tour guide

Out-of-Pocket

Fandango27 Comments

Empty-Pocket_TopperFor most of my adult life I thought that the phrase “out-of-pocket” meant paying in cash, often without an expectation of reimbursement. As in, “I went to the bar and bought you guys a round and now I’m out-of-pocket fifty bucks.” It’s also how to describe a cash outlay for healthcare deductibles or copays that aren’t reimbursable from your health insurance provider. As in, “After I pay my deductible, my out-of-pocket costs will be a few hundred bucks.”

But when I spent a few years living and working in Dallas, Texas, I learned that it had a completely different meaning — in Texas, anyway. It meant being out of reach, especially while shirking one’s official duties. As in, “I’m going to be out-of-pocket for the next few days, so don’t bother calling or texting me.”

So why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because starting tomorrow, I’m going to be out-of-pocket for the next week. We are having out-of-town guests staying at our place and my wife and I will be playing unofficial San Francisco Bay Area tour guides. Thus, I will be running around hither and yon showing off to our guests all that this city and the surrounding areas have to offer, leaving me very little time to post, read, and respond to comments, or to read and comment on other bloggers’ posts.

The good news is that I have scheduled in advance my daily FOWC with Fandango one-word prompts. But the bad news is that I may miss other prompts that I normally post each week. And I will also likely miss responding to the word and photo prompts from other bloggers.

But I should no longer be out-of-pocket by next Thursday or Friday, unless you count the money I shelled out-of-pocket in my hosting duties. So, until then, keep the home fires burning for me.

Twittering Tales — Watching the Universe

Fandango10 Comments

919C79D1-F791-4BF5-98EA-49C6401201D2 “This is the Gran Telescopio Canarias, the largest telescope on earth,” the tour guide said.

“What are those men looking at?” a boy asked.

“They’re astronomers. They’re looking at the universe.”

Looking at a monitor, the boy said, “No, they’re watching Stranger Things on Netflix.”

(278 characters)

Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: noelsch at Pixabay.com.

Please Accept My Apology

Fandango49 Comments

img_1918I have been remiss. For the past week, I have not read many of your posts or participated in many of the writing prompts I typically respond to. I can’t even be 100% certain that I read all of the posts from those of you who have responded to my daily Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, though I did try. I have no doubt that I missed a few.

I do have a reasonably good excuse, though, as I explained in this post. I was on the go from early morning until bedtime, sneaking in a few minutes here or there, often while sitting on the toilet (TMI?) or in bed at night before being overtaken by sleep, to do some reading and occasional posting.

But now that my out-of-town guests, bless their hearts, are gone and I will recapture some discretionary time, I’m ready to jump back in with both feet. Yay!

That said, I feel like I’ve missed a lot of really great writing, photos, and prompts. Unfortunately, there’s just no feasible way for me to go back and read every post each of you who I follow has published over the past week.

So I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Please choose one post you posted in the past week, one that I haven’t liked and/or comment on, and one that you think shouldn’t be missed. And once you’ve selected that post, put a link to it in the comments on this post.

I promise that I will read your posts and I’m so looking forward to catching up on at least some of what I missed.

Thanks.

Coyote Ugly

Fandango21 Comments

Today is the final day of serving as the tour guide for our out-of-town visitors. When we headed out to Golden Gate Park to walk our dog and to show off one of the nation’s greatest city parks, they got a little freaked out when we passed this sign.15EE0CF2-5E91-47AF-B322-9DAA9A7DA5BC“There are coyotes in this park?” One of our visitors asked. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Many times,” I answered. “But they typically keep to themselves, so it’s not an issue. We just have to keep our dog on the leash so she won’t go running after them. That would not be good.”

I could tell that our guests were a little uncomfortable at the possibility of coming across wild coyotes. Every time they spotted a German Shepherd one of them would point at it and ask if it was a coyote. So I decided that perhaps it was time to take them to a “safer” tourist destination and we headed over to Alcatraz Island. FD7D8C31-2978-47C1-96BF-8F57E6C577A4I’ve yet to see a coyote at Alcatraz.

#FOWC — Down But Not Out

Fandango24 Comments

1E5FB4E1-E8E7-4829-9CBE-D644DD5067B0My page views yesterday were down by nearly 50% from what they were just four days ago. After a cursory review of possible causes, I came to the conclusion that my duties as a tour guide for my out-of-town guests resulted in my writing fewer posts yesterday, posting fewer responses to comments people made on those posts, and reading and commenting on fewer posts by other bloggers.

In fact, I was so busy entertaining our guests that I even forgot to write a post in response to my own one-word prompt, “cursory.”

But far be it from me to allow my precipitous drop in page views yesterday cause me to feel woebegone. Oh no, I’m going to make that feeling of woe be gone. I’m going to plant my feet squarely on the ground, and take my guests on the best tour of San Francisco today that one can imagine.

5330D350-810F-4AD5-B29B-6F7C47F060A1I’ll be like that ant in the fairy tale that my Great Aunt Sally used to read to me. The one about the little ant carrying a huge load many times its size and storing up food for the long, cold winter while the grasshopper sings and fiddles away the summer, leaving it having to beg the ant for help.

(I realize that this Aesop fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” seems to be a bit out of context here, but I had to figure out a way to use the words “great aunt” and “ant” in order to complete Teresa’s Three Things Challenge.)

Written for today’s Word of the Day Challenge, “woebegone,” for Teresa’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are great aunt, ant, and plant, and for yesterday’s Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, “cursory.”