then, but I must have researched it much more thoroughly in 2006.

We planned to meet up with Marva Whitehead, whom we had met on our first trip to Italy in 2003 (documented here), for dinner on Monday. To pay for the trip we were using my frequent-flyer miles on Delta, my Hilton Honors points for the hotel stay, and my frequent-parker points at Executive Valet Parking for a spot near the airport. It was actually a pretty economical trip.

Would you expect Charlotte to be on the left on a trip from BDL to ATL?

The notes said that we brought Sue’s backpack/suitcase purchased for the 2003 trip to Italy, the duffel that IBM had given me in 2000 and the cats had baptized shortly thereafter, a suitcase held together with duct tape, and another backpack that contained my computer. Sue also probably brought an assortment of bags to use as carry-ons. I brought my camera (a small Cascio point-and-shoot digital) with some ability to zoom. Sue may have brought her camera, too.

Sue had arranged for John Bolling, a former IBM employee with whom she had worked in (or maybe even before) the early days of TSI, to meet us at the airport in Atlanta during our layover there. Our plane to San Diego did not leave until 6:18PM.

Denny’s closed for good in 2022 after 45 years.

Thursday March 23: Our first stop was at Chick’s house. Sue gave him the spare key to the house. We then ate brunch at the Denny’s on Elm St. at a little after 10AM. For some reason we made two trips to the bank (or maybe one each to two different banks). Sue sent an email to Marva just before we left.

We drove in my Saturn to Executive. The guy in front of me in the line there asked the clerk about the company’s points system. He had paid only $4 per night by using prepaid coupons. It was nice for once to be the one who was going on vacation. Usually I was the stressed-out guy on a business trip, and everyone else was giddy about their upcoming vacation. It was an even better feeling this time because I had amassed enough points to pay for the car’s entire stay.

Our itinerary called for us to leave Bradley at 1:55 p.m. and to change planes in Atlanta. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. For once there was no problem getting through security. Because of problems in Atlanta we did not actually leave until 2:41. Sue made short work of an ice cream cone while we were waiting.

The flight from Bradley to Atlanta was completely filled. Sue volunteered to take the middle seat, but she was quite uncomfortable. She learned that the guy next to her was going to Costa Rica to photograph wildlife. I had made this trip so many times that it was like riding a bus for me.

Somehow John Bolling found us in the gigantic Atlanta airport. He had a job there working for AirTran Airways². He told us that he did not like his assignment at all. He had reportedly lost twenty-five pounds in five weeks.

I bought and consumed a gyro and some curly fries while we were waiting for our plane to depart. It did not do so until 7:15.

The plane to San Diego was also very full. No meal was served on the flight, but we did get drinks and a package of snacks. I selected trail mix, Later the flight attendants brought some Gouda cheese spread, and crackers plus some kind of buttery shortbread stick. One passenger was a guy from Italy. I was impressed that the stewardess was able to converse with him in Italian.

Sue watched a movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her, “The Family Stone,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Dermot Mulroney. I was in the middle seat. I undoubtedly brought something to read, study, or play with, but the notes did not mention anything. The guy next to me brought absolutely nothing with him for diversion, and he did not avail himself of anything offered by the airline. He just sat there.

Nothing held together with duct tape appeared on the carousel.

Although we gained three hours during the flight, it was still 9:30 by the time that the plane’s wheels touched the ground. When we arrived at the baggage claim area, I was amazed that our luggage was not there. This NEVER happened to me on business trips, and on this occasion both of our flights departed late. It was hard to imagine how Delta had screwed this up.

Sue was upset about it. It did not bother me a great deal. In the worst-case scenario we might need to wear the same clothes for a day or two. Only one person in San Diego knew us in San Diego, and we were not scheduled to see her for a few days.

We told the people at baggage claim that we were staying at the Hampton Inn in Kearney Mesa. They said that they would deliver the bags to us there.

We walked to the Avis counter and picked up our rental. Our vehicle was a blue Chevy HHR that, according to a form that I found in the bag, had been inspected by someone named Otis. I had seen one or two of these cars before, but they were still an oddity if March of 2006. I was not impressed. It had no pickup at all.

We found our way to the Hampton Inn in Kearny Mesa. By then it was nearly 11:00, which was 2AM Enfield time. I had never had a bad experience checking in at a Hampton Inn. This clerk was unenthusiastic, but he seemed competent. We told him that Delta would be delivering our luggage, or at least we hoped so.

We quickly went to sleep, but for once we hoped to be disturbed during the night.

Friday March 24: The bags were delivered at 1AM. They appeared to be in no worse shape than when we had checked them.

All Hampton Inns provided a free breakfast buffet. Sue likes to go to restaurants for breakfast, but the selection at this hotel was pretty good. This was a good deal for people who can tolerate plastic silverware and are not picky about how their eggs are cooked. I had scrambled eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The setting was very elegant by Hampton Inn standards.

Our plan for the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park³. The name was slightly misleading. Although the park was affiliated with the zoo, it was located in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido. It was thirty miles north of the zoo.

We had a very beautiful day for our visit—74 degrees and sunny. We drive north through a naval air base and then east through the back country. We drove by an ostrich farm, which was a first for me, and a few places where visitors were allowed to pick their own oranges.

The park was huge. It covered 1,700 acres! The animals at the park were not, for the most part, kept in cages. Rather they were kept in groups in areas that resembled each one’s natural setting. The easiest way to see a lot of animals fairly quickly was to take the monorail⁴, a two-car open-air train that made a clockwise circuit around the entire park.

The park was not too crowded. We picked up a map of the park and a list of the shows and their times. We also picked up pamphlets that described two sections of the park, Heart of Africa and Condor Ridge. The former contained the vegetarian animals that resided on the savannas. The latter contained animals from North America.

There were a few empty seats on the monorail. We took Frommer’s advice and sat on the right. The trip lasted a little less than an hour. Each train had a guide who explained over the intercom what area of the park we were passing and what animals were visible. In a few cases she needed to direct our attention where some of them were hiding.

The train ride was great fun. We saw three separate types of rhinos. At one point the guide told us about some kind of Japanese animal that was in a culvert directly beneath the train. We passed through lots of different terrains. We even saw mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Condor Ridge section, a bonobo playing with a basketball, and a giraffe doing the splits in the Heart of Africa.

We could see a balloon ride that we did not take. There were also trucks that you could ride in. Their main purpose was to feed the animals, but visitors could pay to tag along.

My most distinctly remembered experience occurred near the end of the monorail ride. The guide told us to be very quiet as we were approaching a new exhibit. She warned us not to make noise, because it might disturb one of the park’s newest resident, a bobcat. We need not have worried; I doubt that any noise we made would have disturbed a loader manufactured by the Bobcat company.

After the monorail ride ended we stopped for some food. We purchased an apple, banana, muffin, a bag of $4 potato chips and a $4 glass of Diet Coke. I also got a refill for only $1. In 2006 these prices were outrageous.

I think that we walked up to Condor Ridge, which is in the northeast corner of the park. My notes say that we saw a bald eagle, some prairie dogs, and a porcupine.

Somewhere in the park we saw all of the following. I probably took photos of all of them.

Gorillas being fed some oranges.
A hummingbird and a bustard.
A sleeping warthog.
A meerkat colony. One was on guard; the rest were underground.
A bird show. I wrote: “Pete and girls. Forgot about the parrot act.”
An elephant show with two performing pachyderms, Mary and Cookie. The trainer’s name was Brittany.
“Poop from egret.”

I loved the Wild Animal Park even more than I had loved the San Diego Zoo six years earlier.

We ate supper.at the Pampas Bar and Grill⁵ in SanDiegoVille. Our waiter was named Pedro. I ordered a ribeye and mashed potatoes. Sue had a strip steak with sauce and rice. The vegetables were understandably meager. Argentinians are notoriously carnivorous. A guy played the guitar and a harp while we were dining.

The vacation was off to a great start.

Saturday March 25: The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego. The weather cooperated. It was around 70 all day long, and it was sunny.

We ate breakfast in the hotel again. I had sausage and scrambled eggs, with biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The baseball team from Westmont College in San Diego was in the dining room at the same time as we were. Their uniforms had maroon trim. They reminded me of UMass’s colors. I had stayed at many Hampton Inns. I had never seen a breakfast area so crowded. Sue and I had to eat at little table.

The next line of my notes says: “Convoy St. Target: _______. Big dip to get in. Drove past Home Depot Expo Center.” I am not sure what to make of this. There is a Target in Kearney Mesa, but in 2023 it is on Othello St. There is a Home Depot Design Center in San Diego, but it is not near the hotel or Target.

Balboa Park was our first touristy destination of the day. The park’s website calls it, “San Diego’s ever-changing, always amazing, 1,200-acre back yard.” I distinctly remember having trouble finding a parking space along the side of the road. Several women were reserving spaces for their husbands. When I finally found one I had difficulty maneuvering the HHR into it. It was quite a bit larger than my Saturn, and the visibility was not as good.

The main thoroughfare, which is reserved for pedestrians, in Balboa Park is El Prado. The notes describe it as “very nice”, and the photos that I found on the Internet certainly confirmed that. On both sides of it were museums, hotels, restaurants, and other elegant places.

The notes state:

Railroad museum. Wooden trestle bridge. Imperial valley. Junkyard dog. Barrel falling off of truck. Pushing truck uphill.

I assume that the first two words referred to the Model Railroad Museum that was located in the basement of the Casa de Balboa building on El Prado. Although a flyer from the museum was in the Sand Diego Opera bag, I don’t remember anything about it.

Sue had her own N scale model train layout that she constructed on the ping pong table in our basement in Enfield. Someone bought a Lionel train set for me when I was very young. My dad and Joey Kuchel set it up in the basement when my family lived in Kansas City, KS.

Evidently we saw all of the following somewhere in Balboa Park: “Palm reader, bicycle taxi, guitar and flute.” None of these references rings a bell. I distinctly remember not getting my palm read in San Diego or anywhere else.

I did not find a flyer from the Natural History Museum, but we must have gone there. We saw a movie about Baja California and a skeleton of an allosaur.

I reported “lots of interactive stuff for the kids.” Don’t ask me what “Dave in white coat in bathroom” referred to.

I have no notes about the tram that went around the park. It was free, and I found a flyer for it, so there is a good chance that we rode on it for a while.

Try to imagine the Moreton Bay Fig Tree with seventeen less years of growth. That is what we saw.

Our next stop was at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. I probably had some very striking memories of this stunning location, but all that I wrote was, “Sucking face. Woman with cigarette”.

I found handwritten directions to Old Venice Restaurant on the back of an advertising piece from Avis that was in the bag. We ate a pizza and a very good salad for supper there. The pizza had prosciutto, chicken and basil. The notes stated that the restaurant was near Shelter Island, which is really a long peninsula.

I remarked in the notes that the people in the restaurant were too good-looking. We ate our supper on a wobbly table outside. Darren was the waiter’s name. I didn’t record the amount, but I am pretty sure that I left a tip.

When we left the restaurant I noticed a small ding on the passenger side of the HHR. Dings on rental cars can be costly. I had to hope that Otis had made a note of it when he inspected the vehicle or that whoever inspected it when we turned it in was equally negligent.

I forgot to bring the good map that I had ripped out of Frommer’s in 2000. I found myself on Rosecrans road and couldn’t figure out how to get on the freeway. I also ran a red light. The notes did not state whether the malfeasance was accidental or deliberate.

Another great day!

Sunday March 26: The plan was to drive to La Jolla, Coronado Island, and Old Town in San Diego. I wonder how much I used the Frommer’s book to select the itineraries. My choices do not closely agree with “Frommer’s favorite San Diego experiences.”

Sue might disagree, but I found the weather to be less than perfect. Clouds kept the temperature in the sixties all day. That’s light-jacket weather for me.

We had the usual breakfast at the Hampton—eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. They also generally provided at least two kinds of juices and plenty of coffee.

We stopped at Target again. This time we picked up some two-liter bottles of Diet Cokes and some snacks. These items were much cheaper at chain stores than at locations attractive to tourists.

La Jolla was less than ten miles to the west of our hotel. I anticipated that we might have difficulty finding a place to park, but I was wrong.

Sue and I walked down to the beach We saw the aggregation of seals that Denise and I had enjoyed so much in 2000, but the only thing that I wrote about the experience was that the rest rooms were “crummy”. My dim recollection is that it was breezy at the cove.

We walked into town and strolled around for a bit. It seems incredible, but I reported that we could not find the Best Western in which Denise and I stayed. I did take note (and probably photos) of two dachshunds.

We did not take the 26-minute route from La Jolla to Coronado Island that is shown in the map at the left.

We were in no hurry, and so we drove through San Diego down to Chula Vista and then over to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay. from there we took the “Silver Strand” up to Coronado.

The notes indicated “6$ at beach”. Maybe that was what I paid for parking. All beaches in California have always been open to the public.

I remember that there were protestors at the incredibly elegant Del Coronado Hotel, but I do not recall what the issue was. We had lunch al fresco. It consisted of leftover pizza from Old Vienna and food that we had purloined from breakfast at the Hampton Inn.

We walked up to the legendary hotel and even went inside. I could not believe how many bellboys they had. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Call for Philip Morris.”

Afterwards we stopped at a place called Moo Time Creamery for some ice cream. For some reason we ordered three types of ice cream. The notes stated that Sue really liked the double chocolate and the pear sorbet. I preferred the stracciatella.

Moo Time had a statue of Elvis and another one of a cow. I found a photo on the Internet.

I am surprised that I even tasted the ice cream. It has never been my favorite food, and, if the temperature was only in the sixties, I was probably shivering while I ate it.

From Coronado we drove to Seaport Village, which was on the eastern side of the bay, so that Sue could do some shopping in what its website calls “14 acres of fine waterfront dining, entertainment and world-class shopping in the heart of beautiful San Diego”.

