Day 1 - Gerry insisted we unpack before we do anything else. Later we met with the activities director and got our schedule for lessons and games. She advised us that the bridge room was small and there was a tug of war for tables She also said we would be lucky if we got any bridge players the first day as most passengers preferred to get the feel of the ship on that day.

I got my bridge director's certification about 20 years ago after being told by Lois Fortunato that bridge directors were invited to go on cruises at handsomely discounted prices. Our local bridge clubs were growing and I felt the need to put my extra time and effort into helping make them successful. Besides, my husband wasn't particularly interested in cruising. Time flew by as I said to myself, “Maybe next year.” Then, in October of 2009, Gerry Panos, Fumie Teitelbaum, Joann Griffin, Millie Dabbs, Alice Weagle and I took a combination "my family" / Regional Bridge Tournament trip to Danbury, Connecticut. On that trip, I asked Gerry if she might be interested in accompanying me on a cruise if I became a bridge cruise director. Gerry never batted an eye or took a breath but immediately blurted out "Sure!"

In the mid-80's, about 25 years ago, I bought a hard disk drive for my home computer.  It cost about $500 for the drive itself ($900 for the entire package) and had 20 million bytes of storage.

Last year I bought a hard disk drive for my home computer.  It cost $90 and has 1 trillion bytes of storage.

Let's do the math. The old drive was $25 per megabyte. The new one was $0.00009 per megabyte, so the old drive was 277,777 times more expensive per megabyte. That's 27 million percent.

A car cost about $10,000 back then, and got about 20 miles per gallon.  At the same rate of improvement and pricing, a car today would cost $1800 and get 1,000,000 miles per gallon.

Another comparison: if typed out, the old drive would make a line of characters from here to Clearwater, 31.5 miles. The new drive would make a line from here to the moon and back 3 times: 1.578 million miles.

Mark your calendar or set up your DVR: an IBM computer system will attempt to play Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter next Monday through Wednesday (February 14-16). Locally, it's on channel 28 at 7:30.

Recently I spend some time trying to peel a banana, ending up grabbing a knife and severing the stalk from the top in order to break the skin to start the peel moving downwards.  As often happens, (karma, kismet, whatever) while watching TV that might, the host addressed that very topic.  He was expounding on how humans often have trouble peeling bananas.  He went on to ask if you have ever watched a monkey peel a banana.  They turn the banana upside down and peel from the bottom of the banana!  Well, having an innate scientific nature and a curiosity that has to be satisfied, the next morning I turned my banana upside down and attempted to peel it.  Would you  believe it, it peeled quickly and smoothly.  Evolved to a higher level than monkeys?  Maybe in some ways but not in peeling bananas.  Maybe we could teach monkeys to play bridge!

[Plus, you end up with a handle for that last bite.  Ed.]