Sisyphus Project

I’ve used this change in punctuation before, but it applies to Rep. George Soros as well.  What?  Was he thinking?  It’s inconceivable to me that Soros didn’t think at least some of his lies would be exposed.  One report I saw said Santos’ campaign hired a research company to check his background and some of his campaign staff resigned as a result of the report.

Latest report on the NY Post’s website today says Soros’ SUV has five outstanding speeding tickets, four of them in school zones!  If you’re going to make the laws, you should take care to observe the laws.  Soros isn’t just notorious in New York’s third congressional district on Long Island.  I heard his story related on a news broadcast over the talk station LBC in London, UK!

During the rancorous events leading up to Kevin McCarthy’s election as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama had to be restrained by another House member from lunging at Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.  To quote comedian Chris Rock who said it of another event with different circumstances, “I don’t approve, but I understand.”

The release date for Prince Harry’s book, “Spare,” is next Tuesday.  There have been so many news articles and gossip articles about the book that nobody will need to read it.  Personally, I don’t care about Harry, Meghan William, or Kate, and I don’t understand why anyone else does either.

In grade school, we were tasked with writing compositions about what we did on vacation.  This is reminiscent of those essays.  We were going to go to Florida in September, but the hurricane season intervened. 

In October, we like to go someplace that has some fall color.  So, in October, 2022, We went to Plymouth MA. The weather was awful on the drive there.  I’d call it a deluge.  It was also very foggy the whole time we were in Plymouth, but that didn’t really interfere with our exploration.  The weather turned nice on our last day, so we drove out Cape Cod.  Pretty area.  I understand why it’s a magnet for vacationers and those who can make use of a summer home.  The streets of Provincetown are so narrow I’d hate to take a car there in the height of tourist season though.

Have to shout out to Delta Airlines for a second time this year.  My wife and I finally got to go to Florida to visit our son and his wife’s new house, but in November, rather than September.  I lost my iPhone on the plane on my birthday.  A Delta gate attendant found it.  He answered my phone when someone called to wish me a happy birthday.  That’s how he learned where to contact me.  So, my phone and I were reunited the same day.  Of course, he earned our thanks and a little reward as well.

We like the house and of course we wish our son and his wife well with it.  We also hope to be invited back.

I’d still like to live in Florida, and my wife still wouldn’t, so we don’t.

One of my friends complained that Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park is very expensive.  I guess he hasn’t visited Busch Gardens recently.  Busch Gardens does have rides, but some of them were closed in late November and Busch Gardens is roughly twice as expensive as Zoo Tampa.

For the first time since they passed away, we visited my wife’s parents’ graves at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell Florida.  It’s really a lovely place, but we hadn’t been there since the burial, so we didn’t see the grave marker before.  I’ve said for many years that my wife should have been the PR person in our family since she’s much better at deflecting than I am.  Turns out she’s also quite the phrase maker.  Carved in stone on her parents’ grave are the words, “Together Forever.”  That inscription is both appropriate and touching, isn’t it?

We visited one of our favorite places, the north public beach on Siesta Key.  There were no warnings about it, but I guess red tide is a problem because there were a lot of dead fish washing up on the beach.  Still lovely at sunset though.

The Mazda CX-5 I rented was a nice car, but some of the controls are located in places where they’re hard to read and reach.  Also, the symbols on the remote key fob are too small to read without glasses. 

After the Braves clinched the NL Eastern Division title, the Mets were ahead of the Nats 8-0, the game had lasted long enough to be official, it was pouring, and the outcome of game meant nothing except maybe to a player’s personal stats. Why didn’t they call it? Todays Mets-Nationals game also meaningless, the weather forecast doesn’t look favorable to complete a game until 8 or 9 o’clock. Why is it in rain delay? They should have call this one off too.  Instead, they started a 4:10 PM game around 6:00.

Gotta say thank you to Delta Airlines. Saint Karen and I bought tickets for a Florida vacation starting the day after Ian made landfall in Florida. As you might have expected, our flight was canceled. The tickets were eligible for changes, but not for a cash refund. However, since the flight was cancelled because of Hurricane Ian, Delta offered us the option of a full refund. We accepted. Good job, Delta!

We’re probably going to Florida in November now, but we may drive there.  Because of all the flooding, a lot of autos were ruined, including a lot of rental cars.  To rent a car at the airport in Tampa now costs a lot more than it did before Ian arrived.

Also because of all the flooding, I would be very careful in buying a new or used car with a Florida title for a while.

According to a photo caption in an article recently on the NY Post website recently, a former high school football player and his girlfriend were “fatally killed” in a traffic accident about a week ago. Condolences to both families, of course, but “fatally killed?” Is there another kind? Editors used to exist for reasons, and that’s one of them Bring back editing!

I bought a new paper shredder last February.  It has a one-year warranty.  It broke recently.  Warranty information is hard to find, but apparently, the company wants to send you parts and have you repair it yourself.  Boooo!  I liked the company before this.  My last shredder broke too, but after more than 11 years.  I told my wife it looks a lot easier to just buy a new shredder. She said, “Not from them.”  Smart lady.

Both cataract surgeries were successful.  I don’t need glasses to drive, but I do need them to use the computer, so I took the last two months off.

I saw Steven A Smith and Christopher Russo on ESPN this morning.  Assuming they hired the same person to buy each of them a different pink sports coat, neither coat works, IMHO.  I’d either pick out my own clothes or hire someone other than the person who selected those two coats.

Had fun at the Mets Old Timers Day game back on the 27^th, but I wish they opened the gates earlier.  Standing outside in the sun and the heat until 3:30 wasn’t enjoyable at all.  But I did see Joe Torre arrive in his big Mercedes.

Driveway is finished, so I can now use my garage.  But the new driveway is thicker than the old one, so now I have to rebuild the driveway gates.  Back yard gets repaired next week.

Our son and daughter-in-law visited from Florida a couple of weeks ago.  We’re going to visit them in Florida in two or three weeks.

Attention reddit posters:  When you ask someone to “bare with” you, you are requesting that they join you in getting naked.  I think you meant to say “bear with” you, but on Reddit, it seems to me the error is much more common than the correctly spelled statement. 

Bought a new cell phone.  It replaced one about six-years old, and the battery held a charge for a few hours at best.  Got an iPhone 13.  Never had an iPhone before, so I have to Google how to do almost anything with it.  This iPhone connects via Bluetooth to my hearing aids, without an adaptor.  So, if I’m wearing my hearing aids and can’t hear you, I’m probably listening to something else. I keep hearing people who should know better pronounce the word accessory as “assessory.”  No dictionary I consulted lists that as an acceptable secondary pronunciation, but I think it will soon become accepted and I have no idea why.  By the way, I have never heard anyone pronounce accepted as “assepted,”  but I have heard “essentric” instead of eccentric.  If you have any idea what’s going on here, please clue me in.

I took June off, because I had a few other things to do. But I did jot down a few comments along the way.

Had cataract surgery in June.  Doing the other eye this month.  Well, I’m not doing it, the surgeon is.  Except for the endless supply of eye drops I’m enduring for months, recovery happened surprisingly quickly.  And I do see better.

The guy wandering around Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s neighborhood in June, with a gun and burglary tools, told cops he wanted to kill Kavanaugh.  This reminds me of something I already knew.  One of the consequences of the internet is that there’s very little privacy anymore.  This means it’s entirely too easy to find out where someone important lives in case you want to kill them.  After I read about the threat against Kavanaugh, I found out where he lives.  It took about a minute.

You don’t always need the internet to do it either.  I’m not sure it applies to the president, but in New York State where I live, everyone running for election to any office up to and including US Senate, has their name and address published in Newspaper legal ads a little while before election day.

I was once nosy for a living and I’m still pretty good at it.  When I’m bored, I sometimes look for people I used to know.  It’s harder to find women because they still usually change their name when they get married.  I’m pretty sure (about 99-percent) I know that the first girl I ever dated lives on a horse farm in Missouri.  Her name, address and phone number are on the internet.  I did it as an exercise.  I have no intention of contacting her.  But being a stalker or even an assassin is a lot easier than it used to be.

I ordered my new garage doors in white last fall, after it was too cold to paint them. I forget how much money I saved ordering them this way instead of getting them finished in dark green, to match what’s on the house. I’ve now started on the project, and since it’s clearly going to take at least three coats of paint to cover them, I’m beginning to regret whatever it is I saved.

Here’s another thing I used to know but had forgotten.  When you mask something and paint it, remove the masking tape while the paint is still wet.  Do that even if you’re going to have to mask it again to apply a second coat.  If I had remembered that I wouldn’t have to sand and repaint the bottom panel of one of those garage doors.

I said it on Friday, but never even 15-20 years ago.  I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctor’s office and decided I wanted to read the book I brought with me, but I couldn’t.  The book’s battery was dead.

My wife’s birthday was on Mother’s Day this year.  It happens once in a while, but I never noticed until the year after we had our first child.  But I knew what to do, because when I was 16, the girl I was dating celebrated her birthday one week before Christmas.  When two gift-giving occasions come close together, separate presents are what you need, not one combined gift.

I haven’t been paying close attention, but from what I have read and heard neither Johnny Depp nor Amber Heard have done much to improve their public image during the current trial.

There’s no need to experience Europe ever again.  On Sunday, I filled up my Nissan Frontier pickup.  It cost $75.31!  And gasoline has gone up again since then.

When I started out in the job market, gasoline cost about 25 cents a gallon. As a teenaged driver, I though gasoline was cheap. Over many decades, my income went up due to inflation and to me acquiring additional skills. So gasoline is 20 times more expensive than it was back then. Over that time, my income went up more than that. I certainly don’t think gas is cheap anymore, and I don’t know anyone else who thinks it’s cheap either.

Speaking of how upside down the economy is, last week we paid a dollar a pound less for sliced roast beef at the deli than for sliced turkey. Who doesn’t remember when turkey was an inexpensive choice?

I was able to fix the top rack on our dishwasher the other day, without any help. I was also able to get up off the kitchen floor without any help, but that took longer than fixing the dishwasher.

We just got a marketing mailer from an investment house. It congratulated me for being among the wealthiest Americans. Now, my wife thinks I’m holding out on her. Both wrong!  Fact is, I don’t have enough assets to qualify to invest with this particular company.  Sometimes, you just get on the wrong mailing list.

I’ve been to the Olympic training center in Lake Placid, NY, so I know that Olympic ski jumpers get the hang of it by going down a jump into a swimming pool in the summertime.  But watching the 2022 Winter Olympics makes me wonder how Olympic snow-board, half-pipe athletes manage to do that without every one of them killing themselves the first time they try.

Analysis of the Prince Andrew mess.  Hey, Andy, you got all of the bad publicity, you avoided admitting guilt, but you look guilty in public opinion.  It still cost you antihistamine money (nothing to sneeze at).  Conclusion, you settled way too late.

As I understand the situation in and around Ukraine, Russia has somewhere around 150,000 troops at and near its border with Ukraine.  In response, President Biden has threatened sanctions and ordered three-thousand US troops to Poland.  Those are long odds.  Yes, Russia is causing this incident, but the United States government should have learned at least as far back as Viet Nam that we have no business risking the lives of American soldiers in conflicts we have no intention of winning.

At one time, major-league baseball Spring training began with pitchers and catchers reporting on February 15^th.  In the last CBA, the reporting date was a little more flexible.  But the lockout continues.  We need baseball so badly they’re putting a lot of college baseball on TV this year.  Owners and players, get together and settle this now.

Brand new support socks are harder to get on or off than ones you’ve owned for a while.  So, today I learned, don’t wear your newest support socks to the podiatrist. 

Minnie Mouse is getting a blue pantsuit with black polka dots designed by Stella McCartney to replace her iconic red dress with white polka dots. It’s to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Disneyland in Paris France.  News reports say it’s the first time Minnie has been outfitted in pants.  Probably the majority of women, at least in the western world wear pants more often than dresses, so I guess it’s past time.  But maybe Disney should have given pants to Donald Duck first.

I can’t help doing math in my head.  I can’t do it as fast as I used to, but I’m still compelled to do it.  This is sometimes troubling, especially concerning advertising.  There’s a phone app that refunds users money, up to 25 cents per gallon, for each gallon of gas purchased.  Because the commercial says “up to” I imagine there are conditions.    

The ad says the user sometimes gets back $200 – $300 a month.  Here’s where my math head kicks in.  If he gets 25 cents per gallon, and the car gets 20 mpg, that means he has to buy 1,200 gallons of gas a month to earn $300.  Remember, the ad says, “up to 25 cents per gallon.”  If those numbers ring true to you, to hit the maximum means the driver has to drive 24,000 miles per month!  If the rebate is less than 25-cents for some of those gallons, the miles driven have to be higher.

Is that a lot?  Yes.  Last time I saw figures the average motorist drove 12-15 thousand miles a year.  That number is probably lower now because of the pandemic. To break it down farther, this hypothetical driver must average about 33 mph, all the time!  That’s seven-days a week, 24-hours a day!

I guess someone must have pointed this out to whoever wrote the ad copy.  The latest ad for the app features a different character, a woman, who claims to save $200-$300 A YEAR! Using the same parameters, that’s still about 28,000 miles a year.  If it works as now advertised, it sounds worthwhile to me.  It is much more doable, but still hard to accomplish.

About ten years ago, I noticed and remarked that MS Word’s spell-checker recognizes a lot of proper nouns, for example, Asimov, and Mandelbrot.  At that time, I was happy to report it didn’t recognize the word Kardashian.  It does now!  The decline of western civilization progresses.

Been missing for a while.  Devoted my time to managing construction of a new, over-sized, two-car garage.  It will wind up costing about half what I paid for my house and more than five times what my parents paid for theirs.

If you’re old enough, all prices are ridiculous!  I’m old enough.

Gil Hodges has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It’s not about time.  It’s way past time.  I’m glad his widow, Joan, who is 95-years old, lived to see this happen.  Hodges, for those who don’t know, was the best right-handed first baseman of his era.  When the gold glove award was created in 1957, Hodges won the first three given out at his position.  For the period from 1949 to 1959 he hit the second-most home runs and drove in the second-most RBI’s.  The game has changed, so 370 isn’t as impressive as it once was, but at the time he retired, Hodges was 12^th on the all-time home run list and 3^rd among right-handed hitters.  Way past time!

Buck O’Neill was also elected to the Hall of Fame.  He was a fine Negro League player.  Since there are other people in the hall for promoting the game, O’Neill should be there if he had never played, just for his role in the Ken Burns documentary series on baseball.

Potassium is an important element in human nutrition.  Too much or too little can be very bad for you.  So, I think the potassium content of the things you eat should be included on the nutrition label processed foods are required to display.  Some foods include it, but not all by any means.  Portion size is important too.  I read that tea contains about 88 mg per cup, and so is considered low in potassium.  Fine, except I’ve been drinking about half a gallon a day.  I have to knock that off.  In fact, I just did.

My daughter thinks some things should be obvious.  She’s been having trouble booking a vaccination through the website of one of the big pharmacy chains.  I suggested she try the other one.  Easy-peasy.  No problem at all.  She wondered why she didn’t think of that.

Proud moment:  our daughter-in-law was notified last month that she has passed the California bar exam.  She will soon be admitted to the bar.  Her husband, our son, has been a lawyer for 12 years now.  The two of them have decided to move from California to Florida, so they’ll have to study for another bar exam.

Little-known fact:  Having made the famous movie, the Grinch died less than a year later due to that enlarged heart.

You can listen to radio stations all over the world through certain internet services.  I tried radio.org the other day and found it a little odd.  I was listening to Newstalk ZB from Christchurch NZ.  What was odd is radio.org inserts its own commercials, so you’re going along listening to New Zealand broadcasters and then a commercial comes on and the announcer sounds very much American.

Check around folks.  I know ink-jet cartridges are crazy expensive, so the other night at the office supply store, I remarked that $52.13 was a lot.  But when I got home, it hit me, and I took to the internet.  I couldn’t find one that cost even half that much!  I found one on Amazon for $19.49.  Adding sales tax brought it to $21.17.  I decided I could wait two days to print what I needed to print and ordered the Amazon one.  Next morning, I took the $52.13 one back.  I had no trouble returning it for a refund and the guy at the counter told me they do price match.  Not his fault, but maybe if they checked other sources before pricing their merchandise, they wouldn’t charge almost two-and-a-half times as much for their product and wouldn’t have to make as many price matches or refunds.

My wife and I have done DNA tests through ancestry.com this year.  I’m about 1/8 Scottish and she’s about 2% Scottish.  Neither of us have a problem with that, but neither of us has any idea which of our ancestors contributed the Scottish part either.

One of my wife’s cousins also had a DNA test.  Then, he changed his surname.  Turns out his father wasn’t who his mother always said it was.  Genes don’t lie, but sometimes moms do.  Both his bio dad and the man who raised him have passed away.

In New York State, Secretary to the Governor isn’t a job for a secretary. It’s the highest-ranking appointed administrative position in state government. Gov. Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, resigned last night. The State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee meets today to discuss impeaching the governor. His resignation or impeachment seems very likely now to me. Today might be a good day for Cuomo to step down. It’s the 47th anniversary of the day President Nixon left the White House, having announced his resignation to avoid impeachment in a televised, nationwide address the night before.

The major-league baseball team in Cleveland recently announced that it is changing its name from Indians to Guardians.  Too bad the baseball team didn’t Google that name.  There is already a Cleveland Guardians Roller Derby team, and it owns the website Clevelandguardians.com.

The current stream of so-called information urging people not to get a COVID 19 vaccine and to not wear a mask is a liberal plot to kill off all the most extreme conservatives.  At least that’s my theory.

My house is almost 120 years old.  When it was built, attached garages were illegal, because cars caught fire way more often than they do today, and because horses stink. 

My detached garage is falling down.  That’s not surprising really, it looked like it would fall down decades ago when I bought the house.  It doesn’t meet the local building code and probably didn’t meet code when some previous owner put it up.  Of course, that is if there was a building code way back then.  I want to tear it down and build a new one that does meet code and does look like the house.  To do so, I had to hire an architect and a contractor, get building permits, and go before the municipal site review board.  Because of COVID, because I procrastinated, and maybe other reasons too, this process has taken about a year.  So far, I have about $4,000 invested in the process, but there is progress.  The site-review hearing was Tuesday night.  It took about five minutes.  The site review board said my plan was nice, and reserved decision.  No questions.  So, either my architect did a splendid job of preparing documentation, or the hearing was a complete waste of time for such a simple project.  Possibly both, but definitely the later.

One of my friends brought up the topic of alchemy recently.  So, I said it is theoretically possible to turn lead into gold.  However, to do so would cost a lot more than the current price of gold and said gold would be radioactive for a very long time.

My shoulders hurt, and I have to do something about it.  But I’m dragging my feet.  Why?  The orthopedist I go to only wants to deal with one joint at a time.  I have two shoulders.  Each has the same two problems:  they were reinjured after I had rotator cuff surgery to repair them (one at a time of course); and I have a compressed disc in my spine.  I believe the compressed disc contributes massively to the pain I’m feeling.  Maybe I’ll tell the doc that not only am I a pain in the neck, I have one too.

Amazon makes a big deal about its customer-directed charity contributions through Amazon Smiles.  Any amount is good, but each contribution is pretty small.  Since I signed up for Amazon Smiles, my donations are averaging about 22 cents per purchase.

I’m late with this, and I’m sorry.  If you’re old enough and lived either in Buffalo, NY or Richmond, VA, you probably grew up listening to Shane Gibson who can be described as a legendary rock DJ in both markets.  He usually didn’t use his last name on the air, instead calling himself “Shane Brother Shane,” or “the Cosmic Cowboy.”  It was my honor to work with Shane, briefly, near the beginning of my relatively brief radio career, at WLEE in Richmond.  Shane passed away last February at the age of 78.  In his later years, he was a golf instructor.  RIP Shane.  You were a heck of a talent, a real original, and I’m one of many who miss you.

In June, Dairy Queen advertised that the Blizzard of the Month was made with Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies.  I thought I had missed out, but I didn’t.  I was in my local DQ earlier this month, and apparently the Thin Mint Blizzard is available all summer.  So, I bought one.

I have a four-year-old computer printer.  It works fine, but for some reason, it decided to disconnect from the internet on Wednesday.  Connecting that printer to the internet is pretty damned complicated.  I hope they’ve improved the error messages and the way Brothers printers connect since I got the one I own.  That’s the only thing I really don’t like about mine.

Nobody consulted me on this. They probably shouldn’t have bothered anyway because I don’t patronize Arby’s all that often.  But Arby’s has eliminated potato cakes from the menu.  I liked those and I’m sorry they’re gone.

Bill Cosby’s conviction for sexual assault was overturned last Wednesday on a technicality.  That means he is now considered not guilty.  There’s a difference between not guilty and innocent.  He wasn’t declared innocent and he wasn’t vindicated either.

I don’t know if it’s Hate Dogs Day everywhere, but it certainly is tonight in my neighborhood.

Happy Independence Day.  Since “Independence Day” and “The Fourth of July” have the exact same number of syllables, if we could get everyone to call it Independence Day, we could have a three-day weekend on the first weekend in July every year.

This is a mistake that happens more often in radio and TV reporting than in newspapers, because newspapers are more likely to have reporters who actually go to the courthouse.  But indictments are handed up, not down.  I raise it because the NY Post made the mistake in reporting the apparent suicide of computer-security exec John McAfee.  In presenting an indictment, the foreman of a grand jury, accompanied by the DA, or an ADA, comes into a courtroom.  The judge is seated on the bench and the foreman hands the indictment up to the judge, not down.

Ruth Eckerd Hall doesn’t love me any more.  Ruth Eckerd Hall is a concert venue in Clearwater Florida, not a person.  I saw the Blue-Collar Comedy Tour there, probably in the year 2000.  Nice theater, good show.  The theater emailed me dozens of times over the ensuing years, telling me of other events I might like to see.  Okay, but according to Google Maps, that’s around 1,200 miles from where I live, so it’s not someplace I’m likely to pop into on a whim.  I don’t know when the emails stopped, but I noticed during the pandemic.  So, I looked to see if it went out of business.  It hasn’t.  From this I conclude that sending massive amounts of email is essentially free, but still, someone will probably cull the mailing list every twenty years or so.

 On several occasions recently, I’ve been prompted to sign into Reddit using Google.  I thought anonymity was the entire point of Reddit. 

I got a message from Google telling me to go to my account profile and enter my birthday.  The message said it was needed to avoid violating a law.  I didn’t go further, to find out what law.  However, I bet Google already knows my birthday.  Lots of other websites do.

A few months ago, I ordered some aluminum foil from Amazon.  I did that because stores in my neighborhood don’t carry the 18” variety.  I wanted to do it again, but now Amazon sells aluminum foil through Fresh. I kind of understand this because I usually buy aluminum foil at a grocery store.  But, this means instead of getting free delivery because I’m a Prime member, I’ll have to pay $4.99 to get it here.  And it costs just as much no matter what delivery option I select.  Understandably, I’m looking around for stores nearby that do sell the 18” foil.

While admitting he didn’t understand it, Prince Harry the other day called the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution “Bonkers.”  This prompted Sean Hannity to go on TV attacking the prince and defending the first amendment.  Hannity didn’t admit it, but based on what he reportedly said, he doesn’t seem to understand it either.

A letter came in the mail on Saturday, as letters sometimes do.  This one was from a local car dealer and promised me that it could put me in a new vehicle and at the same time reduce my monthly payment.  I do own a vehicle that dealer sells, but I bought it 11 years ago, and I paid cash.  I must confess this has me wondering just how much lower he can make my monthly payment.

Is anyone else here watching the Smithsonian Channel’s series about the Tower of London? It’s of particular interest to my wife and me because one of the people they feature on the show is Yeoman Warder Chris Skaife, who guided our tour of the Tower when we visited 7 years ago this month. He’s in charge of the Tower’s ravens. That’s important because according to legend, if there are no ravens at the tower, the monarchy will fall. His official title is Raven Master, but when we took our tour with him in 2014, he called himself the raven lunatic.

I hate when that happens. I called a doctor’s office during the scheduled office hours to make an appointment and got a recorded message asking me to call during normal business hours.

It’s just a guess on my part, but it seems likely to me that some or all of the unfavorable stories surfacing recently about Bill Gates may be coming from his wife’s divorce attorneys.

I got my ticket, so I’m all set to win $345 Million in Mega Millions tonight.  I’m also all set to not win anything, and that’s much more likely. My plans for winning have not changed. If I do win, I’ll squander it.

For the first time in my life, I nicked a finger while slicing a bagel this morning.  Ouch!

I just got back from the dermatologist.  Sunshine isn’t good for you folks.  When I was a child, it was common practice for parents to make the kids stay out of the house for most of the day when the weather was nice in the summer.  Sunshine was supposed to give you vitamin D.  Maybe it does, but it gave me sunburn as a youth, and as an older man, all those sunburns have given me several skin cancers, so I go to the skin doctor twice a year for checkups.  He always finds pre-cancerous growths, and he did today.  He has found skin cancer in the past, but not today.  If your kids want to come inside in the summer, let them.

In PR speak, deflecting is answering the question you want to answer, rather than the question you were asked.  My wife should have been the PR person in my family, because she’s much better at deflecting than I am.  But I was once a reporter, so I’m quite aware when she does it. 