I had difficulty finding a place to park. I must have let Sue off and parked in a lot rather than on the street. The notes said, “Hard to park. Meet at four. Brought Sue the ticket.” I interpret this to mean that I was given a ticket so that the HHR could exit from the lot, that I brought the ticket to Sue, that I planned to mess around somewhere while she shopped, and that we would meet up somewhere at 4PM.

The rest of my notes about Seaport Village were difficult to decipher: “Smoking outside of jewelry store. Arabs. Cat.illacs.” I was evidently impressed by the number of boats in the nearby marina. I also saw quite a few sailboats in the harbor. In 2023 I have no memories of this place, but Sue’s only clear memory of the entire trip was that she bought her favorite earrings there.

From Seaport Village we probably took I-5, which in Southern California is called “The 5”, north to the Old Town section. Old Town is a State Historic Park. The website describes it this way:

Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which include museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. The Historic Plaza remains a special place for gatherings and historic activities. Visitors can also experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park’s burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.

I reportedly was very lucky with the parking. The word “Closing” is mentioned in the notes. Perhaps the “unique retail shops” had closed for the day.

We toured the area for a while and then decided to eat supper at Café de Reyes. We ate outside. The weather was perfect for Sue, and I got to sit by the heater. Our waiter was named Daniel, and the busboy was Jorge. The clientele seemed to be equally divided between Mexican-Americans and gringos. There were free tables when we arrived, but it got pretty crowded after we sat down.

For an appetizer we ordered quesos fundidos, which was a plate of goat’s cheese and sausage. The notes indicated that I had “combination #1 and a very large margarita.” The combinations are no longer numbered on the restaurant’s online menu, and so I cannot say what it contained, but I did call the supper “very nice”.

The notes also specified a “lady making tortillas with scrunched-up shoulders.” It didn’t specify whether she worked for the restaurant or not. I assume that, despite the word order, the shoulders belonged to the lady, not the tortillas.

When we returned to the hotel we were both dead tired. Sue contacted Marva by phone or email. We saw commercials on television for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham, who had resigned in 2005 for taking bribes from military contractors.⁷

We also learned that although the UConn men lost, the women won.

Monday March 27: This was the zoo day. For photos of animals (including the pandas) from the trip in 2000 look here. The weather was beautiful until about 1:30PM. It became chilly after that.

My breakfast at the Hampton was sausages with cold hard biscuits supplemented by fruit and cereal. The notes indicated that I took photos of the grounds around the Hampton. You will need to imagine the basketball goal and what the “Shriner stuff” might have been.

The zoo was located in Balboa Park. By this time I was familiar enough with the area that the drive there was a stress-free experience. We arrived at about 10:00. I parked the HHR near the sidewalk between aisle 4 and 5. From there it was an easy walk to the entrance. We did not need to stand in line because we already had tickets.

We made a beeline for the panda exhibit. There was no line at all. We got to see the six-year old that had been a baby for my first visit as well as the parents.

We then took the moving sidewalk up to the polar bear exhibit. Only one of them was out, but he put on a show for us. I remember that half of the exhibit was water, and you could easily see the bears when they went for a swim.

We got a bird’s-eye view of the park from the Skyfari ride. It had been included in the price of the combo (Zoo plus Wild Animal Park) tickets that we had bought. Denise and I did not do this. My recollection is that she was not good with heights.

When we were back on terra firma we walked down to visit the tortoises. One of them appeared to be horny. After that Sue went into the lizard and reptile mesa; I think that I stayed and took more photos of the amorous tortoises. We both then spent a little time in the reptile house.

We then went to see the orangutans in their new home. The notes indicated that I took good pictures of the baby. It was painful to write the last sentence. I have got to find those photos.

We ate lunch in the Treehouse Cafe, which was definitely aptly named. The photo at the right provided a good indication as to how hilly the zoo was. I ate a chicken Caesar salad with some chips and coke. Sue had clam chowder in a bread bowl and chocolate layer cake.

While we were eating the temperature dropped like a rock. The notes do not indicate whether I brought a jacket, but I probably did.

The gorilla enclosure allowed us to be within just a few feet of the mighty apes. The notes indicated that I was very impressed with the size of the silver-back’s thighs.

We next saw the hippo, but I was unable to snap any good pictures. The water was too dirty.

The flamingos did what flamingos do.

I think that the “express bus” that we took was similar to this one. The park now has a Kangaroo Bus that is a double-decker.

We then took the zoo’s express bus from stop 3 to stop 4 so that we could see the giraffes and the other hoofed animals. One of the giraffes was only two days old, but it was already pretty steady on its feet.

Sue was disappointed that we never saw any meerkats. We viewed their exhibit from three separate vantage point, but they all stayed in their burrow. It was a good thing that we had seen the sentinel at the Wild Animal Park. If not, she might have insisted on extending our stay in San Diego until she saw one.

We reportedly saw all of the following:

A horny wallaby.
Bactrian camels.
Some very active koalas.
Both Asian and African elephants drinking from a fountain.
Llamas.
Pigs.
Capybaras
At least one tapir..
A peacock that had flown up on a roof.
Quite a lot of topiary.

We enjoyed supper with Marva at the Imperial Mandarin Chinese restaurant. I had wonton soup and spareribs. Sue also had wonton soup and moo shu pork, which was apparently a specialty of the Imperial Mandarin.

One of the rear doors on Marva’s car did not work. After noting this fact I included the phrase “Simply Marvalous”.

We drove to the Black Angus steakhouse for drinks. The bartender’s name was Ryan. I had Scotch on the rocks. The notes stated that someone had a lemon-drop martini. I have a hard time believing that it was Sue. She usually ordered a Scotch if I did.

It is telling that the notes included absolutely no mention of the conversations. Either I was not paying attention, or I figured that I would remember it without prompting.

I must have had only one Scotch. I managed to pilot the HHR back to the Hampton without any difficulty.

Tuesday March 28: The original plan was to go to Sea World. However, it rained lightly all night long. By morning it looked pretty good, but the forecast was for rain all day, or at least all afternoon. We therefore decided to skip Sea World. The new plan was to make return trips to Balboa Park and Old Town.

For breakfast we ate egg pizzas (that’s what the notes said), fruit, and cereal.

This time we had no problem parking in Balboa Park. We saw busloads of kids and also witnessed a group of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in blue warm-up suits.

I do not know what to make of the phrase “Bridge over Park Rd.” There is a famous bridge in Balboa Park, and there is a Park Blvd., but the one does not go over the other.

We saw a cactus garden and a rose garden. I also noted a pair of sneakers in a tree.

The people in the park that day were interesting. I saw a guy with a flag, and I overheard another guy who said, “I should have shot him again. I should have shot him four times.”

We visited the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and I picked up a daily schedule there and a flyer for an IMAX film about Greece. There was quite a bit of interactive stuff for kids in the area of the museum called Kid City. A few of the devices appeared to be broken. We watched a presentation on television entitled “Origins in Space”. It was about NASA and particularly the Hubble Space Telescope.

I don’t know why the word “Einstein” was included in the notes.

Sue and I enjoyed a cappuccino at Galileo’s Café inside the center and then watched an IMAX movie called “Greece: Secrets of the Past”. In the theater there you lean back and watch the film on a dome. I don’t think that this was a particularly useful way to learn about Greece’s past.

The statue of El Cid did not look much like Charlton Heston.

We saw a Venus flytrap, among many other species, in the Botanical Museum.

We walked past the Mingei International Museum, which promoted folk art and crafts from around the globe. We did not go inside.

We drove to Old Town again for a late lunch. We had tacos and a burrito at the Alamo Mexican Cafe. It got quite chilly. Sue wrote postcards, and I mailed them. The notes stated, “Alamo closed up.” I interpret this to mean that the patio area was closed because of the weather.

On our way to the car we found a store that was offering 50-65% off the regular price. The notes did not say what they were selling or whether we went in.

We drove back to the Hampton and took a nap so that Sue could stay awake during the opera, and I could prevent cartoon characters from appearing in the last act, as they had during the performance that Denise and I attended.

This time the San Diego Opera was presenting on a performance of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both Sue and I had seen traditional productions of this opera several times. I owned a CD of the opera that used Bizet’s original version that included dialogue, not recitative. Every performance that I had seen had used recitative, which, in my opinion blunted the impact of Carmen’s personality.

We also had season tickets for the Hartford Stage Company when Mark Lamos, the director, was the artistic director. Both of us were quite sure that his Carmen would not be a traditional one, and we were right. The program for the opera contains 56 pages, but there is not a word about the production. The setting had been moved from Spain to an unnamed Latin American country and from the late nineteenth century to the thirties or forties. This really did not impact the arc of the story line much. Of course, gypsies were rare in Latin America, but it was not that hard to suspend disbelief. The famous Anvil Chorus did not seem anachronistic in this environment.

All performances of Carmen were sold out, but the two seats next to me were empty and at least one woman seated near us left after the first act.

I don’t remember whether I enjoyed the performance or not. The only detail that I remember was that one guy in the audience wore shorts. If it had been the dialogue version I feel certain that I would have mentioned it. The review in my notes was terse: “Liked Micaela. Good chorus. Great acoustics.”

It took a very long time to maneuver the HHR out of the parking garage. That’s often part of the price one pays for attending one of the ABC operas.

Back at the Hampton we enjoyed a late supper of leftovers consisting of moo shu pork and combination #1.

Wednesday March 29: When I traveled to the West Coast on business, I always returned on an overnight (“red-eye”) flight. The times of our return flights were not specified in the notes, but we obviously spent most of the day getting from San Diego to Enfield.

I woke up with quite a bit of energy and decided to go for a run. After a few minutes it started to sprinkle, and I returned to the hotel.

Since getting food is always somewhat dicey on airplanes and in airports we decided to treat ourselves to a full breakfast at the Spice House Café.⁹ It was less than a mile from the hotel. We had veggie frittatas and “gyros meat”, which I presume was lamb The portions were enormous. The very nice waitress, whose name I did not record, kept the coffee flowing. It rained quite hard during breakfast, but then it cleared up.

We returned to our room at the Hampton Inn, packed our things into the HHR, and checked out. Sue, needless to say, brought leftovers.

I stopped for gas at an Arco station. The pump wouldn’t accept my ATM card¹⁰ for some reason. I went to a nearby Chevron station that accepted the card. We then drove to the airport and returned the HHR to Avis. Either they did not notice the ding, or they didn’t care.

The notes said, “Raining in Salt Lake City.” So, we evidently changed planes there. I had been in that airport at least once before, but it is the only place in Utah that I have visited. The other states that I have missed (as of 2023) are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.

We ate leftovers from breakfast on the flight from Salt Lake City to Bradley. There was plenty of time for Sue to watch a movie. She did not ordinarily like science fiction, but maybe “Aeon Flux” with Charlize Theron was the only thing that was available. I worked on sorting and editing my photos, the B4 deck¹¹, the notes, and playing bridge on Bridge Baron.¹²

Both our bodies and our luggage arrived at Bradley International intact. It was probably pretty late; we lost three hours in the air. I called Executive Valet, and they sent their bus to bring us to their lot.

As always, my Saturn¹³ was running and parked near the door of the office. It was a little disconcerting that the “Service engine soon” light was on.

No trip was over until we verified that the cats were OK. As the Saturn entered the driveway we saw a grey tiger-striped cat in the yard. This was not a good sign; he was not one of ours. Woodrow, as expected, greeted us as soon as we went through the door. He showed me that there was no cat food left in the gravity dispenser. I poured some into the metal plate that the cats ate from.

Giacomo made an appearance the next morning. The entertaining and exciting trip to San Diego was officially completed.

1. Sue was married (but estranged) when I met her in 1972. Her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto, lived in Enfield about a mile from our house. He looked after our cats on most of our big trips. His obituary can be found here.

2. At the height of its popularity AirTran operated 700 flights per day, many of them passing through Atlanta. It was acquired in 2011 by Southwest Airlines.

3. The park was renamed San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2010.

4. In 2010 the monorail was replaced by a set of wheeled vehicles with similar capacity.

5. The restaurant closed in 2019 after twenty years in business.

6. Give the kid a break. His parents could not find the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

7. Are you surprised to learn that he was pardoned in the waning moments of the Trump administration?

8. You do not need to go to San Diego to be entertained by the zoo’s polar bears. You can watch them on polar-cam.

9. The Spice House Café closed its doors for good in December of 2018. It had been in business for twenty-six years.

10. Perhaps the most puzzling thing in all of the notes is the fact that I used an ATM card to buy gas rather than a credit card. By that time I paid for everything with credit cards in order to amass points. I had separate American Express Cards for Hilton and Delta. I had used them to earn enough points to cover most of the costs of this trip.

11. I can’t be certain, but this probably refers to a deck of flash cards that I created for quizzing myself on Italian vocabulary. The English words were sorted alphabetically, one card per word; the Italian word or words were on the back. The B meant that deck contained English words that started with the letter B. They were sorted alphabetically. The 4 meant that this was the fourth deck. There were at least ten thousand cards in total. I went through the entire set of decks more than ten times.

12. Bridge Baron was a terrific software product that facilitated the learning of bridge, both play and conventions. I had Bridge Baron15 on my laptop. The last version of the software that could be installed on your computer and run without the Internet was Bridge Baron29. In 2023 the app Bridge Baron Gold is still for sale.

13. The Saturn lasted until the end of the year. I traded it in for a beautiful sapphire-blue 2007 Honda Accord coupe.

2022 July: The Providence NABC: 7/15-19

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Mike

The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here. Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days … Continue reading →

The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here.

My bridge schedule for the Providence NABC.

Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days and left the house at about 7:15. The trip got off to a terrible start. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg and a large black coffee. The biscuit reminded me of a brick that had been sawed horizontally. The coffee was a couple of degrees above room temperature when it was handed to me, and it did not taste right. I cannot describe the taste, but it was definitely wrong.

