Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Yesterday reminded me of the "old days" in software selling. These old days aren't that old, of course. I'm only talking about the mid-aughts (when I started in technical sales) through the early 10s! So, what was so 15-years-ago about yesterday? It was meeting prospects and colleagues face-to-face for sales work.

Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.

I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.

The Meeting

Seeing how big the meeting room was— it was set up as a classroom— and how many people filed in, I fretted about how the meeting would flow. Rooms where the seats are all front-facing discourage genuine conversation. People see the physical layout and think, "Okay, I'm supposed to let the presenter speak."And when there's a large crowd in a meeting, anything over 10 let alone the 20 we had yesterday, the audience size also discourages a lot of people from speaking up. It's like people are thinking, "My question had better be worth interrupting 20 people or I should keep quiet." Moreover a lot of people are intimidated by such gatherings. They're reluctant to speak up for fear that asking a question may make them sound stupid or acknowledging that there's a problem they don't know how to solve will make their colleagues think less of them.

I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."

My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.

The After-Meeting

Oh, but the successful f2f meeting wasn't the only part that felt old school. After the meeting in Newark I drove my colleague to his hotel in downtown San Jose. Just driving with a colleague felt old school. It used to be a regular, almost daily thing in my life as a salesperson years ago. Now it happens maybe a few times a year.

What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.

When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.

After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.

The Menendez brothers, Eric and Lyle, were resentenced by a judge in California on Tuesday. The pair were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents in a brutal attack in 1989. Originally sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Their new sentences are 50 years to life. It's possible they could be paroled later this year, having served just shy of 30 years of their sentences.

For people my age, "The Menendez Brothers" are memorable. I was in my late teens in 1990 when news broke that police had arrested them for murdering their own parents. The two had been living high on the hog for months after falsely claiming to police that they came home and discovered their parents brutally shot in their own home, insinuating that the killings were a "mob hit" due to their father's business ties. (There was never any evidence linking their father, Jose Menendez, to organized crime.)

The Menendez brothers' trials were a regular news fixture for several years as the pair wound their way through the legal system. They were young, handsome, and wealthy— the perfect profile for TV news coverage. In fact, part of the coverage was about their legal defense team working with image consultants to make them appear more sympathetic.


The somber dark suits they wore in earlier court appearances were deemed to make them look too mature and sinister. The suits were ditched in favor of sweaters that made them look more "like the boys next door", I remember news articles crowing.


And because they were wealthy, their trials took a long time to resolve. After the killings in August 1989 and their arrest in March 1990, it wasn't until July 1993 their first trials began. (Example reference: "A timeline of the Menendez brothers’ double-murder case", AP News, 13 May 2025.) Those trials deadlocked in Jan 1994. A retrial began in Oct 1995. The jury there convicted the brothers in Mar 1996. They were sentenced in July 1996— almost seven years after the crime they committed.


Across the various trials, including at this year's resentencing, the brothers never disputed their role in the killings. And the killings were brutal. They had bought shotguns prior to the killings— showing premeditation— and then fired multiple shots each at their parents. Crime scene investigators described the bodies as among the most gruesomely disfigured they'd ever seen. The brothers' defense was that their parents had physically and sexually abused them, and hence they were acting in self defense. Jurors kind of bought that argument in the original trial, which ended with a hung jury, and rejected it in the retrial, when the judge put some limits on (but did not exclude) the amount of psychological testimony permitted.

My sense at the time, back in the 1990s, was that I didn't believe the brothers' defense, either. It's not that I don't believe claims of physical and sexual abuse, but there was no corroboration of it— no doctor who'd seen signs of injury, no clergy member or school counselor they'd confided in, no family member or guest in the house who ever saw anything probative. Moreover, there was zero evidence there was any threat against them at the time, in their 20s, they bought shotguns and murdered their parents. With that, plus the stories of their wealthy entitlement before and after the killings, it sure seemed like their motive was some combination of revenge and desire to take their father's wealth for themselves.