I was reminded this week about another PR skill she possesses.  When I went into the Army, I wrote my then girlfriend (now and for many years my wife), giving her my address.  Days later, I wrote to my mother, with the same information.  Mom called my girlfriend to tell her my address.  Saint Karen, who must be a saint to put up with me, thanked my mom and said she could now mail the letters she had already written to me.  One of the many ways she has saved my life over the years—Saint Karen didn’t tell my mom she already had my address, but had forgotten to call my mom with the information.

I don’t write much by hand anymore, so it’s kind of difficult to do it.  Muscle memory must be fading.  Apparently, I don’t type enough either, because I’m making and correcting a lot of errors doing that today as well.

Congratulate us.  My wife and I are fully vaccinated.  Pfizer, thank you.  Our daughter gets her second shot of Moderna tomorrow morning.

Saint Karen and I have been talking about where we’d like to go once we feel safe traveling.  She hasn’t come up with any answers yet, but I’d like to go to Hawaii.  And I’d like to spend at least a month in Florida during baseball’s Spring training season.

Talk to your insurance broker once in a while.  Sure, they may try to sell you more insurance, but the last two times I talked to mine, one of the employees there saved me money.  Right now, I’m anticipating a discount because I pay my premiums in full when due and don’t stretch them out for months and months.

I was crazy about the girl I was dating when I was 16-years old.  Still, we did argue a lot, mostly about religion.  She didn’t convince me of anything, but I did convince her to find a different boyfriend, so I won!  Right?

What I learned from that is never to argue with anyone about any faith-based belief system.  Faith-based belief isn’t limited to religion:  it includes politics too.  I did manage to resist, but this week I was sorely tempted to argue with my friends who think attacking the US Capitol last Wednesday was either excusable, or right.

One of the worst things about politics in America (and it’s not recent at all) is that way too many people are willing to excuse behavior that is wrong when it’s done by people you agree with politically.  There are lots of things that are objectively just plain wrong, and breaking into the US Capitol to try and derail Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated duty is one of them.

Some (but not all) BLM demonstrators turned to rioting, arson and looting over the summer, and that doesn’t make it okay for some (but not all) pro-Trump supporters to storm the US Capitol.  If one group was treated more harshly than the other, it doesn’t mean both should be treated less harshly, it means both should be equally condemned and punished.  Three lefts make a right.  Two wrongs don’t.  And while rioting, arson and looting are incredibly wrong, rioting, arson, looting, and sedition are much worse.

Plus, I’m much less likely to attack you if you punch somebody else in the face than if you punch me in the face.  So, the people who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday ought to expect Congress to come down hard on them, because Congress can, and because it’s Congress they punched in the face.

To be clear, I lean more conservative than liberal, but I didn’t vote for President Trump either time he ran.  While I didn’t expect him to incite what happened last Wednesday. I did expect from Trump the kind of behavior he has exhibited throughout his Presidency and before.  In fact, in 2016, for the first time in my life, I didn’t vote for President at all.  On the other hand, efforts to remove Trump with fewer than two weeks left in his term of office serve only to express how angry Congress is at the President for inciting the attack on the Capitol.  The 25^th amendment isn’t going to be tested and while the House may be able to impeach him for a second time, Senate Democrats would need at least 17 Republicans to vote with them in order to remove him from office.  It’s debatable whether such a vote should succeed in the Senate, but I’m almost certain it won’t.  If they are not sure they can succeed, impeaching Trump again is far more political theater than anything else.

By the way, former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor John Bolton pointed out this week that the 25^th amendment won’t work on a President a lot of people think is mentally ill.  The way it’s supposed to work, the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet advises Congress that the President is unfit.  The President can then dispute that and if he (or eventually she) does dispute it, the matter goes to Congress which has three weeks to decide.  During those three weeks, you would have two people, the President and the Vice President, each claiming the right to exert executive power within the federal government.  If a President were in a coma, the 25^th amendment would probably work.  If the VP and Cabinet thought he was crazy and he disagreed, not so much.

Happy New Year.  And just to get the formalities out of the way, the Sisyphus Project is copyrighted 2021, just as it has been every year since it started in 2008.

I’m not an accountant, but I used to play one in real life.  I was reminded of my past life in accountancy because the first baby born in Suffolk County NY in 2021 was born at Stony Brook University Hospital, and the baby’s father is an accountant.  Of course, he and his wife are delighted with their new baby girl, but he did say he had hoped she would be born on New Year’s Eve, not right after midnight on New Year’s Day.  Why?  Because if she were born a couple of minutes earlier, she would have been an income tax deduction for 2020.

With 2021 less than two weeks away, I’m asking my friends not to speculate on what else could go wrong this year.  After all, 2020 already reminds me of a horror movie.  I’m thinking now of the kind where you say the name of the demon, and the demon shows up.  So, please, no speculation along those lines.  Somebody already told me to cheer up because things could be worse, and when I cheered up, things did get worse.

I’m generally fairly conservative, at least fiscally.  I mean I was a government finance officer for decades, so that’s kind of natural.  Still, when President Trump talks about using the armed forces to redo the 2020 Presidential election in certain states, that wouldn’t be martial law.  It would be a military coup.  Is anyone talking about section 4 of the 25^th Amendment yet?

Your sales pitch should at least be credible. I got a loyal customer offer from a car dealership I’ve never bought a car from. They want to buy 15 used vehicles. They want to give me up to 20 % above book value for my vehicle. It’s a truck, not a car, so I guess vehicle is okay. And, because I’m a loyal customer of their car store (nope), they’ll waive up to six payments on my current vehicle. Sweet! But it’s 13-years old, and I paid cash for it, so I sincerely doubt they really want to buy it even though I just put new tires on it. Plus, what good does skipping six payments do for me? I’ve already skipped all the payments.

I collect Christmas music.  I also like the Pentatonix Christmas CD’s.  I already owned one, and just picked up two more.  Without criticizing their musical performance, I would like to state for the record that “God Only Knows” isn’t a Christmas song, and neither is “When You Wish Upon a Star.”  I mean Pinocchio wasn’t a reindeer.

Sometimes Facebook’s algorithms concern me.  Today, the all-seeing computer suggested that I should be friends with a 16-year-old girl.  I’m sure she’s a wonderful person, still thanks, but no thanks.

A man named Joseph Epstein wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal where he said President-Elect Biden’s wife, Jill, should stop calling herself “Doctor” since she isn’t an MD.  I’d like to suggest that there are lots of more important things to worry about, and while Mr. Epstein is certainly free to express his opinion, it isn’t really any of his business.  Jill Biden has an earned EdD from the University of Delaware, not an MD.  While it isn’t common for people with academic doctorates to call themselves Doctor outside of academia, it isn’t unheard of either.  You can also call her first lady (beginning January 20, 2021) or professor if you like, but I think it’s absolutely fine for people to call themselves whatever they like.  I know several people who have changed their names over the years, and I do my best to get used to that as fast as possible and call them what they call themselves.

President Trump was quoted in the NY Post today as saying his fight to overturn November’s election results isn’t over.  I’m not a lawyer, or a judge, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be over tomorrow when the Electoral College meets and votes on who’s going to be President next month.

Maybe I should be flattered, but I’m not.  Almost every one of the limited images published in this blog are photos taken by me, the owner of the blog, and the photographer.  Not that it’s been a big problem, but the blog is copyrighted, and so are the pictures, individually.  Some wanker is offering them up on his or her website as free wallpaper for your computer or phone.  The pictures are credited to my website, but there are so many I can’t see how they can be classified as fair use.  Plus, nobody asked me, or paid me.  A DCMA notice asking that they be removed has been sent.

Details on product listings at Amazon.com are frustratingly incomplete.  I’m a luddite who still buys audio CD’s, but Amazon no longer feels it necessary to provide track listings.  Especially on compilation CD’s I won’t buy it if I can’t find a track listing.  My wife wants to buy Reynolds Wrap in the 18-inch width.  Every listing on Amazon for Reynolds Wrap includes the number of square feet in the package, which is important.  However, the width of the foil is important too, so let’s have it in the product description.

It’s possible I now have too much Christmas music.  I own 22 copies of “White Christmas,” 29 copies of “Silent Night” in English.   I probably have a few copies in German around here someplace too.  And, I have 33 copies of “The Christmas Song,” but I don’t own Mel Torme’s version, and he wrote it!  I just can’t buy Christmas music as fast as it’s being recorded.  In the first place, nobody needed to record “The Christmas Song,” after Nat King Cole did it.  “Silent Night” and “White Christmas” are fine songs (although “Holiday Inn” leaves a lot to be desired as a movie), but these three are among the many songs we really don’t need any additional versions of.

I haven’t gotten anything that looks like a real comment from a real person on this blog in more than four years.  That’s okay.  I haven’t done anything to promote the blog and I’m doing it for my own entertainment.  If you’re entertained too, that’s nice, but not essential.  I got quite a few generic compliments on my blog item from early November entitled “The Lieutenant.”  But they all came from one website and that website can’t be accessed by the general public.  So, I’m assuming those are from bots too, testing to see if I’ll put up any and all comments.  I won’t.  Comments on this blog are welcomed.  They are moderated too.  Decisions of the moderator (me) are not only final, they’re also random.

I mentioned it before the election, so I might as well mention the result:  Voters in Rhode Island did vote to drop “and Providence Plantations” from the official state name.  You can now just call it Rhode Island, especially since you already did that before the name was officially changed.

The website classmates.com was an interesting idea, but it became kind of obsolete due to My Space and later Facebook.  Still, I occasionally get a notice from classmates.com that someone has remembered me and described that memory.  Three people have done that in the past year.  I’m flattered that someone remembers me as attractive.  However, I apparently didn’t make much of an impression on my classmates because one remembered me as outdoorsy and another remembered me as soft-spoken.  I wonder who they’re confusing me with.

With President Trump now destined to leave the White House, whether he acknowledges it or not, here’s another way to make America great again:  get the people who make ice cream to go back to selling it in half-gallon containers.

If you haven’t already voted early, please vote on Tuesday.  It’s important.  We had early voting in New York for the first time this year.  Of course, lessons were learned.  I think for the next election, there will probably be more places to cast votes early and the hours for voting will be more consistent.

I don’t usually make any mention of my age here, but I must be fairly advanced in age.  My wife and I recently celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary.  To show you how wonderful she is, she bought me a $1,000 lens for my camera.  In case anyone cares, it was a 150-600 mm Sigma contemporary.  I wanted to take pictures of Saturday’s blue moon, but the moon was entirely hidden by clouds.  We usually take a trip to celebrate our anniversary, last year to New York’s Finger Lakes.  The year before to London.  We have it a lot better than many people during this pandemic because staying at home is the thing that affects me most.

Our son just moved out of our house.  He’s lived in California for 19 years.  He married there.  He and his wife own a house there.  But he just got all of his crap out of our attic!  Took him over a week to organize it and decide what to keep vs what to throw away, but he did it.  Our house is so much lighter now that I’m certain it will get much better gas mileage going forward.

In addition to taking his stuff to his house, I had a few things around here that were too heavy for me to move.  He helped me get them to the local dump here.

Actor Sean Connery has passed away at the age of 90.  RIP.  It looks like he wasn’t immortal after all.  There can be only one. 

The New York Post recently reported that Lady Gaga has reworn her meat dress while making a public service announcement about voting.  Oh, I hope not.  I hope she had a new one made.  The old one must be awfully ripe by now if it was preserved.

I was appalled that President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose the November election.  I was heartened that Senate leader Mitch McConnell in response said there absolutely would be a peaceful transition.  I hope Trump didn’t mean it and just said to stir things up.  He does that a lot.

Four-and-a-half years ago, (more than eight months before the election) what the Republican-controlled US Senate did to President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland was wrong.  If the Senate pushes through a Supreme-Court nomination from President Trump six weeks before the 2020 election, that will return to giving a sitting president the right to nominate Supreme Court Judges.  So, it’ll be the right thing to do.  Since they promised to apply the same standard to future nominations that they did to Judge Garland, It will also be the wrong thing to do and the height of hypocrisy.

Someone said on Twitter that Judge Garland must be spinning in his grave.  Uh, no.  Judge Garland is very much alive.

I read that a man died recently from eating too much licorice.  I didn’t know there was such a thing.  A compound in the licorice reduced the potassium in his blood so much that his heart stopped.  I have too much potassium in my blood.  So, if I don’t overdo it, I guess I could take black jellybeans instead of Lokelma.  Only trouble, I also have diabetes, so I guess the jellybeans are out.

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has decreed that trick or treaters will be allowed to go door to door next month during this pandemic.  They will, of course, be required to wear masks over their masks though

If you’re a radio geek, like I am, John Landecker, at the age of 73, is taking on a full-time slot as a talk-radio host on Chicago’s WGN, starting at the end of September.  Because of that, I looked up his Wikipedia page and was surprised to learn “Records” was his mother’s maiden name, which is why it really is his middle name.

I’m considering building a new garage at my house to replace the one that’s falling down.  If I do that, just that garage will cost four or five times as much as my parents paid for their house.

Now that we’re in the heart of the presidential campaign (yawn) I keep hearing once more that President Trump was the loser in the last election, but he was awarded the office anyway.  To be clear where I stand, I didn’t vote for the Democrat or the Republican in 2016.  I couldn’t hold my nose and vote for the least bad candidate because I considered them both equally repulsive.  Still, I hate it when people say the loser won the election.  It’s like saying the Washington Nationals won the Stanley Cup last year, but another team was awarded it.  The Nationals didn’t win the Stanley Cup because the Nationals play baseball.   Well, last year they did; this year that’s not so clear), The Stanley Cup, in case you don’t know, is awarded to the National Hockey League champion.

The winner won the presidential election in 2016 because popular vote wasn’t the game being played.  Hillary and her consultants knew what the game was.  They also knew it was possible to win the popular vote and lose the election.  It had happened before.  They blew it.   They should have concentrated more on swing states.

Should we do away with the electoral college?  Maybe.  The founding fathers had a reason for creating it though.  They wanted low-population, agricultural states to retain some influence and power within the federal government.  If we did eliminate it, there would be consequences.  And if one-person one-vote should be sacred, we should also do away with the senate (or apportion seats by population) and allow congressional districts to cross state lines.  When you divide the US population by 435, the number of members of the House of Representatives, three states, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming, don’t have enough population to justify one whole congressional district.  If we keep the Senate, but apportion it by population, thirty-two states don’t have enough population to justify one senator and four states deserve more than the two each state has now.  California should have six!  One-person-one-vote in the NY State Senate is why New York the city now controls all aspects of state government in New York the state.  The city has more than half of the state’s population. 

Can we do away with the electoral college?  No.  Reform is happening though.  Some states have abandoned a winner-take-all approach to awarding delegates to candidates. 

Why can’t we do away with the electoral college?  It would require a constitutional amendment.  Why won’t that happen?  Because 51% of the US population lives in nine states.  You probably know a constitutional amendment must be approved by 2/3 of the house and senate followed by ratification in 2/3 of the states, or by a constitutional convention called by 2/3 of the states.  A convention has never happened because sane people are legitimately afraid that such a convention would throw the baby out with the bath water.  The nine most populous states might vote to do away with the electoral college, but there is no way in hell 25 of the other 41 would go along with it.  Why would North or South Dakota want that? 

 I’m usually the wordsmith in this family, but my wife hit on a great expression the other day.  Our lawn has been taken over this year by crabgrass.  But my wife said it isn’t crabgrass, it’s king-crabgrass.

I had a wedding anniversary, but it isn’t also my wife’s anniversary.  How is that possible?  Recently, I was married to my wife for two-thirds of my life.  She’s younger than I am, so she was married to me for two-thirds of her life about three years ago.  Even though it was my anniversary, I bought her flowers, because I could not have done it without her.

With the quarantine, I’m guessing there’ll be lots of room for Elijah at most if not all Passover seders tonight.  Gut yontif to my friends and reader who celebrate.

Easter is this weekend, and if Pope Francis blesses the crowd at St. Peter’s Square, there won’t be one.

The Pope is 83.  He’s also non-traditional.  After all, he had midnignt mass on Christmas at 9:00 PM.  So if he gets up in the middle of the night to take a leak, will Easter sunrise services be held at 3:00 AM?

There are plenty of people who only go to church on Christmas and Easter.  The Catholic church and any Protestant denominations that use a collection plate, should start Go Fund Me pages so they will recoup at least some of the revenue they’ll be missing at the Easter collection.

I’m not trying to minimize COVID 19.  It’s awful and everyone in my household is in a vulnerable category.  But keep this in mind.  There aren’t a lot of tests out there, so there are a lot of people who have it or had it but survived and aren’t included in the statistics.  This means there are more people affected than being reported.  I thought this meant the death rate was lower than reported, but I have recently heard that deaths are being under-reported and mis-categorized as well.  So, who knows?

 You may have noticed that “coronavirus” is one word.  I tried googling why, but even the all-knowing Google didn’t have an answer.

Solved my problem about the lawn-mower gas cap.  I found the original.  When it fell off the mower, it fell under the engine on the deck that houses the blade.  If you’re wondering why I didn’t find it sooner, I got down on the ground to try to find a model number and serial number for the engine and the cap was hidden there.  I didn’t do that earlier, because my knees make getting back up problematic.

My daughter has managed to arrange grocery deliveries from Amazon Fresh and from Shipt.com.  Over and above the delivery charge, I think it’s going to cost you more than shopping multiple grocery stores from their circulars, but in this time of COVID 19, having these services does cut your exposure.  Well worth it, I think.  Amazon is better at being on time than Shipt is where I live, but both are very helpful.  I also tried Peapod.  It might be different elsewhere, but here, I can’t get a spot, even if I log on just as they add another day which is two weeks out.  As it comes online, all the spots two weeks away are listed as sold out.  One good thing about Peapod is you find a delivery slot first, so you don’t waste time ordering only to find you can’t get the stuff to your house.

Getting a flu shot is a good idea, and it’s not too late.  I did it.  Bumping into a wall or door frame soon after you’ve gotten a flu shot is not a good idea.  I did that the morning after I got my flu shot, and thought I’d warn you.

On the tourism front, I’m in Florida to take in the Mecum auto auction in Kissimmee.  It’s the biggest one I know of, and since I like to photograph old cars, it seems logical that I’d be here eventually.  Saint Karen isn’t interested, but she said it was fine for me to come here, so I did.  Just one more example of why I say she must be a saint to put up with me.

Spoiler alert:  The Mustang driven by Steve McQueen in the movie “Bullitt” sold for $3.4 million.  The title Plymouth from the movie “Christine” garnered a high bid of $275 thousand, and the owner didn’t sell it at that price.

As for the travel, there’s a Snapple vending machine in Islip MacArthur Airport that is full of drinks, but no Snapple.  A disappointment.  The worst bagel I’ve ever had I got at Islip too.  It was edible, but truly a roll with a hole.  None of the chewy texture bagels are famous for.

First flight on Frontier Airlines.  As soon as I sat down, I pulled their app up on my phone and booked a premium flight for the return trip.  Premium seats have a little more legroom.  At least the ones that are really jammed together don’t recline.  BTW, I found their customer support via their Facebook page to be excellent. 

I rented a car from Alamo.  I reserved a Mustang convertible, and they gave me a Mustang convertible, instead of an “or similar.”  I think it was the first time in my life I got the car I asked for from a rental agency.

Note to Ford and Android Car Play app.  It’s a rental car. I want it to play music from my phone.  I don’t want my phone to tell the car all my deepest secrets and the name and contact information of everyone I have ever known.   If you want to spill your guts to Ford and Google, fine, but since a lot of people use their phones in rental cars, if I tell the car and the app to stop trying to sync, they ought to take my word for it and knock it off.

Have you ever wondered why the three-letter code for Orlando’s airport is MCO?  It’s because before it was a commercial airport, it was an Air Force base—McCoy Air Force Base.

Saint Karen and I celebrated our wedding anniversary with a little trip to New York’s Finger Lakes region.  In case you’ve never been, the lakes are fed by streams that have, over thousands of years, created beautiful gorges and lots of waterfalls.  How scenic is it?  Taughannock Falls is on the scenic calendar my auto mechanic gives out to customers.  Taughannock Falls State Park and Watkins Glen State Park are two of the area’s prime beauties.  The Taughannock waterfall doesn’t spill the same volume of water, but it is thirty or forty feet taller than Niagara. 

Watkins Glen has more waterfalls, but it’s also more strenuous.  We made the mistake of starting at the visitors’ center.  I say mistake because from there the hike is all uphill.  The smarter thing to do is start at the other end and walk downhill.  In the summer, there’s a shuttle between the two parking lots, but there isn’t one the rest of the year.  I suppose you could call a taxi.

If you’re a photographer, set up your gear before you head out.  My photo backpack weighs 25 pounds and there aren’t a lot of dry places to put something like that down so you can select lenses and set up your tripod.

Did you miss me?  I’ve been busy with a few other things.  My wife and I have each had some minor health problems.  Plus, I’ve been consumed by reddit.  People who have problems encounter advice from the most passive-aggressive people on earth there.  I admire that.

With respect to health problems, I had to have an MRI.  They’re uncomfortable, but it beats slicing me open to see what’s in there.  If you’ve had one, you know they’re noisy and a lot of places that administer them will play music for you and let you select what kind.  The tech asked me, and I said for all that commotion, I like the most relaxing music I can think of:  Gregorian Chant.  He asked me if that was the name of a band.

Isn’t there another debate tonight for Democratic presidential candidates?  I’m sorry, but I just can’t.  Maybe when they weed it down to two or three I’ll pay attention, but not now.

I’ve been running into a lot of people recently with whom I share idiosyncrasies.  I told you about the Buick-taillight guy.  Since then, I found out my eye doctor likes awful puns too.  Aren’t the very best puns really bad?  And I’m not the only person who uses spreadsheets to come up with odd anniversaries.  You can add and subtract numbers and dates in an Excel spreadsheet.  I told my buddy Steve about that last week, and he knew without thinking about it that 10,000 days is between 27 and 27.5 years.  It’s a good thing I’m the only person I know who has all my idiosyncrasies.  Frankly, I don’t think I could stand anyone else who did.

My wife, Saint Karen (who must be a saint to put up with me) had cataract surgery.  She’s said it was relatively easy and she’s recovering remarkably well.  The biggest problem she’s having is forcing herself to sleep on her back.  I told her that if it were me, I’d milk it for a lot more sympathy than she has.

Sirius XM satellite radio recently changed a policy.  Now, if you subscribe in your car, you can also listen on your phone or on your computer without paying an additional fee.  I like the service.  I’ve had it in a couple of rental cars and a free trial came with one of my cars.  I just don’t spend enough time in the car to pay full price for it.  I signed up at a reduced rate for a year, and with the additional access points, it’s more valuable to me than it was before.  I may even renew when the reduced rate is up.  And, yes, I do know you can get them to cut the price again when you go to renew.

The Press Club of Long Island, the Freeport Historical Society, and the village administration will teamed up this summer to dedicate an historical marker at the site of radio station WGBB’s transmitter.  The Press Club is involved because GBB was the first station on Long Island to broadcast news.  I didn’t know that, and I used to work there.  Stands to reason.  After all, when WGBB went on the air in 1924, it was the only commercial station on Long Island.

I think Thule AFB is enough of Greenland.  We don’t really need to buy the rest.  Plus, I understand it isn’t for sale.  Plus, I don’t think the people who live there now would be happy to go without some of the socialistic benefits they enjoy now for being a part of Denmark, including free health care.

I was at a car show on Long Island, Sunday, where I met a guy who owns a 1969 Hurst Rambler drag car.  American Motors officially designated the model as a Scrambler. I told him that I saw a custom Pontiac at Barrett-Jackson in Connecticut last Wednesday.  The Pontiac had Buick taillights, and it disturbed me that I knew the difference instantly, instead of knowing something that would make me a lot of money.  He started correctly describing the difference between the taillights on a 61 Pontiac and a 61 Buick.  I couldn’t help thinking, “A kindred spirit!”  I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that I’m not the only one.

My back has been biting me recently.  As a result, I’ve let yard maintenance slide and I had a lot more weeding to do than my back was willing to allow.  So, I hired the lawn-care company my neighbor uses to do it for me on a one-time basis.  It cost a bit, but it was like magic.  Four people who are used to this kind of work, know what they are doing and have proper tools took care of everything in about two hours.  I’m not going to give up doing normal yard care myself yet, but that idea is sure tempting. 

One thing did occur to me, lawn-care companies and house-cleaning companies ought to exchange sales-contact lists.  In my home, while my wife and I share both inside and outside work, she does more of the inside and I more of the outside.  If I were to hire a company to mow the lawn and do yard cleanup, I’d be benefitting myself more than my wife, so it would only be natural for me to want to do something nice for her as well, if that should happen.

If you ever wonder if you’re still young at heart, here’s a sure-fire way to find out.  When is the last time you deliberately made yourself dizzy?

On Facebook the other day, one of my friends wished another, “Mazel tov.”  Oddly, at least to me, Facebook offered to translate the phrase to English.  Where I grew up, mazel tov is English.

