In a weird convergence of weather and chance, all the Kentucky places I have history with got whacked by major storms and/or tornadoes yesterday. Ashland (grew up there), Lexington (college there), and Louisville (second home there) all experienced extreme weather. Ashland got the worst of it, including a small area (Ironville) where we had a home in the late 70s. Lots of tree and structure damage in all those places, but thankfully everyone I know is OK. I’ll be in that very area next week in search of a good spot to view the eclipse.

We’re going to get another chance to see a SpaceX launch this Friday, according to this very useful website. Let’s hope for no clouds that evening. The grandsons (and I) would be thrilled.

Spent a lot of time yesterday trying to book an Antarctica trip for January 2025, but ran into some difficulties. First, the website and customer service front end of Scenic was bad. Useless. Booking site didn’t work, so I had to resort to giving all our hideously-detailed info to an agent over the phone. Slow and inefficient. Second, once I had gotten past the reservation and a deposit, only then did I learn that the mandatory trip insurance was going to be huge: 5-10x more expensive than I had expected. So I went back to the crummy customer service agent and began the process of getting my deposit back only a couple of hours after authorizing it. Scenic is resisting, saying the five-figure deposit is non-refundable, but I think they’re going to cave and refund it. After much work on my part.

Booking a luxury trip shouldn’t be this hard and this full of gotchas. Something is rotten with Scenic, even though one of our relatives swears they’re the best organization ever. But I’m rethinking the whole “…it would be fun to walk on Antarctica…” thing. For the price of one trip to Antarctica, we could go to Europe five or six times. Or Africa 3-4 times. In style.

This weekend is the Masters golf tourney AND the NCAA Final Four. Big sports weekend, but I won’t watch much of the Masters because the kids are here (Update: Oops, the Masters is a week later. I’m really out of touch). And won’t watch much of the Final Four because I really don’t give a shit who wins. Thanks, Calipari.