I found an interesting thing when I went to light a candle the other day. The box of matches I kept nearby had just run out, so I rummaged around other places in the house where we keep matches and found this:



What's so interesting about a matchbook with a restaurant's name on it? I mean, aside from the fact that restaurants basically don't "do" customized matchbooks anymore. It used to be a thing years ago, back when more people smoked. Back when smokers could smoke in virtually every restaurant, everywhere. Restaurants would hand smokers a matchbook with the restaurant's name on so they could light up at their tables, then remember the restaurant by taking the matchbook home, sort of like a calling card. A calling card that makes fire.

What's interesting to me about this particular matchbook is that I've probably had it in my possession, through multiple house moves across multiple states, since about 1992. I know that because the Greek House restaurant in Ithaca, NY was one of my regular haunts in 1992-1993 when I lived a few blocks away. Yes, these matches are from another century!

And why would I have old matches when I've never smoked? Ah, it's because in that century past the apartment I rented had a stove that needed to be lit with a match. That's right, a gas stove without an automatic striker or even a pilot light!

How old is that? Well, since you asked.... I estimate the house I lived in was built in the 1910s. That comes from style of foundation the house was built on and the foundations of other houses in the neighborhood. (Haha, you asked an engineer "How old is that?" and now you get an engineer answer. 😏)  Some houses had stone foundations/footings, others had concrete. Building standards changed from one to the other in the US after 1910. Thus I estimate the neighborhood was built around that time, with my house being slightly newer than some because it had a concrete footing.

Now, the stove might not have dated to the 1910s, but I figure it wasn't newer than the 1940s. Pilot lights become common in gas stoves in the 1940s. For example, my grandmother owned a stove manufactured in 1941, and it had a built-in pilot light.

So, since my flatmates and I needed matches to use our stove, and we were poor college students, we grabbed free matchbooks at restaurants when we dined out so we could eat hot food at home. It was lucky for us, I guess, that smoking was still common.

BTW, the Greek House closed in 2006.

BTW², these 33 year old matches don't work well anymore. Unsurprising since they're cheap giveaways. Two fell apart as I tried striking them before the third lit.

Today' the fifth anniversary of the Coronavirus pandemic. Five years ago today, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Coronavirus a global pandemic. As I wrote in my blog that day, classifying it a pandemic was debatable and political. But I meant those terms positively. It was debatable because the definition of what's a pandemic involves subjective terms; and political because determining it was a pandemic would open up more political solutions. Governments that might not act in the face of a regional health concern, something happening "over there" and "to some people", could be prodded to act against what international health experts deemed a global problem potentially affecting everyone.

A common question I've seen posed in a lot of writing about this 5th anniversary is, "What's changed and what hasn't since then?" To answer that question it's important to be able to go back to that point in time and understand what was happening then. I fortunately have my own record of it: my blog. Take a look at my blog's table of contents page from March 2020 to see the things I was writing about in real time then.

One thing I was struck by in revisiting my contemporaneous writing was how Covid denialism was there pretty much from the beginning. Denials started started with China, of course. China's dictatorship covered up the seriousness of the problem to protect their reputation and keep their own populace in line. But very quickly the US political right, led by President Trump, started pounding Covid as a hoax ginned up by domestic political opponents to make him look bad in a reelection year and gain dictatorial control over the US. Trump had already established a daily cadence of calling it a hoax even before the WHO deemed it a global pandemic. And now, 5 years later, President Trump elected for a nonconsecutive second term has pulled the US out of the WHO.

It's sad to be reminded of just how quickly the situation with Coronavirus turned from political in the good sense— able to spur governments into action— into political in the bad sense, falling prey to partisan differences and demagoguery. It's still with us today. Covid denialism has become a tenet of the political right. And it's actually spread. Denialism has become a political way of life. The MAGA movement churns out "alternative facts" on pretty much every issue of the day. Undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave, rooting out fraud in government spending has saved billions of dollars in just a few weeks, vaccines are worse than the diseases they supposedly prevent, tariffs lower prices, and the stock market isn't crashing because of the chaos coming from the White House. Don't believe your lying eyes when they tell you otherwise.