I like the recent addition to Facebook that allows me to choose to see all comments, most relevant, or most recent.  I’d like it better if it allowed me to set a default value for that.  I’d like it much better, if when I choose “all comments,” it shows me all the comments, instead of showing maybe two or three and then making me click to see more.

I don’t object that the special deal Sirius XM satellite radio offered me costs me $6.06 a month.  I object that they said it cost $4.99.  The extra charge, revealed in the process of signing up, is to cover music royalties.  But music royalties are part of their business overhead.  I suppose next they’ll assess me a separate fee to cover the cost of the electricity they use to stay on the air.

I like hotels in the Hilton chain.  I especially like Homewood Suites because a genuine suite (the kind with a door between the sleeping and living areas) doesn’t cost a lot more than a room at some other chains.  We stayed at the Boston/Peabody Homewood Suites for a couple of days last month and were entirely satisfied.  You knew there was a however, didn’t you?  However, today I got an unwanted sales call from Hilton Grand Vacations time shares.  I called Hilton Honors and told them that if I continue to get unwanted calls from their time-share subsidiary after staying in their hotels, I’ll stop staying in their hotels, even though I do like them.  Maybe it’s a coincidence, but if so, it’s not the first coincidence, or the first time I’ve complained about it.

The spell checker built into Facebook thinks Zuckerberg, spelled correctly, isn’t spelled correctly.  On the other hand, the spell checker built into MS Word is familiar with the term.  Go ahead, try it.  Unless they scan the internet for every mention of Facebook, it will still be true by the time you get around to checking it.

You don’t have to be as wealthy as Donald Trump says he is in order to wear clothes that fit properly.  On the other hand (and this may be less obvious) being as wealthy as Donald Trump says he is doesn’t preclude you from wearing clothes that fit either.

Don’t know if he’s in the right place, but Doctor John the Grammy-winning New Orleans musician, passed away earlier this week.  RIP Doctor, Doctor John.  Two doctors because he called himself doctor and Tulane University awarded him an honorary doctorate a while back, I think in 2012.

A few days ago, in a supermarket I patronize, there were packages in the refrigerator case labeled, “5 Cheese Ravioli.”  Except, there were six in each package.  So, I’m assuming for the sake of clarity they meant “5-Cheese Ravioli.”

Somebody won the big Powerball lottery on a ticket sold in North Carolina.  According to CNN, “A stack of $100 bills totaling $344.6 million would be taller than the 1,063-foot Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Powerball website says.”  Ridiculous, I say.  A stack of $100 bills totaling $344.6 Million would fall over long before it got that high. In case you won, and are wondering, taking that prize in $100 bills, before taxes would also weigh around 7,600 pounds, depending on how dirty the bills were.

President Trump says he’s going to impose tariffs on goods coming from Mexico if that country’s government doesn’t stop the illegal immigrants coming from Mexico to the US.  As far as I know, right now the only country that spends a lot of effort and money trying to keep people from leaving is North Korea.  Maybe China spends some effort to stem outflow too, but not nearly as much as North Korea.  The last country to make a big deal of it was East Germany.

President Trump seems to think that tariffs imposed on Mexico and China are paid by those countries.  No, they’re not.  Maybe if we raise tariffs it costs some exporters in those countries some of their business, but companies that import their goods to the USA are the ones that pay the tariffs.  Then, they pass the increased cost on to we the consumers.  So, we’re the ones who pay.

Plus, tariffs are generally reciprocal.  If you raise tariffs on my country, my country is very likely to raise tariffs on yours.  That explains why China has raised tariffs on soybeans to the extent that Chinese importers have stopped buying soybeans from US farmers.

The first Democratic presidential debates of the 2020 campaign will be held toward the end of this month in Miami.  How many candidates are there now?  23, I think.  I’m not exactly sure a debate among 23 candidates (or whoever many of them wind up qualifying to take part), taking two days, will be scintillating.

In Great Britain, the contest for the next prime minister is on too, but will finish up a lot sooner.  Unless I’ve lost count, there are only 11 candidates for that job.  But Britain has about 20 percent of the US population, so that’s proportionally much worse.  LBC, a British talk radio station, has a brilliant programming idea.  One day each week, their afternoon-drive host is taking calls about the race.  But he’s not asking callers who they support.  He wants to know what they would do if they were prime minister. 

ETA:  I stand corrected.  At last count there are 13 candidates for British prime minister.

So, what would you do if you were President?

I’m a bit behind, so I just watched the 4/28 episode of “Game of Thrones.”  Too bad I couldn’t see it too.  I read that it was too dark, so I watched it in a room with all the lights off.  Still too dark.

Joe Biden recently declared himself a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.  He was immediately declared the front runner.  I think Biden will have a tough time in primaries because primary voters tend to be more radical than people who vote in general elections.  Maybe I’ll become interested in the presidential election in October, next year.

I’ve recently made two observations about toddlers that don’t make any sense to me.  If you’re two-and-a-half feet tall, you apparently think the safest place to hide is behind mommy’s leg.  Similarly, people two-and-a-half feet tall never worry about being trampled.  Neither of these seems like a good survival strategy to me, but both appear to work pretty well.

I’ve just been informed that our son and daughter-in-law will be visiting in early December.  We’ll be happy to see them.  Do you think that this time we can finally get our son to ship all the stuff he has stored in our house to his house?

For a long time, I’ve dabbled in property tax assessment in a small municipality.  The job is very part-time, and I stepped down last month.  With all the jobs I’ve held and left, you’d think I would have at least one gold watch by now, but I don’t.  I wish I had been a famous network TV host.  Leaving those jobs seems to pay exceptionally well.

I’ve been doing physical therapy for my hips and lower back recently.  It has helped my hips greatly.  I wonder if my back is worse now, or if it just seems worse because the hips are so much better.

I went to the New York International Auto Show around Easter.  I usually do that.  I’ve been going since I was 12 and while I have missed some, there are people there who should know me by now.

I tried a Fiat 124 Spyder on for size.  I might be able to get into one, but I’d definitely need help (maybe even a hydraulic hoist) to get out of it.  I’m guessing that the Fiat Spyder is a medium, while I clearly need an extra large.

I still want to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to photograph weeping cherry trees.  They bloom a little earlier than the rest of the cherry blossoms.  But it’s been a pretty nasty April around here, weather wise, so this year, I didn’t go at all.

When I was in college, I pursued an interest and pursued lower grades too, by being a disc jockey.  As the current Mega Millions jackpot nears $300,000,000, I’ve just come up with another silly thing to spend the money on in the very unlikely chance I win.  The trouble is that while it is silly, it isn’t terribly extravagant.  I’ll still jump on the bed if I win, but I’ll also get myself a personalized dj jingle.  Author Steven King bought a radio station near where he lives and had it play music he likes.  Maybe I’ll do that too.  Radio stations aren’t as expensive as they used to be.

Published reports estimate that New York City’s upcoming congestion pricing will save about $50 million in carbon-related costs while raising $1 billion in revenue.  The period of time in which this will take place wasn’t specified.  Still, at that ratio, it’s pretty clear that congestion pricing in New York City is one of the biggest, if not the biggest tax increases in the history of New York State.

Some TV commercials for insurance are good and some are tolerable.  I like the long-running Geico gecko.  Farmers’ “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two,” is good as well.  I think Flo from Progressive is okay, but don’t understand why she and Jamie are dressed as bakers.  I always enjoyed Marshall Efron on Public TV years ago, and believe he is the voice of the animated general in General Insurance spots.  But, I cringe every time the Liberty Mutual emu comes on screen and usually change the channel too.

I have this diet thing nailed.  I stopped eating between meals about two weeks ago.  So far, I’ve gained seven pounds.

Our commonly-misused word department hears from descendants.  Your ancestors aren’t your descendants:  you are theirs.

As I write this, the NY Mets have started their season 3-1.  If it gets to 11-1, I will be concerned.

Given the current health of the Yankees roster, if George were still alive, there wouldn’t be any more unsigned free agents.

There aren’t a lot of British shows on BBC America these days.

April Fool’s day always reminds me of my uncle.  He was a school-bus driver when I was in elementary school.  He always told the kids on the bus that if we were all good, he’d take us to the circus for his birthday.  We were good, but we never did get that free trip to the circus, because his birthday was April Fool’s Day.

Headline today on the NY Post’s website: “Man shot in broad daylight on Queens Subway.”  Uh. . . .  The subway is underground.  So it can’t be in daylight, broad or narrow.

Pi day 3-14, is an inconsequential day someone came up with to make people think about math. In observance of Pi day, 3-14, Someone who works for Google has set a new world record. My mind does work in mathematical ways. I have a terrible memory for names and for the sequence in which some things happened, but for some strange reason, even though I haven’t taken geometry since ninth grade, I still remember the value of Pi to five decimal places. What I had for breakfast this morning, not so much.

A man who announces he’s running for the Democratic nomination for President on a Wednesday in El Paso, TX, should probably consider getting a better PR consultant.

Actor Jussie Smollett, of the TV show “Empire” was indicted on 16 felony counts a while back for allegedly staging the widely reported racist, homophobic attack he claimed to have suffered in January, and then lying about it to police.  Some reports claim he staged the attack to stop from being written off his tv series.  Others say he was unhappy with his salary.  Defending himself against a 16-count felony indictment is expensive, even if he is acquitted.  This is why you should hire a PR professional, instead of drumming up press coverage yourself.

TV news people should stop saying we have an extra hour of daylight. We don’t. We’re just getting up before dawn now, so in the evening, it seems like the sun shines longer. In England, they don’t set the clocks ahead until the end of the month. At least by then I won’t be waking up before dawn anymore. Maybe we should go back to starting daylight saving time a little later in the year, the way we used to.

I’d like to move to Florida.  My wife wouldn’t.  She’s correct that I won’t move without her, so if we’re going to stay here, I should investigate replacing my tumble-down, 80-or-90-year-old garage.

Alex Trebek, Jeopardy Host and TV spokesman for life insurance has announced he has Stage 4 Pancreatic cancer.  Trebek is one of those people who’ve been on TV for so long it seems like everyone knows him.  He insists he’s battling it and plans to keep working.  Still, the prognosis for anyone with Pancreatic Cancer isn’t good.  I hope he makes it.

The laces on my hiking boots broke, so I bought new ones.  Laces for hiking boots are pretty expensive, aren’t they?  I didn’t know what length I needed, so I bought the kind that you can cut to length and then use heat-shrink tubing for aglets.  After it’s been shrunk, the aglets made this way aren’t hard enough, so I can’t recommend that solution.  Fortunately, I don’t remove the laces very often.  Also fortunately, I now know what size lace I need (54”).  I always say the older you get the more ridiculous prices become.  That certainly applies to laces for hiking boots.

As I write this, it’s 17 degrees in Punxsutawney, PA.  It’s also more than a month after Groundhog Day and this year the groundhog didn’t see its shadow.  Supposedly that means an early Spring.  Not so much.

If you’re a senior citizen and your doctor tells you that you can’t shovel snow because of your health, Medicare ought to cover 80% of the cost of hiring someone to do it for you.

Attention direct mail marketers.  If you make your mailings too thick to go through my shredder, I can open them, and then shred them without reading them.  It’ll only annoy me a little more.  Stop it and save yourself some postage.

Even in winter on Long Island, it occasionally gets above 50 degrees during the day, but not today of course.  The problem is that most days it gets that warm, it also rains a lot.

I’m a big guy and while I’m getting older, I still walk about 50% faster than most people.  My knees and feet won’t let me stop as fast as I once could though.  So, if I’m at the mall, and you’re at the mall too, please don’t stop short in front of me.  Based on the average size of human beings (which I exceed substantially), if I plow into you, chances are it’ll hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.

Twenty-one-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Fields drove into a crowd, injuring 35 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville VA last August has been sentenced to life plus 419 years in prison.  It was a heinous crime, and I’m okay with burying him at the prison to ensure he serves that part of the sentence that takes effect after he dies.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a young radical, elected to Congress in November, replacing a long-time incumbent.  She worked very hard to get there, and probably benefitted from circumstances such as changing demographics and her predecessor, Rep. Joe Crowley, not taking the primary challenge seriously.   Still, she is a freshman member of Congress, so I’m surprised at all the news coverage she is getting.

My wife won’t give me any hints as to what to give her for Christmas.  I’ve already taken her on two expensive trips this year (to California and to London) in lieu of presents.  I’d like to take her to Hawaii for Christmas, but I can’t afford that.  I’ve always been taken by the lyrics to the Beach Boys Christmas song.  You know, “I want to spend Christmas on the Kona coast of Hawaii.”

When I was a sophomore in college, I was a dj on my college radio station, I read my letter to Santa to my listeners.  I said, “Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is a doll.  Her name is Karen and she’s 18 years old.”  Santa must have been listening, and I must have been very good.  I got everything on my list!  She was already my girlfriend for about a year.  Not right away, but eventually we married.  If I wake up on Christmas morning, she’s still here, and still the love of my life, I’ll be completely satisfied.

I’m pleased that I managed to find the last day on which it was over 50 degrees in weeks to put up my Christmas lights.

Did you watch Aretha Franklin’s funeral on TV?  Emotional, wasn’t it?  She was a world-renowned musician.  Many of the people on the dais were too.  So, what struck me about the event was how bad the sound was.  It cut out often.  There was a 60-cycle hum throughout.  That means the sound equipment wasn’t properly grounded.  Whoever operated the sound board didn’t always shut off mics that weren’t in use, so extraneous noise was included in the audio feed.  And, worst of all, the main mic on the podium made noise when anyone touched it.

It’s been possible for decades to make a mic that doesn’t do that.  Just look at an EV 635A.  I used one of those almost 50 years ago, and Electro-voice still makes them.  It’s designed for speech, not singing, so I don’t suggest they should have used one, but there must be a better mic for the purpose than whatever it was they did use.

As for the content of the program, I think it could have used fewer speeches and more Shirley Ceasar.

As an Optimum cable subscriber, I’m a week away from losing my access to Newsday.com, the website of Long Island’s major newspaper.  So, I checked into what’s necessary to get free access until the end of the year. I may do it, but I’m not happy about it. First, I must give them my credit card info to get it for free. I’m sure that’s so if I forget to cancel by New Year’s Eve, they’ll charge me rather than turning it off. Second, and I’m going to call Newsday about this, it looks as if after the free trial, my wife and I will have to pay separately for access to the website. Either that, or both of us share the one sign in. If we do the second, can we view it on two devices at the same time? And third, just for web access, it costs more than the NY Times! I don’t know if it’s going to go over like a lead balloon, but it doesn’t look to me as if it’ll take off like a helium-filled balloon either.

Speaking of the NY Times, the anonymous op-ed piece about resistance to the President inside his administration astounded me.  I think it’s extremely likely that the identity of whoever wrote it will be found by the FBI, the NSA, the Secret Service, or some federal agency in short order. 

I don’t think it’s possible (and it would certainly undermine democracy) to remove President Trump from office under the 25^th Amendment.  If the Vice President and the Cabinet, or the Vice President and Congress tried to remove him that way, he could assert that he is fit to continue.  If anyone attacks Donald Trump, he does fight back.  That we know.  So, he would claim he is able to continue.  Then, it would take a two-thirds vote of both houses to remove him.  I don’t see that happening.

President Trump said on Twitter a few weeks ago that making basketball star LeBron James look smart isn’t easy.  I disagree.  If I had the choice of spending four years in college or beginning immediately to amass what is now a nine-figure fortune, I’d probably do exactly what Mr. James did.  It sounds like a smart decision to me.  Plus, whenever I’ve heard him on TV he sounded intelligent.  Moreover, he certainly deserves credit for all the charitable work he’s done, including starting a new school in his hometown of Akron Ohio this year.

Yosemite Valley has been evacuated due to smoke from wild fires surrounding the park, and to allow the valley to be used to stage fire-fighting efforts.  It’s sad.  Yosemite is among the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I was lucky enough to go back last May.  I know fires are a natural part of the ecosystem in that area.  Still, I hope the park isn’t badly damaged and that nobody is hurt or killed fighting the blazes.

Professional writers who ply their trade in the English language really need to learn to write.  From today’s article about Serena Williams on the NY Post’s website: “Williams returned to competition this season after missing more than a year while pregnant.”  I was going to say, “Poor girl,” but she’s 36, so poor woman.  No human being is pregnant for more than a year.

The NY Daily News’ parent company, Tronc, announced it is laying off half its editorial staff including cutting the sports department by more than 70 percent.  I don’t have access to reader surveys, but I’m guessing that before this week, more people read the Daily News for its sports section and comics than for its news coverage and editorials.  Unfortunately, I don’t think the Daily News is long for this world.

The NY Mets announced that left fielder Yoenes Cespedes needs surgery on both heels and recovery will take at least 8-10 months.  This issue developed after Cespedes returned for one game after two months on the disabled list.  Having established a new category of MLB roster, the one-day abled list, one wonders why Cespedes and the Mets haven’t taken care of this mess much earlier.  Apparently, he’s had heel problems since before the Mets acquired him years ago.

If you are a man who wears suits, when someone takes your picture, you should button the suit jacket.  Leaving it unbuttoned will make you look heavier than you are.  If nobody has, someone ought to tell President Trump that.  If someone has told him that, it wouldn’t be the only advice he’s received and subsequently ignored that it would be good for him to pay attention to.

It strikes me as somewhat ironic that the Food Network’s show “Good Eats” runs occasional commercials within the show for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

July 11^th, was the anniversary of my discharge from the US Army.  That day was for a little over five months, the happiest day of my life.  It was superseded by Christmas Eve that same year, when Saint Karen (who must be a saint to put up with me) agreed to marry me.

Obviously if the 11^th was the anniversary of my Army discharge, the 12^th was the anniversary of the day I went into the Army.  When I got home from basic training, my girlfriend (later to be canonized) walked right past me on the railroad station platform.  She didn’t recognize me because I had lost 42 pounds in the two months I was away.  I’m sure she’ll recognize me this September, because there’s no way I’m going to lose 42 pounds this year.

I spent a lot of second full weeks in July in Boy Scout camp.  I don’t do that anymore, but I occasionally miss it.  I don’t miss the food.  Nobody goes to Boy Scout camp for the cuisine.  I do miss the kids, the activities and the other adults though.  If I miss it, why did I stop going?  I really can’t sleep on those cots or on the ground anymore.

Thursday, another maniac shot his way into a place, this time a newsroom in Maryland, killing five people.  Clearly one thing that would help the rash of these shootings is bullet-proof thoughts and prayers.

Dan Ingram died this month, at 83, of side effects from Parkinson’s Disease.  He retired from radio about 15 years ago.  In his time, he was the best top 40 DJ I ever heard.  He was great at adlibbing.  It was Dan who dubbed the lower level of the George Washington Bridge the Martha Washington Bridge.  Think about it.

He was also in demand as a voiceover artist.  Even if you don’t live in New York, where he made his mark in radio on WABC and WCBS FM, you’ve heard him on commercials.  If you grew up in New York from the 60’s to the early 2000’s, and you make it to the beach this summer, “Roll your bod,” in Big Dan’s honor.  RIP Kemosabe.

We went to California in May, so I was looking at hotels around the airport in San Francisco to stay at the night before we came back.  Last time we went, I waited too long to do that.  Even if your bio clock is on east-coast time, getting up at 3:30 AM in Sacramento to get to SFO in time for a 7:30 AM flight is a bummer.  Maybe seven years ago, we stayed at the Inn at Oyster Point, and liked it a lot.  So, I was disappointed to find out that it closed last year.  We only stayed there once, so maybe that’s why it closed.

I have a simple solution to one problem with Yosemite National Park.  If you get there after around nine in the morning, parking at the visitors’ center is pretty hard to find.  Simple solution:  valet parking!

I find when browsing reddit that you can almost always skip the first paragraph of each post.  Usually the second paragraph too.  You can thank me later.

In case you’re wondering why TCM is running the movies it is today, it’s Doris Day’s birthday.  She’s 96.  In honor of the day, please don’t eat any daisies. 

Christine Shawcroft is a member of the British Parliament and was, until recently a member of the executive committee of the Labour Party, the largest out-of-power party in the UK.  She resigned from the executive committee recently over a controversy where she supported a local Labour Party candidate who had previously written a holocaust denial article.  The British Labour Party has been troubled because some members have been accused of anti-Semitism.  Ms. Shawcroft has been replaced in her leadership position by comedian Eddie Izzard. 

Saint Karen (who must be a saint to put up with me) and I have only spent a few days in England in our lives, but we approve of this substitution.  Worldwide, we believe, there are way too many clowns in politics, so we view comedians as a step in the right direction.

My local bagel store was open on Sunday, so it didn’t surprise me that they wished me Happy Easter.  For those who don’t understand the joke, bagels are ethnic food associated with Jewish people.  Easter Sunday was two days after the first night of Passover.  Observant Jews are prohibited by religious dietary laws from eating leavened bread during Passover.  Therefore, on this Easter Sunday, it was very unlikely for the owners, staff, or customers at the bagel store to be Jewish.

It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been writing this nonsense for ten years now.

I had a colonoscopy recently.  They put you to sleep for the procedure, but the anesthesiologist laughed, and conceded I had a point when I told him they should give anesthesia during preparation for the test.  The protocol my doctor told me to follow to prepare involved taking two-weeks’ worth of laxatives in two hours.  Ugh.

Lesson learned:  ethylene glycol is poison, but polyethylene glycol is a laxative.

Still, I’d rather have a colonoscopy than colon cancer, so I took the test as an outpatient at the local hospital.  Two days later, I got a clean bill of health, and a thank you note.  Who sends a thank you note to a patient who just had a colonoscopy?  New management I guess.  My wife had inpatient surgery at that hospital in 2016 and 2017.  We got bills for those, but no thank you notes.

I never thought the comic strip Beetle Bailey was funny before I served in the Army.  Once I did, I became a fan.  I just learned that Mort Walker, Beetle’s creator, died in January at the age of 94.  RIP Mort Walker.  Did anyone play Taps?

We’re going through a nor’easter here.  Not the worst one we’ve seen.  Concurrently, they’re going absolutely nuts about the “Beast from the East” over in the United Kingdom.  I heard that -10 C is the coldest it’s been in Wales at this time of year since 2001.  For our friends in Minnesota, that’s 23 F, plus 23!  Someplace, I believe in Scotland, got half-a-meter of snow.  For our friends in Oswego NY, and Truckee CA, that’s about 20 inches.

Look it up on a map.  You’ll be surprised how far north London is.  They say Britain doesn’t usually experience that kind of weather because it’s warmed by the Gulf Stream.  Fine.  But Long Island is warmed by the Gulf Stream before England is, and we got 15 inches earlier this year.  While that kind of snow doesn’t happen every year on the US East Coast, it’s hardly unusual.

Our son found a postcard on line that includes a picture of our home, circa 1915.  The house has changed surprisingly little.  103 years ago, the road was unpaved, the trees looked just planted, and there were no utility poles.  When the weather eases up, I’m going to try to take another picture from the same vantage point.

 

A couple of lessons learned. 

Review your home and car insurance occasionally.  When my car insurance renewal arrived with a 7.5% increase, I asked my broker about both my auto and my homeowner’s policies.  They requoted, and between the two saved me around $2,500 annually.  If your current broker can’t help you, get another estimate.  The savings could be very substantial.  Conclusion:  review these more often that I’ve  been doing.

I expected to receive a new camera body for Christmas, and I did.  So, I should have bought a spare battery and charger for it, before it arrived.  That way, when I opened the present, I would have a fully-charged battery, so I could use the new camera right away.  And, if I didn’t get the new camera, I could always have return the extra battery and charger.  No harm, no foul.

Kudos to Biddeford, the people who make electric blankets.  I have a dual control model that’s four or five years old.  One of the controls broke.  I called Biddeford about buying a new control.  Instead, they sent me a new one, free of charge.  They told me it would take up to three weeks to get here, but it didn’t.  It only took 11 days.

Democrats have been in charge of the top offices in New York’s Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead, for a month now.  So far, nothing terrible has happened, and I don’t expect anything will.

On the petty side, the newly elected Town Clerk arrived to find her office stripped of furniture and computer equipment.  A town-owned car was also missing.  That situation, which never should have happened, has been corrected.

An employee of the Town of Hempstead was riding an elevator at Town Hall, recently.  Another passenger in the elevator asked him what he did for the town.  His answer: “As little as possible.” Even Especially a smart ass should probably take the time to learn what the newly-elected Town Supervisor looks like.

Supervisor, Laura Gillen, says she’ll have a performance audit of snow removal during the recent storm.  Makes sense for the new management to see how things are going and whether they can be improved.

In addition to being copyrighted 2009-2017, sisyphusproject.org is also copyright 2018.  Happy New Year.

Here’s how to think about what a long life 94 years is.  Rose Marie, the singer, comedian and actress probably best known for her role as a comedy writer on the Dick Van Dyke Show, died recently at the age of 94.  She started her career as a child in vaudeville as a singer.  She sang for three U.S. Presidents, the first of whom was Calvin Coolidge.

Between the two of them tonight’s Mega Million drawing and tomorrow’s Powerball will total at least $801 million.  If you’re wondering what you’ll do if you should happen to win both, you probably don’t have to concern yourself.  The odds of two events happening is calculated by multiplying together the odds of wining each of them.  So, the odds of winning Mega Millions tonight and Powerball tomorrow night are roughly one in 85,800,000,000,000,000.  That’s one in 85.8 quadrillion to one against.

