We are sitting at the wedding reception, enjoying the meal, when my self-definition took hard blow. The conversation wandered from topic to topic, as conversations do, and, at some point, made it around to gray hair. There was some back and forth as the young people near us starting commenting on how they were starting to see gray hairs.

Me? I’ve had gray for a long time. My mental image of myself is “I am graying”. As in, I still have a lot more gray to go. My dad has an awesome head of silver hair and I hope & expect to get there some day. I am gray, there is no doubt.

So when one of the young people (who shall remain nameless) looked at me and asked,”How long have you been fully silver?”–I was at a loss for words. I’m not fully silver. But here was someone who thought I was. And it was someone whose opinion I hold in high regard, so I couldn’t just dismiss it as the ramblings of a young punk.

After gaping like a fish out of water for far too long, I tentatively offered that I didn’t think I was fully silver. There was much laughter and embarrassment.

Like most of my posts, this was several days ago. I’ve been thinking about my hair far too much since then.

The wedding families headed to Phuket a couple of days after the wedding. A resort area in southern Thailand, it is on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. And it is pronounced poo-ket, not they way you pronounced it in your head.

We spent today visiting elephants (more on a future post) and then shopping. Now it’s pool time.

Beautiful walking park. Lot of flowers. It also happens to be a water treatment facility. The nicest one I’ve ever seen.

The lizard pic was taken by Joyce. She has a way of finding wildlife that is beyond my understanding.

Lots of koi in the water. Mostly gray with a few bright orange ones. Since it was more marsh than pond, the fish were wandering around the various water plants.

There was a skywalk over some of the marshland and concrete boardwalks all throughout. It was very peaceful and serene.

And hot. Upper 80s and oppressive humidity. We got there before 7am and were sweating two minutes later.

Bangkok has interesting power lines. Below are some pics showing the quantity of wires and very confusing junctions. The coils of extra wire are probably for future adjustments. Although a resident I spoke with said they often just cut and leave when they replace wires. Nothing gets removed.

I imagine that this technique is cheaper in the short term and more expensive in the long term. The cost to track and fix problems is certainly higher. And the problems are probably more frequent and more severe.

There are times when the risk of taking the cheap way out won’t cause too much long term pain. And times when it will. I think I know which this is.