Recently I tried a "new" restaurant, P.F. Chang's. I quote new because the restaurant itself is hardly new. It's a chain that's been around for 30 years and has 300 stores worldwide. Likely there's one near you. And the one near me isn't exactly new to the neighborhood; it's been there for 24 years. Plus, I've been there before. Though my last visit, to it or any of its 299 sister stores, was about 23 years ago. Returning to try it out again fits my sort-of New Year's resolution a few years ago to try new restaurants— where "new" specifically includes places I haven't been to in a long time.

Why have I not been to P.F. Chang's in 23 years? It's not because I hated the food. I mean, I did dismiss it as overly Americanized, yuppie-fied Chinese fare. I live in an area where there is so much more authentic Chinese food available that going to a "Chinese" restaurant that's the same in Wichita, Kansas as Silicon Valley, California was laughable. It's the same reason as why sit-down chain restaurants are sparse in Silicon Valley and up the peninsula to San Francisco. See also, Try finding an Olive Garden here. But keeping in mind, "I'm not eating Chinese food so much as Chinese-ish food that's yuppie-safe and is the same in Wichita," I decided the local P.F. Chang's was worth another try.

So, how was it? In a word, Chinese-ish. 😂 I went with my spouse and two mutual friends. We ordered a variety of appetizers, sides, and mains to share. Everything was well prepared and attractive looking as it landed on the table. The flavors were a little bland, made suitable for Middle American palates, if a bit too salty (also suitable for Middle America). Basically it was exactly what I expected it would be: an Americanized facsimile of Chinese food, served in upscale fashion and with upscale prices. And I figure that's exactly why/how the chain succeeds. It gives people a safe, not too foreign, and slightly upscale experience with ethnic food. Plus, it's a date-night or nice-dinner-with-friends spot that's two steps classier than Chili's.

Would I eat there again? Sure. Not next week... but probably sooner than in another 23 years.


Edited to add: Funny story about how authentic— or not— P.F. Chang's is. When I was traveling to China frequently for my job in the late 00s/early 10s I showed my Chinese national counterparts online pictures and menus of some of the Chinese restaurants near me. It was a revelation to them as schools in China taught that nobody in the US speaks a Chinese language or knows anything about Chinese culture. I was curious for their opinion as they looked at menus and pictures from the restaurants, which looked the most Chinese to them? They all picked P.F. Chang's. Why? I asked. It turns out it's because the restaurant's website prominently displayed the words "Chinese Food", in Chinese, written traditionally in vertical orientation. Native Chinese thought that made it the most authentic. 😂

Banks tell us to "cut up your credit card" after closing an account. It's a safety precaution to protect against fraud once you throw the physical card in the trash. That guidance is at least 40 years old, though. It dates back to when physical credit cards contained only an account number embossed as raised numerals on a plastic card. That's back in the days when merchants would run a roller over your card that imprinted the physical number from the card onto carbon-copy paper. In the long-long ago there was no validation at point of sale... so a stolen card, even one belonging to a closed account, could easily be used in a sale.

Credit card technology has gone through a few generations of advancements since then. Even a lot of middle-aged folks today may never have seen a credit card roller machine outside a museum or one of those "People Under 50 Will Have No Idea What These Are" social media threads. The industry moved to magnetic stripes, instant validation, chips, and near-field communication (NFC) "tap to pay". But what about the guidance of cutting up your cards when you cancel your accounts?

Hawk and I still cut up our old cards. We're careful to cut the chip and the antenna mechanisms when doing it nowadays. But have you ever peeled a credit card? Skinned it?



Hawk did this with one of her old cards out of curiosity this week. It's one of those metal sandwich cards, the kind issued for some premium account types where, instead of the card being all plastic, it has a metal layer in the middle between plastic front and back. We know from years ago that these do really interesting things when run through a shredder. This time Hawk tried peeling off the plastic layers to get rid of the visual number and magnetic strip. What's left is that metal previously sandwiched in the middle!