If I should win both, I will still jump on my bed.

At Christmas time, remember, it’s not the gift, it’s the thought that counts.  We’re getting a new water heater for Christmas.  I didn’t think about that.

BTW, the phrase “Hot-water heater” is redundant.  If the water was already hot, why would you need to heat it?

Last night, a couple of hours after I ate, I went into the kitchen to clean up.  My wife had already put away the half a tomato I didn’t use when I made my sandwich.  I told her that’s one reason I love her, and one reason she wants to murder me in my sleep.  She laughed.  As long as she laughs when I say something like that, I figure I’m still safe.

Also, last night, I ordered something for her from LL Bean.  Their website told me it would arrive on January 2.  No problem.  I didn’t order it until Christmas Eve eve.  Retail workers and package delivery workers deserve holiday time too.  But, the same website told me that if I paid an additional $15 for express delivery, the package would come on January 2 instead.  Hmmmmm.  What would you do?

There’s a tv commercial for Optimum Cable showing soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, accidentally locking himself out of a hotel room.  Then a female housekeeper shows up to let him back in, takes a picture of him in his underwear, posts it on social media, and the pic goes viral.  Funny, I suppose, but in real life a hotel housekeeper who posted a photo of a famous guest in his or her underwear would be fired.

It was funny to hear Democratic Senators complain about not having time to read the Republican tax reform plan.  Funny because the Republicans made the same complaint about the Affordable Care Act years ago when the Democrats rammed that through Congress without giving anyone time to read the bill.  What’s sad is both complaints were accurate.

It looks like I shouldn’t vote for a Republican or a Democrat.  My income taxes went up substantially to pay for Obamacare.  I live in a high-tax state, so my federal income taxes will also go up because of the limit on state and local tax deductions contained in the new tax reform bill.

My wife told my daughter the other day that my mother called her when I was first in the Army to tell her (my girlfriend at the time) my address.  Saint Karen (who must be a saint to put up with me), told my mom that she would number the letters she had already written each day since I went in (this was pre-email in case you’re wondering).  I asked Saint Karen how it was that I told my mother my address before I told her.  She said I did tell her first. 

That’s just one reason why Saint Karen should have been the public relations person in our family.  Instead, I did PR for 20 years or so.  Another reason she should have done it is because she’s a genius at not answering the question you ask her.  I, on the other hand, will answer you directly if you ask the right question. 

What do I mean by not answering the question?  Q:  Do you want to go out to dinner?  A:  I’m tired.  Okay, but that doesn’t tell me whether you’re willing to go out to eat, does it?   

The first time my wife complained she was getting older, I told her, “That’s good.”  When she asked why I said that, I replied, “Because if you were still seventeen, you wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”  With the recent news about Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, I realize there’s another reason why it’s good she’s getting older.  If she were still seventeen, I wouldn’t have anything to do with her either.  I was interested in a 14-year-old girl once myself.  Until 32 days after my 16^th birthday when she turned 15.  In my opinion, 14 and 32 don’t add up to anything but creepy.

A t-shirt I saw recently read, “I have CDO.  It’s like OCD, except the letters are in alphabetical order, like they should be.”  At first, I thought that was funny.  Then I realized it ought to say, “as they should be.”

I tried Uber on a recent trip to Boston.  I do wish they used bigger cars.  We had a Toyota Corolla and a Mazda 3.  I don’t know about elsewhere, but if you call for an Uber in Boston, you’d better be ready to go.  The two times I used them, they showed up in a minute or two. The only glitch was the first time, their computer told my phone that Pedro was showing up in a Honda Odyssey, so when Jing showed up in the Mazda 3, I didn’t realize it was for me.

I’m happy for Mavis Wanczyk, the Massachusetts woman who won more than $750 million in the Powerball lottery in August.  But, by coming forward right away, she didn’t follow the recommended procedure of getting financial, and legal advice before claiming the prize.  I hope she manages that new-found wealth prudently, using it to benefit herself, and whatever good causes she believes in.  She does seem to have achieved the privacy I’d certainly want if I won.  There doesn’t seem to be anything else in the news about her since then.

I couldn’t stop the robocall urgent public-service announcements about my current electric bill, so I switched land-line phone carriers from Verizon to Altice.  Why?  Verizon wanted to charge me about $15 a month extra for caller ID while Altice reduced my cable and Internet bill by $10 a month when I signed up for phone service too.  Maybe I could get a similar deal if I switched to FIOS for cable and internet, but there are several reasons I want to keep Altice, including News 12, and retaining my email address.

Saint Karen, who must be a saint to put up with me, just asked our daughter if she wanted to split some zucchini sticks.  It’s okay.  After all this time, she knows I don’t like zucchini.  Joking around, I told her that if she split them they’d cook faster.  Then, I said, “I’m clever that way.”  She laughed, and said she married me because I’m clever.  I told her I married her because I’m clever too.

The other day, I saw a BMW headed north on Long Island’s Meadowbrook Parkway, doing the speed limit in the left lane.  I’ve never seen something like that before.  I always imagined that if a person in a BMW was observed driving at or below the speed limit, someone from Stuttgart would show up and confiscate their car.

Lesson learned: 

If your birdbath falls over, check as soon as you notice to see if something made it turn over, because recently deceased racoon is a lot more pleasant to clean up than racoon that’s been dead, in hot weather, for most of a week.  I’ll spare you pictures. I spared me pictures too because I didn’t take any.

Theories you’d think are true confirmed to be true:

Rotten racoon doesn’t smell very good.

As you might expect, Raid for flying insects doesn’t kill maggots.

Maggots can’t swim in water heavily laced with chlorine bleach.

In solidarity with all the dogs in my neighborhood, I’m planning to spend tonight hiding under the bed, thankful that except for licensed professional displays, all forms of fireworks are illegal where I live.  Just imagine how noisy the evening of the Fourth of July would be if anyone could buy firecrackers.

I’ve read on a couple of internet forums that certain Nissan Frontier trucks have a known problem.  They have a transmission cooler inside the radiator.  As the trucks age, some of those coolers leak, allowing engine coolant into the transmission.  That requires an expensive transmission rebuild.  Concerned, I checked my aging truck.  It has an external transmission cooler.  That means a leaking cooler won’t brick my transmission, and I don’t have to add an external cooler, because my truck already has one.  Money saved!

Sometimes, you just can’t win.  I took my old GPS unit with me when I went on a 500-mile trip two weeks ago.  On the way home, it took me 14 miles out of my way because I hadn’t updated its maps in about three years.  So, this week, before I went on a 300-mile trip, and in preparation, I tried updating the GPS.  The update failed, and in the process bricked the GPS.

Yes, I can use my phone as a GPS, but the display is uncomfortably small, and the phone eats batteries when used that way, plus it gets really hot.  I have to decide whether to get a new car that has GPS, buy another GPS unit, or confine myself to going places I already know how to get to.

I went to the Barrett-Jackson car auction in Connecticut this week.  I like old cars.  I could pay for some, but far from all the ones for sale there, but I have no place to keep one, so I just look, and take pictures of them.  I like taking pictures too.   But about half the cars at the auction are displayed in a parking garage at the Mohegan Sun casino, and resort.  That garage is brighter than it was last year, but it’s still a difficult place to photograph cars.  Frankly, it’s not a great place to examine cars you might want to buy either.  If I go back next year, I must remember to bring my big-boy Speedlite.

Driving from Uncasville CT to New York the other day, traffic was really bad.  So, I found myself wondering if people who live in Connecticut have jobs, homes, and families like the rest of us, or if they just drive aimlessly on I-95, and the Merritt Parkway.

If you haven’t been to Connecticut recently (as I hadn’t), you may be as surprised as I was to learn that they have finished I-95 east of New Haven.  I went to Binghamton NY two weeks ago, and was not surprised that they haven’t finished NY Rte 17.  I’ve been driving that road since I was 17, and I’ll probably die before it’s completed, if it ever is.

Earlier this month, I played radio dj for two hours.  It’s been a long time.  My first dj stint since college.  When I was paid to be on the air, I was doing news.  I’d say playing music on the radio is easier than it used to be.  The records are longer, the bathroom is much closer to the studio than it was at the last place I worked, and you don’t get to talk as much.  Still, I don’t think it’s as much fun.

For a long while now, the pop-up flash on my camera wouldn’t pop up.  I finally figured out why and fixed it.  I noticed that there appeared to be something in the crack between the camera body and the flash.  I cleaned it out with an Exacto knife and a little alcohol on a swab.  Then, the flash did open, and fire.  What was keeping the flash stuck closed?  Best guess is a drip from a chocolate ice cream cone.  New rule:  don’t eat a chocolate ice cream cone while your camera is hanging around your neck.

It’s larynx, not larnyx.  For some strange reason, the name of an organ we use to produce speech is among the most mispronounced words in the English language.

When the Colgate toothpaste TV commercial says, “80% of bacteria aren’t even on teeth,” it’s trying to make the point that bacteria lodge elsewhere in your mouth too.  But all I can think is that’s true.  A lot of the bacteria are in sewage treatment plants.

City fathers in Seaside Heights NJ have banned smoking on the beach.  Good.  I don’t smoke.  Second-hand smoke bothers me, but for me that’s not the real problem at the beach because the beach is outdoors, and it is a breezy place.  What bugs me is too many beaches look like the butt-filled cans of sand which serve as ashtrays outside many elevators.  Cigarette butts are litter.

I’ve seen this word misused so many times, most recently earlier this month on the website of a major newspaper.  Your kids are your descendants.  They are not your ancestors.  Relatives who came before you are ancestors, not the ones who came afterwards.

If you’ve seen the current TV commercial for Pennington grass seed, you may wonder what the music behind the spot is.  It’s a song called “Tall Cool One,” by a group called the Wailers.  Not the Robert Plant song and not the Bob Marley Wailers either.  It was popular, but not a huge hit.  It reached #36 in the Billboard top 100 way back in 1959.  Whenever someone makes a TV commercial using a song that’s too old to play on the radio, I wonder why.  Are they trying to sell to people old enough to remember the song?  If that’s the case, it didn’t work for me.  I recognized “Tall Cool One” immediately, but instead of deciding to buy some grass seed, I went to my reference books to find out if it was whalers, or Wailers.  It was the second.

It’s Palm Sunday, and I know what that means. I have one week to clear away all the stuff I have stored on the dining room table, and put the Christmas tablecloth away.

My friend, Richard (not Feder) and no longer of New Jersey, let alone Fort Lee has resumed blogging.  His blog is recommended by my blog.  You’ll find a link to the Riklblog below and to the right. I’m happy to see he has resumed writing it. 

I’ve complained previously that the audiologist I visit has no regard for punctuality.  Six days after my last visit, I received a post card telling me it was time for me to come in for a checkup.  Why did it come six days after my visit?  Because it was mailed three days after my visit.

I had two teeth pulled on Monday.  If I think of something that having teeth pulled is better than, I’ll let you know.  The oral surgeon gave me antibiotics to stave off infection.  But the pills are the biggest I’ve ever had.  I think they kill germs by crushing them to death.

If my daughter was right that the tooth fairy brings people my age dentures instead of money when we lose teeth, then she is late—very late.

The new principal at Harrisburg HS in Harrisburg PA reportedly suspended almost half the student body recently because those suspended had at least five unexcused absences in a nine-week period.  She has a point.  Going to school is important for learning.  It’s also an important discipline to learn because only showing up for a job when you feel like it will get you fired in the real world.  Public schools don’t have a lot of options for disciplining students either.  Still, if I understand correctly, the punishment for not going to school is not being allowed to go to school.  A lot of those kids are probably thinking, “Great!”

Keith Palmer is the British police officer who was killed in a terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge, and the British Parliament.  I know that British police have a tradition of going unarmed, but as the world is today, I’m surprised that all the police at a likely terrorist target such as the British Parliament are not armed.  Some are, but Palmer wasn’t.  If he had a gun, he might be alive today.  Arming all members of the security detail at Parliament is now being discussed.  It’s a smart move.

I think all terrorist attacks are awful, but Wednesday’s attack on the British Parliament was a little more personal for my wife and me than others we’ve heard of.  Three years ago, Saint Karen (she must be a saint to put up with me) and I were at the very location where the attack took place.

To be clear, the Republican proposal to repeal, and replace Obamacare didn’t fail because it cut too many benefits for American taxpayers.  It failed because members of the conservative, Republican, Freedom Caucus wanted more cuts. 

Considering that House Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare multiple times a year for years, I was surprised that they didn’t have a workable alternative they could agree on ready to go back in January. 

Now, there’s talk of moderate Republicans in Congress trying to work with moderate Democrats instead of with the right wing of their own party.  I worked for Congress many years ago.  It would be nice to return to a time when Republicans and Democrats were people who disagreed with one another, not mortal enemies who must be battled to the death.  I don’t know how that stance evolved, but it’s not good for the country, and as far as I can see, it’s not good for Republicans or Democrats either.

My wife wanted me to put gas in her car, but I had to check whether I won the lottery first.  I told her if I was super rich, I might get a different car that already had gas in it instead.  I did win the lottery, but only a dollar, so I filled her car up with gas as she asked.

My daughter has a plan to show appreciation to her friends, and relatives if she wins a multi-million-dollar lottery.  She says she’ll gift those people with a nicely framed photo of her with the giant check.  I told her she didn’t really need to have the pictures framed, but she insists she’s a class act.

I’m sure Staples, the office supply store, knows what items make the most profit per square foot of retail space.  Still, it seems odd to me that there are dozens of office chairs in every Staples store I visit, but no desks.  I’d rather not buy a desk on line because I can’t tell how sturdy it is and if I find parts broken as I try to assemble it, repacking it to return to an on-line seller is a huge pain.

www.pseudodictionary.com is a website that contains words people have made up over its years in existence.  You must spell out the word, provide a definition, and use it in a sentence, just like vocabulary homework in high school.  I discovered the website recently and contributed three words I’ve made up, and used in this blog.  I used my real name in submitting these words, so if you can figure out which words, you can unmask me.

Occasionally, when I’m bored, I use the internet to look for people I used to know.  Unless they are or were very important in my life, I don’t try to reconnect.  I’m still good at being nosy, but need to practice to retain proficiency.

I’ve mentioned a few times here that I remember one high school girlfriend not because she was important to my life, but because I managed to humiliate myself in her presence more than I usually did with girls I dated.  The last time I wrote about her was last Christmas Eve when baking cookies reminded me that she sent me a care package of cookies during my Freshman year in college.

At that time, I hoped she and her husband were well and happy.  In my nosy, bored searches, I’ve since learned that her husband, Bill, passed away about two years ago.  Bill was a high school friend too, and we attended the same college.  My wife and I haven’t seen them in decades, but I’m still sorry to learn that he died.  I hope enough time has passed that Leslie’s memories of him are mostly of the good times, not of the grief she must have felt as he slipped away.  Even though I now know where she lives, I’ve changed my mind, and won’t be sending her any homemade cookies.

Maybe I’ll stop looking for people that way because sometimes I learn things I really don’t want to know.

I’m having a couple of teeth pulled tomorrow, so I wondered aloud at the dinner table whether the tooth fairy brings money to people my age.  My daughter said she didn’t.  According to my daughter, people  my age who lose teeth receive dentures from the tooth fairy, not cash.  She must get it from her mother, because God knows I’m completely normal.

If, like me, you are Irish-American, diabetic, and planning to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, be advised that corned beef and cabbage won’t do bad things to your blood-sugar level.  Potatoes and soda bread are another matter.

I saw a commercial for Scott’s Turf Builder lawn fertilizer.  The ad said now is the time to apply Turf Builder to my lawn.  I went outside to do just that, but I can’t find the lawn right now.

From prior to the recent snowfall, I’ve never seen this before, and I bet you haven’t either.  It’s a legally parked UPS truck.

This just in, the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, New York Senator Charles Schumer, has called for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian Dressing.

I should have mentioned this much sooner.  I apologize.  Alan Colmes, the liberal political commentator, passed away recently from cancer at the age of 66.  Best known for the Fox News TV show, “Hannity and Colmes,” among the many places Alan hung his hat was talk radio station WABC, where he was called Alan B. Colmes.  His middle initial wasn’t B, it was S.  Early in both of our careers, I was the newsman on his Sunday music show on a now defunct Long Island radio station.  “Nice,” is a word anyone who ever knew him, including me, would use to describe him.  He was also kind and gracious to those of us he passed on his way up.  Condolences to his family and RIP Alan S. Colmes.

There are lots of local elections coming up for villages in New York State later this month.  Some New York villages vote at other times though, so if you live in a New York village, call village hall and ask.  I know there are people who only vote in national elections and people who don’t vote at all, but your vote counts most in the smallest jurisdictions because each vote is a larger part of the total in a more local election.

The League of Women Voters has accomplished a lot toward civic awareness even beyond its initial purpose of encouraging American women to participate once they could vote.  Because village elections are coming up, I attended a League of Women Voters candidate forum last night.  If I could bet every man, woman and child in the United States that I’ve attended more League of Woman Voters forums than they have, I’d win more than I’d lose, a lot more.  Still, nobody runs a more boring forum than the League of Women Voters.

It was meant to be.  I collect popular music.  Mine is a medium-sized collection of around 8,000 songs.  Joel Whitburn’s “Top Pop Singles” is a reference book that lists every song that made the Billboard top 100 charts.  My copy is a paperback and covers 1955-1993.  I’ve used it a lot over the last 24 years, and a paperback book that’s 24 years old is likely to be falling apart.  To nobody’s surprise, mine is.  So, I looked on line and found a hardcover version that covers 1955 through 2012.  It’s not the latest edition and it was on sale for $48.94, including tax and shipping.  I happened to have an Amazon gift card with a balance of guess how much?  $48.94!  I ordered the book.

Baseball causes warm weather.  I’ve told you that before.  So, when your team’s games are on the radio, please put the game on in your car and drive around with the windows down.  It will do a lot more toward making the weather warmer than waking up some dumb groundhog in early February in Pennsylvania.

I seem to be late mentioning this most years, but material posted to Sisyphusproject.org is copyright 2008 – 2017.  All rights reserved.

This isn’t a complaint, by any means, but I have noticed that the lady on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2017 swimsuit issue isn’t wearing a whole swimsuit.

The Powerball jackpot this Saturday night is $349,000,000!  And, since Monday is a holiday, if any of us win, we can’t collect until Tuesday.  Just in time, I have a new plan.  If I win, I will jump on the bed, but that won’t be the first thing I do.  First, I’ll giggle all day Sunday, and all day Monday as well.

Black Sabbath recently performed its “Final Concert” in the pioneer heavy-metal band’s hometown of Birmingham, UK.  So many performers have had much-ballyhooed final appearances, and then continued appearing, that I hereby propose a new law:  Once you’ve charged extra for a final appearance, you are no longer allowed to charge admission to any other shows you give for the rest of your life.  Maybe Black Sabbath will never do another concert, who knows?

I don’t want to stamp out live shows.  I want to do away with faux final appearances.  For example, I don’t know how many final appearances Barbra Streisand has made so far, but she’s got at least nine shows scheduled in 2017.

My wife and daughter both have jobs meeting the public.  I don’t.  I got a flu shot.  They didn’t.  All three of us got the flu.  But between Tamiflu and the fact that I got a flu shot, I was only sick for 48 hours.  They were sick for a week or more.  Flu shots and Tamiflu are both great stuff.  I recommend them highly.  My wife told me that if she doesn’t get a flu shot on her own this fall, I should drag her by the hair to get one.  I want her to get a flu shot, but me dragging her by the hair is never going to happen.

Congratulations to our son, and our daughter-in-law.  They are in contract to purchase their first house.

It might change in the future, but for now, I’m making a conscious effort not to discuss President Trump too much.  I didn’t vote for him, but he did win the election.  I do hope he calms down.  If he’s going to be the leader of the free world, he’s way too sensitive to criticism and way too defensive.

Sally Yates, acting U.S. Attorney General, instructed the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s executive order restricting entry of people coming from seven predominantly Muslim countries.  She must have anticipated she’d be fired, and she would have been out of a job soon anyway.  So, as an action, it wasn’t very effective, but as a statement it was.  Being fired for not doing what the boss wants is pretty standard.  There are lots of jobs where being right is no excuse.  I’ve had more than one of those myself, although nowhere near as high profile.

For an added perspective on the President’s immigration restrictions, try listening to talk radio from  overseas.  LBC from London is an interesting one and they’ve been discussing this a lot lately.

If the restrictions were have even a pretense of making sense, shouldn’t they at least include Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia? 

Almost everyone now agrees it was wrong for the US Government to confine Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II.  The fact that so many people do agree with the President’s ban on people entering the US from those seven countries makes it easier to understand why a lot of people agreed with locking Japanese Americans away something like 75 years ago.

Bernard Baruch, James Schlesinger and Daniel Moynihan, among others have observed something I’m paraphrasing because I can’t quote all three.  You’re entitled to your opinions.  You’re not entitled to your own facts.  Kelly Ann Conway talked about alternate facts on ABC last week.  There’s no such thing.  You can put forth different facts to support different sides of an argument, but you can’t cite different facts about how many people attended President Trump’s inauguration.  Crowd figures are estimates, so different sources can have different numbers, but the fact that fewer people attended President Trump’s inauguration than President Obama’s first inauguration is indisputable.  There are photos that show the later crowd was much smaller.  And the President of the United States has more important things to worry about anyway.

President Trump moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, aka The Trump House, on January 20^th.  I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t had it painted gold yet.

If you hate some of your friends ranting endlessly about President Trump on Facebook, I recommend an add-in for the Internet Browser Chrome called Social Fixer.  It enables you to filter Facebook content so you don’t have to read all that stuff.  I don’t object to, or argue with anyone about, their political views. Everyone is entitled to them. What I hate is the same people telling me, and all their other friends how much they approve/love/dislike/hate Donald Trump multiple times a day, every day since last year in June.

For the record, I didn’t vote for him either. I also objected to the people who did that with respect to Secretary Clinton, but they have mostly stopped. By now I know what my political-rant Facebook friends think of President Trump. Whether they admire or despise him, it’s equally annoying. I also believe they aren’t changing anyone’s mind.

If the same people express the same views to the same audience repeatedly, and endlessly, it becomes annoying, even if I agree. Admittedly the political issues are more important, but if you told me multiple times every day for the last eight months that you hate asparagus, I’d be annoyed with you and I’d want Social Fixer to include an asparagus filter, although I hate asparagus too.

On an entirely different and much lighter subject, two weeks to pitchers and catchers.

My sister is an elementary-school teacher.  Recently, they had an active-shooter drill at her school.  The kids were worried that it was real, not a drill, so she told them that if it was real, the principal had special code words to use to alert the staff to that.  She also told the kids she has a baseball bat she calls “Duke” for anyone who attacks the school. 

You may think Duke is no match for a school shooter.  Don’t be so sure.  During her years on earth, my sister, even without Duke, has mugged two muggers, and beat up a guy who tried to rob the ice cream store she used to work at as a teenager.  She punched one mugger in the face, and pushed the other one down the stairs in a New York City subway station.

What’s at least as scary as my sister is that kids that young understand, and ask intelligent questions about school shootings.  Even one school shooting was too many, but we’ve had so many that little kids are aware of them.

My local TV news told us about a new study that says any amount of exercise will “lower your risk of dying.”  Sorry, nope.  Exercise may increase your chance of living longer, but you will still die eventually, so your risk of dying remains the same:  100%.

I stayed a Boy Scout leader long after my son reached his 18^th birthday.  Consequently, I have more technical outdoor gear than a lot of people my age.  This weekend, with temperatures under 20 degrees and more than 8 inches of snow on the ground, I got dressed to go shovel it.  As I did so, I noticed that one set of my thermal base layer was made in Honduras.  Don’t know why I never noticed it before, but when I did, I asked myself what people in Honduras know about the need to keep warm.  I didn’t have an answer, so I selected a different thermal base layer.

New word department.  If someone is acting so stupid that it’s really funny, they’re being imbisilly.

Here’s an example of why I say my wife, Saint Karen, must be a saint to put up with me.  We both battling a nasty virus for two weeks after Christmas.  It gives us stuffed noses, chest congestion, and a really awful, hacking cough.  Immediately after I failed at an extended effort to cough up a lung or two, she started coughing.  When she was finished, I looked at her, feigned annoyance and asked, “Why must you repeat everything I say?”

Our department of unnecessary detail hears from the NY Post which recently wrote a headline, “Columbia Professor Found Dead After Writing Suicide Notes.”  Well, he could not have died first, could he?

Our not the smartest thief department has read the news reports of a robbery at the Walgreen’s drug store nearest my home.  The thief reportedly escaped with 15 tubes of toothpaste, brand not specified.

Note to the UPS driver blocking my street the Thursday before Christmas:  I know UPS requires its drivers to always park illegally, still, if you’ve got to talk to my neighbor for several minutes, blocking both my driveway and the street while doing so, I have a problem with it.  In the future, if you park at the curb in front of my house so I can get by, I promise I won’t report you to your supervisor.

In case you encounter a moose while wandering around Alberta Canada, here’s the official government advice.  

