It's been too nice to blog.

This weekend's weather was a mid-summer gift. High of 84, low in the upper 50s. In July. In North Carolina. It's this type of climate that used to make me pine for Seattle or Portland every summer before I decided my mental health would probably suffer during their rainy seasons (all three of them).

At any rate, I've been away and I haven't quite gotten back in the swing of things. Heather Havrilesky, who writes a hilarious column about t.v. for Salon, said something that rings so true for me: "My personal rule is, if I don't sink into a major existential crisis when I get back from vacation then I wasn't gone for long enough." This happened both times when I returned from Ireland. I moped and shuffled around my house, listening to nothing but traditional Celtic music, drinking hot milky tea, scanning on-line dating sites for men named Seamus, and setting the AC low enough to pretend I needed to bundle up in my new Blarney woolen throw.

A week in St. Lucia wasn't long enough to set off a crisis. (For better or worse. On the one hand, I'm glad not to be full of existential angst; on the other, I wouldn't have minded being gone longer). But I did get out of the habit of writing.

I'm getting back to it, though, and I've got a question to answer. So stay tuned. In the meantime, here's a shot of the Caribbean from the plane.


And one of the Pitons, St. Lucia's signature site:


One of The Black Pearl, allegedly featured in "Pirates of the Caribbean":



And, finally, one of a little fishing village on the island's east coast:

Crispy around the edges

Quick update from St. Lucia: Though slightly burned in typically-ignored spots, my SPF 30 and 55 sunblocks seem to be doing the job. Have yet to find a hat for my huge noggin. Fortunately, I brought an old baseball cap, which I was desperately hoping not to resort to. Dorky though I may look, at least my face isn't fried.

It's an hour and a half drive from the airport to the hotel, and my cab driver was a great tour guide. The island is lovely and green, with mountains, banana plantations, rain forests, rocky coasts on the eastern side, and sandy beaches with turquoise water in the west.

Work starts tomorrow, for three days, and then a bit of vacation. I'm hoping to arrange an official tour, but if that falls through, I can always call the cab driver and plan my own day trip. He knows his stuff!

My SO's social life still revolves around his ex-wife. I love him but enough is enough!

Dear HTT,

SO and I have been living together for 8 months. Dating for almost 4 years. Last night at dinner with friends he called me by his ex-wife’s name. About a year ago he introduced me by the name of his ex-sister-in-law. He is very close friends with his ex-wife and her present husband. They are the focal point of 95% of his social life, the ex-wife and her large extended family. My SO has remained a part of this extended family. They have been divorced about 14 years. She calls him and tells him about family dinners, parties, religious events for her family (they/we are jewish). He has called her “baby” on the phone while I was standing there. Told me when we first started dating that seeing her remarry was a humbling experience due to the fact that he loved her more than anything.

I have about decided that I am not an SO in his life but rather a housekeeper/roommate. I really don’t think I need to stay in the relationship. I love him but enough is enough. I’m at a loss –I am 62 years old and am too old for this kind of crap. He treats me well otherwise. He apologized and I accepted his apology but I just feel like I get more doses of his ex-wife than I care to have. She is a nice woman but controlling and domineering.

****************************

I’m so sorry that this situation is causing you pain and frustration. I can imagine the sting of being called by the name of an SO’s ex-wife. I’m prone to jealousy (though I fight it), so I’d have to summon a lot of strength, and not a little pride, to graciously accept his continuing friendship with his ex and her family.

But if I loved him enough, and if I thought he loved me as much, I’d try. I could probably find ways to work around the social life problem; namely, I’d make sure I had an active social life of my own and work out some compromises about how much time we/I had to spend with the ex. If I truly felt loved and appreciated, I would forgive his slip of the tongue--although I’d not be above hurt feelings and an argument about it first--and eventually accept that this probably wasn’t a reflection of his feelings for me. I conducted an admittedly unscientific poll and found that several of my friends had called their well-loved current partner by an ex’s name (or had been called by the ex’s name).