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #11
Outside Harrisburg, PA - Thu, 28 Nov 2024, 11pm

This evening we enjoyed a big, traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Hawk, her parents, and I went over to the house of family friends Dean and Lynne. That's been a tradition among my inlaws for probably 40 years. Lynne cooks Thanksgiving dinner at their house, and my mother-in-law cooks Second Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Yes, it's like living with Hobbits. 🤣 Though Second Thanksgiving is a day or two later, not later in the same day.

Joining my inlaws and their friends for Thanksgiving is a satisfying tradition but it hasn't always been our tradition. When Hawk and I started our new lives together in California years ago we were far away from almost all of our relatives. That was both a good thing and bad thing. Good, because we wanted to start fresh and didn't care to be beholden to other people and their expectations for us. But also bad, because the distance made it hard to see family.

Sure, flying cross country was always possible. Today we do it frequently. But back then it was expensive compared to our budget, Plus, time off from work was tight. With so many other places in the world we wanted to go with our limited time and money, so we did it only once every few years. Instead our Thanksgiving tradition was to use the four-day weekend to go hiking. As recently as 2018 we spent our Thanksgiving going hiking in California— or maybe planet Vulcan— at Vasquez Rocks and Devil's Punchbowl.

But this year we stuck to the traditional tradition of Thanksgiving with family and friends. We even had my oldest sister, her husband, and their daughter join us. They recently moved back to the east coast and— warning: long story short— didn't fit in with any other relatives' plans for the day. So Hawk checked with Lynne and Dean and her parents, and invitations were extended. There's always room at the table in these houses.

Who remembers Marie Callender's? Okay, probably few people outside of California. They're a restaurant chain and a brand of ready-made frozen pies you can buy at the supermarket.

The restaurant chain has gone through ups and downs— but mostly downs— over the years. They were more common in California in the 1980s and '90s as an American variety menu restaurant whose specialty was a large selection of pies available for dessert. The chain went through a series of purchases and stumbled badly after its co-founder passed away. Today there are only 27 Marie Callender's restaurants left, per their website. Their map shows they've mostly in California, and mostly in Southern California at that. There are two in Las Vegas, one in Salt Lake City, and one near Boise. And of the merely two located in Northern California, one's right here in Sunnyvale.



Why the little history lesson on a little-known restaurant chain? Well, we decided to eat there for the first time in... years. It was a partly a matter of my sort-of New Year's resolution last year to try some new restaurants in the area— or old ones we hadn't been to in a long time. This definitely counts as the latter. I think Hawk ate at the local Marie's a few years ago, but for me it's been probably 20 years.

We did used to eat at Marie Callender's more often. ...Not weekly, or even monthly, but definitely more often than once in 20 years. The chain was one of many at the time in the category of variety-menu American food. In addition to Marie's there were Lyons, and Carrows, and bears Baker's Square. Now they're all gone. Though other chains in the once-crowded space, Denny's and Hobee's, are still around. It was partly because there were so many chains in the category that we didn't dine at any one all that frequently. Plus, middle-American wasn't a cuisine we cared to eat more than maybe once a month, and even then only for variety when we were tired of Mexican, Italian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, and so many other categories we're rich with here in Silicon Valley.

So anyway, we decided on a visit to the local Marie Callender's for old times' sake. And because we were curious about this restaurant, in our town, being one of the few survivors.

Stepping into the restaurant was like entering a museum from the 1940s. The place was decked out in dark wood, highly waxed, with dim lighting. The wood floor creaked gently underfoot as we crossed the large foyer. Marie Callender's always made its niche within its crowded restaurant category with old-timey decor and a more upscale character than its competitors. But here what was once an artificial old-timey look now looked... genuinely old. Like nothing had changed for 40 years. Walking to our seat was like walking through a museum that serves food.