Phone companies have the technology to block robocallers.  I don’t know what percentage of phone company revenue comes from robocallers, but I’m guessing the money is why the providers of telephone service don’t allow land-line customers to block them.  So, here’s a suggestion.  If you cancel your land line, tell the telephone company that their refusal to provide a tool to block robocallers is the reason.  If enough people do that, maybe it will move the companies to help us block them.  It’s a thought, and a hope, anyway.

It would be wrong, but reasonable to assume that everyone’s nether regions are in the Netherlands. 

I have a lot of problems dealing with CVS Caremark with respect to mail-order prescriptions.  It seems to me that every error that they make is in their favor too.  Here’s one thought to improve their customer service:  Calls I make typically take an hour or more, including being placed on hold several times for prolonged periods.  So, I suggest they get a second piece of hold music.

Actor Alan Thicke passed away in mid December, after suffering a heart attack while playing ice hockey.  My daughter commented that if you must die, many Canadians would prefer to die playing hockey.

According to all the supermarket tabloids, Tarek and Christina’s marriage appears to be at an end, so maybe HGTV should change the promos it’s currently running for their show, Flip or Flop.

The NY Post reported on Sunday that Melania Trump and ten-year-old Baron Trump will not be moving to the White House in late January, so that Baron won’t have to change schools during the school year.  That’s kind of common when someone takes a new job during their child’s school year.  Still, if the report is true, it would not be a good idea to assume that the Secret Service and the NYPD are delighted.

I got 43 comments on my “Not My President” blog item.  All of them were trying to sell us Cialis or Viagra, so I spared you.  Comments are welcomed.  Spam isn’t.

My daughter voted for Hillary.  Her reaction to Trump’s election, “But you need two years of experience to be a receptionist.”

I get so many snail-mail ads for Verizon FIOS TV that my phone bill occasionally slips through the cracks.

One of the silliest Christmas gifts I’ve seen on sale this year is a down-insulated skirt.  I can see how that might make it a little warmer to sit down on a cold surface, but all skirts are open on the bottom, which is what makes them skirts after all.  And, because they’re open on the bottom, I don’t see how the skirt being insulated does much to insulate the person wearing it.

Over the weekend, every Democrat on the national political scene called FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress, “unprecedented.”  What may have happened is unprecedented.  The FBI exposes crimes, and possible crimes all the time.

Comey is in a damned if you do, and damned if you don’t situation.  He revealed the possible existence of new, previously concealed emails from Hillary Clinton.  Remember, that’s possible existence, not existence, or at least not existence yet.  If there’s nothing there, he’ll possibly have influenced the Presidential election.  If he didn’t reveal them, and they prove to be something, he would be excoriated for a cover up. Remember too, nothing that’s covered up ever stays covered up.

I know that Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner are both public figures, but how can anyone, even two anyones, have 650-thousand emails on one laptop computer, and why would two high-level government officials share one laptop for work?

To be clear, I am a person who always votes.  I once voted by absentee ballot in a school board election, but I’m so appalled by the choices we face next week that I may not cast a vote for President this year.

There will be baseball in Cleveland on Tuesday.  I’d like to see the Cubs win the World Series, but more than that, I would have hated to see the Indians win it at Wrigley Field.

Dos Equis beer has a new most interesting man in the world.  He can tie one hand behind his back with one hand tied behind his back.  I guess a new most interesting man makes sense; they shot the old one into space a while ago.

I am astonished that Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and their cohort were acquitted recently on charges stemming from their occupation of federal land in Oregon last year.  I can’t fathom what the jury could possibly have been thinking, or whether they were thinking at all.

Last week, I was observing to my wife that even though the election was only three weeks away (and now less than two), we hadn’t heard a word from either New York Senator Charles Schumer, or his opponent, Wendy Long.  The thought was hardly out of my mouth when a deluge of commercials began for Senator Schumer, including one featuring a guy I used to work with, Jeff Veatch.

Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto were indicted last week on federal corruption charges.  If they did what they’re charged with doing they may have thrown the Republicans running in Nassau County, NY under the bus.  More than that, they may swing the majority in the New York State Senate from Republican to Democratic too.  Republicans only hold the majority because of a coalition with some rebellious Democrats.  Only one or two seats changing hands could repaint the entire picture.  Damage is done even if they’re both acquitted because their trials will take place long after the election.

Five women I went to high school with wished my wife and me a happy wedding anniversary recently on Facebook.  Saint Karen (she must be a saint to put up with me) and I have similar senses of humor.  We each thought perhaps they were all thinking, “Better her than me.”

A year ago, around this time, I complained about how much the Nissan dealer charged me to replace tire pressure monitors.  I replaced two of them in two months.  At least one more has failed, but I haven’t replaced it.  I’ve decided to live with the warning light lit up.  After all, I have two tire gauges and the two of them together are much less expensive than the inflated (Sorry.  I couldn’t help myself) price the dealer charges for one TPMS replacement sensor.  But, I probably will replace the two remaining sensors soon, when I need new tires on the truck.

I’ve been informed that the idea of having Charlie Sheen throw out the first pitch in a Cleveland World Series Game was widely discussed on sports talk radio in Cleveland.  The consensus was that Sheen’s antics as the character Ricky Vaughn in the movie “Major League” were funny.  Sheen’s antics in real life, much less so.  I just thought it would be funny.  I also think it would be funny to have Bob Uecker in the broadcast booth for a little while during a game.  Uecker was the Cleveland play-by-play announcer in the same movie. Uecker is 81 and retired, so I don’t know if he would be interested, or able to do that, but it would also be amusing.

I’ve been away and I’m going to fill you in or bore you to death.  Your choice.  But first, I’d like to deal with a couple of events that happened while I was gone.

And speaking of gone, I don’t think baseball will be quite the same with Vin Scully gone.

When John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo bank testified before Congress, I found myself guessing that many employees didn’t come up with the idea of opening fraudulent accounts without some boss, or bosses pushing them toward it.

The Presidential debate didn’t change my mind.  I still don’t like either of them.

Gary Johnson is never going to be elected President running on the Libertarian Party ticket, but he sure didn’t help getting his ideas out there with his recent foreign policy goofs.   East Korea Gary?  Really?

Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me) and I have been vacationing in Florida.  I’d like to move there, but our vacation has made me reexamine things.  Saint Karen thinks Florida is too hot.  That’s nonsense.  Our house in the New York metropolitan area isn’t air conditioned.  It’s hard to find a house in Florida that isn’t air conditioned.  So, if we moved there, she’d enjoy AC and I’d be cold all the time because she turns it down and I turn it up.  Something to bicker about.  Not something new, because we generally don’t bicker now.

New theory:  Florida is so much warmer than a lot of other places because they have fire-breathing dragons there.

We spent three nights at the Portofino Bay Resort Hotel in Orlando, FL.  It’s one of the hotels associated with Universal Studios Florida theme park.  It’s nice, but it’s expensive.  A few minor things went wrong, but the hotel stepped up to fix them just fine.  Things always go wrong from time to time, so isn’t how things get fixed the real test?

Lindsay at the concierge desk was able to switch my reservation for the Blue Man Group show from Thursday night to Friday night, with no extra charge to me.   I was hoping to take a nap before a Thursday night show, but we had a late check in and without a nap, I was too tired to go.  So, kudos to Lindsay.  The late check in, by the way, is one of the things the hotel stepped up to make amends for.

The Blue Man Group was very good, but extremely noisy.  Before the show, they tell you to turn off all electronic devices.  In case you’re wondering, unless you’re profoundly deaf, you can include hearing aids in that.

This isn’t a complaint about this hotel, but about the hotel industry in general.  Services that are common at lesser hotels frequently carry additional fees at full-service ones.  I have never heard of a hotel where the rooms cost over $200 a night that provided a free continental breakfast.  And, honestly, luxury hotels, free WiFi is almost a basic human right by now.  You don’t charge for cable TV anymore, so stop charging for high-speed internet.  Less expensive hotels don’t, and your Internet isn’t any better than theirs.

We’re on vacation to lift my wife’s spirits.  She had surgery recently.  But, because of the surgery, she didn’t think it wise to ride the roller coasters.  If you’re not going to ride roller coasters, I’d say there isn’t a lot for you at the Universal theme parks.  Also, in late September, the hours are short and they have a separate Hallowe’en event with separate admission after the day’s attendees are turned out.  Admission to the theme parks is costly too and I didn’t like that separate second admission at all.

More on our travels next time.

During the Olympics, I keep wondering when Michael Phelps is going to forget and dive into that pool still wearing his headphones.

The AP reported on August 11, that 70 prominent Republicans had signed a letter to the Republican National Committee asking it to stop helping Donald Trump.  We should also see a letter asking Donald Trump to stop helping Hillary Clinton.

A man in Georgia was arrested recently because he lost his temper at his wife.  In doing so, he yelled at her, spit on her and prevented her and their daughter from calling 911.  According to the wife, he had a history of violence against her.  What set him off?  She made a grilled cheese sandwich with three slices of cheese, when he wanted two.

“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons.”  That’s Hillary Clinton’s strongest argument against a Trump presidency. Trump’s impulsiveness is a big concern to a lot of people.

Have you seen the TV ad the Clinton campaign is running?  The one that features Donald Trump saying nice things about her, including that he thought she’d be a good president.  If I were her, I am not certain I’d run any other.

I don’t think Mrs. Clinton succeeded in redefining herself at the Democratic National Convention and I don’t think Trump has tried to redefine himself.  I don’t think either of them can.  These are probably the two best known and least liked major party candidates ever to seek election to the US presidency as non-incumbents.  Also the oldest.  Whichever of the two is elected President will be older than any previous US President beginning his or her first term.

I’d really like to return to the political system where we didn’t hear much from the major-party presidential candidates between the conventions and Labor Day.

Last year, my phone company, let’s call it Horizon, okay? Anyway, Horizon wouldn’t repair my copper, land-line phone service, so I was forced to switch to Horizon’s fiber-optic service, or switch to my cable system’s phones which are also fiber-optic.  I am aware of the benefits of fiber, but I didn’t want to switch because of the main disadvantage:  fiber-optic phones depend on the electric utility for power while copper phones have independent power.  I lived through Sandy and had no outside power for four days, but my phone still worked.  I’m not complaining about the power, by the way.  The local electric company worked round-the-clock to fix things, and a lot of people suffered much worse damage than I did.  Some of those houses are still uninhabitable.  Last month, my phone’s battery died.  It’s not a little one.  The battery would probably start my lawn mower.  I was not happy.  Horizon sent me a new battery for free and sent it overnight.  I was happy about that, because sometimes the best description for Horizon service of its equipment in customers’ homes is “glacial.”  But, this battery is supposed to be serviced by the customer, and since that’s true, it would be nice if the wires connecting the battery were a little longer, the battery compartment was a little bigger and the battery cover was easy to put back on.  I finally got the battery connected. I had to grow a third hand to do it, but I haven’t figured out how to reattach the cover yet.

Donald Trump urging the Russians to try to find Hillary’s missing thirty-thousand emails.  It was funny, it got Hillary’s emails into the news again, and the Russians didn’t need Trump to suggest it.

The Democrats blaming the Russians for the DNC email leaks.  If the Russians were responsible, that was wrong.  Foreign nationals and foreign governments are not supposed to try to influence US elections.  But, blaming the Russians was an attempt to change the focus of the story.  Nobody denied the facts revealed in the DNC email leaks.  Bernie always wants to be left, but he was right that the DNC was against him.

Bill and Hillary Clinton each get paid a lot of money to make speeches.  Still, I bet they did their speeches this week in Philadelphia for free.

Rep.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz seems to have been fired from her job as Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee.  So, she resigned, effective at the end of this week.  When I was in radio, we used to call that leaving by mutual consent:  the boss said, “you’re fired,” and you said, “If that’s the way you feel about it, I don’t want to work here anymore.”

It’s fun to see that both the Republicans and the Democrats have party unity issues.

Protestors at the Democratic convention seem to me to be louder than the ones at the Republican convention.  What do you think?

In order to appeal to younger voters, my daughter suggests the Republicans call their 2020 convention “Republicon.”  She’s trying to tack con onto the word Democrat too, but hasn’t come up with a euphonic way to achieve that.  Democon would work, but it could also mean a convention of pollsters.

With the recent departure of Roger Ailes from Fox News, and reports that he’s being paid some $40 million to depart, I’m reminded once again that the highest paid job in network TV appears to be leaving your job.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that leaving your job in local radio is more likely to cost you money than to make you any.

Sprinkles (or if you prefer, Jimmies) come in different colors, but they’re all the same flavor.

If you’re going to pull off to the side of the road, pull off to the side of the road.  Don’t park with the rear end of your car stuck so far out into traffic that you choke two lanes of traffic down to one.

It’s one thing to run a red light.  It’s quite another thing to get angry at me and the other driver who just managed to avoid hitting you when you ran the red light.

If a road crew fills a pothole, it would be good if someone, maybe a supervisor, came by later to see if the thing sank and needs to be filled some more.

If they don’t repave Main Street in Hempstead NY, south of Front Street pretty soon, I’m going to stop driving on it until someone else agrees to pay for the damage to the suspension on my car.

The spell checker I use now says ginormous is a real word.  Egantic, though, still isn’t.

It was hard for me to believe, but Trevor Noah said something funny the other day.  I’m not in the demographic the Comedy Channel is targeting with the Daily Show, so they probably don’t care, but I just don’t find Mr. Noah. Funny.  YMMV.  But the other night, he was joking about breaking into Donald Trump’s house.  He said it was easy to defeat the alarm system because the password was TRUMP.

I told Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me) a terrible joke.  Those are the best kind.  I think it was, what do you call a patronizing criminal who is going downstairs?  You know, a condescending con descending.  She made a face, that face.  Before she could say a word, I said, “You knew long before you married me.”  She admitted that’s true, and that’s one of the reasons I love her.

This morning, while we were both looking for my wallet, she said I was driving her crazy.  I told her I’m pretty sure she’s immune.  After all, it has never taken me this long to make anyone else nuts.

I recorded CBS Sunday Morning on my DVR.  I started watching it 18 minutes after it began.  By fast forwarding through the teases and the commercials, it took me 41 minutes to catch up. 

We need to try again to understand the meaning of the word “after.”  NY Post headline: “Man injured after suicide attempt at mall.”  I’m just guessing here, but the suicide attempt is probably what caused him to be injured.  Man injured by suicide attempt at mall, would be more accurate. 

I’m disappointed.  While I came up with the pun “electile dysfunction” all by myself, I Googled it afterwards and found lots of other people came up with it both independently and before I did.

There are a little over 6,600 commercial, FM radio stations in the United States.  Tonight, between 10 PM and midnight, I’m going to be on one of them.  Which one is up to you to figure out.

In California this week, two judges were reelected and the fact that they were makes you question democracy.  One was the judge in Santa Clara who recently sentenced a rapist and star athlete at Stanford to six months in jail.  The other, in Orange County, was reelected despite having admitted to having sex in the office with an intern and with an attorney who had cases before his court.  I call both of these events electile dysfunction.

A man in England, Richard Huckle, has been sentenced to 22 life sentences for raping children in Malaysia.  I’m okay with that.  The article I read said he’ll have to serve a minimum of 25 years in jail.  25 years for 22 life sentences?  I’m not sure which, but if one of those is right, I have to think the other is wrong.

My Daughter has a good idea.  Have you ever watched the TLC TV show “Cake Boss?”  They have several shops in the New York area.  One of them is a few miles from our house.  My daughter wants to go in there and find out if they can make her a cake that looks like a cake.

These days, my wife usually hits the hay around 10:00 PM.  I usually go to bed around 1:00 AM.  When we started dating as teens, she would let me hang out at her house, sometimes until 1:00 or 2:00 AM.  It just occurred to me that she married me so she could get some sleep.

I’m not necessarily claiming credit here, but the most recent TV spot for Burger King’s nuggets does tell you what in them.

I’m trying to convince my wife, Saint Karen, that I’m a saint too because I didn’t bring this car home from a local cruise night.  It’s for sale and it’s a ’66 Chevy Impala SS with a 396 cubic inch engine.  Not buying it, though, didn’t take as much willpower as she thinks:  it’s an automatic.

When I was a Freshman in college, her parents allowed my then 16-year-old girlfriend to travel 250 miles to visit me for a weekend.  I was surprised all those years ago, but astonished recently when I learned they did not let her go on her high school senior trip a year later.  Her parents really liked and trusted me.

I keep a few packets of duck sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, and mustard around the house.  You know, the ones you get with your take-out food orders.  But I never keep extra Arby’s Sauce around.  If I ask for five please give me five, but if I ask for one and you give me five, four of them are going in the garbage. 

 

It’s been cooler than usual in April and May where I live.  I’m going to plant tomatoes this weekend.  The danger of frost is past, but the ground may still be a little cool for tomato plants to thrive.

I guess Mother’s Day was also breast-cancer awareness day for major league baseball.  I’m against breast cancer and in favor of breast-cancer awareness.  Still, the uniforms in the Mets-Padres game were ugly.  They made me pine for the Padres’ old brown ones.

I don’t begrudge breast cancer research a dime.  I have contributed myself from time to time, but from the publicity it gets you’d think breast cancer was the number one cause of death among women.  It isn’t.  Lung cancer and heart disease cause more deaths than breast cancer does.

I may need to get a new doctor.  My test results came back and now this doctor is trying to tell me I’m completely normal.

Over the years, I’ve asked lots of questions here, some of them serious, and some meant as jokes.  One of the serious ones came four years ago when I wondered whether noise-cancelling headphones would help with my tinnitus.  Since the last time I looked into it, sound therapy has become helpful, but not a cure for tinnitus.  Certain frequencies generated by special hearing aids help cancel out the annoying ringing of tinnitus.  So, while noise-cancelling headphones won’t help, there are now hearing aids that supposedly will.  I can hear without hearing aids, but because of the tinnitus, and because of some high-frequency hearing loss, I don’t hear people well if there’s a lot of background noise.  I’ve ordered a pair of hearing aids designed to help with both.  If they work well, I may review then here in the future.

Here’s an update on my Panasonic bathroom fan.  I have replaced it, with another Panasonic fan.  So, I’ve bought three of them in eight years.  The one in my upstairs bathroom still works.  I have mixed feelings about the fans.  They’re high quality, very quiet, and Panasonic makes more than one fan that will fit in my existing opening which is a little over ten inches square.  On the other hand, they’re very expensive, the light kit on mine (not the bulb, the fixture) failed after eight years.  The ballast for the light isn’t easily replaceable and neither the ballast nor the light fixture is available from Panasonic anymore.

The light in my new fan is bright enough that I can probably grow tomatoes in there now.  But, I won’t.

I have a compressed disc in my neck, and I tore both rotator cuffs for the second time after I’d already had surgery to repair each one.  I guess what I’m saying is working over my head is painful.  So, I didn’t replace the fan in the ceiling myself.  It annoys me to pay someone else to do something for me that I know how to do.  Still, the electrician did a bang-up job, took about half an hour and cleaned up after himself.  Good job there.

The masthead photo here changes from time to time.  The end of April and beginning of May is time for cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  It’s a really beautiful exhibit.  If you’re in the area, you should go.

Austin Texas school officials have decided to rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School.  They opened the renaming process to public suggestions.  After Boatie McBoatface was shot down even though it was the popular choice for the name of a new and expensive British research ship, you’d think everyone knew this is a bad idea, but nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!  In the race to rename the school in Austin, Donald Trump came in first and Robert E. Lee came in second.  Adolf Hitler got eight votes.  A commenter on the website Deadspin.com came up with the cleverest thing I’ve heard on the topic.  Someone who identifies as Yusuf-Darba chimed in with, “Say what you will about Adolf Hitler, but he did kill Hitler.”  And, here I’d lived my entire life until today thinking nobody could say anything good about Hitler.  How wrong was I?

I’ve mentioned before that it’s a bad idea to screw up on a slow news day, but it’s okay to die on one.  I should have pointed out that if you’re famous, you shouldn’t die on the same day as someone who is substantially more famous.  Since I didn’t point that out before, I’m doing it now.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Lonnie Mack or Joanie Laurer.  RIP to Joanie, Lonnie, and Prince as well.  Yes, Prince was a great talent and an important cultural icon.  But I have to question whether his death deserved over a third of the NBC Nightly News.

Speaking of Prince, he apparently died without a will.  Nobody is happier about this than the tax man.  Even if you don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars, if you expect to have anything left over when you die, a will is a very good idea.

This blog doesn’t have a copy editor.  It could use one.  Most writing would be improved by copy editing, certainly mine.  I am incapable of catching all my own mistakes, although I’m good at catching those of other people.  I occasionally catch a mistake I made in this blog a long time ago, and when I do, I correct it.  Yet copy editors are laid off at news and publishing organizations more than any other people involved in the process of publishing.  People argue that correct grammar and spelling don’t equal intelligence.  That’s true.  What they indicate is attention to detail and if someone doesn’t care enough to get them right, what’s their attitude toward facts?

I’ve recently started paying attention to radio talk shows and TV news from outside the US.  BBC TV news is easy to find on cable.  Lots of radio stations stream.  Today, I listened to stations in Dublin, Ireland, London, UK, and Sydney Australia.  Their perspectives are considerably different from ours.  It’s educational.

Happy birthday, April 21^st, to our son, and to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.  Even though they share the same birthday, and you’ve never seen them together, they are not the same person.

In the European Union, Google has been hit with anti-trust charges in part because it requires Google apps to be installed on all Android phones.  What gripes me about Android phones is all the apps that come with the phone, and can’t be uninstalled.

When Ted Cruz criticized New York values back in Iowa, I’m sure he thought (as most of us did) that the New York primary wouldn’t be important.  He finished third statewide.  In at least one CD, New York’s 16^th in Westchester, he finished fourth, behind Ben Carson.  Didn’t Carson drop out of the race?  Yes, he did, but he dropped out too late to be removed from the New York ballot.

Big shout out and many thanks to Deputy Inspector Christopher Ikone, NYPD.  I had a nice chat with Inspector Ikone at the NYPD exhibit at this year’s NY Auto Show.  I mentioned to him that my dad was a cop, showed him a picture and asked if he knew what the collar brass, BHS, stood for.  He didn’t, but said he’d look into it for me.  In less than a week, I received an email and a phone call from the Inspector.  He had found a few things about my father, and enclosed scans of them with the email.  He apologized that there wasn’t a lot about my dad in NYPD records, but Dad was a cop a long, long time ago so that’s okay, and certainly no fault of the very helpful Inspector.   I was absolutely delighted with what Inspector Ikone sent me.  I thanked him both profusely, and privately.  I just wanted to mention it again in public.  Incidentally, all those years ago, BHS stood for borough headquarters squad.

From the Daily News website on Saturday, April 2, 2016:  “Shane Thompson, 43, a Navy veteran deep-sea diver, was exploring the treacherous cavern underneath the Blue Hole, a popular diving spot known for its crystal clear waters off the coast of New Mexico.”  Not to diminish Mr. Thompson’s death or his life, but what coast of New Mexico?  Doesn’t anyone edit, or fact-check anything anymore?  New Mexico, as most people know, is landlocked.  Thompson actually drowned in a cave in a lake.  At least the article didn’t make the same mistake.

The early bird may get the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Effective in June, the word internet will no longer be capitalized, according to the new edition of the Associated Press style book.  I hereby jump the gun.

“Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.  Into the valley of death rode the 600.” –Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This is the 600th blog entry to the Sisyphus Project. That’s 600 in roughly 8.1 years.  I think we’re pretty much on target.   I started this to entertain myself, and it does that.  I sometimes try to inform, and also to make occasional jokes that other people find funny.  You’re the judge of whether I achieve those goals.  I said I’d write about my frustrations, but also about other stuff.  I’m still doing both. Perhaps I’m not quite as frustrated as I used to be because I don’t have THAT job anymore.  One thing that has surprised me is I don’t write as frequently as when I was employed full-time.  Since I have more time, I thought I would pontificate more.  But I just don’t.

Usually, my posts consist of random assertions, and/or questions.  When I rant on a single topic, it’s most frequently about politics, and/or government.  Still, I’m trying to go light on the 2016 Presidential contest.  Is this really the best that the USA can come up with in the way of major-party candidates?

I was recently able to restore some of the format elements of the blog, including a title picture I’ll change once in a while, and the list of three blogs I endorse.  One caveat on the recommended blog list: my friend Richard’s blog is still entertaining, and well worth your attention.  He just doesn’t post in it very often anymore.

Going forward, I’d like to propose a holiday this year.  It will be one day (or preferably a three-day weekend) when no media in the United States mention Donald Trump, or any member of the Kardashian/Jenner tribe.  It’s a desirable goal, and an achievable one as  well.  After all, we don’t hear about everything Paris Hilton or Charlie Sheen does anymore.  I suggest we do it in August.  We could all use a three-day weekend in August.  Let’s work on that, shall we?

I’m the kind of person who can’t help doing math in his head.    Because of that, this sign caught my attention. 

It’s at a parking lot on 34th Street in Manhattan, just east of Ninth Avenue.  No, I don’t know why an hour of parking costs more than two half hours.  That’s the thing about the sign that caught my attention in the first place.  There was nobody around I could ask.  My best guess is this particular parking lot has hours that contain more than 60 minutes each.