The first 99.99 percent of the drive was otherwise blessedly uneventful. I had driven this route a few weeks earlier for the walk-through that has been described here. I remembered that the Rhode Island Convention Center (RICC) was very close to Route 146. The only tricky part was finding the correct entrance to the garage that was attached via a corridor on the fourth level to the third floor of the RICC. I had a distinct recollection that the right entrance was the first on the right. Therefore, I pulled in there and attempted to enter. The unmanned gate would not let me in. Evidently this was now designated as the entrance for monthly parkers. I tried to back up, but a jeep had pulled in behind me. He was understandably upset at me.

Eventually, I was able to back up and return to the street, but in the process the left side of my car scraped against something. The plastic cover for my left side-view mirror also came halfway off. I tried to push this mishap out of my mind completely until the first day of bridge was over, but it was not easy.

I found the correct entrance and drove up to the east side of the third level and parked near the stairs and elevator. It did not seem possible to get to the east side of the fourth level of the garage from where I had entered. I tried to reattach the cover to the mirror, but I did not have much success. I then climbed the stairs to the fourth level and walked across the sky bridge to the entrance to the RICC.

At the entrance to the third floor two people were checking for vaccination status. Players with an orange wristband could just walk in. Otherwise, players needed to show a vaccination card or the equivalent proof on a smartphone. Upon doing so they were presented with a stylish piece of bright orange plastic to wear on the wrist. When the band had been locked, it was very difficult to undo. I just kept mine on for all ten days that I was in Rhode Island. Then I cut it off with scissors. I don’t know what the people checking for vaccinations did if a person would not or could not show proof.

Very few people wore masks. I resolved to wear an N95 mask and to keep my distance from everyone, even teammates and partners, whenever possible. The fact that I was not staying in a hotel associated with the tournament gave me some optimism. The BA.5 variant had recently become dominant in both Europe and the Americas. Vaccines made it less lethal, but they did little or nothing to prevent transmission. Good masks worked, and the ones that I brought with me were the best available to the general public.

For the first two days I was scheduled to play with Donna Lyons, a long-time friend whom I had hardly seen since we had won the Mid-Flight Pairs at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick in 2019. Donna and her husband Bob lived in Granby in the summer and in Naples, FL, in the winter.

Donna was not at the tournament yet when I arrived. So, I went to the welcome desk and received my SWAG bag. It contained the restaurant guide and a gift. I don’t even remember what the latter was. I then went to the volunteers desk to talk with Linda Ahrens about my assignments. When I left I thought that I was clear about when I needed to show up.

Linda provided me with a stack of scrip for my entry fees¹, and Joe Brouillard, the co-chair of the tournament, provided an exit card to pay for my parking.

I picked up a copy of the Daily Bulletin to see what had happened in the GNT championship. Most of New England’s representatives, including Felix Springer and Trevor Reeves, were still in contention.

I went to the partnership area and looked for a likely partner for Sunday. The only person available was Phyllis Bloom with 800 masterpoints. I called her five times, but the line was always busy.

Soon thereafter Donna appeared. We were scheduled to play in the Open Pairs on Friday and the Bracketed 0-3,000 Swiss on Saturday. Before the morning session we went over the convention card that we had used in 2019. If we made any adjustments, they were not significant. Our morning session was disappointing. We only scored a little more than 43 percent.

I don’t remember what Donna did for lunch. I bought a Diet Coke and a bag of nuts from a vending machine. I did this every day that I was playing so that I would not get sleepy in the afternoon. This also helped me avoid the COVID trap of the lunch area.

Our afternoon session was much better. We scored above 53 percent, which earned us 1.48 red points for finishing third in B in our section. If we had done that well in the morning, I would have been quite pleased.

That direct route across eastern CT was stressful.

Donna was commuting from Granby, even though she lived considerably farther away than I did. So, she was facing roughly five hours of driving both days. I advised her not to take the two-lane route back to Connecticut, despite the insistent advice from Google Maps. Instead I told her that driving on Route 146 and the Mass Pike was much less stressful, only slightly longer, and less subject to delays from construction and slow vehicles.

After saying goodbye to Donna I went back to the garage to inspect the damage on my car. This time I was able to reattach the cover much more securely. I later tried to rig up a little more protection for the electronics by covering it with a plastic bag, but I failed to devise a way of keeping it attached. In the end I convinced myself that this arrangement was good enough to last through the rest of the trip.²

At some point on Friday Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky, my teammates for Saturday and Sunday invited me to have dinner with them on Saturday night at their favorite restaurant in Providence, Pane e Vino. I told them that I had already committed to attending the VIP reception on Saturday evening.

I then exited the garage. I had been led to expect that the entire parking charge would be covered by the exit ticket that Joe had given me. However, I was still charged $15. Evidently Joe gave me the wrong ticket.

I found my way from the RICC to the Hampton Inn in Warwick without any problem. I have stayed at dozens of Hampton Inns around the country, and it had never taken more than five minutes to check in to any of them. This time, however, only one person was on duty at the reception desk. A handful of people surrounded the desk offering advice to a woman who was trying to check in. She demanded to see the manager about whatever was impeding the process. The clerk abandoned her station for at least five minutes in order to summon him.

She returned with the unwanted news that the manager was on his “lunch break” at 6:30 in the evening. Eventually he did appear, and he succeeded at calming everyone down. All the people around the desk—except for me—went over to the lounge/breakfast area to wait for the room to be ready.

My room was very close to the entrance on the left.

I was impatient, no doubt, but there was no good reason to be. I had nothing planned for the evening. The clerk had no problems in finding a room for me. I had to provide my credit card, of course, but then she quickly handed over my key. My room was on the ground floor.

When I reached the hallway I was shocked to see trash piled there. I had never experienced anything like this before at a Hampton Inn. At least the pile did not impede my path to the room.

The room itself was fine, but it had one very peculiar trait. There was no closet! I looked everywhere that I could imagine. I mean, how do you hide a closet in a hotel room? I must have been mistaken, but I accounted in my head for every square foot of space, and there did not seem to be any place it might be.³ Because I was only staying two nights, this anomaly was of small consequence to me.

I had no trouble deciding where to eat. The hotel was within a mile of the KFC, and I had had more pleasant experiences dealing with the store than I had with the many other franchises that I had patronized over the years. This occasion was no exception. My four-piece meal was ready very quickly; it was hot and delicious.

About a week earlier I had misplaced my American Express card that awarded frequent-flyer miles on Delta. I hardly ever used that card, but it bothered me that it was missing. While I was at the KFC I noticed that it was hidden behind another card in my wallet.

I received a text from Phyllis Bloom. She was happy to play with Mike, Jim, and me on Sunday. So, my “dance card” was now completely filled for the tournament.

The book that I brought with me to Rhode Island was Newcastle Upon Tyne: Mapping the City. It was written by Mike Barke, a Professor of Geography from Newcastle. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife Vivienne on the European River Cruise that I took in May of 2022. That adventure is related here.

The book is a history of the Tyneside area from Roman days up to the present with maps of various types used as signposts. I really enjoyed learning about the development of the area not only because it was Mike and Vivienne’s stomping grounds, but also because it helped me to understand better what the characters on the television show Vera were dealing with. On this trip to Rhode Island I also discovered that the huge book could serve as an excellent mousepad when I was using my computer while in bed.

Saturday, July 16: My standard operating procedure at Hampton Inns had long been to hit the breakfast room early. I arrived at 6:15 and was surprised to see that it was already rather crowded. There were quite a few children dining with their parents. Most of the people wore shorts. One kid walked up to the orange juice dispenser and filled a gallon jug. I thought that this was somewhat outrageous, but no one said anything about it.

In addition to the families quite a few uniformed airline employees were among the early diners. This was not a surprise. The Hampton Inn is very close to the airport.

The drive from Warwick to the RICC was very easy. I worried about the left mirror, but the cover stayed on, and it seemed to function as well as ever.

I asked at the Partnership Desk if they needed me to help, but Jan Smola and Carol Seager said that they had it under control.

Donna and I played in the 0-3,000 Bracketed Round Robin. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. We found ourselves in the top bracket. We were in contention until the last two matches. In one of those rounds Donna timidly passed my 5♥ bid, and we missed a slam that would have really helped us. So, we finished well out of the overalls and were awarded only .69 “pity points”.

Donna needed to rush home at the end of the last match. I said goodbye to her and thanked her for playing with me. I then walked over to Joe’s desk and asked him for directions to the WaterFire event.⁴ While I was standing there I was surprised to see a distraught Donna walking toward me. She said that she could not find the key fob for her car. She said that she had looked all through her purse several times.

Donna and I searched around the areas in which she had been. There was no sign of the missing fob. Upon Joe’s advice she went to the facility’s security desk on the ground floor and asked the man there. No one had turned in anything resembling a key fob.

She then went back to her car because she said that there was an emergency method of gaining entry and operating the car. She was pretty sure that her husband could talk her through it over the phone.

So, I went out on foot on my own looking for the VIP reception for the WaterFire. I went the wrong way several times⁵. I finally found the viewing area, but I saw nothing that looked like a reception. At about 7:00 it occurred to me that the WaterFire event always took place in the dark, and the sun would not be setting in Providence for nearly two hours. I decided that it was not worth the wait. I drove back to the Hampton Inn.

I was able to exit the garage without paying. Joe had given me enough tickets for the remainder of my days. Since I was not planning on coming to the tournament on Tuesday, I gave one of the tickets to Donna.

I was shocked by two things at the hotel. The pile of rubbish had grown considerably larger, and no one had cleaned my room. Since I was leaving in the morning, these developments hardly mattered to me, but my overall impression was that this must surely be the worst Hampton Inn in the country.

Because I had again skipped lunch, for supper I treated myself to a small Ultimate Bertucci pizza. It was absolutely delicious. I ordered takeout and ate it in my room.

Sunday July 17: As I made my way to the hotel’s breakfast area I could hardly believe how big the rubbish pile in the hallway had become. It was piled high with pizza boxes. I could barely get past it. I doubt that someone with a wheelchair could have done so.

I was equally surprised that the breakfast area was closed. Evidently breakfast was no longer served on Sunday, or perhaps it was open much later than usual. I was not certain whether this was “the new normal” or just another indication of this hotel’s mismanagement.

I checked out, got into my car, and drove into Providence. I did not record in my notes what I ate that morning, but I think that it was part of the hospitality—a muffin or something like that—that the tournament provided. I picked up a Daily Bulletin and discovered that all three of the remaining GNT teams from New England had lost in the semifinals.

Mike and Jim told me that they had postponed their supper at Pane e Vino until Sunday. They asked me whether I wanted to join them. I happily agreed.

I met up with Phyllis Bloom, who was, as I suspected, Ken Bloom’s wife. We spent some time going over our card, which was rather simple. We were playing with Jim and Mike in the Mid-Flight Swiss teams. We were done in on the very last hand. Phyllis played 6♠. At the other table our counterparts bid the grand slam. Both went down one. Mike led the ♣, which enabled the declarer to finesse the 10.

So, we earned only .78 more red points. I had a good time playing with Phyllis. We did as well as a new partnership could expect. However, I think that she was a little frustrated with her mistakes.

After Phyllis left, II walked with Jim and Mike to their hotel, which was called The Graduate. We took the elevator up to their suite. Mike seemed to be a little embarrassed that some clothes were strewn about. Please!

At some point Mike also realized that he had lost his convention card. Presumably it was somewhere in the playing area of the RICC.

We picked up Jim’s car from the hotel’s parking garage and drove to the restaurant. Mike continually criticized the route that Jim took, and Jim repeatedly reminded us that Mike drove like an old woman. They do this sort of thing all the time. For years I thought that they were actually arguing, but, in fact, they almost never argued. Jim just talked all of the time, and Mike occasionally broke his vow of silence and vocalized his opinions, some of which contradicted Jim’s. However, it never went past that. Each has a lot of respect for the other, and they have been playing together for at least a decade that I know of.

The restaurant scared me. It was crowded, and no one—not even the staff—was wearing a mask. I kept mine on until we reached the booth, and I put it back on before walking to the door at the end.

I ordered the fettucine alla Bolognese and a glass of Barbera. After consulting with the waitress, Mike selected lasagna. Jim had the same veal dish that he always ordered there. The titles of all of the dishes were in Italian on the menu, but the descriptions were in English. I found it peculiar that our waitress was unfamiliar with the titles of the dishes.

I ate everything that I ordered, but the Bolognese was a little too rich for my taste. When Jim asked me if I would order it again if I ate there, I had to answer in the negative. Nevertheless, I had a good time with these guys. They are a lot more fun away from the table, but that is not uncommon for bridge players.

So, we drove back to The Graduate. I went down the elevator to walk to the RICC garage. In the lobby of the hotel I ran into Randy Johnson. I talked with him for a minute. I asked him if his wife Ann (Hudson), one of my former partners, was also in attendance. He claimed that she was too busy working at home.

I walked over to the garage, found my car, and drove to the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, which, like the RICC, is in spitting distance of I-95.

Over the next week I often saw this logo.

I walked from the hotel’s huge parking lot to the revolving door. at the main entrance. To my surprise a young man and woman were greeting people as they entered. Neither of them wore masks. They were from the annual gathering of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, which was held throughout that week in the Crowne Plaza. I wore my mask whenever I was in or near the hotel.

I checked in in a minute or two. The hotel employees also had no masks.

I went back to KFC for supper. It was as good as the first time.

