A quick business trip to Chicago. My client offers me a choice of hotels. There’s the Fairmont, of course. But the Hard Rock Hotel is nearby. Humm. Sounds like fun. Dan, after all, has hooked up with a garage rock band called “Still Crazy” (all the players in their forties and fifties), and I enjoy boutique hotels with attitude. So I make the reservation. Of course, I think the lizard chaise lounge in the room is over-the-top, but I appreciate the proximity of the hotel to Starbucks and basically I’m moving and grooving to the hotel’s new, hip tune.

Planning my wardrobe for a big speech tomorrow and tempted to purchase something new. Then I remembered Thoreau’s advice: never trust any enterprise that requires new clothes. Reminds me of the time I purchased a fabulous St. John black knit dress for a speech in Cincinnati. It came with a matching Nehru-style long jacket, and I must say, I looked fabulous. But the room was set at about 90 degrees and so halfway through, I shed the jacket. The speech went well and I received enthusiastic applause. Afterwards, a woman came running up to me. “I wish I had your courage,” she said. Of course, I was assuming she was referencing the élan with which I went through the death of my parents or something along those lines. But no, here’s what she said next. “To wear a dress that clings so tightly to your rear-end: you are the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”
Carol Orsborn

Three retirement fantasies amongst our circle of friends and family—and perhaps the three top explanations as to why the majority of boomers report that they expect, in the end, to settle somewhere within spitting distance of where they grew up and/or spent the greater part of their lives.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once lectured about the postmenopausal red-tailed deer, a particularly wise species of fauna living somewhere in the far north. Mead explained that in their old age, when all the old bucks had been killed off in skirmishes, the females became the oldest survivors.

Gentlemen: if you think that it would be a great idea to give your wife or girlfriend a certificate for a day at a spa, here’s some advice. Ask her which spa she’d prefer, first. Didn’t happen in my case, which is how it was that I ended up in a spa that caters to up and coming starlets who openly enjoy parading in the nude.