On TV news last night, I heard that the majority leader of the New York State Senate, “. . . prides himself on being open and transparent.”  I pride myself on being opaque.  I feel very strongly that if I were transparent, that would be disgusting.

I can’t wait for the baseball season to begin.  Tomorrow, I won’t have to. I had hoped to attend Baseball Spring Training, and catch a few games in March, but my wife felt she had to work.  I’d rather be with her than at a ballgame, but that’s about the only thing I’d rather do.

I still haven’t hit the lottery, so I have yet to hire an editor or proof reader.  I go back from time to time, to correct past mistakes I’ve made.  Lately I’ve been working on apostrophes, and Oxford commas.  If you should find a mistake, you’re more than welcomed to keep it to yourself.

March 22 is National Goof Off Day.  Who decides these things anyway?  I looked it up on Google and one of the links was to a list of 28 things to do on National Goof Off Day.  Doesn’t that miss the whole point of the day?  Should there even be 28 things to do?  Well, I clicked on the link and it doesn’t work anymore.  That is more like it!

I have an older, expensive Panasonic bathroom light and fan.  That’s kind of redundant because all Panasonic bathroom fans are expensive, but they’re premium fans, very quiet and made of quality materials.  The light stopped working.  It’s the fixture, not the bulbs.  The fixture is modular.  It would be simple to get the old one out and plug in a new one.  Except, the part is no longer available.  If I was the Tsar of building supplies, I’d make the ceiling opening for bathroom fans in standard sizes, the way the openings for various electric boxes are standard sizes.  I dread replacing the whole fan because the openings aren’t standardized and because a lot of them aren’t easy to install without access from above and mine is in a first-floor bathroom of a two-story house.  Sometimes, replacing a bathroom ceiling fan involves replacing the bathroom ceiling too.

Also, you can’t read the model number of this bathroom fan unless you remove the light, and even then, it’s not easy to read.  The location of that all-important model number is a bad design, Panasonic.

I’ve been telling my kids since they were kids that if what they’re doing isn’t working, they ought to try something else.  So, I approve of President Obama easing diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. Of course, Cuba’s record on human rights isn’t good, but the US has imposed restrictions of one sort or another on Cuba since October of 1960.  Clearly they haven’t worked to get Cuba to do some of what we want in more than 55 years, so we might as well try something else.

The automatic ice maker in our freezer stopped working.  There was ice in it.  The machine just wouldn’t push the ice into the bin below it.  I messed with it without success.  My wife tried to pry the ice loose too, also with  no immediate results.  But, about an hour later, it worked. For the first time in two days, it dropped the ice into the tray.  Ninety minutes later, it did it again.   Maybe the ice maker was just constipated.

If for no other reason than to clean it, there should be an easy way to get the sliding-drawer freezer out of the larger combination refrigerator-freezer.  There isn’t.  Being easy to remove the drawer would also make it easier to replace the ice maker if that should be necessary.  There still isn’t.

It’s nice that my wife, Saint Karen (who must be a saint to put up with me), takes my word that I’m a prince.  After all, I wasn’t a frog the first time she kissed me.

Every time I go back over the blog items I’ve written since I started this blog in 2008, I find at least one typographical error.  When I find ’em, I fix ’em, but I find new ones every time.  To be fair to me, some of them were caused when my Internet host changed the software and messed up a lot of the apostrophes.  To be fair to the Internet host, the software change didn’t cause all of them, by any means.

We’ve already got Spring Training and now we have a crocus.  I’m pretty sure it’ll be warm before long.

With an ad premiering tomorrow night, Dos Equis beer is abandoning Jonathan Goldsmith in his role as the most interesting man in the world and taking its advertising in a new direction.  I’m guessing the ads are being changed because Dos Equis thinks the public has lost interest.

New research seems to indicate that certain carbohydrates, such as  bagels and pretzels increase your risk of getting lung cancer.  I have been  known to inhale pretzels,  but even I know you’re not supposed to do that, and now I guess I’ll stop in the interest of health.

Other new research indicates that dying significantly reduces your risk of getting cancer.

It’s not a big deal, but it was a pleasant surprise.  The reclining handle on my old La-Z Boy recliner broke last week.  I contacted the nearest dealer and they’re sending me a new handle, for free.  The recliner is easily 10 and maybe as much as 15 years old.

The weather forecast for this week and next shows daily high temperatures in the New York area over 50 degrees.  The heather is already in bloom:  time to keep an eye out for the first crocus of 2016. 

It must have been Doris Day’s birthday over the weekend or something.  TCM ran the old movie “Send Me No Flowers.”I came home while my wife was watching it.  In case you’re unfamiliar, Doris’ husband, played by Rock Hudson of course, is a hypochondriac.  He thinks he’s going to die and sets about trying to find an ideal second husband for her.  I told Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me)  that if I should die before her and if she decides to remarry, I won’t try to pick out a second husband for her.  Why?  Because she did such a spectacular job picking a first husband that I figure she’s up to the task. 

We’re way overdoing Presidential debates.  The candidates probably agree, scheduling them to attract the smallest audiences.  This week, the Democrats had one opposite the final episode of “Downton Abbey.” Still, all the personal attacks aren’t really helping me to decide who to vote for in November.

With all the proper nouns MS Word’s spell checker knows, I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t know Downton.

 In addition to being a saint for putting up with me, Saint Karen is a saint for other reasons as well.  Last week, I asked her if she knew where the tickets we had left over from our last visit to Disney World are.  We were there in 2005.  She knew. Each pass has three days left.  I want to go back.  I’d like to go right after Easter, but Saint Karen doesn’t know if she can get off work then.  I’m not sure it’s the happiest place on earth, but it is fun and since we have three days of prepaid admission, I’m ready.

The jar I keep loose change in is almost full.  That means about $200.  I’m thinking of adding another $100 and buying a wide-angle lens for my camera.

A few years back, during one of my rants about doctors who are perpetually late, I noted that someone owned the web domain www.punctualdoctor.com.  At the time, I said they hadn’t figured out how to use it yet.  Apparently they never did.  When I checked a week or two ago, you could have bought it for ten bucks.

I complained here back in October about how expensive tire pressure monitoring sensors for my 2008 Nissan Frontier pickup truck are.  They are expensive, but it turns out it’s worse than that.  The dealer I had repair the truck marked up the parts by something like 30-35% over what the same dealer charges at retail for the same part at their parts counter in the same building.  I told the service manager that’s the reason I will never do business with them again.

If I go to a local garage, they mark up the parts above what I can buy them for.  It makes sense.  They can’t carry a lot of parts for every vehicle they might have to repair.  They have to pay someone to order them.  They have to deal with a parts supplier who will deliver them the same day, and there are a couple of other reasons as well.  But if I go to a parts store and buy the part myself, they don’t charge me more than retail.  For an auto dealer parts department, the ancillary costs are built into what they sell the parts for at retail.  So, for me anyway, a dealer service department charging me 30-35% for walking back and forth to the parts counter is outrageous.  I won’t pay it again.

I was right about Ben Carson’s chances of becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for President this year.  It looks like I was wrong, very wrong, about Donald Trump’s prospects though.

Nominations to the US Supreme Court are very political.  Depending on who’s confirmed, the current vacancy can turn the majority on the court from relatively conservative to much more liberal.  I don’t think it’s right to obstruct any president’s nominations for the U.S. Supreme Court, not a Democratic president and not a Republican president either.  But what’s going on now over a replacement for Justice Scalia isn’t new.  In fact, a previous Republican president’s nominee who was scuttled by a Democratic majority in the Senate had his last name turned into a word in the dictionary.  Three lefts make a right.  Two wrongs don’t.

As I write this, I’m watching a Spring Training baseball game on TV.  You should watch or listen to baseball in March as often as possible.  Baseball causes warm weather and observing it here in the north will help to warm things up.  Just wait and see.

He’s wrong, but it may help Ted Cruz to criticize New York in the rest of the country and it doesn’t hurt him in New York.  There’s no way in hell Cruz will win the New York Republican primary and if he does get the GOP nomination, there is also no way in hell he will carry New York in November.

I believe it was so windy this morning because I put my light-weight, plastic garbage can at the curb last night.  I’m sorry.  And, many thanks to my wife, Saint Karen, who has to be a saint to put up with me.  She got up before me this morning and managed to chase the can down before it disappeared from the neighborhood.

My daughter has an idea for a new TV show.  She says TLC should have a show about people trying to recover from eating disorders, gain weight and live healthy lives.  She calls it, “My 60-Pound Life.”  She must get it from her mother, because God knows I’m completely normal.

I had an idea for a reality TV show too.  I suggested one about a family that sits around in their family room, watching TV.  My daughter tells me there has already been a show like that.

Don’t schedule an appointment with your diabetes doctor right after the holidays.  If you do, your blood tests will reveal an A1C level higher than what you usually get.  I’ve learned my lesson.

I found out what happens if you accidentally put too much milk in your scrambled eggs.  Try not to do that.

During the recently passed holiday shopping season, I purchased all gifts on line from our living room couch.  I haven’t been to a shopping mall in a months.

Just once, on a TV real estate show, when the prospective house buyers say they want space in which to entertain, I’d like them to say it needs a stage, professional lighting, a killer sound system, lots of parking and a satellite uplink.

My wife and I usually celebrate five-year-incremental wedding anniversaries by taking a trip.  Five years ago we went to Las Vegas and ten years ago, to Disney World.  Our daughter-in-law has to be in Washington next week for a conference.  Our son flew here a couple of days early to visit.  So, instead of a more elaborate trip, my wife and I will join our daughter, our son and his wife in Washington on Saturday night for a family dinner.  On the day our son called and told us he was coming, I was looking into taking my wife to London for a week.  So, even though a weekend in D.C. isn’t cheap, this is saving me a ton of money.

My wife usually drives our new Hyundai.  Most people get less than the EPA estimate for around-town gas mileage.  So does she.  I’ll be driving it to Washington and I’ll be interested in seeing what kind of gas mileage it gets on the highway.

Silver, gold, ruby, sapphire, diamond?  Why are there no traditional wedding anniversary presents for guys?

Last night, I found an anniversary card that tells the woman recipient that marrying her is the smartest thing her husband ever did.  Of course, I bought it.  I’ve been saying that to so many people for so long now that even Hallmark knows.

While our son is here, I’m going to get him to help me carry two old, metal radiator covers out to my truck so I can recycle them.  I never liked them and I recently replaced them with wooden covers I built myself.  I stained them to match the wood trim in the house and they look much nicer than the old ones.

It now appears that Paul Ryan will be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.  It’s hard to imagine why he wants it.  The Republican caucus in Congress is fractured.  A sub-group, the Freedom Caucus, is very conservative and disinclined to compromise, so being Speaker is a job that is a lot like herding kittens.  Plus, since he ran for Vice President in 2012, it’s reasonable to surmise that Ryan has designs on the White House.  The last Speaker of the House to become President was James K. Polk who was President from 1845 to 1849.  Polk was, in fact, the only Speaker to go on to be President.  It’s an awfully high ranking dead-end job, but if Ryan becomes Speaker and wants to be President, his most likely way to achieve the Presidency is if both the President and Vice President die.  It’s relatively little known that the Speaker is next in line to the Presidency after the Vice President.

If California Congressman Kevin McCarthy withdrew from the race to become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives to keep rumors of an extra-marital affair from becoming widely known, that didn’t work very well at all.  For the record, I read those rumors in the newspapers, as most people did, and have no idea whether they’re true.

Verizon wants you to update the software on your computer that interacts with your Verizon cell phone.  So, they send updates, a lot of updates.  And, in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, a little dialogue box appears urging you to install software that’s been downloaded.  The box doesn’t tell you what software or carry a Verizon logo.  Until I found out what it was, I would never touch it, even though it nagged me.  I did update once, but it’s still nagging me.  I can tell it to install later, and it asks me again multiple times a day.  Eliminating the nagging is more important to me than updating the software.  If Verizon doesn’t change its ways soon, I’ll just uninstall the software to end the annoyance.

I used to think I had made two mistakes in high school:  I thought I was the only person that awkward; and I thought I’d get over it.  Turns out I made three.  I also thought I’d eventually be too old for pimples.

It should go without saying around here, but let’s go Mets.  Okay?

I’ve got a solution to the California drought.  All we need to do is get everyone in the state to wash and wax their cars on the same day.

A deranged young man shot up a community college in Oregon.  Nine dead, not including him.  In Tennessee, an 11-year-old boy got his father’s shotgun from an unlocked closet and murdered his 8-year-old neighbor because she wouldn’t let him play with her puppy.  I don’t pretend to know the answer.  I hope someone smarter than me knows what to do to make this situation better.  But I do know what I’ve told my kids since they were little:  If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else.  More mental-health initiatives might help.  Holding gun owners responsible if they don’t secure their guns from their kids might help too.

From the latest Arby’s TV commercial:  “Bacon is a present pigs give you when you’re good.”  I never thought of it that way before, but, yeah.

It’s hard to imagine living a better life than baseball great Yogi Berra who passed away last month at age 90.  He served in the Navy during World War II, aboard one of the small rocket boats that bombarded the French coast on D-Day.  He was one of the best catchers ever to play the game, a fabled bad-ball hitter, tremendously clutch, managed both the Yankees and the Mets to the World Series, played and coached in more World Series than anyone else, was married for over 60 years, was successful in business too.  Although his funeral was in Montclair, NJ, Timothy Cardinal Dolan traveled from Manhattan to celebrate Yogi’s funeral mass.  Considering what baseball players make these days, it’s astonishing to realize that Berra was never paid more than $65,000 as one of the best players around.  And the unintentionally funny way he twisted the language kept him in the public eye even after he retired from baseball.

It probably helps Garmin technical support to reply automatically to emails, based on key words.  But, their replies would be more useful if they had some human read the requests before answering.  I got a lengthy answer from Garmin recently.  Lovely.  It contained lots of information, except it didn’t answer either of my questions.

Also, a suggestion for Garmin:  If someone is trying to get to Washington, D.C., I think it would be good if the software would accept that, as well as “District of Columbia” when it asks for state or province.  It took me a while to figure that out when looking for directions on my next trip.  I know how to get to D.C., but I don’t go very often, so I still need help navigating around once I get there.

I recently bought a lightly used 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport.  The Sport has five seats.  The Santa Fe minus the sport has seven.  So far, I like it just fine and my wife likes it too.  She drives it more than I do.  But, if you’re an obsessive-compulsive type who needs to make sure locks are locked, you might not.  The front doors have a button and a handle.  If you have the proximity key with you, the button locks and unlocks the car, while the handle unlatches the doors.  The hatch just has a button that locks, unlocks and opens the hatch.  So, if you close it, lock it and want to be sure it’s locked, touching the button to try to open the hatch unlocks and opens it, provided of course the proximity key is in your pocket or purse.

The car came with a free trial of Sirius/XM radio.  I’m not sure how many channels it has, but I basically listen to two.  I like it, but don’t spend enough time in the car to justify paying what it costs to subscribe.

I’ve gotten pretty used to the proximity key to unlock, start, and lock the car.  However, when I leave the car, I still try to pull the non-existent physical key out of the ignition.

Do you know what a counter-balanced hood is?  It’s a car hood that uses springs to hold it open, instead of propping it up with a rod or stick.  The Hyundai has a counter-balanced hood.  I don’t remember if I bought the last car I owned with a counter-balanced hood in 1987 or 1980.

My 2008 Nissan Frontier has generally been reliable, but when it hasn’t been, the dealer has been good, but the parts that have broken are expensive.  While it was still under warranty (thank God!) a seatbelt sensor failed.  To replace that, you have to replace the whole seat assembly.  That just reeks of poor design to me. You ought to be able to fix something without replacing other, expensive things that don’t need fixing.  In the past two months, I’ve had two tire pressure sensors fail.  The dealer charged me $115 each for the sensors.  And the dealer’s shop manual says it takes an hour to replace one.  I didn’t stand and watch, but I doubt it does.  I’m not sure if that’s the going rate for sensors.  I couldn’t find any OEM sensors, but I found some in the range of what they cost for other cars, around $40 each, and the most expensive one I found outside my dealer’s shop was about $80.  I know tire pressure sensors have been required on new cars for more than a decade, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.  Each one (and a car has four) is a lot more expensive than a tire gauge (and you only need one of those).  Plus, even with the sensors, you still need a tire gauge to tell you whether the tire is actually low on air or if one or more of the sensors is broken.

If the tire pressure sensors on my Nissan truck continue to fail at the rate of one every two months, I’ll be selling it and getting something else before the end of this year.  I hate buying cars and generally keep each one way longer than the average driver does, so if I buy two cars in one year, that will be a record for me.  One a decade is more typical behavior on my part.

If you want to run for Congress in New York, next year, you should probably declare by next month at the latest, in other words, a month before this year’s election.  Why?  Because nominating petitions go out in March and party primaries are in June.  So, the Presidency is no longer the only office you have to start campaigning for prior to the year you hope to be elected.

If you’re 45 minutes late when you call to tell me you’re going to be late, I already know that.

Just one guy’s opinion, but if I had Mavis Staples on my new TV show (and I don’t have her on and don’t have a new TV show or an old one either) I wouldn’t put her on as a cameo and last. I could certainly have her close the show, but if I did that it would be as a featured act and she would get billing.

I enjoyed Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report.  I thought the first two nights of his new Late Show on CBS were kind of shaky though.  Too much of what was supposed to be funny wasn’t funny to me.  That’s to be expected.  I think I’ll give him a couple of weeks to settle in before I watch again.

If you answer the phone after one or two rings and nobody is there, it’s a robocaller that guessed wrong on how long it would take you to get to the phone.  When that happens, my warped mind thinks they’re selling quiet.  Since I used to be on the radio, I don’t want any dead air.  My sister is a librarian.  They should call her.  Librarians can always use a little more silence.

Rowan County KY clerk Kim Davis isn’t having her religious beliefs violated. She is in charge of issuing marriage licenses in that area and says her religious beliefs forbid her to sanction gay marriage. Fine, but the law requires her to issue the licenses, so she should do that or quit her job. If I had a job that required me to work on the Sabbath and my religious beliefs forbade that, I could quit my job. That’s what she should do if that’s what she believes.

GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is going all out to support Ms. Davis, urging her release from jail where she’s being held for contempt of court.  Huckabee says you should obey laws if they’re right.  In the past, civil disobedience meant violating a law you thought unjust and willingly accepting the consequences.  I’m kind of torn,  Should I vote for Huckabee because he thinks we should ignore laws we disagree with and suffer no consequences, or should I vote for anyone but Huckabee because he thinks we should ignore laws we disagree with and suffer no consequences?

No matter what the weather maven on TV is telling you, today is not the last day of summer.  There are still about two weeks left.  Don’t let them rob you of the beach.  If your schedule permits, for instance if you’re not stuck in school, keep going to the beach until the weather is too cool for you.

I should know better than to upgrade iTunes without reading reviews. I hadn’t updated that software in a long time, and this summer, I installed version 12.2.0.145. I like the list view and the ability to sort by any of the columns on display that existed in the version I was using.   I didn’t note what version I was using before. I found how to restore the list view for all my music, but either that view is missing from playlists or I can’t find it. So, I officially hate iTunes version 12.2.0.145. I rolled it back, but not to the exact same version I was using.  Can any of you readers suggest another good program I can use to play music on my computer? I have Media Monkey too and I’m not really happy with it either.

If anyone reads this with any regularity, they know I call my wife Saint Karen because I figure she must be a saint to put up with me. She just walked into the living room and asked me if I put new light bulbs in the range hood over the stove. I told her I had placed my hands on the hood and said, “Heal.” Then I said, “Worship me, or at least put up with me.” She said she could put up with me for a little while longer, so I guess we’re still good.

The lovely Saint Karen and I took a ride out east on Long Island at the end of June and again in August. We went to Montauk and had lunch at Gosman’s Restaurant which is on the west side of the entrance to Lake Montauk. By the way, Lake Montauk isn’t a lake, it’s a harbor. It’s been years since we’ve been there, too many years. The cuisine is simple, fresh and mostly seafood. On our first visit, we had a lovely waitress from Ireland. The check indicated her name is Anna. It’s more expensive than it used to be (lunch for the two of us was $66 plus tax and tip), but on a sunny summer day, there’s really no place I like to be more than sitting outside at Gosman’s under an umbrella, watching boats go in and out of the harbor, and enjoying lunch with my wife.

The problem is that it now takes about three hours on a weekday to drive from where I live to Montauk.  Since it’s Labor Day and still warm, maybe we’ll make another attempt in a week or two.  I know there’s no really good solution to traffic on Long Island’s south fork, but it would help if they widened State Rte 27 to four lanes for a mile or two after it merges with 27A by the diner just east of Southampton Village.  The two roads come together and merge into one two-lane highway.  Big bottleneck!

Last month, Citibank cancelled my Master Card because I hadn’t used it in a long time. Fair enough. No complaint here about that. But, four weeks later, they sent me a mailing inviting me to apply for another Master Card with a special, introductory rate.

The Daily News website on Friday announced that Jimmy Fallon was hospitalized after surgery. I’m just guessing here, but he was probably hospitalized for surgery and then remained hospitalized afterward. Get well Jimmy.

I hope this doesn’t happen to you. I installed the Chrome browser on a computer at work. Then I signed in to my personal Google account to gain access to my list of favorites. To be clear, a lot of those favorites have to do with my work. When I was done, I signed out of my Google account and erased my browsing history before closing Chrome, but not uninstalling it, and signing off the computer. Next time I used Chrome on that computer, without signing into my Google account, I was alarmed to see that all of my favorites, not just the business-related ones, were shown in the browser. Don’t know if I did something wrong or if Chrome is programmed to act like that, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.

“It’s a free country, which is why we should take down the flag that says it isn’t.”–Larry Wilmore.

On the other hand, when Apple removed a game from its app store because it contained a Confederate battle flag, I think they went a little overboard because it was a Civil War game. By the way, that flag which is now so controversial was not the official flag of the Confederate States of America. It wasn’t even the battle flag of all the Confederate troops. It was the battle flag for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, in other words, General Lee’s army.

Here’s a map of all the states I’ve been in, courtesy of maploco.com. I think it’s pretty impressive, considering that I’ve never had a job which required me to travel extensively. I’ve been a couple of miles from Mississippi, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but I didn’t go out of my way to cross those borders just to say I’d been there.

Create Your Own Visited States Map

Donald Trump for president will at least be interesting. I’m actually surprised he declared since he has flirted with running both for the presidency and for NY governor before. Mr. Trump certainly has name recognition, although a lot of it is negative. He may be too brash and too blunt for politics and the way he goes on the attack when anyone criticizes him suggests he may have too thin a skin. For now, I think he has very little chance of getting the nomination, but he has accomplished an awful lot being him, so I’ll wait and see what develops.

All the news from Dannemora NY about two convicted murderers escaping from the Clinton Correctional Facility reminds me of a story. Back when I was a radio reporter a convicted murderer was brought from Dannemora to NY Supreme Court in Riverhead to testify in someone else’s trial. Another radio reporter, not me, I swear, walked up to said murderer, stuck a microphone in his face and sang out a question: “How are things in Dannemora?” He sang it, of course to the tune of the Irish ballad, “How are things in Glocca Mora?” from the Broadway show “Finian’s Rainbow.” I don’t think he got any kind of answer other than a scowl and you can’t show a scowl on the radio, but we all thought it was funny.

Clinton, by the way, at 170 years old, but it is only the third oldest prison still in use in New York State. Auburn and Ossining (popularly known as Sing Sing) are older. The first state prison in New York, Newgate, built in the 18th century, was north of New York city in Greenwich Village, so being sent there was called being sent up the river. Thus the origin of that phrase. Sing Sing was built to replace Newgate, which no longer exists.

From the NY Daily News’ website a while back:

“Thomas Brennan, 25, and his girlfriend face an array of charges in connection with the death of Scott Stephen Bernheisel last month. A man and his girlfriend were arrested Sunday night in connection with the alleged murder of a man whose rotting body was discovered in a leather suitcase near Philadelphia International Airport last month, according to reports.”

They are alleged murderers, but it’s not an alleged murder: The corpse had been bludgeoned and stabbed. I know the first commandment of journalism is, “Thou shall always remember the allegedly.” Still, in my opinion, the Daily News overuses the word.

Rachael Dolezal: It would be great if what race we were never mattered, but we’re not really there yet, are we?

I like old cars and occasionally go to local show and shine events. On Friday, driving home from one, I was behind a ’57 Chevy. They don’t build ’em like they used to. Compared with modern cars, the taillights on a shoe-box Chevy are tiny, and dim. Plus, the high-mounted center brake light on newer cars does make a difference. ’57 Chevy convertibles are pretty valuable cars. If I owned one, after what I saw on Friday, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t drive it at night.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) sure doesn’t sound like he’s from New England.

Bob Schieffer retired last weekend. He’s 78 and said he wanted to go while he could still do the job. And since he can, he’s moving on to a fellowship at Harvard for the next three semesters. I hope I don’t have to tell you who Bob Schieffer is, but in case I do, he was a reporter, anchor and host of Face the Nation since beginning at CBS in 1969. Did you know how he came to national attention? He was a newspaper reporter in Dallas TX when President Kennedy was killed and it was Schieffer who interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother and drove her to the police station where her son was being held.