When I checked my email I found one from Monday’s partner Paul Burnham. He reported that he had just arrived in Providence. I also received the following missive from Donna:

First of all, the key fob business was somewhat of a mess and more than somewhat had me spinning. When I got to the garage, my car would not open when I touched the handles, as usually it does. Of course, I tried and tried, tried the lift back, nothing. So, I searched in my bags for the fob, which I knew I had, but I could not find it. Panic began to set in. After too much wasted time running from the bridge info table who sent me to security who sent me back to the info table who sent me to another security man, I went back to the garage to see if I had dropped the key fob. I could not find it, so I emptied my bags again in the dark corner where I had parked, thinking it had to be there. No fob. I dug and dug, freaking out more and finally found it zipped in another pocket. But the car still would not open. Dead. I called Bob, and [after he calmed me down] he talked me through taking the fob apart to find some hidden skinny key. It was so dark in the garage where I was that I was near tears running over to some sunlight, worried that I would be sleeping over on 4 East. I did get the fob apart, got back to the car to try the hidden key, and, for some reason, once I had the fob apart, all the lights went on and the car just opened. Then I worried that all batteries had died, but Bob kept telling me to start the car and it would be fine. It was. But then …this story has a better ending…I was still so rattled [77-year-old women should not navigate Providence traffic when they are rattled] that of course I kept missing turns directed by my robot-voice navigator who was trying to get me home. I missed route 6 back to 84, and I ended up on 146 north driving home by the MassPike. This route was an infinitely better route, as you suggested. I am sure I lost another three years of heart life, but at least I was not stuck in the garage overnight.
The nicest part of the fiasco was that your kind gift of the validation card worked like a charm, and it was great to have that bonus in all of the mess.

Monday July 18: My room on the third floor of the Crowne Plaza was very nice. The bathroom had two sinks! It was a good thing, too. The stopper on the main sink did not work. So, I shaved at the one on the end.

I have walked there, but I drove every day on this trip.

I drove to McDonald’s for my usual sausage biscuit with egg, a breakfast that I consumed six of the seven mornings of my stay at the Crowne Plaza, which does not offer free breakfasts. I ate the sandwick on the car while I drove on I-95.

I worked at the Partnership Desk on Monday morning. While I was there I espied Mike Heider’s missing convention card lying on the table. I took it over to Joe and left it with him. When I spotted Mike later that day I told him that I had found it and let him know where it was.

I assisted a few people looking for partners in understanding how the cards were displayed: teams on one board and pairs games on the other. Each board was sorted by day of the event. Usually that was all that was needed. A player would find someone of about his/her level and call them.

One fellow did not have a phone. I offered to let him use mine, but he had no idea how to use a smartphone. I had to dial the number for him. This process was repeated a few times.

Perhaps twenty-five minutes before 10:00, the starting time for all the games, Paul arrived at the Partnership Desk. To my surprise the ponytail for which he was renowned had disappeared. Shortly thereafter we saw Judy Hyde, with whom I have often been a partner or teammate and even more often an opponent. We talked for a bit, and both Paul and I came away certain that she had agreed to play in the Bracketed Round Robin Teams with us. Then she vanished to find her partner. We never saw her again.

At 9:59 Paul and I walked over to the Open Pairs game and registered. It was a nightmare. We were East-West in the morning, and we were between Robert Todd and his partner, who played a customized Big Club system, and a pair that played a Polish Club. The senior member of both of these pairs delivered a lengthy pre-alert speech explaining the unusual conventions that they used.

Thirteen rounds of listening to both of these dissertations would certainly have been enough to drive anyone to distraction. However, we had the completely unique distinction of playing North-South for the thirteen rounds in the afternoon session seated between the same two pairs. By the time that the last round had ended we could recite either speech with no pauses.

Paul played badly throughout, and I was worse. Our scores reflected it. Fortunately, he got to play with a different partner, his college roommate, Rob Stillman, on Tuesday. I, on the other hand, had already been planning on taking that day off.

The most amazing thing about our second session was that a guy with whom I had talked at The Graduate on the previous day came late to our table. On one of the two hands that we played against him he took at least—this is no exaggeration—five minutes to decide on a single play on defense. On every other trick he played in tempo. I suspect that he was astral traveling.

To add insult to injury Tom Gerchman came up to complain to me after the round was over that he was unable to obtain a parking pass. I simply said in a Chico voice “That’s not my chob.”

I picked up some tacos at the Taco Bell that was across the street from McDonald’s on Bald Hill Rd. in Warwick and consumed them in my room at the Crowne Plaza. Life is definitely romantic and exciting at bridge tournaments.

I was only slightly surprised to find that my room had not been made. Apparently that was the new normal, at least at chain hotels in Warwick.

I called Abhi Dutta and confirmed with him that Paul and I would team up with him and a young man named Jaan Srimurthy in the Bracketed Swiss on Wednesday.

Tuesday July 19: In 2019 I took a day off at the NABC in Honolulu, but that was only because my partner, Ann Hudson, refused to play with me any more.⁶ The idea of a voluntary respite was a new one.

The award was presented by Mark Aquino, the Regional Director.

I read the Daily Bulletin on the ACBL website. The first thing that I noticed was that Sue Miguel had been presented with a Special Goodwill award for her outstanding work with the Intermediate/Novice program in District 25 and at the two NABCs in Providence.

So, evidently I had missed another meeting of the Goodwill Committee. I have tried to attend them several times, but I have never succeeded.

I also searched the Bulletin for information about the number of COVID-19 cases that had been reported thus far, but the only reference was to the ACBL’s mask (not required) and vaccination (required) policies.

I went to IHOP and treated myself to a ham and Swiss-cheese omelette with pancakes. They were as good as I remembered. I was disappointed that the restaurant no longer played oldies on the intercom system.

Two very old ladies⁷ sat across the aisle from me. I could not avoid listening to much of their conversation. One of them was treating the other to breakfast because it was her birthday. I was tempted to wish her a happy birthday, but I did not want to disturb their illusion of a private conversation.

After breakfast I called the front desk to ask about the housekeeping regimen. They told me that they would bring me more linens. That afternoon a large bag appeared in my room. It contained towels.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe’s last book. It was a sequel to A Borrowed Man, which I had read a few years earlier. I only vaguely remembered the plot.

I then walked around the exterior of the hotel and then took advantage of the beautiful weather to read my new book while I sat on a bench for a half hour or so. Occasionally an employee would come out to smoke, but they stayed far enough away that it did not bother me. As I came back inside I saw Sally Kirtley and Helen Pawlowski. They were on site to check out the hotel for the regional tournament scheduled for the week before Labor Day. It would be held in the Crowne Plaza.

Helen asked me what I was doing there. I told her that I was staying at the Crowne Plaza and that I gave myself the day off after four days of frustration. She replied, “That makes sense.”

I then went up to my room and took a nap in my unmade bed. After I woke up I talked with Sue on the phone. I told her about how terrible the previous day had been.

Of course, I actually walked straight from the hotel’s door across the parking lot and field to the intersection of East Ave. and Greenwich Ave.

In the afternoon I walked to the Stop and Shop. The walk there was fairly easy. The only challenge was to cross East Ave., a major highway. There was a button to initiate the pedestrian crossing lights, but it only worked for the main part of the street. Crossing the entrance and exit required alertness and quickness.

At the grocery store I purchased a large roast beef grinder and four two-liter bottles of caffeine-free Diet Coke using my GO rewards card to qualify for the $4 price on the colas. The walk back was not quite as easy. I had brought a tote bag to carry the Cokes in, but I had to change it from one hand to the other several times. Eight liters weighs 17.6 pounds, and the burden was mostly borne by my fingers. I should have brought two bags; that would have been considerably easier.

When I got back to the hotel I slept for another hour. Then I ate half of the grinder and drank a considerable amount of Diet Coke for lunch/supper.

In the evening I read some more and fooled around with my laptop computer.

My plans for the last three days were still up in the air. I was scheduled to play with Sohail Hasan, but we did not have teammates lined up.

The report of the last five days of the tournament is a little more upbeat. It can be found here.

1. The fine printing on the bottom of each voucher clearly stated that only one could be used per entry, but I later realized that the directors did not enforce this limitation. They accepted as many vouchers as each person presented. I played in eighteen sessions at the tournament, but I spent very little cash on entry fees.

2. As of November 2022 I still had done nothing about the mirror. It has functioned admirably.

3. My inability to find things is legendary. It almost caused me to flunk first grade. That story was told here.

4. WaterFire was a spectacular event that was held periodically in Providence. It is difficult to describes. People rode in boats, and they used torches to light larger torches that are permanently in the water. I watched the event in October, 2014. On that occasion it was becoming dark by the time that the afternoon session ended, and volunteers had been stationed along the route from the RICC to the viewing area so that all the bridge players could find the event.

5. Towns and cities in New England felt under no obligation to provide street signs that identified every street at every intersection. I have complained about this since I first came to the area in 1972.

6. The adventures at that tournament and the week afterwards that we spent in Maui are documented here. Ann and I remained good friends, and I have played with her several times subsequently. She even volunteered to pick us up at the airport after we returned from Hawaii.

7. I long ago realized that women my age are very old.

1997-2014 TSI: AdDept Client: Stage Stores

Posted on September 4, 2021 by Mike

People and events at SRI/Stage Stores. Continue reading →

Everyone with whom I dealt—and there were a great many people over the course of seventeen years—-called the large retailer based on the south side of Houston “Stage Stores”. Even their LinkedIn pages refer to Stage Stores. However, our contracts¹ were definitely with a company named Specialty Retailers, Inc. (SRI). The checks that we received were from SRI. This always seemed strange to me, but I managed to piece together from various sites on the Internet something of an explanation.

I spent many hours at the headquarters building on South Main. The visitors’ parking was perhaps thirty to the right of the palm tree.

SRI was incorporated in 1988. I was unable to discover who the original stockholders were or who ran the corporation. I also have no idea what, if anything, SRI did in its first four years of existence.

In 1992 the company purchased a Colorado-based retail company named Fashion Bar, Inc., which had seventy-one stores. The larger ones were branded as Palais Royal or Bealls². The rest were known as Stage Stores. In the nineties SRI purchased a large number of other stores. Most of them bore the Stage logo. SRI’s headquarters at 10201 South Main³ in Houston was known locally as Stage Stores, and that name, as you can see in the photo, was displayed prominently over the entrance. The only stores that were actually located in Houston were branded as Palais Royal. I recall actually purchasing a leather belt in one of them. Many people in Houston knew about Palais Royal, but Stage Stores and SRI were probably not on their radar.

In late 1996 or early 1997 Doug Pease, TSI’s Director of Marketing, received a call from Brenda Suire⁴, the Director of Finance for Stage’s Marketing Department. Doug and I flew on Continental Airlines to Intercontinental Airport in Houston to meet with Brenda and some other employees. We were somewhat surprised by the length of the drive from the airport to Stage’s headquarters.

The blue route on the map at left suggests driving through downtown Houston. That route would only be considered if the trip was in the middle of the night. We always took the western loop on I-610.

On the second day in Houston I demonstrated the functionality and design of the AdDept system at the local IBM office. It went over very well.

I recently found in my notes from January of 2001 some of the items that were included in the contract that resulted from that presentation and subsequent negotiations.

I was surprised to discover that in 1997 Stage paid us over $8,000 for the expense payables, sales, MM Plus, and AdSEND (!) interfaces. No wonder we made so much money in those days. We have no choice but to give them the assistance they need to get the first three working. They don’t use AdSEND any more, thank goodness, and I am pretty certain that no one remembers that they paid for this. I don’t remember coding an expense interface for Stage, but we clearly did it in 1998.

As part of that initial contract the programmers at TSI wrote a great deal of new code. Stage Stores had more stores and fewer merchandise departments than the first few AdDept customers. In most of their markets they operated only one store. They were therefore much more interested in the ratios of media dollars spent on each store to the amount of sales that the store generated than in sales and expenses by department. To provide this information we wrote code to accept sales by store from the corporate systems. We also wrote a set of reports that showed the ratio of advertising expenses to sales for each store.

No one at Stage Stores had previously examined the broadcast (i.e., radio and television) advertising too carefully. The buys and audits were done by a lady (I don’t recall her name) from Reynolds Communications. She used SmartPlus⁵ software to make the schedule and audit the spots that each station ran. Stage soon discovered that she had been spending much too much money on television buys, especially in one-store markets in Louisiana. She knew that the company had a store in those markets, but she had no access to sales data.

As often seemed to happen in AdDept installations, this unexpected revelation allowed Stage Stores to save enough money on an inefficient use of funds to justify most of the cost of the entire system.

Brenda, Floyd, and Denise Bessette at TSI’s office.

Training and installation: In 1997 Stage sent three employees to TSI’s office in Enfield for several days of intensive training: Brenda, Floyd Smith⁶, and Hugo DuBois⁷. The emphasis of the training was on how to get the most out of the AdDept software in their environment.

Floyd was Brenda’s right-hand man in the business office. For the first few years—which (for reasons unrelated to the system) were rather chaotic—Floyd was the liaison between TSI and Stage. Hugo, a native of Belgium, managed the department’s local area network. He mainly worked with the production and creative people. I am not sure why he came to Enfield. Hugo’s only role in the project was to connect the network to the AS/400 and to install and configure the software on individual PC’s and Macs so that the department’s employees could access the AdDept system.

After the AS/400 had been delivered, and the network was connected to it, I flew to Houston to install the AdDept software and configure the database. Over the next few months I returned to help them deal with problems, to show them how to use new features, and to gather ideas about further development. I soon discovered that there was a better way to get from Connecticut to Stage. On most trips I flew on Delta or American and landed at Houston’s smaller airport, Hobby. Not only was it much closer to Stage, but there was usually a better choice of flight times.

Denise, Floyd, Hugo, the top of Brenda’s head, and Steve Shaw at TSI’s office.

Within a year or so the system was running fairly smoothly. Then in 1998 Brenda left Stage Stores, and for a while Floyd ran the advertising business office. His primary assistant was Toni Young⁸. One of the primary AdDept users was Renee Mottu⁹, who managed the expense invoices.

Fortunately for TSI, for the next year our involvement with Stage was reduced to answering phone calls and resolving mundane issues. I say “fortunately” because even though Stage Stores declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999, the effect on TSI’s bottom line was minimal. The effect on daily life in Stage’s advertising department was for a considerable period much more severe. My notes after a visit to their headquarters in January of 2000 stressed that “Those poor people spend half of their time trying to persuade newspapers to run their ads.”