But reciprocal love would be the key for me. You say you feel like a roommate and housekeeper, who is “treated well.” Is that how you feel most of the time, or did you write that in a moment of frustration? Honestly, if I regularly felt that way in the presence of my partner, it wouldn’t matter whether he addressed me as Goddess and had no ex-wife. I’d have to move on.

I don’t know if I have a jaded or practical view of relationships, but I think all of them require regular and healthy doses of compromise and forgiveness. But two important caveats:

(1) Compromise and forgiveness are extremely hard work, so the relationship has to be worth it.

(2) Compromise and forgiveness have to flow both ways.

Only you can decide whether your relationship is worth the work and whether your guy is worthy of forgiveness. And if you haven't already done so, I think you should find out whether he is willing to compromise on how much time he socializes with the ex. (If he's been divorced for 14 years and still spends 95% of his social life with her and her extended family, he might not be.) You sound like you've already made your decision; if you have, I hope you're feeling that you've done the right thing.

Good luck,
HTT

I don't want my picture posted on my friend's web site. Am I a privacy nut?

Dear HTT,

A friend of mine keeps a personal website with tons of personal information posted. I, on the other hand, am an extremely private person who doesn't want anything personal posted anywhere.

My friend and I travel together and he posts photos from our trips. That's always been fine with me because he used an online service that
required an email invitation or password to view the photos and it was
nice to share among friends. Now he's switched to a different service that allows anyone anywhere to view our photos. Granted, not many people out of our circle of friends visit his website and wouldn't have a direct link to his photo album. And I doubt strangers would look at another stranger's vacation photos. But they are out there and I feel very uncomfortable with it.

I realize that I am a little nutty about personal privacy, so that's why I need your advice. Am I being too nutty? And how offensive is it for me to ask him to password-protect his online photo album?


Dear Private,

You might be asking the wrong person, since I put personal anecdotes out there all the time and practically beg people to read them!

Then again, self-centered though this may be, I mostly only talk about myself in my personal posts. When I do mention friends, I don’t give their names, and sometimes I change details about them to protect the innocent. I think I’ve posted only one picture of a friend, and I asked her first if she minded. (She didn’t.) I have talked about family, but only in general terms, not naming any names.

So, no, I don’t think you’re being irrationally protective of your privacy. In my case, vanity would be an even bigger issue. I wouldn’t necessarily want the whole world to have access to a picture of me, say, climbing on horse when I was in Costa Rica. (I wasn’t exactly nimble at it.) And I’m sure people have plenty of other unflattering pictures of me that I’d rather were kept in a drawer somewhere, in the old-school manner of photo storage before it was easy to dump all 500 vacation pictures on a web site.

But, whatever the reason, be it privacy or vanity, I don’t think you’re being nutty. I don’t know the ins and outs of all the picture-posting options out there, but just the other day my brother was extolling the virtues of a site that lets you password protect some albums and not others, easily. So, given that you don’t need to be some kind of web programming genius to do it, I think it wouldn’t hurt to ask your friend to install some kind of privacy feature on his pages. Or, at least, to take down the pictures of you.

Take care,
HTT

Durham's got cojones

On Saturday, a friend and I attended the "Durham Rising" event, a celebration that marked the end of a long downtown revitalization project involving realigned streets, brick sidewalks and public squares, new trees and decorative streetlamps, and a general hope that downtown Durham is on its way to becoming hip and vital.

As part of the festival, the city officially unveiled an enormous bronze sculpture of a bull, our city's mascot (we're the Bull City, home of the Durham Bulls, etc.).


"What a handsome bull," I thought, filled with beer garden-induced civic pride. And then the man in the blue shirt stepped aside, revealing the bull's bullish attributes.


Sure, I know it's totally juvenile to note just how anatomically correct our bull is, but how could you not? I wasn't the only one noting, believe me. There were plenty of snickers and shy pointing.

But when I got done having a chuckle, I couldn't help but feel warmly toward my oft-maligned city. In a region where public art is derided as a waste of money, and anything more risky than a bronze acorn draws outraged criticism (heh hem, like Raleigh's snub of renowned Spanish sculptor Plensa), it took, well, balls to embrace this sculpture as the city's icon. And if there was ever a city that thought of itself as ballsy, it's New York, and even its famed Wall Street bull can't compare.