We’ve lost a lot of TV programs recently. Chelsea Handler, Craig Ferguson, Don Imus, Dave Letterman, Bob Scheiffer and soon John Stewart. Steven Colbert is gone too, but he’s coming back as Letterman’s replacement. Scheiffer may not have been the most entertaining, but he was the most informative and probably the most informed too.

They’re removing all the padlocks, some 45 tons of them, from the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. About a decade ago, people started putting locks on the bridge’s railings to symbolize their love. Last year part of the bridge railing collapsed, causing authorities to decide to remove them and to revamp the bridge so they can’t be put back.

When I was in London last year, there were a few padlocks on the Millennium pedestrian bridge across the Thames too. I wondered why they were there, because I hadn’t heard of the Paris tradition. Now, I know.

Former NY governor George Pataki is never going to be President of the United States. He’s never going to be the Republican nominee for President either, despite declaring his candidacy last week.

Donald Trump isn’t either. In fact, Trump has flirted with entering politics as a presidential or gubernatorial candidate enough times that nobody should consider taking him seriously in that regard unless and until he actually does go through the process of officially declaring his candidacy.

My wife’s high school reunion is coming up in August. We’re going. I sent in the check and it cleared. We went to the same high school, two years apart, so unlike some married couples, there will be people I know at her reunion. In fact, there will be women I dated in high school at her reunion. Before the story I often tell about how I met my wife and noticed, by being a volunteer chauffer at a high school play rehearsal, we were introduced (and I didn’t notice) by one of my girlfriends. I like high school reunions, because I get to see some people I liked in high school and, because it’s not high school anymore, I get to like some people I didn’t like in high school too.

There was a very cute and outgoing toddler in the supermarket the other day. I remarked to his mom that all cute little kids had to step up their game thanks to Reilly Curry.

Another example of fail on the part of Amazon.com’s search function, this one particularly egregious: I searched for Samsung blu ray player and sorted it by price, lowest to highest. I wanted a Samsung because I bought a Samsung TV and think the Samsung remote will probably work well with both of them. The first Samsung blu ray player I turned up in that search was on page 255 of 291 pages of search results. I imagine it would have turned up sooner if I sorted by relevance, but I wanted to find the cheapest one and thought that would be an effective way to search. It wasn’t.

I saw a list recently on the Internet that purports to contain the top ten professions for psychopaths. There was no attribution, so I have no idea how accurate it was. However, I have held four of those ten jobs, so maybe it’s right on target.

Ronald Nelson, an 18-year-old high school senior from Tennessee, turned down all eight Ivy League colleges to attend the University of Alabama this fall. Nothing against the Crimson Tide, they do have a great football program, an honors college and their alma mater is the same tune as Cornell’s. Plus, my son and one of my nieces are grads. Still, the reason he said he chose Alabama is he got more financial aid and didn’t want to accumulate a huge student-loan debt. Maybe it was a sensible decision. One that wasn’t: the article I read suggested he applied to at least 14 colleges. That costs a pretty penny too.

Proms have changed a lot since I was a kid. Mine was held in the high school gym. Today, where I live, a prom must be held in a catering hall. I took my date and another couple to the prom in my car. Today, a limo is de rigueur. One school in Connecticut raised the ire of parents and students when it announced it is enforcing a dress code, but announced it a week before the prom, which is long after all the girls have purchased their dresses. The dresses are different too. Many are backless or have slits exposing a leg.

Invitations are different as well. One guy created a fictional crime scene with himself as a corpse and said he was dying to go to the prom with his girl. Another baked his prospective prom date a fancy cake with the word “Prom” on it. One more posted a video of himself skydiving, carrying a sign with the same word. At least the fad of seniors inviting celebrities to the prom seems to have passed its peak of popularity.

I attended high school shortly after the earth cooled and early in my senior year, I experienced a bad break up, so I stopped dating for a while. I wanted to go to prom, so I started again, dating two girls at the same time which was unusual for me. I asked one of them, a junior, to the prom and she said yes, but then called me and told me her parents would not let her go.

So, I asked the other, a sophomore. Did you know that the roots of the word sophomore are Greek and essentially mean wise fool? Neither invitation was elaborate. Both, in fact, were phone calls. When I asked the second girl she said, “Well, it’s about time. How many other girls did you ask before you asked me?” Since she asked, I told her, “Only one.” I have an excuse for my boorish behavior; I was a 17-year-old boy.

I don’t think a senior prom is a life-altering event, but maybe mine was. From that point, I dated my prom date exclusively for seven or eight months. During that time, she introduced me to a classmate who eventually became my wife, Saint Karen, who must be a saint to put up with me. I’ve told a different story about how I met my wife and both are actually true, because when my prom date introduced us, Saint K made no impression on me at all, but when she finally did impress me, the other girl who introduced us was also a friend I met through my prom date.

I bought my wife, Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me), a big TV for the living room. It’s a combination birthday and Mother’s Day present. Every once in a while, her birthday and Mother’s Day coincide, but not this year. Still, I don’t usually buy combo presents. But, it’s a REALLY big and therefore expensive TV. I’m considering mounting the TV on the wall, or buying a piece of furniture to put it on. Since we often watch TV in a reclining chair, the furniture would ideally be tall enough so that it appears above my big feet when I’m reclining in said recliner. If you haven’t tried to find something like that on line, you’d probably be surprised at how hard it is to find out how tall a piece of furniture is on a sellers website. Kudos to Raymour and Flanigan, a big furniture retailer in my area. You can filter their selections using a range of heights and a range of widths too.

According to several newspaper reports about the soon to be released documentary “I Am Big Bird,” Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who plays Big Bird, was supposed to be on the Challenger space shuttle that exploded killing its entire crew back in 1986. Some PR genius thought it would spark children’s interest in the US space program if Big Bird flew on the Challenger. It was only after NASA determined that the costume would not fit on the shuttle that the idea was dropped and Spinney’s place was taken by teacher Christa McAuliffe. The Challenger explosion was a disastrous setback for the space program and a tragedy for those killed and their families. Not to diminish the impact of those deaths in any way, but can you imagine the space program even continuing if millions of kindergarten kids had watched Big Bird explode, live on TV? Sometimes a PR stunt that would be good if it worked would be so bad if it failed that it just shouldn’t be considered at all.

I want to buy my wife a new TV for her birthday, but figuring out which one isn’t easy.

When I’m in the market for a hat to keep the sun off my head and face, as I am now, I’d like to know how wide the brim is and what kind of sweatband it has. Both of those things are missing from the description of most hats I see on line. I want to know about the sweatband because if it’s stiff, wearing the hat for a while will give me a headache.

Honestly people, go to the DMV, get the driver’s license booklet and review the correct way to make a left turn. If you’re in the left lane when you start your turn, you’re supposed to be in the left lane when you finish. Similarly, if you’re in the right lane when you start, you should be in the right lane when you’ve finished. If you didn’t do that on your driver’s test, that’s why you flunked.

Yesterday, I was at the intersection of two four-lane roads. The one I was on had two left-turn lanes. I was in the right-most of the two because I wanted to get all the way over to the right soon after turning. The SUV to my left made its left-hand turn across four lanes of traffic, cutting me off and all without signaling! What’s more common and what I experienced earlier in the week, was someone making a right turn across three lanes of traffic and winding up in the left lane. Again, cutting me off as I tried to make a left at the same intersection, but headed in the other direction.

Most people do this wrong. It’s wrong because the intersection can handle cars heading in opposite directions turning at the same time if it’s done correctly. But it’s done wrong many more times than it’s done correctly. In fact, I assume (and you should too) that all drivers are going to make these turns much wider than they’re supposed to. If you assume everyone is going to do it wrong, you’ll save a lot of money on collision insurance.

It didn’t occur to me until I saw a picture of the US Capitol being used as a backdrop on the news set at CNN, but there’s scaffolding all around the Capitol Dome and CNN hasn’t bothered to use an up to date picture. Since I noticed that, I’ve seen a lot of other articles in print and on the Internet use an older picture, sans scaffolding. The scaffolding is there because the dome is undergoing a multi-million dollar restoration that will be completed sometime next year.

My lawnmower has an electric starter with a rechargeable battery. The battery has worn out, so I opened the case to get a part number. On the battery it says BP3-12. I trotted off to the Toro dealer to buy a new one and he said he couldn’t tell what battery it needed unless I knew the model number of the mower. I don’t know where on the mower that’s hidden, but I do know it’s hidden. So, I went on line and found any number of replacement batteries based on the number printed on the battery. Instead of installing a new battery this afternoon, I have to wait till it’s delivered on Friday.

I understand that manufacturers use parts created by subcontractors, but they ought to be able to provide a replacement part based on the part itself, rather than the piece of equipment the part belongs to. I had a similar problem with an Andersen window. Took the sash balance into an Andersen dealer who told me he needed the sash, not the part. Again, I was able to order it on line based on the part.

I understand needing the VIN on a car (not VIN number, the n stands for number). Cars have lots of options and sometimes changes occur during a model year. But you ought to be able to find a replacement part for a lawn mower or a window if you have the part. You can too, you just can’t get it from a dealer.

The Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre NY has a religious TV channel called Telecare that can be found on channel 29 of my cable system. The other day, while switching from TLC to HGTV, I came across what is probably the single most boring show on TV. They had a priest reciting the rosary. I have nothing against praying, but I don’t think someone reciting the rosary is compelling television.

A 26-year-old guy from Oregon communicated on-line for two years with a 24-yaer-old Alabama woman, then moved across country to meet her for the first time and live with her. She led him outside, had him sit at a table and close his eyes, then fractured his skull with a baseball bat. She said she did it because she didn’t want to be his girlfriend.

When I was in high school, I dated a girl once or twice. I liked her, but apparently it wasn’t mutual, so when I called for a date, she had her mom tell me that she’d gone to some exotic locale with her airline-pilot father for the weekend. This happened several times before I caught on.

Either of these women could have just said no. I know I would have accepted that and I suspect the poor guy from Oregon with the fractured skull would have too.

Editing just isn’t what it used to be. On its website this morning, the NY Daily News describes the Arizona cop who hit an armed felon with his patrol car as “a former NYPD veteran.” I guess the article cleared the redundancy desk at the paper, but got lost between there and the copy desk.

As you may have sumarized based on the occasional mistake I make, this website doesn’t have a copy editor, but I hope the Daily News still does. If you send me too much money, I promise I’ll use some of it to hire one.

I have to assume that Bruce Jenner wants his personal life all over TV and supermarket tabloid rags, because if he’d like to keep his private life private, he’s doing it wrong.

Northeastern University in Boston needs to find a bigger venue for its graduation ceremonies. When my nephew graduates on May 8th, he only gets four tickets for family and friends. So if a graduate has even one sibling and his mother and father have both remarried, all of their immediate family can’t see their achievement celebrated in person. On the other hand, I don’t really need an excuse to visit Boston for a weekend. I can do that anytime I want. And this proud uncle doesn’t have to sit through another two-and-a-half hours of boring speeches. There is that.

Brits are right. Americans should call soccer “football” and find another name for American football. “Running into people” is too long for a name, but I’m sure the NFL could come up with something, maybe even something starting with “F” so they don’t have to change their initials as well. After all, kicking is a very small part of American football and an integral part of what we call soccer.

There’s an ugly statue of the late TV star Lucille Ball in her hometown in upstate New York. Citizens of the town are correct that it doesn’t look anything like her. There’s a campaign on to replace it or to at least replace the head. But why now? The statue has been there for six years.

I stumbled across a website that discusses the meaning of people’s names. It said that the name Thomas means twin. My daughter said she already knew that, but what she couldn’t find is a name that means other twin. So, she thinks if you have male twins they should both be named Thomas.

Happy Passover to my Jewish friends and Happy Easter to my Christian friends. If you celebrate something else at this time of year, I hope you enjoy that too. In fact, I hope you enjoy them whether we’re friends or not.

With all the controversy lately, especially in Arkansas and Indiana, over how to protect a mythical baker from providing a wedding cake to Adam and Steve, there’s one thing I don’t believe anyone has mentioned. As far as I know, baking a cake doesn’t violate anyone’s religious beliefs except possibly if you’re Jewish and it’s Passover.

You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “Dirt cheap.” Lately, not so much. Amazon.com informed me recently that I can buy from them a 15-pound bag of earthworm castings (that’s worm manure to you Bunkie) for roughly $20 including shipping. I think I’ll pass.

l can’t help doing math in my head. Sometimes, this makes me notice something almost nobody else would notice. I was browsing on line to find a place I can rent next March so I can go to baseball Spring Training. One place I located rented for $149 a night or $1,100 a week. Since 9 times 7 is 63, I know the answer has to end in 3, but the question is how much am I saving at $1,100 a week? Nothing. A week costs $57 extra although I have no idea why. Seven times $149 is $1,043. Don’t think I’ll rent that one.

The warranty on any car you own is longer for certain pollution controls and safety items than it is for other things. The check engine light was aglow on my truck and after pulling the code, I took it to the dealer because it was part of the emission system. I had to sit around an uncomfortable waiting room for over three hours, but the repair was free.

In case the New York International Auto Show was expecting me today (I go almost every year, usually on opening day), I’m still coming, but the easiest way for me to get from Penn Station to the Javits Center is to walk and it’s supposed to rain. Expect me Monday when it’s not supposed to rain instead.

And speaking of rain, if April showers bring May flowers, by the end of next week, we should be ready for more flowers than you can shake a stick at. I’m not 100 percent sold on the idea that April showers do bring May flowers anyway. In my experience, April showers tend to bring mildew and black mold.

On this, the last day of the month, I would certainly like to see the lamb that March is supposed to go out like. But snow is predicted today in some parts of the NY Metropolitan area.

I don’t think it’s too late to snow around here once Spring rolls around because I remember it did snow during the Mets’ home opener in 1996. I should know. My daughter and I were there and we left in the second inning.

The controversy over Indiana’s new religious freedom law baffles me. Mr. or Ms. Baker, gay couple doesn’t want you to marry either one of them, they just want you to make them a cake and they’ll pay for it too. So, don’t get hitched to either of them if you don’t want to, but if you’re business is selling cakes to the public, gay people are public too.

My to do list has some things on it that are going on five years old. So, today, I’m starting a don’t do list, if I get around to it.

I hope you had a happy St. Patrick’s Day. Did you try my recipe for Irish coffee? I have it black with no coffee.

I just streamed the movie “Mr. Sherman and Peabody” on Netflix. In case you’re wondering, Mr. Peabody’s first name is Hector. It was never mentioned in the cartoons or in the movie, but it was revealed once in a promo.

Rumer Willis, Charlotte McKinney, and Michael Sam are on the new season of the TV show Dancing With the Stars, but they haven’t changed the name of the show to eliminate the word “stars.” I don’t watch it, so I don’t know if any of them have been voted off yet.

After all the negative publicity (and all the former-ness) former Congressman Anthony Weiner achieved from texting a woman named Sydney Leathers a while back, you’d think that no politician would ever contact Ms. Leathers over the Internet again. You’d be wrong about that. Just ask Indiana State Representative Justin Moed, otherwise known to Ms. Leathers as “bitchboy.”

I think Winthrop University Hospital is a bad name for a good hospital because the hospital isn’t affiliated with Winthrop University, but rather with Stony Brook University. I couldn’t find it on their website, but I presume the “Winthrop” part is the name of someone who donated a considerable amount of money toward the hospital. While the school has been around since the 1860’s, in the hospital’s defense, the school changed its name to “Winthrop University” in 1992, after the hospital assumed its present name. So, there is that.

You’re not supposed to make cell phone calls while driving, unless hands-free (the calls not the driving), I know that. But you’re not supposed to park in the right-turn lane at the exit to Home Depot to make a phone call either, even if you put your flashers on.

In most villages in New York State, the real property tax assessment roll becomes final tomorrow. That’s an April Fool’s joke if I ever heard one.

Amazon.com’s recommendation algorithm never ceases to amaze me. You’d be amazed too if, like me, you had purchased AC Delco 24ACD Clear Vision Wiper Blade with Wear Indicator. I usually run down to the auto parts store for those, but they were on sale. Since I bought them, among many odd things, Amazon.com has suggested that because I did, I should also purchase toilet paper (several brands), moisturizer, cleaning wipes, and gummi bears, among other things. Some of them I can understand if the algorithm picked up the word “wiper” without any context, but some of the ones I haven’t written down are beyond my comprehension.

While listening to the Moth Podcast, I learned that there is such a thing as the Astronaut Hall of Fame. It seems unnecessary to me because I think they should all be in it.

Lesson in writing from the NY Daily News website on recently: “An overweight arsonist who said his clothes were allegedly stolen at Riker’s Island is headed to prison after being sentenced Monday.” The first commandment of journalism is, “Thou should always remember the allegedly,” however, here, it’s unnecessary. As long as the man actually said that, “alleged” is redundant. I, on the other hand, tend to over-use parenthetical phrases.

Department of all-too-common mispronunciations: it’s pundit, not pundint; there’s only one a in masonry; repeat after me – – double-u, not dubba-ya; there are two c’s in Arctic and Antarctic and there are also two t’s in Antarctic; jewelry, not jew-la-ry; and of course nuclear isn’t Nuc-U-lar either. I’ve given up on February because Feb-U-Ary has been going on for so long that it’s now considered a second acceptable pronunciation. The NBC Handbook of Pronunciation has been out of print for decades, but you can still find one, even a new one. Surprisingly, right now on Amazon, a new one in paperback is much more expensive than a new one in hard cover.

And as long as I’m examining pedantry in a pedantic manner, MS Word’s spell checker thinks Antarctic should be capitalized, but doesn’t particularly care if I capitalize Arctic.

The popularity of streaming services, downloadable MP3 files and file sharing have reduced the market for music CD’s. If anyone’s wondering whether streaming has or will substantially reduce the market for movies on DVD, just check the catalogue of Oscar winner Julianne Moore. Hardly an overnight success, Ms. Moore has been in lots of movies. a few aren’t even available as DVD’s, but very few are available to stream on Netflix. So, there’s still a big market for DVD’s, especially since lots of people would rather watch a movie at home than go to a theater to see one.

I don’t usually sign Internet petitions, but I signed this one.

I suppose some Presidents’ Day sales offered substantial savings, but we only got $30 off the new sofa we bought. I’m happy for my wife though. She was satisfied with a sofa we saw at the first store we stopped in. Usually, she has to visit multiple stores before making up her mind.

I was unable to add a date to a photo I put up on Facebook because the photo is older than I am.

Disillusionment has set in because I learned that most of Munich Germany’s famous Oktoberfest is in September. Since I spelled October the German way, I would spell September the German way too, except September is both the English and the German way, although it’s pronounced differently in the two languages. Of course, March Madness lasts well into April, so I guess there’s a precedent of sorts.

I’ve been saying for years that if I should win one of those big lotteries, you know, Powerball or Mega Millions, I’d jump on the bed. I found out watching Nancy Giles’ CBS Sunday Morning report last month that there are people at a mattress factory in San Francisco who are actually paid to do that. I don’t know about you, but being paid to do it would take a lot of fun out of it for me.

If you’re off TV for six months, network executives expect the audience to forget you. I’d be more surprised than ever if Brian Williams returns to TV in his former role as sole anchor of the NBC Nightly News after his six-month suspension is up in August.

Otto Von Bismark, the first Chancellor of Germany in the late 19th century, once said, “Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made,” except, of course he said it in German. Still, I was in a market the other day that was selling sausage at $13.99 a pound and I do wonder what the hell is in that.

I’ve arrived at a new way to think of one of my pet peeves, the phrase “Very unique.” To repeat myself, unique doesn’t mean rare, it means only. So, if something is unique means there’s only one, then it follows that if something is very unique it doesn’t exist at all.

If your mechanic gets a Ferrari before you do, it’s time for a new mechanic.

Montana State Representative David Moore of Missoula made national news when he tried to get the state of Montana to outlaw yoga pants, claiming they’re too revealing. His effort failed and Matt Lauer on the Today Show said it was kind of a stretch.

An editorial in the Long Island newspaper Newsday called recently to make the New York State Legislature full-time, increase legislators salary and bar outside income as a way to fight corruption. New York State legislators salaries were last raised in the 1990’s and something needs to be done to fight corruption. Since former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was criminally charged, former Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (a Democrat) was convicted of trying to bribe his way into being the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York. Still, Newsday’s editorial board should know, but didn’t mention, that giving the New York State Legislature a raise can only be done for the next session. In other words, legislators elected last year can raise the salaries of legislators elected in 2016, but not before that. New York’s state constitution mandates that, so while it could be changed, a constitutional amendment can only pass the legislature in two consecutive sessions. Therefore, amending the State Constitution to give legislators a raise or to bar them from making outside income, would take longer.

You may have read newspaper or Internet reports or heard on TV or radio that a house trailer in Amagansett, Long Island, is for sale for $1.1 million. That’s misleading, deliberately misleading in my view. What’s for sale is the land the trailer sits on which is roughly .4 acres. The land is worth what a buildable lot in Amagansett close to the ocean is worth. It’s worth that, plus what it costs to remove the trailer. You can build a 4,000-square-foot house on that parcel. If you want the trailer, and who would, you can probably have it for free as long as you get it off the lot.

My shoulders hurt, as usual. I was wondering if I could blame the nuns I had in Catholic grade school instead of myself, but I decided not. First, they hit me with a ruler on the hands, not on the shoulders and second, I was talking.

He never worked under just one name, as some other singers have, but if you look up the name “Waylon” in Google, you get over seven million hits. The first nine, and lots of the rest, refer to Waylon Jennings. In case you didn’t know, Waylon was a protégé of Buddy Holly and was on the Winter Dance Party tour with Buddy in February 1959. Buddy and Waylon chartered a light plane from Clear Lake, Iowa to the next tour stop. Waylon agreed to give up his seat on the plane to J.P. Richardson (the Big Bopper). Buddy told Waylon he hoped he would freeze on the tour bus and Waylon told Buddy that he hoped the plane crashed. It did, in the pre-dawn hours of February 3rd, killing Buddy, J.P. and Richie Valens as well as their pilot. Years later, Don McLean wrote a song about it and called it “The Day the Music Died.” Because of his off-handed remark, Waylon felt responsible for the crash for years. He even gave up performing for a while because of it.

I neglected to mention this earlier, so pardon me, but the Sisyphus Project is copyright 2015, as well as 2008-2014.

It also contains material that may be unsuitable for adults or other people with a modicum of maturity. I should probably have warned you about that years ago.

I want to like Comedy Central’s new Nightly Show with Larry Wllmore, but whether it’s a live audience or a laugh track, they find it a lot funnier than I do.

If you are responsible for making the payments on more than one student loan through Navient, the company’s bill collector tells me it cannot split a payment. If you’re on the hook for four years of loans, and using your bank’s on-line bill pay feature, I’m told you have to send four separate payments. I berated their computer programmers and suggested they switch to Quicken, which can handle split payments. BTW, four years ago, Navient’s predecessor, Sallie Mae, could handle split payments. Progress, I guess.

Sheldon Silver is out as Speaker of the NY State Assembly and Governor Cuomo was “shocked” to learn of the charges of corruption against him. There have been questions and rumors about Speaker Silver’s possible ethical lapses and involvement in outside law firms for years. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara now says he has proof Silver accepted bribes and kickbacks. It remains to be seen whether Bharara’s proof will stand up in court, but Governor Cuomo being shocked reminds me of Captain Renault in the movie “Casablanca” being shocked that there was gambling going on in Rick’s Place.

If the reports I’ve read about the terrible train accident in Valhalla NY a week ago on Tuesday night that killed six people are true, it was entirely avoidable, and having not been avoided, the woman driver whose car the train plowed into could at least have saved herself. First, you can drive over railroad tracks, but you should never drive on to them. In other words, don’t get on the railroad tracks if you can’t proceed across the tracks without stopping. Second, if you do get stuck on railroad tracks and there is a train coming, you exit your car and run toward the train. Why? Because when the train hits your car, both the train and the car will hurl in the direction the train is going. If you run to where the train just was, at least you won’t get hit by flying debris from the collision.

In addition to the Super Bowl, Sunday’s TV programs included the Puppy Bowl, the Kitten Bowl, the Lingerie Bowl, and the Fish Bowl. My next genius idea for TV programming is the Cereal Bowl. I figure we’ll have a bowl of corn flakes getting soggy and a bowl of Rice Krispies making that noise compete against each other.

The recorded voice on the phone said, “Hello. This is not a sales call.” I can’t tell you what kind of call it was though, because that’s when I hung up.

If you are a telemarketer or a survey operator, it’s bad enough from my perspective that you’re calling me at all, but when you call, at least be prepared to talk to me. If I say to you, “You called me. Talk,” you’d better have something I want to hear and say it fast or I’ll hang up.

I have a part-time job. Most part-time jobs are a few hours a week. Mine is a few weeks a year, and a few hours from time to time otherwise. I just finished the few weeks a year, so I’m back.

Ernie Banks has passed away. Mr. Cub was the embodiment of those things we’d like to believe are right about baseball. In his honor, let’s play two.