Karen is in the red jacket. The man who is obscuring Floyd is, I think, the Advertising Director.

Brenda was replaced by Karen Peltz, who had held a similar position at Foley’s¹⁰, the chain of department stores owned by the May Company that was also based in Houston. At the time Foley’s had been using AdDept to solve various problems in its advertising department for five years. I had worked with Karen at Foley’s, but only a little. Eventually Floyd moved to another position at Stage Stores, and Toni Young managed the day-to-day operations of the marketing business office thereafter.

I had only a few interactions with Joanne Swartz¹¹, the Senior VP of Marketing, and the guy who was Advertising Director. I do not remember his name. I think that Karen reported directly to Joanne.

I dealt with two people in the media area. The woman’s name was Deidre Prince¹¹. I do not remember the guy’s name, and it is not in the notes. I also remember Sandra Green, who used AdDept for buying newspaper space. She seemed to have a lot more difficulty using the system than anyone else did.

My notes: I discovered quite a few email messages that I sent back to TSI’s office from Stage. They are dated between October 1999 and January 2001. I’ll start withe the earliest one

The New Skin bottle and the shaving/ medical kit that I kept it in.

Not a great start today. I woke up at 6 AM. I got up and stumbled around the hotel room for a few minutes. I ironed some shirts and pants. At 6:55 I shaved. I looked in the mirror and saw Dracula. The blood was pouring from my lip. It took over 40 minutes for it to stop bleeding. I painted the New Skin on it. I got dressed and went to Stage. The New Skin held until almost 5 PM. Then I bled all over my shirt and pants, but this time I got it to stop in only about five minutes. Life on the road is so glamorous.
Renee Mottu is looking for suggestions as to how to remove two possums that have taken up residence beneath her mobile home. She rejected my idea of sending in a dachshund. She said that the possums would eat a dog.
I didn’t get to run tonight. Toni Young told me about a good trail. I put on my running duds, followed her directions, and drove around for about 25 minutes looking for the place. I never found it. I drove back to the hotel, got some food, and settled into my room to watch “Norm” and “The Drew Carey” show.

I am pretty sure that the woman with the big hair to the right of Floyd is Renee Mottu. I don’t remember the names of the other two ladies.

The first paragraph refers to a blue-black circle that appeared on my left lower lip in the nineties. It has never caused any pain, and it has not bled in the last decade or so. The story of Renee and her possum continued for a few visits. Before reading the above I had totally forgotten that for a while Norm McDonald had a network television show.

The following are from the subsequent two days on the same trip.

It was in the 80’s here yesterday, but it felt cooler. There was almost no humidity, which is rare for Houston. Floyd’s office was freezing. He has an electric heater in his office. We had it running most of the day even though we had six people crowded around his PC all day long. I brought sweaters, and I will wear one today.
Stage has network printers. We sent a 40-page report to Floyd’s printer about noon. It was still in SND status when I left at 6 PM. Floyd said it will sometimes not print until the next morning. Have they ever complained about this? I think the culprit may be the faxing. They were faxing all day yesterday.
I noticed at Stage that their floors must not be very level. The pieces of their desk units come together at angles. I also noticed that some units were raised off the floor as much as an inch on one side.
I don’t think that I could possibly in good conscience approve more than five months for the palm tree research project at this time.
How much do you think is the monthly fee that Reynolds Communications charges Stage to handle (including auditing and approving invoices from stations) their broadcast advertising?

I don’t remember the precise answer to the last question, but I am pretty sure that there were two digits to the left of the comma. The next set of emails came from the trip that began on January 11, 2000.

This Silver Medallion card expired many years ago.

I was dreading the flight to Atlanta. I envisioned myself standing in line with the common people now that my silver medallion card has expired. I was delighted to discover that my ticket still says “Silver Medallion.” Half of the flight got on with the medallion status group.
The phone on my seat on the flight from Hartford to Atlanta has a little LCD display. It discloses the NASDAQ closing price every few minutes along with advertisements for various ways to spend your money on the phone.
A lady on the Atlanta flight has striped hair. Not streaks, stripes. She has brown hair intermixed with ½” blonde stripes. I guess it is a look.
The flight from Atlanta to Houston sat in the gate for about 20 minutes. Then we got in the usual long line to take off. It must have been over 100 degrees in the cabin by the time we hit the skies. The guy in the seat in front of me pushed his seat all the way back. I have therefore had to turn 45 degrees and put my laptop on my lap. Even so it is uncomfortable to type. Thankfully there is no one next to me.
Listening to Kiri Te Kanawa sure beats listening to salesmen. On my last few flights the planes were full of families and college students. The passengers on both of Tuesday night’s flights have been mostly middle-aged men.
I still have a 45 minute drive ahead of me after this flight, which won’t get in until about 11:00 central time. I need some caffeine.
I used the air conditioner in the car all the way from the airport to the motel.
… Renee Mottu asked me to hire her. I told her that we needed experienced, or at least trained, programmers. She pressed me on this. She said that she was sure she could learn programming and that Floyd would give her a good reference. By the way, she said all of this in front of Floyd.

I remembered to ask Renee what happened to the possums living under her trailer. She said they were still there. I repeated my recommendation about the dog. She said she didn’t have one. I said she should borrow one. She asked me (!) if I knew anyone who had a dog she could use. Later I heard her walking around intoning “Does anyone have a dog I can borrow?”

I think that by 2001 Stage Stores must have been emerging from bankruptcy and resuming their strategy of expansion by purchasing other chains. The biggest of those was the acquisition of Peebles, a chain of 125 department stores based in South Hill, VA.

For some reason the management at Stage wanted to keep track of all expenses and co-op income of the Peebles stores separately. This was the first, but not the last, time that I installed a second AdDept database on the same AS/400. There was still only one set of programs, but each user had two AS/400 user ID’s. Their profiles determined which database would be used.

Here are some of my notes from January of 2001:

Leaping Lanny Poppo became one late in his wrestling career

The meeting in the afternoon went well. Joanne, the advertising VP introduced me as “the resident genius.” The project has been scaled down. We need to be able to do accruals at the store level for media and production at the store level. We also need to be able to do prepaid to expense. One unusual wrinkle is that they do not want to allocate creative costs to stores. They want to be able to get ratios of advertising expense to sales from AdDept, but we must be able to reconcile this with what is in the G/L.
I was glad that I was an outsider at this meeting. The politics was just barely below the surface. Chuck, who I think is the CFO, put Joanne on the spot about something that was not even on the agenda. Their explanations were not at all impressive. The experience had the happy effect of reminding why I did not like working at a larger company.
Toni Young says that she thinks that Renee Mottu never got rid of her possums.
It turns out that what Stage really wants to do most is to start using what they have and what we have previously proposed—SmartPlus interface, sales interface, and expense payables interface. They spoke of the SmartPlus interface as if it were a done deal. I don’t recall them purchasing this module. I brought back the file layout for the expense interface. I did not come back with a lot of specs for new projects. Believe it or not, they want another week of my time. Both Karen and Joanne (the Senior VP) seriously asked me to stay over the weekend and spend next week in Houston. I didn’t tell them this, but I don’t think that I could have lasted for 24 days.
01/07/01: I was surprised to discover that in 1997 Stage paid us over $8,000 for the expense payables, sales, MM Plus, and AdSEND (!) interfaces. No wonder we made so much money in those days. We have no choice but to give them the assistance they need to get the first three working. They don’t use AdSEND any more, thank goodness, and I am pretty certain that no one remembers that they paid for this. I don’t remember coding an expense interface for Stage, but we clearly did it in 1998. I will write up a quote to change it to work the way that the new documentation states.
Toni Young said that she thinks that Renee Mottu had not solved her possum problem.
I saw a sign at Stage Stores offering a $3,000 bonus to any employee that refers someone hired as a senior analyst in IS. The candidate must have five years of COBOL or Oracle experience.

Evidently I had already scheduled most of the rest of the month of January 2001 to travel to other clients so that if I had agreed to stay in Houston over the weekend and the following week, I would have been on the road for twenty-four days in a row! In those days we were charging $1,000 per day for my time. If Stage had still been in Chapter 11, I doubt that they would have proposed spending another $7,000 for another week of my presence. The bankruptcy court would have needed to approve the expense.

AdSend was a service offered by the Associated Press for sending the images of ad layouts to the newspapers. Hugo once told me that the company had twelve T-1 lines (TSI had one), and, according to him it was not nearly enough.

The neighborhood: Stage seemed to be a nice place to work. The headquarters was a fairly nice building located on the south side of Houston. They always provided me with a comfortable place to work, and there was ample parking in spaces reserved for vendors. The building also had a cafeteria that offered good food at very reasonable prices. I always ate lunch there, usually by myself. Many employees arrived at work early and ate breakfast there.

I took this photo of Enron Field under construction. It is now called Minute Maid Park.

It was not too easy to reach by a car driven from the south. Just north of the building Main Street became a divided highway with restricted access. Since I always stayed in a hotel north of the building, I had to drive my rental car to the first exit, drive under the highway, and then take the access road back to Stage’s driveway.

Most of Houston’s explosive growth had been in other directions. There was not much south of Stage’s location. However, just north of the building were the medical centers for which Houston was famous and Enron Field, which is where the Houston Astros played after the Astrodome was abandoned in 1999. I got to see (and photograph) the construction of the new stadium.

According to Yelp Marco’s is closed, but it still has a website.

I usually stayed in a Hampton Inn a few blocks from the stadium. My favorite restaurant was a Mexican place called Marco’s. Located in a hard-to-reach strip mall near my hotel, it was where I first became acquainted with tacos al carbon, one of my favorite dishes. Marco’s had ridiculously low prices. I often told the manager that they should open restaurants in the northeast. They could have doubled their prices and still filled the place every night.

During a couple of multi-day trips to Stage I met up with Sue’s cousin, Mark Davis, for supper. He worked for Exxon Mobil. We usually at an Olive Garden. The conversation was better than the food.

I jogged on the streets near the hotel nearly every evening when I visited Stage. I worked out a route that kept me on streets that had very little traffic.

Eventually I discovered a delightful dirt track that surrounded a golf course in Memorial Park. I drove there every chance that I got. A loop around the track was a little less than three miles. I usually did two loops. There is no chance that I would ever move to Texas. However, if I did, it would be to Houston, and the primary motive would be to gain access to this track every day.

The people: I was quite surprised by the LinkedIn pages of the people with whom I worked at Stage. We had not done much work for the company after 2008 or so. Consequently, I really had no idea who was still working there after that. I discovered that many of them remained at Stage Stores quite a long time after I last saw them or talked with them.

TSI’s initial contact, Brenda, departed in 1998. I don’t know why she left Stage so soon after we did the installation. There might be a story there. I don’t recall ever hearing her name mentioned again.

I have many memories of Floyd. He was definitely a family man. He was always cheerful and business-minded. He always ate lunch at his desk. His office was not very large, but it had two doors, which he kept open. Some people used his office as a shortcut to get from one part of the marketing department to another. I was surprised when he and Toni seemed to switch jobs after Karen arrived. That was never explained to me. Floyd was employed by Stage Stores until 2011.

I was acquainted with Karen from her days at Foley’s. When she arrived at Stage, she made it clear to me that one of her top priorities was for the department to make better use of AdDept. A Republican, she assured all of us in January of 2001 that George W. Bush “will not be that bad.” After his two incredibly stupid wars and an economy that totally tanked while he and his cronies watched helplessly, most historian vehemently disagree.

Karen was, to my amazement, an avid biker—not mountain bikes, Harleys. She and her husband rode up to the big gathering in Sturgis, SD, at least once. I have always told people that if you saw me on a motorcycle, you can be certain that I will also be smoking a cigarette and showing off my piercings and tattoos.

Karen worked at Stage until 2013, twice as long as her stint at Foley’s. Her LinkedIn page lists no jobs after she left Stage Stores.

I remember that Hugo drove a Saturn—as did I during that period. His, however, was a coupe. If I had known that Saturn sold two-door cars, I would have bought one. Hugo stayed until 2017.

I did not really have much personal contact with Joanne, aside from that one meeting that they asked me to attend in 2001. I do remember that on one occasion I overheard Renee accosting her in the hallway. Renee said, quite loudly, “Joanne, I need a raise!” If Joanne replied, I did not hear the answer. Joanne left Stage Stores in 2012.

Toni apparently never left Stage Stores. The more that I worked with her the more that I respected her.

When I met Deidre I asked her if she was related to Diana Prince. She did not know whom I was talking about. I guess not everyone was a fan of Wonder Woman on TV and in the comic books.

I think that Deidre was our main contact when I showed the A^xN¹² system to the department in 2003 or 2004. They enthusiastically endorsed it and used it until they outsourced the buying of newspaper space to an outside company. Deidre left Stage in 2011.

Epilogue: I think that our last major dealings with Stage were the implementation of A^xN and the Peebles project. Nevertheless, they were still using AdDept when TSI went out of business in 2014.

Unlike most retailers Stage Stores continued to expand in the twenty-teens by acquiring other chains. In 2017 Stage acquired the assets of the Gordman’s chain of department stores and quickly converted all of them to sell off-priced items. This worked so well that they began to convert most of their other stores to the same format. In the November 2019-February 2020 quarter sales were up 19 percent¹⁴.

Then the pandemic struck and Stage Stores was stuck with a lot of debt and 738 stores that could not be expected to generate any revenue in the immediate future. The price of the company’s stock plummeted. In May of 2020 Stage entered Chapter 11 again, and in August it announced that it was liquidating all of its holdings.

1. For some reason SRI insisted on a new contract every year. We had contracts with all of our AdDept clients, but all of the others were open-ended.

2. There is also an unrelated chain of department stores with the Bealls moniker that is based in Florida. My unsuccessful pitch to that company is detailed here.