HTT: How do I tip a curbside delivery person?

Dear HTT,

This is more of a 'modern etiquette' question than a 'life, love, and the pursuit of happiness' question, but here goes... I know how much to tip waiters/waitresses in a restaurant: 15% of the check is traditional, and in the New York metro area 18-20% seems reasonable. (I assume such an amount is reasonable in most North American metropolitan areas.)

I would always rather over-tip than under-tip. I figure that anyone who's waiting tables for a living is working harder than I've ever had to work, and I know that person is counting on my tip as part of his/her salary. So unless the service has been really bad, I tip 20%.

But what about when those same waiters/waitresses deliver take-out food to the 'Curbside To Go' (or "Curbstyle To Go' or whatever cutesy name the chain restaurant uses) parking spots? Surely some sort of tip is in order, but since the waitperson hasn't taken my order, answered my questions, delivered my food, cleared away the dirty dishes, and refilled my coffee, 18-20% seems a little steep. What do you think is appropriate?

*********************

I’ve never taken advantage of curbside delivery, so I did a little Web research. Let’s just say, as is often the case when you ask the entire world of web-posters for advice, opinions vary. In fact, I ran into a number of long and heated threads about this issue.

I agree that 18 to 20 percent seems over the top. As you point out, the person who brings food to your car doesn't have to do nearly the amount of work that someone who waits on your table throughout an entire meal does.

Some argue that the curbside delivery person makes the same lousy salary as tableside waitstaff and, hence, should be tipped equally. However, I would imagine that curbside folks can serve far more customers per hour, so they might get smaller tips but more of them.

From what I can tell, tips for curbside delivery range from nothing (which I do not advocate), to $1-$2 per bag of food delivered, to 10 percent of the bill.

I’d probably lean toward 10 percent, but my decision might also be affected by the following factors:

• Did they get my order right?
• Was service relatively quick and friendly?
• Am I a regular at this establishment?
• How’s the weather?
• Would an extra buck or two kill me?

I’d be curious to see what others think.

Thanks for writing!
HTT

HTT, I don't like my girlfriend's friends!

Dear HTT,

You give straight-forward and logical advice. I like that you don’t mince words! I’ve got a big problem I hope you can help me with.

I’ve started to become serious about a woman I’ve been dating for six months. Not marriage serious, but maybe move-in serious. She’s great: smart, beautiful, sweet, laughs at my jokes. Really, what more could I ask for? Well, the problem is that I dislike her friends! They’re loud, drama queen types who draw a lot of attention to themselves and need a lot of hand-holding and support from my girlfriend. They’ve known each other forever, and go on and on about people I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, just annoying. We go out with them about once a month, and I never have fun. What can I do about this? Should I tell my girlfriend how I feel? Or can I subtly suggest that we not spend much time with them?

Like the girl, not the posse



Dear LTGNTP,

Good that you appreciate someone who isn’t a word mincer, because I have to deliver some tough news: your girlfriend comes with her friends, so either find something to like about them or break up with her now.

I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you haven’t given me much to work with. Under different circumstances, a kinder middle ground might have presented itself. Say, if you disliked only one or two of her friends. Or if you and your gal rarely spent any time alone and hung with her friends several nights a week. Or, if you sounded less pouty that someone besides you was on the receiving end of your girlfriend’s attention, support, and hand-holding. If you’d thrown me any one of these bones, I might have been able to suggest some compromises or strategies for keeping the peace. I’m a peace-keeping expert!

But, come on. You dislike ALL of her friends? You only have to see them once a month? You’ve known your girlfriend for six months, she’s had these friends “forever,” and you think you’ll come out on the winning end of a conversation about how all of her friends are annoying, loud, drama queens? You never know. Maybe she’ll capitulate, in which case, her friends deserve better anyway.

However, I’m going to assume that a woman who has friends she’s known forever has held onto the friends through at least a few other boyfriends. So, I think it’s in your best interest to examine your feelings, stop expecting to be the center of attention, and grow to appreciate, or at least cheerfully tolerate, a few of her friends.

HTT