Little has changed about Marie Callender's menu, either. It looks similar to what I remember from 25 years ago— not that I remember it all that well. It does seem to have shrunk over time, though. That's understandable as a result of all the times it was bought and sold and the constant pressure from new owners to find ways to reduce costs. Luckily I was in the mood for a classic Marie Callender's dish, a meatloaf sandwich.

At least one thing changed from 25 years ago. Beer. Note that glass behind my plate and the bottle of beer in the upper right hand corner. Marie's offers a choice of about a dozen beers now! Serving beer was once considered antithetical to the family-friendly image chains in the category anchored by Denny's strove to maintain. As that category withered the chains decided they'd have to broaden their offerings in various ways to survive. So now there's bottled beer.

How was the food? Well, that meatloaf sandwich was the main thing, and it was... barely edible. The meat tasted like low quality ground beef, possibly with too much filler. It was also dry, like it had been left sitting under a warming lamp all day.

I was really disappointed by that, though at the same time not too surprised. I mean, Marie Callender's did used to be better. I know that because I know the kind of food I enjoyed eating when I moved to California in the 1990s, and I know it was better that this. This restaurant was never great; but it was at least fair. Now it's not even that.

Food at family-oriented restaurants that were once a mainstay of dining almost all seems to suck today. It's the end result of too many years of cost reduction in search of greater profits. The problem is, when they reduce the cost too much the product starts to suck, and once the food isn't that great anymore customers will go elsewhere. Witness why so many chains in this once booming category have disappeared over the past 25 years and even the survivors have only a fraction of the locations they once had.

As a child I found my Grandmother B's house enchanting. It was so full of stuff. Stuff made with quality materials. In the house where I grew up, things were made of plastic and cardboard. The ostensibly fanciest piece of furniture we had, our china cabinet? Medium density fiberboard, with a rich-looking veneer glued on it. My parents spoke of it as if it was a gift from the Emperor of China. I revered it as an heirloom piece, too, until one day my mother was carrying a box that nicked against the corner of the cabinet, peeling off a strip of the veneer to reveal the sawdust and paste underneath. It was like pulling back the curtain to find the Wizard of Oz is just a man moving levers.

In Grandma B's house almost nothing was made of plastic or cardboard or MDF. Instead it was full of things made of various woods, such as beech and mahogany. And real stone such as marble and slate. I sat on a leather sofa for the first time at Grandma's house. My parents literally screamed at me about how I needed to be careful because it was over 30 years old, but that 30+ year old sofa was still in better condition than the 10 year old piece-of-crap sofa my parents owned.

All these wondrous things in my grandma's house had stories. You see, while my grandparents were affluent, they were not idly rich. They bought nice things carefully. Each beautiful thing that filled their house over the course of many years was chosen deliberately, with a sense that money is real and doesn't grow on trees, so everything had a story behind it: where it came from, why it was selected, what it meant, even down to— for big items like furniture the piano— how they got it into the house. Thus it was equally enchanting to learn what all these beautiful things were made of as to hear the story behind them.

As you might imagine in a house furnished carefully and with intention, things largely matched a motif. The furniture in the large living room wasn't all upholstered with the same pattern, but the wood trim and legs all matched. The table, chairs, and cabinets in the formal dining room all matched. Bedrooms had different motifs, but within each room the items matched a particular look or style. Except there was one item in the house that stood out as different from everything else: a red bowl.



The red crystal bowl sat in one of the display cabinets in the dining room. Unlike everything else in the room which all matched, this bowl matched nothing. It was conspicuous in its difference.

"What this bowl made of?" I asked my grandmother.

"It's crystal," she began, and then she explained the story behind it.

It was red, the color of ruby, because ruby is the traditional gift for a 40th anniversary. It was sent as a gift by friends ahead of gradma and grandpa's 40th anniversary. The friends were leaving on an extended trip overseas, so they send the gift months early.