3. Years after TSI was closed SRI moved to an office building at 2425 West Loop South. I tried to use Google Maps to find the Main Street building with which I was so familiar, but I failed. I think that it must have been demolished.

4. Brenda’s LinkedIn page is here. I had trouble remember her last name. I sent an email to Floyd Smith asking if he knew it. He replied, “Sure. She is also on Facebook..” Confused, I asked again. Floyd wrote, “Suire is her last name. Sorry about that spell check changed it last time.”

5. The Media Management Plus product was renamed SmartPlus. I think that this may have happened when the company was purchased by Arbitron, the rating service. On the Internet I found a very detailed description of what SmartPlus did. It is posted here.

6. Floyd’s LinkedIn page is here.

7. Hugo’s LinkedIn page can be viewed here.

8. In 1997 I was only 49. I was shocked that year to learn that Toni Young, who was younger than I was, had a grandchild who was by no means an infant. Her LinkedIn page is here.

9. I found no LinkedIn page for Renee Mottu. Her Facebook page is here. I was surprised to discover that it contained even less than mine does.

10. A great deal more has been written about the AdDept installation at Foley’s. The account is posted here.

11. Joanne Swartz’s LinkedIn page can be viewed here.

12. Deidre Prince’s LinkedIn page is here.

13. A^xN was the name that I gave to TSI’s Internet program for management of insertion orders that AdDept users sent to newspapers. Its system design is explicated here. The marketing history is described here. Stage’s use of the system was one of the main reason that the number of subscribing newspapers grew so large—at one point over four hundred!

14. The Philadelphia Inquirer picked up this story from the Washington Post and posted it here.

1992 Cruising Tour of Turkey and Greece: Part 2

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Mike

Three Greek islands, Ephesus, Athens, and Delphi. Continue reading →

Buses transported the entire group from the hotel to the ship, which was considerably smaller than the Song of Norway. This was actually a good thing. It was easier to get around on this ship, and almost all of our time on it would during the hours of darkness.

I think that we must have left Istanbul fairly late in the day. I don’t remember that we had any days at sea. In fact, I do not remember much about being on the ship at all. The schedule was pretty much the same every day. We were always in port when we woke up. We ate breakfast on the ship. Then we disembarked from the ship and did something. Then we returned to the ship. After we left the port we had supper. There was usually some kind of entertainment in the evening.

I remember absolutely nothing about the food. It must have been passable and fairly plentiful. In those days I was probably more interested in quantity than quality. The cost of the cruise was quite low. We did not expect to be treated the way that we were on our two Royal Caribbean cruises (described here).

Our room was OK, and the service at supper was, too. There were no assigned seats, and I don’t ever remember us sharing a table with anyone. I don’t remember our cabin boy, but we must have had one.

If we had had a day at sea, it might have been tiresome. The ship had none of the amenities that the Song of Norway boasted. There was definitely no casino. I don’t think that there was even a game room or an exercise room or anything like that. We did not miss these things; we came to see the sights. If we wanted a drink on the ship, we could get it.

Magicians who specialize in productions need a good tailor.

After supper there was entertainment in a small theater. I remember three of the shows.

A magician performed one evening. I was still quite interested in magic in 1992 even though more than a decade had passed since I had devoted a lot of time to it in Detroit (as described here). The magician came on stage wearing a flashy sport jacket and did at least six or seven “productions”—making things appear out of nowhere: flowers, a cane, a dove, a bunny, etc. Then he took off his jacket for the rest of the performance. I wonder how many other people thought, “Well, I guess that that jacket is empty now.”
I seem to remember that there was a small orchestra/band on the ship. One night they played while some female dancers performed. Ordinarily I would have no interest whatever in such a show. However, Sue and I were within ten feet of one of the dancers when her left breast popped out of her costume. I paid attention after that.
On the last night of the cruise as our ship was en route from Santorini to Piraeus, the orchestra played Greek music, and a gourp of the crew members got up on the stage and showed how to dance to Greek music. One fellow really got into it and tried to coax passengers into joining him for the finale. Only a few did. I think that this fellow may have hit the ouzo a little early that evening.

Our first port of call was Mytilene (mee tee LEE nee), the port city and capital of the Greek island of Lesbos (LEZ voss). Although Mytilene is only 184 miles from Istanbul by air, it was quite a bit farther by sea, perhaps 300 miles. The first phase of our voyage took us down to the base of the Bosphorus, across the entire width of the Sea of Marmara, through the Dardanelles, past the site of ancient Troy, down the western coast of Turkey, then an abrupt turn back to the east, and then south to the western side of Lesbos, where we were actually less than seven miles from Turkey and very far indeed from the Greek mainland.

Sue and I took a guided tour that included at least two stops on the island. About ten or twelve of us were in the group, as I recall. We traveled in a small bus. Our guide was a young lady who was very well spoken and enthusiastic about her home island and Greek heritage. She told us about the historic conflict between Greece, of which Lesbos is one of the most distant islands, and “Asia Minor”, which is how she always referred to Turkey. She also spoke about the Turkish Revolution that ended in 1923 and resulted in the Greeks being expelled from modern Turkey. She called this event “the Catastrophe”. How strange it must be to live in such an otherwise isolated area only a few miles away from your country’s ancestral enemy. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that the families of most or the residents have been in Lesbos for centuries.

Our first stop was at the Theophilos Museum in the village of Vareia, just outside of Mytilene. Our guide explained that Theophilos Hatzimihail was an eccentric artist who was born in Vareia. She said that he was one of the few people who dared to wear the ancient historical garb, including a kilt and a curved sword. He also was a fanboy of Alexander the Great.

Theophilos’s works were generally very colorful and patriotic. He also often painted the locals of Lesbos engaged in mundane tasks. The guide said that they were like “cartoons”. Clearly she did not mean to disparage them. Instead, she was emphasizing that they told stories and were not necessarily realistic. Also, he also sometimes hand-wrote dialogue next to his characters, but he never used “balloons”.

Many more of Theophilos’s paintings can be viewed on the Internet.

I really enjoyed the visit to the museum. Theophilos was no Caravaggio, but I remember having a really good time looking at his paintings. and I had never felt that way before around art. Maybe it was just because the guide provided some context for me. It had a profound effect on me. It definitely affected the way that I approached subsequent trips.

After we left the museum the bus transported us into the interior of the island to another village. This one was, our guide assured us, locally famous for its beautiful church. I don’t remember the name of the village or the church. The church did not seem that special to me. It certainly was not as ornate as St. Bede’s church in Kelly, KS. The most memorable feature was the pair of nuns who cared for the church. I estimated that they were both about four feet tall.

After the visit to the church we may have stopped for lunch (I don’t remember) before returning to the ship. When I gave the guide her tip, I described the experience as “θαυμάσια”, which means “wonderful”.² She was very surprised by this and smiled widely.

By the way, Sue did not share my enthusiasm about the excursion. Maybe I just had a slight crush on the guide.

Mytilene is in the top center; Kuşadası is in the lower right.

During the night we sailed from Mytilene to Kuşadası, a port city on the Turkish mainland. The primary reason for this stop was to allow passengers to view the remains of the ancient city of Ephesus. Almost all the passengers elected to take the excursion.

Ephesus was for centuries one of the major cities in Asia Minor. It figured prominently in the early years of Christianity. There is even a letter to the Ephesians attributed to St. Paul.

I think that we had a guide for this visit, but I don’t remember him at all. Someone official certainly accompanied us on the bus trip to the site, which is about twenty miles from Kuşadası.

I remember that we were told that the city was a port in its heyday. However, the river and coastline silted up over time. The ruins are now about two miles away from the sea. By the fifteenth century the former city had been completely abandoned.

The ruins, however, were in pretty good condition. Perhaps the best aspect was that it felt like a real city, not just a group of isolated structures.

The one thing that both Sue and I remember the most clearly was the place where a footprint and a drawing in the paving stone have been interpreted as an advertisement for a local brothel. Our guide claimed that it was the oldest advertisement in the world.

The worst aspect was the fact that the site was guarded by soldiers with semi-automatic rifles. In 1992 this was a stunning sight. We were told that there might be a problem with Kurdish groups.

The building that impressed us the most at the time was the huge theater that could seat as many as 25,000. It was extremely well preserved. It took no effort at all to imagine a performance taking place there.

The other really impressive structure was the Library of Celsus. I remembered that the four virtues were celebrated in the facade, but the only one that I remembered was Sophia (wisdom). The other three—bravery, knowledge, and thought— I had to look up online.

The guide did not tell us about Jesus’s mother Mary being escorted to Ephesus by John the Apostle. Supposedly she lived in or near the city up until her last days on earth. However, no Catholic believes that she was buried in the vicinity—or anywhere else. One of the very few statements ever made by any pope under the terms of infallibility was that Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul at the time of her demise. Pope Pius XII made this declaration in 1950 in the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus.

Of course, I was quite familiar with the doctrine of the Assumption when we were in Ephesus in 1992, but I did not know about the papal declaration. What is surprising to me now is that it was not declared earlier. The Assumption has been a part of Christian (but not biblical) tradition for a very long time.

Kuşadası is at the top, Rhodes at the bottom.

The next morning we landed in Rhodes, which is the name of both the port city/capital and the island on which it resides. The only thing that I previously knew about Rhodes was that it was the home of the Colossus of Rhodes, a huge statue that straddled the harbor. The statue disappeared many centuries earlier, but as our ship docked in that same harbor, and it was not difficult to visualize what the statue—one of the seven Wonders of the World—might have looked like in ancient times.

Rhodes was a very interesting place. A medieval wall circumscribed the Old Town. I walked the entire circuit by myself. It affoded great views both of the city on one side and the rest of the island, the harbor, and the sea on the other.

I was even able to read a few of the street signs. I recall that one of the streets was named ίππος, a common word from Homer’s time that is still used. It means horse. If he had ever written it, Homer would have placed a rough breathing mark at the beginning to indicate an /h/ sound. Modern Greek has dispensed with that character and that sound.

The Staircase of the Propylaea was pretty steep, but …

For centuries Rhodes was home base for the Knights of St. John, often called the Hospitalers. Several castles and palaces that they used remained on the island. I think that there were excursions available to visit some of them, but we did not take advantage of them.

Instead, we went to the nearby town of Lindos, which is pronounced like “LEAN those”, except that the last consonant sound is an /s/, not a /z/. It has a nice beach, but it is most famous for its Acropolis. One of the most stunning events of my life was climbing the very wide Staircase of the Propylaea there. Sue recalls ladies who sat on the steps selling home-made lace products.

Nothing but sky was visible at the top as one ascended the stairs. It was a surreal experience. However, when the top was finally reached, the view in every direction was absolutely stunning—ruins of the church of St. John, the sea, the village, the beach. It was almost too much for the senses to handle.

… the view from the top was spectacular in every direction.

Rhodes is in the upper right. Santorini is in the upper left. The big island at the bottom is Crete.

During the night we sailed west toward our final island, the picturesque Santorini. We knew nothing about it until we arrived there.

The small island is a long way north of Crete, but an event there had a large effect on the Minoan civilization that was based on its much larger neighbor to the south. That is because circa 1600 BC the volcano on Santorini (which was then one single island called Thera) erupted massively³ and buried the settlement at Akrotiri on the southern part of the island. It also caused tidal waves and earthquakes that wiped out the Minoan civilizations on Crete and other islands.

I was game for riding a donkey up to Fira, …

The caldera of the volcano, which has became the harbor after the eruption is surrounded by very steep cliffs. The capital city of Fira and, from there, the rest of the towns and villages, can be reached by road. One way to get to the top is to ride a donkey. A faster way is to take the cable car. Both Sue and I remember exploring Fira and having lunch at a restaurant there, but neither of us remember how we got up and down. We definitely did not ride donkeys. We must have taken a cable car.

The roof in this photo of the Akrotiri site collapsed in 2005.

In the afternoon we took a bus to the archeological site of Akrotiri. This was the most informative and interesting excursion of the entire trip. When we arrived, the excavation was in its twenty-fifth year. These are probably the best preserved ruins ever discovered, and large portions of them were open for public viewing.

Our guide told us about some of the artifacts that were found here. It is indisputable that the merchants of Akrotiri traded with people from all over the Mediterranean. A large amount of written material was also discovered. It is in a language called Linear A. Unfortunately, we were told that no one has been able to decipher it.⁴

During our last night at sea the ship sailed northwest from Santorini (which Google Maps sometimes still calls Thera) to Piraeus, the port for Athens. We were then taken by bus to the hotel. During the drive we passed the Panathenaic Stadium in which some of the events of the first modern Olympics were held in 1896. We also were surprised to see a statue of Harry Truman, who was honored there because of the Marshall Plan that was implemented during his administration.

Most of the group took the excursion to the Acropolis. How could you visit Athens without seeing the Acropolis? Actually, I was a little disappointed by the Parthenon. It definitely was impressive to see from anywhere in Athens⁵, but when we finally arrived there, we discovered that a good bit of it was covered by scaffolding. So, for me at least, this was mostly just a matter of “ticking the box” on the bucket list. I did learn one new word that actually stuck in my memory: Caryatid.

The only social interchange with any of the other tour members that I can remember occurred while we were standing around on the Acropolis. As we looked down on Athens sprawling beneath us, we got into a conversation with two young ladies from the West Coast. They were interested that we owned a business, which we accurately described as “struggling”. One of the women astutely pointed out that we could not be doing too badly if we could afford to take a nice vacation like the one that we had both experienced. It was a nice thing for her to say, and it improved my mood.

After we had wandered around the Acropolis for the allotted period of time the bus drove us down to the National Archeological Museum in the center of Athens. Although I am absolutely positive that we visited it, I don’t honestly remember anything about it at all. If you want to know what is in it, I recommend that you watch the nine-minute video that is posted here.

At the hotel we had picked up a pretty good street map of Athens. I talked Sue into walking back from the museum to the hotel. If we became too tired or sore at some point, we could probably flag down a taxi. Incidentally, the taxi drivers in Athens were almost indistinguishable from the ones in Istanbul—same gender, same mustaches, same cigarettes held at all times in the right hand.

