Silver Planet™ Help Your Parents Age in Place.

Aging shouldn’t keep elders from traveling and interacting with the world at large, if they still have the capacity and drive to do so. Travel can still be an exciting experience for them, but it takes a great deal of organization. Complications you would never think of can arise. Something as simple as jet lag could pose a major problem since it takes many elderly people twice as long to recover from it. The key is to plan.

[amazon cover 0385663404] In The End of the Alphabet, Ambrose is told he has only a month to live. He and his wife, Zipper, have no children or extended family, so his decision to travel as much as he can before dying affects only them.

My thought is to travel as much as I can before I’m given that kind of diagnosis, but I do understand. We often put off today what, we hope, we’ll be able to do tomorrow for a variety of reasons: cost, especially in these days of economic uncertainty; personal safety; time away from home, job, family; etc.

I usually have to watch myself when the subject of travel to England comes up.

I admit to being an Anglophile. I’m partial to English writers and actors, Masterpiece Theatre, and tales of kings, queens, Knights of the Round Table, and castles.

I am ready for spring. This has been a pretty mild winter for us, but I am tired of brown grass, bare trees, and piles of dirty snow hiding under the pine trees.

[amazon cover 0312354959] Linda Francis Lee, another Kappa Kappa Gamma sister from Texas Tech, is the author of The Devil in the Junior League. Her book is being made into a movie by Universal Studios, with Jennifer Garner as the star and producer.

The Ex-Debutante, her second book, set in fictional Willow Creek, is just out.

It certainly took long enough for this movie to come to my hometown, but it finally got here—just in time to see it before the Academy Awards.

Yes, I’m talking about the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. What a super film—it's a love story, an adventure story, a story of compassion, and a story about survival—all rolled into one.

I met a long-time friend for drinks recently. As is often the case, books and authors came up in the conversation. She belongs to two book clubs. The first, she refers to as a “chapter club,” because they read only a chapter for each time they meet; the second is made up of sorority sisters from Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Oxford University is an excellent center for learning and an excellent setting for a movie. Some of the famous movies filmed there include Chariots of Fire, The Golden Compass, and scenes from Harry Potter (inspired by places at Christ Church College).

In four days, a friend and I will fly to Harlingen, Texas, and drive a rental car to see the Alamo and to visit another friend, who has been wintering in San Antonio with her husband since early November.

To say the three of us are close is an understatement. We, and others, refer to us as the three musketeers! While there have been weekly phone conversations and emails flying back and forth, the thought of not seeing her until sometime in late May had become unbearable.

This last week I was in the San Jose area on a school trip to visit the headquarters of Apple Computers. Our district is interested in getting laptops for the students at our high school—and all of that was really interesting and exciting, but I want to tell you about the food.