But why is nothing else in the house ruby? Ah, because grandpa died just before their 40th anniversary. There was no 40th anniversary to celebrate, so there were no other 40th anniversary gifts; just this one, given months ahead of time, when grandpa was still alive.

It took me years to distill the lesson from this lone red crystal bowl, and years longer to understand how I needed to put it into practice.

Don't put off seeing your friends and relatives until the indefinite "later". Especially as they age, there won't always be a later.

One thing I've noticed as I've been periodically working on my Beer Tasting 2022 project— yes, it's still ongoing here in late 2024—is how popular premixed cocktails have become in the past few years. I'm judging that popularity by how much shelf space such drinks have taken over when I'm cruising the beer aisle at the liquor store and the grocery store. What used to be maybe half a rack of larger bottles of premixed cocktail drinks has now grown into 1/4 of the beer section. And, yes, they're sold next to beer because the category has grown and diversified with new producers selling them in packs of single serving cans.

I've long been skeptical of this category. I remember when wine coolers came out in the 1980s. At first they were made with real wine and fruit juice. The idea was create a lighter, sweeter wine-drinking experience, something like a wine spritzer drink for people who found the idea of table wine too intimidating. But within a few years the makers all switched from using real wine in their drinks to using using malt liquor, i.e., beer. Thus they also became a drink for people who can't handle beer and need it sweeter.

These "malternative" beverages always struck me as fake because most are branded to imply they contain wine or hard alcohol, when really it's just beer, sugar and artificial flavors. And the category has spawned real losers. Who else remembers Zima from the early 1990s? It launched with an enormous ad campaign. My friends and I in college tried it once. Once. Once was enough. It was downright disgusting.

And while wine coolers, Zima, and other malt beverages were advertised to be enjoyed by hip young men and women, they rapidly gained a cultural stereotype as being "girly" drinks— a thing young women, or girly men, would drink because they couldn't handle traditional wine... or even traditional beer unless it's sweetened up like Kool-Aid with sugars and artificial flavors. It's alco-pop.

Thus I mostly ignored the growing presence of canned alternative drinks in the beer aisle at the liquor store and the supermarket, kind of rolling my eyes as I strolled past to get to the real drinks instead of alco-pop. But then I noticed some of these new drinks are not just beer plus sugar masquerading as something else; some of them actually contain the liquor their branding implies!

The brand of this new type that caught my eye first is Cutwater. They're a liquor distiller based in San Diego. I'll say honestly that the reason they caught my eye is because they were on sale. Yes, I always appreciate getting a bargain! 😅 And seriously, the bright yellow "SALE!" tags are eye-catching. They're designed to be eye-catching.

A week ago I bought a four-pack of Cutwater's Mai Tai premixed cocktail. The label states it's made with two kinds of rum, actual rum as opposed to, basically, beer flavored to taste like rum. Cutwater has at least half a dozen different cocktail varieties on store shelves. I picked Mai Tai to try first because it's a cocktail I enjoy drinking but is a bit fussy to make from scratch. How often do you have orgeat syrup on hand?

So, How Does it Taste?

The question, "So, how does it taste?" can be answered a few different ways— all contextualized with, "...as compared to what?"

For a premixed cocktail Cutwater Mai Tai tastes pretty good. It has legit rum flavor. It does not taste like a beer-based facsimile. It's not a fizzy drink meant to impersonate a real cocktail. With 12.5% ABV it has a pretty good hit. One can of this is like 2 medium-strong beers or 3 lighter ones.

As a competitor to an actual Mai Tai, this Cutwater drink is barely even close. It's got a couple kinds of rum, which is on track, but then it's got fruity flavors. It's closer to being another tiki rum drink, possibly a Bahama Mama, than being a Mai Tai.

That said, as a generic tiki rum drink, it's pretty darn good. Think of it as a rum punch and there's no argument. Plus, the convenience of just opening a can and pouring over ice can't be beat. It's so easy to enjoy when going out to the pool or just settling down to watch some TV in the living room.