I wanted to stop at a clothing store or sports store in Athens to try to buy soccer jerseys with team names in Greek for my nieces. We stopped in a few places, but I don’t think that we found anything of that nature that was very appealing. The retailers in the center of Athens were mostly oriented toward selling souvenirs or very expensive stuff to tourists. It may be that the fad of wearing fake jerseys had not yet reached Greece in 1992.

At one point in the journey back to the hotel we stopped for a rest. Sue and I were resting on a low wall. An elderly woman approached us and addressed us—in Greek, of course. As quickly as I could, I tried to form the most useful short sentence that I could think of: “Δεν καταλαβαίνω,” which means “I don’t understand.” Before I could get the first word out, she correctly diagnosed our ignorance of her native language, turned her back and walked away. By the way, that first word, “Δεν”, is pronounced almost exactly like the English word “then”.

We happened to pass the home of the Prime Minister of Greece just as they were performing the ceremony of the changing of the guards. The soldiers wore absolutely absurd costumes, and their marching style would certainly have qualified them for the Ministry of Silly Walks. If the Turks frightened their enemies with their mustaches, the shoes of the Greek soldiers must have disabled their foes with uncontrollable laughter.

Sue and I had a good time at supper describing these guys to some of the other members of our tour group who had gone to the same restaurant. The atmosphere was festive, but the food was at best mediocre.

On our last day we took a bus to Delphi, the home of the famous oracles. The highlight of the trip occurred just as we made the turn to the west. I saw a sign for Marathon. It was fun to imagine the messenger making his fatal run from Marathon back to Athens along the same route that we had driven. I could visulaize him prostrate near the stadium as he called out in a strained voice, “Νίκη!”

Delphi itself was another disappointment to me. We got to hear the story of the oracles, and we saw the ruins along the side of a hill from a distance, but we were not allowed to get very close to them.

In point of fact, at this point in the trip we had seen about as many ruins as we needed to see. We had viewed a large number of broken columns and ruined buildings. At this point we would rather have dealt with something alive or at least intact.

Sue and I enjoyed this trip immensely. It seemed regretable that the only really disappointing day was the last one. I think that the trip would have worked better if it had been in the opposite direction—starting in Athens and ending in Istanbul. That would have put the most impressive ruins at Ephesus closer to the end and the one island with no ruins at all, Lesbos, just before Istanbul.

We flew back to JFK Airport on Long Island. The trip was completely uneventful; at least I don’t remember any problems. My recollection is that a limousine service brought us back to Enfield. In those days a company called CT Limo⁶ specialized in driving between the Hartford area and the international airports around New York City. Their prices were competitive; if not, I would never have agreed to such an extravagance.

1. Her attitude to me seems strange in retrospect. The Ottomans conquered Turkey in the fifteenth century. A few Christians still lived there, but the Turks were dominant until the end of World War I. At that point the allies and Greeks tried to impose a government on the area, but the Turks revolted and won their autonomy. So, she was really pining for a time that had been erased from history more than five hundred years earlier.

2. The word is pronounced, believe it or not, “thahf MAHS ee ah”. The alpha-upsilon diphthong in modern Greek is pronounced “ahf” or “ahv”, depending on the next letter. Upsilon is still a vowel when used alone, but when used with another vowel it has developed a consonant sound.

3. The volcano is still considered active. It last erupted in 1950. The ones in the 1920’s were more serious and caused some damage.

3. Volcano

4. Little progress has been made in the subsequent years. When I heard about this my first thought was that I would love to work on this project.

5. Mark Twain’s stealthy visit to the Parthenon is described beautifully in The Innocents Abroad. He was quarantined on the ship, but a group of men snuck ashore, made their way to the Acropolis and visited it by starlight.

6. CT Limo still exists and still offers this service.

1996-2006 TSI: AdDept Client: Robinsons-May

Posted on July 23, 2021 by Mike

May Co. department stores based in North Hollywood, CA. Continue reading →

Robinsons-May was a chain of departments stores owned by the May Company. Its headquarters was in North Hollywood, CA. Most of its stores were in southern California, but eventually the advertising department in NoHo bought space and time for stores with various logos throughout the western states.

Rob-May’s headquarters was in the upper floors of this department store. It had the largest parking lot I had ever seen for one store, much more than needed.

TSI never pitched the AdDept system to the store’s advertising department. In 1996 the May Company decided to install AdDept in the department store divisions that were not already using it—Robinsons-May, Meier & Frank, Kaufmann’s, and Filene’s.These installations were quite different from the other systems that TSI had installed at May Co. divisions. They began with three days of rather intense sessions in TSI’s office in Enfield while the hardware was on order from IBM. We were teaching them about the system design of AdDept, and they were informing us about their policies and expectations for the system.

I later learned that the Northridge earthquake of 1994 had demolished the rest of the 25-acre Laurel Plaza, but Rob-May’s headquarters survived.

Previous May Co. installations had begun with a site visit in which I had learned about each department’s business procedures and priorities. TSI then presented a formal proposal for the base system and any custom code that I thought was needed. Only after the system had been delivered and installed did we provide training, and it always took place at the company’s location.

At some point in 1998 a group of people from Rob-May visited TSI’s office for orientation and training. Those sessions were also attended by people who would be involved with the installation at Meier & Frank (described here). Robert Myers, with whom we worked in the AdDept installation in the advertising department of the Foley’s division (described here), also was there to provide the perspective of a user of the system.

I found several photos that I snapped on the occasion of their visit as well as a dozen or so that I took in California. I also found text files containing notes from 1999-2003 that helped me remember some of the details of the installation and other happenings in my trips to southern California.

Rob-May’s training visit at TSI: The training sessions were held in what was ordinarily my office. All of my stuff was moved out. Everyone sat around tables, one of which I ordinarily used for a desk. Training booklets were provided for everyone. The photo to the lett was of one of the first sessions, in which Sandy Sant’Angelo (pink shirt on the right) showed the visitors how to sign on to the AS/400 and how the AdDept screens basically worked. Yes, we were still using “green screens”. We occasionally fielded complaints about them, but seldom from the people who actually used them.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is MF_Table-1024x679.jpg

The photo on the right was taken after one of the training days in Enfield. On the last evening we all went to the Mill on the River restaurant, but I think that this photo might have been taken at a different place.

Robert Myers was seated next to me. In the photo he is on the far right. The other two people on his side of the table were Rusty Hansen¹, the Planning Manager in the Rob-May advertising department and Beverly Curtis-Frethy², the Controller. Across from Rusty was Doug Pease, TSI’s VP of Marketing. I don’t recall the name of the fellow across from Beverly. He might have been in charge of the department’s network. The other three people in the photo were from M&F.

Rusty Hansen was our primary liaison with Rob-May in the critical first few years.

The installation trip: The first of many enjoyable trips to Rob-May occurred a few weeks after the training session in Enfield. Doug and I flew to Los Angeles. from Hartford. We probably changed planes in Chicago. In those days I liked to fly on American Airlines because I could get frequent flyer miles both from the airline and from Avis for rental cars.

On those early trips I usually stayed at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn³ in the Studio City neighborhood of North Hollywood, but I am pretty certain that Doug and I were advised to stay at the Sheraton in Studio City on the first trip to set up the AdDept system. I found a photo that I took of its entrnce

Robert was also present for at least part of this to provide another user’s perspective and to assist where he could. .

Rob-May treated us to meals with key employees more than once on that first trip and at least once on every subsequent trip. The smiling guy on the right across from Beverly (red coat) was Mario, the Direct Mail Manager. His last name was nowhere in my notes.

The main purpose of the visit was to install the AdDept software in the AS/400 that IBM had delivered. I did all of that myself. The secondary purpose was to make sure that a regimen had been set up whereby the tables that the system needed—newspapers and other vendors, selling departments, the organizational structure for the merchandise, employees, etc. I also needed to show Rusty how to set up user profiles both for the AS/400 and for AdDept and how to deal with the printers and errors reported by the system. Finally Doug and I needed to talk to the managers of the various areas of the advertising department to try to discover special needs and any procedures that were unique to Rob-May. For example, invoices from the Los Angeles Times were recorded in a general ledger account that was different from the one used for all of the other newspapers.

Beverly, Karen, and Robert at Karen’s favorite restaurant in Beverly Hills. Where was Doug?

Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, we got to meet Karen Jones, the Advertising Director. She provided us with insight as to the department’s highest priorities. Karen and I hit it off very well right from the start. She was (unduly) impressed by an analogy that I made: “Memory is to disk as electricity is to magnetism. If you lose power, the system loses what is in memory but retains what is stored magnetically on the disk.”

In retrospect this does not seem like a great pickup line to me, but she definitely became enamored of me and treated me royally whenever I visited Rob-May. I once casually mentioned to some employees at Rob-May that “Karen Jones loves me.” Everyone agreed. I did not think that we made good headway in the first year or two, but Karen always seemed to think that I could do anything.

My goal from the first trip was for the software for one of the media (newspaper, direct mail, or broadcast) produce something useful. It was very important that the system not be regarded as on that they fed a lot of information but got little in return.

As I usually did, I concentrated on printing a schedule for their newspaper advertising and the faxing to some papers of a set of insertion orders. To that end I worked closely with Sonia Ban. I think that there was still work needed on the schedule when I left, but we did manage to send some faxed insertion orders to newspapers, and they were impressed by that.

View from the courtyard of the BG Hotel.

The new system: For various reasons the people in the IT Department of the May Co. decided that Rob-May’s system should be upgraded in 1999. The original system had been purchased from and installed by IBM. The new system was a model 270, and it was purchased from Savoir Technology Group, a company that was authorized to sell IBM midrange systems. I flew out to Robinsons-May to complete the process by installing the AdDept software on the 270 and migrating the data.

I still have the notes that I sent back to TSI about this trip. At the time American Airlines had a direct flight from Bradley International to LAX. I flew out on a Sunday morning and arrived early enough (gaining three hours) that I could pick up my rental car at Avis, drive to Malibu, the home of my icon, Jim Rockford, and spend some time at the beach.

I went to Topanga State Beach, which is in Malibu. It was pretty nice but cool. I don’t think that it even reached 80 degrees today, and there was a fairly strong breeze from the north. I made a little camp. I lay on my beach towel, listened to my CD’s, finished my Ethan Coen book⁴, and watched the surfers and the rest of the California scenery. I took a long walk all the way up and down the beach. I got a lot of sun. I think I am as dark now as my last day in Hawaii⁵. If I had stayed any longer, I would have been sunburned.
I think this was the first time since Hawaii that I have just goofed off during the day for more than an hour.
Incidentally, Malibu is where Jim Rockford parked his trailer on the beach. The Rockford Files is by far my favorite TV show ever. I looked for the trailer, but I didn’t find it⁶.

Valley Village Park is the green area in the middle. NoHo West is the new name of Laurel Plaza. I usually drove on the 101. The exit went right into Rob-May’s parking lot.

What I discovered on Monday did not meet my expectations. I had started the day at dawn by driving my rental car from the Beverly Garland Hotel to the park that was halfway to Rob-May to get my five mile run in. Then I returned to the hotel, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, and drove to Rob-May. The following excerpt provides a glimpse into what it was like to be a cowboy coder at the turn of the century.

I expected the system to be set up and the TCP/IP connection established. I figured that I would install AdDept and BASIC. I would also migrate the user profiles and the data libraries from the old box. Instead, I found that the system was still in the box. I had to set it up using the instructions in the box. This went OK. However, when I got to the point at which I had to do a system save, it balked and said that QGPL and QUSRSYS were not installed. I had Rusty look through his boxes to see if he had system software. He did. I spent many hours installing the operating system and PTF’s. I kicked off the system save just before I left.
I don’t suppose there is any great harm. Everyone will have to use the old system tomorrow. Their connectivity consultant is coming in tomorrow. I hope he will be able to tell me how to do the TCP/IP connection.

Keep in mind that I was not (and am not) an engineer. Far from it. I am not good at this type of thing. I am good at designing systems and writing code. Things were still FUBB on Wednesday evening, when I wrote the following.

The problems we had here were cabling. They decided to run the new system on Ethernet rather than Token Ring, which meant that they had to change the hub into which they were plugged. The IT guy had no empty sockets. He unplugged something he thought was unimportant. It brought down the e-mail system. Before he found this out he was out putting out a fire somewhere else. People had a hard time chasing him down.

I don’t know if I got blamed by anyone for the company’s lack of email that day, but it would not surprise me. The dispatch I sent on Friday at least contained some good news.

Yesterday went much better. Their new system is now almost completely functional. I still spent most of the time putting out small fires. I ran CMPPFM last night for every member of QBASSRC to see if I can find any more changes that the black box was missing. Robinson’s new system is incredibly fast. Reports that took over half an hour run in one minute.
I figured out how to copy the system directory entries over to the new box. I had to copy a bunch of files from QUSRSYS that start with QAOKP.
I copied ADDEPT, QGPL, and QUSRSYS from the old machine to the new one and named them ADDEPTOLD, OLDQGPL, and OLDQUSRSYS. Last night I ran the source comparison program on QBASSRC in ADDEPT. I printed out the differences and was surprised at how many there were. I then realized that the old box was a week ahead of the 150 at TSI. I thought for sure that I checked this. I created a change library but there was no time to install it. I will have to do it after hours. This cut down on the number of differences, but there is still be a pretty good number. There must be a flaw in my updating routine.

By Thursday evening Rob-May had successfully used the system for one full day. I left fairly confident that the people in TSI’s office could deal with any remaining glitches. However, one of the last notes that I sent back to the office was prescient.

These guys need a lot of training. Most of them do not know what an error is and what to do about it. Rusty just kind of lets them go on their own, even the ones that he works with.

I flew back on Friday. It was an excruciating experience. Seven and a half hours after I left the hotel I was still in LAX! I wrote the following when we had finally boarded.

