I'll start with those two t ropical storms approaching Hawaii.   Both will become serious hurricanes....but largely miss the islands. Hurricane Karina , to the east and north, just attained Category 4 strength, but should slowly weaken as she heads on a path that will be just north of the Hawaiian Islands around the time of my birthday, September 6.  Unfortunately, we will board the Silver Whisper on September 3 to Honolulu. Lowell will become a hurricane today and move westward, just south of the Big Island of Hawaii. The Sheraton Le Centre is ideally located in the middle of the Montreal Golden Square Mile.  Around 100 yards  away are three Oriental restaurants.  We went had a Chinese lunch on Thursday, Korean lunch of Saturday, and Japanese dinner on Sunday. Dinner began with edamame and miso soup with Sapporo Beer and hot sake. Then a salad. We shared a Sukiyaki meal. End of meal with noodles. Then green tea ice cream. Throughout the dinner, the background ...

Some tell me that they read my blog  daily to vicariously enhance their lives.   From an issue of Time magazine I am now reading by Angela Haupt: YOU DON’T NEED TO BOOK A FLIGHT to see the north­ern lights or watch a total solar eclipse to exper­i­ence awe. All you have to do is look up at a sun­set, down at the veins of a leaf, or deep into your morn­ing cof­fee. Exper­i­en­cing just a few minutes of awe a day is linked to less stress, anxi­ety, and depres­sion; lower inflam­ma­tion; less loneli­ness; and more gen­er­os­ity and con­nec­tion, research­ers have found. “I don’t think there’s any­thing you can do that’s bet­ter for you than a few minutes of awe,” says Dacher Kelt­ner, a psy­cho­lo­gist at the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia, Berke­ley, and author of Awe: The New Sci­ence of Every­day Won­der and How It Can Trans­form Your Life. Awe is the feel­ing you get “when you encounter things that are vast and bey­ond your frame of ref­er­ence,” Kelt­ner says, shift­ing ...