I yesterday summarized the two cruise segments of our recent 50-day trip, and half those days were in Canada, mostly on VIA Rail Canada and Rocky Mountaineer trains, both with no WiFi.  Somehow, I think I only missed a couple of days of posts.  And some amazing good news.  The SJourney train trip we are taking from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi at the end of the year does have WiFi. Interestingly enough, during this current travel period, my original blog site, which had been averaging 500 visits/day for the first 15 years, jumped to 25,000/day.  For reasons I can't explain, this surge began from the American Melody cruise, Memphis to New Orleans, and continued on through Canada. This Canadian train trip changed my mind about trains. Turns out that the only time I slept overnight on a train was on VIA Rail Canada, a four-day ride in December of 2017 from Vancouver to Toronto . Passengers were peeved because we arrive half a day late.  Why? What happened about a year...

As you know, the new COVID-19 Omicron bivalent booster is now available.   When is the best time to take this shot?   It depends.   Read this article for details . For those who took their last booster six months ago, plan to soon travel, or otherwise happen to be vulnerable, like elders, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. In my case, I'm old, have a long trip coming up beginning on November 12, and live in a seniors' community.   Thus, 15 Craigside will arrange for these shots to be taken on our premises later this month.   For me, that's perfect, especially if taken at least two weeks before departure, which will be the case. But all my four vaccinations were of the Moderna version.   Should I stick to the same one, or expand to Pfizer? The CDC says it does not matter. Some studies of the earlier shots indicated that mixing vaccine brands actually may have produced a higher number of antibodies.  Moderna's earlier monovalent vaccines were ...