LAX, which is my least favorite airport in the country, was playing some kind of shrieking sound over the intercom the last 20 minutes that we were there. I was afraid I would miss an announcement, so I had put my CD player and headphones away. A couple to my left has not one but two babies. They paid for two tickets, but were using two rows! After they made us get off⁷, the situation became so ridiculous that I took it easier. This lasted until about ten minutes ago when the stewardess whacked my elbow, which was not sticking out at all. At the time it was about 40 degrees in the cabin. After takeoff it went up to about 90. Now it is dropping again.

The new team: The turn of the century brought a lot of changeover among the employees at Rob-May with whom TSI dealt. My notes said that when I came to install the new box, Karen Elmo had been replaced by Heidi Houghton. I have a vague recollection of Karen Elmo, but none of Heidi. The notes also report that I worked with the Co-op Coordinator, Doyle O’Dell, who asked for a report of committed co-op v. actual. I was able to show report #DM594 to him. I took a photo of him; he evidently was happy with the report.

The biggest changes happened in 2000. Rusty Hansen was replaced by Mary Ng⁸, and Beverly Curtis Fethy’s replacement was Steve Ornee⁹. Mary was the new liaison with TSI, and we worked closely together for several years. Chad Sesser’s title was Newspaper Analyst. He reported to Karen Jones.

The notes that I have from the three-day trip in October of 2000 show that Mary was very direct about what she wanted from AdDept.

Direct mail was on the menu for lunch in the Rob-May cafeteria with (I think) Kyle Levine¹¹, Mary, and Dan Rothbauer¹², the Direct Mail Manager.

Mary said that their objectives are to do all of direct mail on AdDept, to pay all invoices on AdDept and to upload them to CAPS¹⁰, to use AdDept for closing, and to use AdDept for planning. This was way too much to cover in three days. Even with three days I was barely able to gather enough information to put together a game plan.

They wanted to know which division they should visit if they wanted to see how to use AdDept for direct mail. I recommended Kaufmann’s. Lord & Taylor uses AdDept extensively for direct mail, but they do not use our cost accounting for closing of direct mail.

Chad is on the left. I don’t remember the fellow with whom he was talking.

I also spent quite a bit of time with Chad Sesser. He told us that he had already downloaded sales from the mainframe at least once. He did not remember how he had done it, but he knew the name of the person in their Information Services department who had helped him.

On the last evening Karen Jones again sprang for supper at the restaurant in Beverly Hills. I might have gotten lost crossing the hills; I distinctly remember that I did on one occasion.

At the restaurant I noticed a blonde woman who was much more buxom than Ellie Mae Clampett. She was sitting with some other people a few tables away from the group from Rob-May. The most astounding thing to me was that for all of the time that we were there—which must have been at least ninety minutes—she was talking on her cellphone while paying scant attention to anyone at her table.

I should mention that I did not have a cellphone in 2003, and the people who talked on them loudly in airports bothered me a lot. I could not imagine anyone answering a phone in a restaurant, much less talking for an extended period. It seemed unimaginably rude to me, but I realized that I was partaking of a totally different culture in Milburn Drysdale’s town.

The projects: TSI did quite a bit of custom coding for Robinsons-May. We also helped them to integrate the data from M&F when the responsibility for managing the stores previously in that division was transferred to North Hollywood. Fortunately, their 270 was easily up to this task. I did not need to travel to California to install another upgrade.

Rob-May had two types of ads that I had never heard of: TMC’s and PWP’s. TMC stands for “total market coverage”. On certain days of the week or on special occasions some newspapers delivered a greatly reduced version of their paper to all households in an area that did not subscribe to the paper. If the same ad (ROP or insert) was run in the regular edition and this reduced edition, it had a higher rate because more eyeballs would see it.

I don’t remember what a PWP was, but I think that the concept was similar. Newspapers were desperate to retain the same level of revenue even as their circulations shrank in the twenty-first century.

My first visit to Rob-May after Mary Ng’s arrival triggered a very large number of fixes (changed for free) and requests for changes (quoted). This was definitely good news in that they were finally interested in taking full advantage of the system. On the other hand, it meant more pressure on the programming staff to produce what Rob-May—and other clients—needed in a reasonable amount of time.

The programming that was most valuable from TSI’s perspective was constructing an interface with another system. In some cases AdDept was the sending system; in others it was the receiver. Our expense invoice entry and claims system had the ability to feed the corresponding corporate accounting system (CAPS). Several changes had to be made to this module to accommodate peculiarities at Rob-May.

Our sales analysis and productivity programs used tables that were fed by the corporate sales system. Most of the May Co. divisions used the same ad agency (Doner) for broadcast. The agency sent a file to Rob-May. The departmental employees ran a program that TSI provided to update the broadcast section of the schedule in AdDept.

The last item on my notes from the trip in April of 2003 reported:

I spent ten minutes talking with Chad, Bobby McIntosh¹⁴, and the QPS programmer about the interface that they want to create. Nothing came of it.

Chad said that he will write up the details of what they would like the QPS interface to do. We can then quote it. The problem that he could not handle with query is how to treat sections. QPS has a job for each page, but the media schedule is on the book.

Bobby McIntosh was the Manager of Advertising Systems. The advertising production area used the Quark Publishing System (QPS) to manage the workflow of some of their direct mail catalogs and newspaper ads. I do not remember this meeting described above at all. If we were to undertake an interface like this, it would have been a massive job that would have taken at least several months. Therefore, I don’t think that we ever got to the point quoting construction of the interface.

My adventures in southern California: North Hollywood is best known for the unbelievable attempted bank robbery in 1997 at a Bank of America branch that was only a mile or so north of the Rob-May headquarters. The two robbers wore home-made body armor and bore much better weapons than the police. Foiled in their escape, they shot it out with the lawmen for an extended period of time. They were eventually killed, but not before the two sides discharged roughly two thousand bullets. Twelve police officers and eight civilians were wounded, but no one besides the perpetrators died.

A slightly fictionalized made-for-TV movie about the incident aired in 2003. No one from Rob-May ever mentioned it in my presence. If I had not seen the movie, I probably never would have known about it.

The LAPD Museum has an exhibit that features the perpetrators, their weapons, and their body armor. Because it was not opened until 2007, I never went there. By then Macy’s had taken over the May Co., and Rob-May was no longer a client.

The most interesting thing that I saw in North Hollywood was an apartment building that had a large sign on it offering “Free Rent”. I took a photo of it from my rental car.

At the time TSI was actively looking for a new site for our office. I sent an email to Denise Bessette, who ran the office when I was out of town, about it. I suggested that we move our operation to North Hollywood in order to take advantage of this opportunity. If we had rented a handful of apartments, we would have had plenty of room to grow our business. For some reason she did not urge me to sign a $0 lease while I was in the vicinity.

One evening I decided to take a drive into Hollywood itself. I arrived at the corner of North Highland Ave. and Hollywood Blvd., where I saw a throng of people around the Ripley’s Believe it or not. The whole neighborhood was incredibly touristy. I did not even park my car. I drove back to my hotel in Studio City as quickly as I could.

For my last few trips to Rob-May I abandoned Beverly Garland and drove a little farther north to stay at a Hampton Inn. I did this for a couple of reasons. I had found that I liked Hampton Inns better than other hotels. I had an American Express card that I used for stays at Hamptons and other Hilton hotels. This paid off in free stays, which I used either for business trips or vacations.

I also was not enamored with the neighborhood in Studio City. I only found one place to run, and it was a little boring. I had to make several circuits of the path in the park, and the scenery no longer interested me. The biggest factor, however, was food. I had not been able to find many places that served tasty and healthy meals and also could be used—takeout or sit down—comfortably by a lone diner. My notes of July 1999 reported:

I had trouble finding affordable edible food in California. I ended up eating twice at Koo Koo Roo¹⁵, which has vegetables. The problem is that the only main courses they serve are rotisserie chicken and ¼ pound of turkey. I had the chicken both times.

The closest Hampton Inn was in Santa Clarita. The drive did not bother me much. The inconvenience was more than offset by the free breakfasts and occasional free snack in the evening. It was close to a large suburban shopping center. I don’t remember exactly where I ate, but I had no problem finding what suitable restaurants.

The best aspect of staying in Santa Clarita was that I discovered a really interesting trail in Quigley Canyon, a park that is very close to Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch. I really enjoyed running through the hills in the park. I had to climb a fairly steep incline to reach the trail that ran along a ridge. A sign at the trailhead warned about snakes and mountain lions, but I never encountered any wildlife while I was running.

Departure: I almost always flew back to Connecticut on a red-eye flight. I would leave LAX at 9 p.m. or later, arrive somewhere on the eastern side of the Mississippi at dawn or earlier, change planes, and then catch another flight to Bradley.

I always filled the gas tank before returning the car to Avis. I once made the mistake of stopping at a gas station in south-central L.A., an area that was close enough to LAX that the gas gauge would appear full. It was past sundown, and the place was not well lit. This was one of the very few times in my life that I felt afraid. I had lived for over three years in inner-city Detroit, but this area was fairly notorious because of the Rodney King incident.

What was scary about this gas station was that a few young men were walking around and approaching customers who were pumping gas. One came up to me and asked me something. I made some kind of noncommittal reply. He was annoyed with my response, but he did not do anything. I got back in my car and returned to the highway with deliberate speed.

On another occasion Karen Jones took me and a group of employees to a restaurant that was in either Burbank or Pasadena. I had my car, and after supper someone outlined for me how to get to LAX. Everyone assured me that I had plenty of time to make my flight. I probably did, but I made a wrong turn somewhere, and by the time that I arrived at the Avis counter, I was really pressed for time.

This was the first and only time that it took a long time to check my car back in at an Avis location. In every other instance no more than five minutes was required. However, this time there was a long line that moved very slowly. By the time that I returned the car and boarded the Avis bus, there was little chance of arriving at the gate in time for my overnight flight on Delta¹⁶ to Hartford by way of Atlanta.

When the bus let me off at the terminal I rushed up to the Delta desk with my suitcase. The agent confirmed that I had missed my flight. She then calmly booked me on a different flight that went to Bradley through Cincinnati and was leaving within the hour. I was not charged anything extra for this change, and I arrived in Connecticut less than a half hour later than my scheduled arrival time.

Epilogue: Rob-May used the AdDept system until 2005 or 2006 after the May Co. was purchased by Macy’s. On August 30, 2005, administration of the stores was transferred to another AdDept client, Macy’s West in San Francisco. The history of the installation at Macy’s West is detailed here.

The store in North Hollywood was turned into a Macy’s. It and its oversized parking lot stayed open until October of 2016. The entire acreage is still, six years later, in the process of being transformed into a mixed-use area renamed NoHo West. The retail part of the project evidently suffered from the emergence of the pandemic. A directory map can be found here.

An aerial photo of NoHo West taken in 2019, at which time it was described as “fully framed”.

1. Rusty Hansen does not seem to have an Internet presence in 2022, but I did receive a phone call from him once after he left Rob-May in 2000. Jim Lowe, TSI’s marketing person, and I later talked with him briefly at his new place of employment, Wherehouse Music in Torrance. That experience has been recounted here.

2. Beverly Curtis-Frethy left Rob-May in December of 1999. Her LinkedIn page is here.

3. Beverly Garland was an actress in Hollywood. Among many other roles she was Fred McMurray’s wife in the last few years of My Three Sons. She died in 2008, but her hotel still is thriving in 2022, and it is still a Holiday Inn.

4. I don’t remember reading a book by Ethan Coen. Since my notes did not mention the name or describe the plot, it might have been Gates of Eden, a book of short stories published in 1998.

5. This refers to the trip that Sue, Doug, and I took in 1995 to pitch the AdDept system to Liberty House. The description begins here and continues in two subsequent blog entries.

6. I am almost positive that I have seen every episode of The Rockford Files several times. The only bad one is the first one, the pilot, which had a different Rocky and was too much like Philip Marlow. Rockford lived at 29 Cove Road in Paradise Cove in Malibu. The beach that I went to was approximately twelve miles east of Paradise Cove.

At some point on one of my trips I took a late evening photo of the Los Angeles River. It is posted at the right. The river bed was concrete, and the trickle of water that it contained was laughable.

I could swear that back in the seventies I saw on an episode of The Rockford Files a chase scene that took place in the river itself. However, when I watched all of the episodes again (and again) in the twenty-first century first on MyTV and then on Peacock, I never saw such a scene. The show was recently removed from Peacock. I may never know for certain about that chase scene.

7. There was some kind of hydraulic leak that forced us to leave our scheduled plane and board a different one.

8. Mary Ng worked at Rob-May until 2005. Her Linked-In page is here.

9. Steve Ornee was employed at Rob-May until 2006. His Linked-In page is here.

10. CAPS was the mainframe corporate accounting system. It was located in St. Louis.

11. Kyle Levine worked at Rob-May until 2004. His LinkedIn page is here.

12. Dan Rothbauer did not leave Rob-May until 2006. His LinkedIn page is here.

13. I still hate cellphones in 2022. While sitting in my right front pants pocket my first “smart phone” ordered pizzas on its own. I did not mourn when it somehow got fried by European current. That story, and a lot more is detailed here. Its replacement has not ordered pizza yet, but it did turn itself on while resting in the right front pocket of my blue jeans. I was playing bridge at the time.

14. Bobby McIntosh stayed at Rob-May until 2006. His LinkedIn page is here.

15. Koo Koo Roo went out of business in 2014.

16. By this time I flew on Delta whenever I could. Delta had the most connections to places that I often visited, and I had a Delta American Express card on which I accumulated thousands of valuable miles that I used for vacations.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Delta Airlines

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

2022 July: The Providence NABC: 7/15-19

1997-2014 TSI: AdDept Client: Stage Stores

1992 Cruising Tour of Turkey and Greece: Part 2

1996-2006 TSI: AdDept Client: Robinsons-May