Bullying is pretty much constantly in the news these days. Out of curiosity, I recently Googled the guy who bullied me in high school. One day, for no apparent reason, he chased me through the halls of the school. When I got around a corner, I stopped and when he rounded the same corner, he found me with my hands clenched together. He was running full-speed ahead when I hit him hard in the stomach, as if I were batting right handed. He didn’t bother me a lot after that. Unless there are two of him (and his last name is unusual), he couldn’t attend his class’s 10th high school reunion because he was doing time for selling a little marijuana–two tons of it!

My car insurance covers damage to rental cars. So does the insurance most people carry on their own cars. The only reason I can think of why you would want to buy the insurance they sell at the car rental counter is if you intended to trash the car. Last time someone asked me if I wanted to buy rental car insurance, I told the woman that if I bought it, I’d really, REALLY use it.

It’s really kind of frightening how little privacy there is in the world. Every once in a while, I try to locate someone I knew in the past. I recently located the second girl I ever dated. Women are harder to find than men, because most of them still change their last names when and if they marry. Not to narrow it down too much, Shirley is married and lives in Connecticut. I’m just proving something to myself and I’m not going to look her up. If I were ever to run into her, my only thought is I’d say I was sorry for acting like a jerk in the way I broke up with her. My only defense for acting like a jerk then is (and you have to admit it is a good defense) I was a 15-year-old boy.

A recent survey by the Oklahoma State University department of agricultural economics found that more than 80% of respondents favor a government-required label on all food containing DNA. Every living thing contains DNA. I’m telling you this because based on the result of that survey, a lot of people don’t know it.

I like the Barrett-Jackson collector car auctions. I try to watch them when televised and I’ve even been to one a few years ago. Since Speed Channel went out of business, I don’t like the TV show as much as I used to. First, having different parts of it on different channels is a pain, especially when I don’t receive all the channels. I’ve always thought it could be a better TV show if they had a few features about special cars, but they’re more likely to highlight bidders than delve deeply into a car. And recent trends toward emphasizing social media and hiring people who don’t know much about the cars for the telecast are bad. I don’t have any research to prove this, but I think people who watch this on TV are mostly interested in the cars.

You can’t tell it from shopping where I live, but you can still buy Lifesavers roll candy. Around here, they only sell the pouches of big, individually wrapped Lifesavers. If you want the rolls, you may have to order them on line.

I am not one of the 100,000,000 Americans suffering from . . .whatever: I’m one of the 300,000,000 Americans suffering from robocalls.

I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but if you file quarterly estimated federal income taxes, today is the deadline for your fourth quarter filing. I’ve already mailed mine. Have you?

We visited the Library of Congress in Washington DC over the weekend to see the copy of the Magna Carta from Lincoln Cathedral on display. This is one of the four copies dating from 1215 known to still exist. It’s amazing to see a written document, 800 years old. It’s displayed to protect it, but the way it’s displayed makes it hard to read and hard to photograph. Can’t read it anyway. It’s in Latin and the writing is surprisingly small.
The Jefferson Building of the Library is amazingly ornate and beautiful. It also hosted an exhibit on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was extremely informative as well. The Magna Carta exhibit closes on January 19th.

Sunday, January 11th, was a day when some New Yorkers took to the subway, wearing no pants. They did wear underwear, just no pants. I’ve been living for two weeks in this climate with no winter coat, making do with layers and a windbreaker. If I were going to ride the New York City subway sans pants, I’d pick a much warmer day for it.

I’ve never met the writer Larry Doyle. Among other things, he used to write a blog in Huffington Post, but I don’t read the Huffington Post regularly. I came across one piece of his work on a recent rebroadcast of the NPR show, “This American Life.” The episode is called, “It’s Never Over.” If you’ve ever been dumped by someone you dated and thought of as the love of your life, download this podcast, or go to Larrydoyle.com, find and read the piece he wrote in 1990 called, “Life Without Leann.” I’m sure it won’t appeal to everyone, but I found it hysterical! I found out that Larry did finally discover love with someone else. I have too.

I hate to say anything nice about Navient, but at least this month, they didn’t call me before the end of the grace period. And, perhaps, if they knew the maker of the loan was not going to pay in December, calling me before the end of the grace period was a way of alerting me so I wouldn’t pay late fees. That would probably be a good idea, but the call sounded too bill-collector for my tastes and for the fact that I wasn’t late.

Update on my jacket. The good folks at the sportswear company have agreed to send me a warranty replacement for the jacket that suffered unusual wear on the right sleeve. Mistakes happen. A reliable company deals with mistakes and stands behind its merchandise. If this one follows through (and I believe they will), I’ll let you know which company it is when I receive the new jacket.

Since it’s going to take another five to ten business days to get the coat, I am doing without a winter coat for essentially the entire month of January. Let that be a lesson to me. If another coat ever needs warranty replacement after one season of wear, I should return it in the summer, not after Christmas.

You can stop the automated “courtesy calls” from CVS drug stores by calling 1-800-SHOPCVS. I did it today and I only hope it works. After one, or MAYBE two calls, it crosses the line from courtesy to harassment. You have to listen to the whole top-level menu and then select other choices, but the option is in there.

One reason car dealers and manufacturers advertise so heavily that you should give someone a car for Christmas is that December is a slow month for buying cars, since people usually spend their money on less expensive presents.

If you got a fruitcake for Christmas, I didn’t give it to you. So, please don’t give it back to me next year.

Speaking of cake, in case you’ve ever wondered, bakers wear white because it doesn’t show flour stains. It does, however, show chocolate.

I recently made two roundtrips to Manhattan by automobile, a distance of 28 miles each way. One leg into Manhattan took about 45 minutes. The other three legs, one in and two out, took roughly one hour and 45 minutes each. I have driven to Manhattan twice in the last week. Also twice in the last 20 years. If I had to go every day, I wouldn’t consider driving.

Here’s a money-saving tip: If you have two cars and one EZ Pass, make sure you don’t leave the EZ Pass at home if you should drive to Manhattan. A roundtrip through the Queens Midtown Tunnel carries a $15.00 charge for tolls if you don’t have an EZ Pass. I hope I don’t have to explain how I know that.

We took my daughter to Manhattan to consult with a prominent neurosurgeon, Doctor Jeffrey Wisoff, at NYU. It’s easy to see why he’s prominent. He was very professional, spent almost an hour with us, went over her condition with us in great detail, and in language we could all understand. If I needed brain or spinal surgery, I would certainly want Dr. Wisoff on the list of doctors to consider engaging to do it. Our visit was frustrating, however, because our daughter’s neurologist thought her symptoms could be addressed by an operation and while nobody wants to have that kind of surgery, we were hoping Dr. Wisoff could help and he said her symptoms aren’t caused by something he can address. Now, we have to explore other avenues to try to figure out what’s wrong.

One great thing about living in the New York metropolitan area is access to some of the world’s outstanding hospitals, not one, some. You’ve got Weill Cornell, Columbia Presbyterian, NYU Langone, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Hospital for Special Surgery and many more. There are superior hospitals in other places as well, but I think New York has the highest concentration of them in the entire country, maybe the world.

Speaking of health care, my mother was the kind of person who would cancel a doctor’s appointment because she didn’t feel well.

Christmas is better with little kids around. I have adult children and no grandchildren, so if kids are here at Christmas, I have to wait for them to wake up. When I first became a father, I never thought that day would come, and now that it’s here, I’m honestly not crazy about it.

I don’t really need anything for Christmas and anything I really want costs more than the people who love me can afford to give. My camera equipment is Canon and while I don’t really have a need for the $16 thousand lens, all Canon stuff is pricey.

I love my wife, Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me), more than anything and she’s in the same boat I am. Neither one of us is big on spending extravagantly on gifts. For less modest gifts, frankly, I have bought enough of them over the years that I’m really out of ideas.

Since I have adult children and no grandchildren, one thing I could use for Christmas is a new Christmas tradition.

Just for the record, when I said I wanted a Vette for Christmas, I meant Corvette, not Chevette.

I paid Navient before the penalty date and they didn’t call me again, so I didn’t call them as I said I might either, because I don’t like to be frustrated, so why should I talk to Navient if I don’t have to?

Here, by the way, is my advice to Navient, not that they asked for it. If I were the maker of a loan and the cosigner was paying that loan, on time as required, I’d send the cosigner a monthly statement to make sure those payments continued apace.

My friend and former colleague, Wes Richards, had a nice turn of phrase in his blog last week. He said the Long Island newspaper, Newsday, is a shadow of its former shadow.

Today’s Patti’s birthday. We dated for a while in high school and I still have a soft spot in my heart (or maybe it’s my head) for her. Even though she hasn’t done anything influential in my life since she was 17 and I didn’t appreciate it then, she really was a big influence on me and how I grew up. Neither of us wants to drop our spouse and run off together, but I do wish her well and like to hear that she’s doing okay. I didn’t remember her date of birth from when we were kids, but I asked her years ago when we reconnected as adults. She told me, but said she would not tell me how old she was. She’s roughly 13 months younger than I am. If I could subtract one from 16 to get her age when we were dating, I can subtract one from my current age to figure out how old she is now. But I promised her I wouldn’t tell her unless she asked. She hasn’t asked, so I won’t tell. Still, happy birthday Patti, and many more.

I’m on the federal do not call list. I didn’t put myself on the list because I’m gullible and want to avoid buying anything someone calls me up and offers to sell me. I did it as a favor to myself because I find telemarketing annoying. That’s true. But I also did it as a favor to telemarketers, since there is no way in hell, and no way on God’s green earth that I will every buy something from a telemarketer, so why should I waste their time either?
Peter called me tonight to try to sell me solar panels. I told him that if he could tell me exactly how many times I had asked his company to never call me again this year, I’d listen to his pitch. He didn’t even try to guess. I didn’t bother telling him that I don’t believe his name is Peter, but I don’t believe it.

I know charities are exempt from the list, but I don’t give to charities that call me for donations either. I don’t because for the most part, I don’t know if the people who are calling me are who they say they are and I don’t know whether their charities are legitimate either.

If I want to donate to charity, I research it first to see if the charity is putting my money to a use that I approve of. Mostly, the ones that do the most telemarketing spend most of their money on more fund raising. That’s not a use I approve of.

I like Baskin Robins ice cream, but the store in my neighborhood isn’t very good at making milk shakes and despite the sign behind the counter, they don’t make malteds at all. The last milk shake I bought at that store will be the last milk shake I buy at that store, but they were good about giving me my money back when I took one sip and complained.

Former New York Governor George Pataki is testing the waters for a Presidential run in 2016. It’s the fourth time in the past five election cycles that Pataki has done this. He sat out 2008 when George Bush ran for reelection. In my political opinion, Governor Pataki has absolutely zero chance of gaining the GOP nomination, but his chance of becoming the Republican vice-presidential nominee are about ten times greater than that.

In case you’re wondering, I do know what ten times zero is.

The Bath Bus Company in Great Britain is running an experimental bus on bio-methane, made from decomposing human feces and food waste. I’m sorry, but that gives me a mental picture of a bus in which all the seats are toilets.

If you weigh yourself on the kind of scale they have in a doctor’s office, the kind where the weights slide across a beam, you may thing the scale is accurate, but maybe it isn’t. First, when it’s set to zero, the beam has to be adjusted so it balances. Second, the post has to be plumb and the base of the beam has to be level. The scale can’t be on a carpeted surface either. The scale in my doctor’s office said I gained seven pounds in the last two weeks. To do that, I’d have to eat an additional 1,500 calories for each of those 14 days. I know Thanksgiving was in there, but still I can’t see how that’s possible. But then, I noticed from my seat on the examination table that the scale isn’t plumb and level. I probably put on two or three pounds, but not seven!

I’m starting another effort to change American culture. Let’s all get behind it. Beginning when you reach the age of 70, instead of receiving your birthday cake at a party or a special dinner, everyone should be entitled to birthday cake for breakfast. After all, 70 is getting up there and life is short so, as the saying goes, eat desert first.

I get a kick out of seeing someplace I’ve been on TV. When the “Dark Water” episode of “Doctor Who” aired recently, showing Cybermen bursting out of the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and head south along Sermon Lane toward the Millennium Bridge was one of those times. I understand that scene is also an homage to another time Cybermen marched down Sermon Lane during a previous invasion when Patrick Troughton played The Doctor.

Now that they have legalized pot in Washington DC, the Congress has a better excuse than it has had previously.

Vaunted Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania (no not Penn State, that’s a different school) will soon offer a course entitled “wasting Time on the Internet.” Surprisingly, to me anyway. I can’t find the course available for download so it can be studied at your home or in your place of business.

Amazon.com has a new feature for members of its paid Prime service. In addition to two-day shipping, free videos and a kindle lending library, they now offer free, on-line storage for an unlimited number of still photographs. Since I have around 500 GB of pictures, I decided to try it as a backup. It’s a good deal, but I don’t like the execution. I like the large thumbnails used to display the pics, but uploading is kind of slow. Plus in Amazon’s cloud storage, the pictures are displayed by date taken or date uploaded. Nothing else. I have organized my pictures mostly by subject or event. If I could display my file storage tree on Amazon’s cloud, I’d like it better. I have a lot of pics of friends and family and I’d like to be able to locate that folder in the cloud. You can upload pictures to Flickr too (also slow) but on Flickr, you can create sets of pictures which is better. But I use Flickr for pictures I want to share, not for general storage.

A zoo in the Philippines is allowing visitors to be massaged by some big pythons. The snakes are supposedly not aggressive and the zoo management says doing this will help zoo patrons learn more about the snakes. I think I’ll just read a book, watch a documentary, or check out a couple of websites if it’s okay with you.

Two female school teachers in Louisiana are the latest I’ve read about in a disturbingly long line of teachers having sex with students. There was another one, this one male, in Brooklyn in September. Are these things happening more often or being reported more often? For the record, the most any of my high school teachers did for me in the romance department was introduce me to a Sophomore girl in his homeroom who I took to my senior prom.

Sophomore, in case nobody else has told you has Greek roots and basically it means wise fool.

The Yankees aren’t in the post season for the second year in a row. The Mets didn’t make the post season for what? I think it’s the third two-years in a row in a row. The Mets won-lost record was slightly better this year than last, five games better. But that’s nowhere near the ninety games GM Sandy Alderson said they could win this season. They didn’t fall off a cliff in the second half either and I suppose that’s a small step forward. They played mediocre baseball almost all season. They finished tied with the Braves for second place, but that’s 17 games back of the Nationals and nothing to brag about either. Some baseball pundits are saying they’re only two players away from contending. I don’t believe that, but they could break 500 next year. Hope does spring eternal.

What do we know so far that the Mets are planning to help improve next year? They’re going to move the outfield fences in again (second time since the stadium opened) to help Curtis Granderson hit seven more homeruns.

The Department of Great Lines hears from Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. When the NFL’s biggest sponsor, a brewery, said the NFL needed to be more active in combatting domestic violence and child abuse, and the NFL said it is formulating new measures, Stewart said the NFL “succumbed to beer pressure.”

My memory isn’t quite as good as it once was, but if “Don’t touch my Dart” isn’t the stupidest advertising campaign I’ve ever heard or seen, it’s got to be second.

I’m building new radiator covers for my 100-year old house. I bought a pneumatic nail gun to help with the construction. I finally got around to trying it. By using it, I figured out a couple of things the instructions didn’t tell me, but I didn’t make any major mistakes. It works, and I didn’t nail myself to anything. One tip: to make attaching moldings around the edges of the opening you cut in the plywood, you used to make the cabinet, it helps to make the opening big enough to fit the nail gun into.

Ray Rice, a professional football player, is bigger and stronger not only than the average woman, but than most above-average women too. An average man is bigger and stronger than an average woman. An average man could probably beat up an average woman anytime he wanted to. Beating someone up, man or woman, doesn’t prove who’s right or wrong: It proves who’s stronger which usually isn’t in dispute. So, a man beating up a woman is a particularly despicable form of bullying. The good thing is most men don’t only not want to beat up a female companion, they can’t want to.

I agree with the people who say the NFL didn’t take domestic violence seriously enough, but it looks like the NFL has learned its lesson. I certainly hope so.

LRD. I have named a disease that’s existed for centuries, but never had a name before. LRD of course stands for Liverwurst Reflux Disorder.

So, now NATO is going to have a rapid response force. I hope the powers that be are bright enough to figure out a path somewhere between the over-zealous mutual-defense pacts that started WWI and the appeasement that started WWII, in order to avoid WWIII.

I keep hearing that Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. It hasn’t been warm enough this summer for it to end, so I’m not going to accept its unofficial end. In fact, I may not accept its official end either. I know I’m still wearing white shoes.

After the news reports of hackers making nude photos of celebrities public, David Letterman asked his audience if they spend a lot of time taking nude selfies. If you’re not already glad there are no nude photos of me on the Internet, you should be. I know I am. I don’t take nude selfies because I have a mirror and I wouldn’t share them if I did.

President Obama is neither my favorite nor my least favorite president. Criticizing him for announcing that he doesn’t have a plan to deal with ISIS is fair. Criticizing him for wearing a tan suit is ridiculous!

Newsmax TV is running a radio ad for a poll it’s conducting. It asks, “Can Doctor Ben Carson win back the White House from OBama?” First, President OBama won’t be running in the next presidential election. Second, While Doctor Carson has taken up writing and politics after a distinguished career as a neurosurgeon, I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting nominated, let alone elected president.

We have so many people in jail in this country that we really should make both mental illness and non-violent drug crimes public health problems rather than criminal justice problems. I suppose locking up a few of those people is justified, but not all of them.

While out for a drive this week, I encountered my dad’s ghost. The guy who was in front of me in traffic had his left-turn signal on for about three miles and he hadn’t turned left by the time I got around him. Wrong kind of car, but definitely my dad’s driving style.

So the fraud guy from alleged Microsoft Support (which is a scam and has nothing to do with Microsoft), called again tonight. I advised him to take a stool softener. You can probably figure out why I said that. I also told him not to call again, and didn’t say please, but I still think he will.

I know this isn’t going to stop the calls, but just to be clear, I don’t buy anything from telemarketers. Doing so would only encourage a practice that needs no encouragement. I also don’t donate to any telemarketers who call alleging that they represent charities. First, like the sales calls, it only encourages a practice that needs no encouragement, but there are other reasons too. If you call me out of the blue, I have no idea if you are who you say you are and I usually have no background on the charity. I’m not that responsive to political telemarketers or people I’m already doing business with who try to sell me more stuff over the phone. I have no trouble saying no. I just took the trouble to get on the federal no-call list because I find all these calls annoying.

Classmates.com is a little nuts in the way it markets its service. I just received an email from them asking me about a guy who started in my high school after I graduated. Don’t know and don’t care. I suspect most guys don’t know or care about guys who weren’t even in school with them. If I were running their marketing campaign, I’d ask girls about guys who graduated up to two or even three years before they did and I’d ask guys about women who graduated up to two or three years after them. If I weren’t happily married, I might be very interested in some women who graduated from high school a year or two after I did.

According to several stories I read on the Internet (so it must be true) Jell-O sales fell by 19 percent between 2009 and 2013. I bet people don’t buy a lot of Junket anymore either. In fact, I was surprised to learn they still make that.

Ray Dean, recently retired police chief in the small Long Island village of Westhampton Beach received a retirement bonus of something like $400,000. It was for accumulated, unused vacation and sick time over his 15 years in the job. He’s been criticized for that and I don’t know why. The Village mayor and trustees who entered into the contract that required these payments deserve the criticism. If someone wanted to give me an overly-generous employment contract, I’d accept it, wouldn’t you. Current mayor, Maria Moore, to her credit, says the she and the present board of trustees will make sure the next chief’s contract isn’t anywhere near as generous.

By the way, did you know that according to New York State law, if a municipality gives its police a raise, it must also raise the salary of its police chief by at least as much as the dollar amount of the highest raise given to any of the policemen? According to one interpretation of that law, you can’t pay a new police chief less than you paid his or her predecessor either. That, to use the applicable technical term, is nuts.

Attention Geico Gecko: Bullwinkle’s last name isn’t “Winkle.” It’s “Moose.” Full name, Bullwinkle J. Moose. If I ever knew what the J stands for, I’ve long-since forgotten.

Don Pardo died. He was 96. Absolutely a household voice, although not a household name. Still, if you know anything at all about media, you didn’t just ask, “Don who?”

Arcadia publishing has made a success of publishing trade paperback books consisting mostly of photos of local areas. The series is called “Images of America.” The newest one is “Ithaca Radio” by Peter King Steinhaus and Rick Sommers Steinhaus with an introduction by Keith Olbermann. Ithaca NY is home of a highly regarded college curriculum in broadcasting at Ithaca College’s school of communications and one of the most professional college radio stations you’ll ever hear at Cornell’s student-owned and run WVBR. Because of that, a lot more successful broadcasters have passed through Ithaca than most radio markets of its size. I passed through Ithaca radio myself and I bought the book when it came out last week. If you worked in Ithaca radio or if you just follow the medium, I think you’ll like the book and, no, you won’t find a picture of me in it.

Two young Amish girls were kidnapped last week near Oswegatchie, NY. Fortunately, the girls’ abductors were arrested and the girls returned to their families. If like me, you’ve lived in New York most of your life and never heard of Oswegatchie, you may wonder what it’s near. It isn’t near anything.

If you’re interested in cars, as I am, you probably agree with me that the Woodward Dream Cruise and the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance should never take place on the same weekend.

A 1962 Ferrari 250 GT which was expected to bring a record price last week sold for only $38 million. A record price for a Ferrari 250 GT, in case you’re thinking of getting one for yourself or a friend, would be somewhere north of $52 million.

“Never wear sandals on a farm.” –Robin Williams. RIP Robin Williams. You made everyone laugh.

Frankly both Israel and Hamas are wrong in the current Middle East conflict. I’m not going to get into which side is more wrong, but with respect to the current issue, if you’re going to sit around firing rockets at someone, you should expect them to shoot back.

James Brady, President Regan’s press secretary, died on August 4th, at the age of 73. He was gravely wounded when John Hinckley tried to assassinate Regan. Bullets fired by Hinckley hit both Regan and Brady. Brady’s injuries were permanent. I didn’t know Mr. Brady, but I did talk to him on the phone a couple of times when I worked in the House of Representatives and he worked for Senator Roth of Delaware. After his shooting, Brady worked hard for and became a living symbol in efforts to pass stricter gun control laws. RIP James Brady.

There’s a radio commercial for B&H Photo, a huge camera and electronic store in New York. In it, his co-workers are planning a “surprise retirement party” for Bob. This suggests, at least to me that in addition to the party being a surprise to Bob, his retirement is also a surprise to him.

I was watching a rebroadcast of the 2010 Mark Twain Award ceremony, the one that gave the prize to Tina Fey. Jennifer Hudson is really talented singer. Still, In my opinion, nobody but Aretha should sing “Respect.”

Two 19-year-old junior hockey players for the US Hockey League’s Lincoln Stars were arrested because they allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old girl in a hotel room in Morehead MN, recorded event and then shared the recording. Here’s advice you may not get anywhere else. If you do commit a felony, make sure to record it and share it with as many people as possible. Be certain to post it on the Internet too. That will make it so much easier for the police to catch and prosecute you. Since I mentioned the team’s name, I should point out that the team has quite properly suspended the two players indefinitely.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of the world that when Orlando Bloom swung on Justin Bieber in Ibiza, Spain, it was international news. Because of his age and his past public behavior, I don’t expect Justin Bieber to behave like an adult, but Orlando Bloom is in his late 30’s, almost twice Bieber’s age.

So, I was looking through a bunch of books and I came across one by a professor, a woman with a very unusual first name. How unusual? I’ve only met or heard of one person in my entire life with that name. We went to school together from third to sixth grade. So, I Googled the author. Then, I Googled the first name. The first nine results for the name were the author. One of those turned up an email address. I dropped her a line. She answered. Yup, it’s her. I doubt we’ll ever get together, but it’s nice to know that one of my old classmates has had a successful career in academia.

Based on my experience riding in cars, both as a parent and as a child, “Don’t make me come back there,” is among the very best advice I’ve ever received or given.

Saint Karen (my wife who must be a saint to put up with me) received a mailing from Barclay’s Bank, offering her a black Visa card. Said Black Visa Card is made of stainless steel (patent pending, believe it or not). Since most cards are now swiped or used on line and not imprinted, I don’t know how important that is. I do know if I were a merchant, the black one wouldn’t impress me. It has some benefits that are good if you travel a lot and have a lot of problems while traveling, a lot. But the interest rate is nothing special and it has an annual fee of $495! So, thanks, but no thanks.

The nice thing about getting robocalls on my cell phone is that I can (and do) hang up on them without even answering them.

Some wag on TV said there’s a new word, precrastination, that means getting something done too early. Procrastination never made me any money, so I’m coining another new word: amateurcrastination.

The phrase “The Fourth of July,” and the phrase “Independence Day” have the same number of syllables. If we could get everyone to call it Independence Day, we could change it to always have a three day weekend out of it.

At the end of June, General Motors announced another 7.6 million cars. The General has now recalled 28 million vehicles since January 1 of this year. That’s more cars than it sold in the past seven years combined. If this trend continues much longer, the General will run out of cars to recall that it manufactured. I predict when that happens, General Motors will start recalling Fords and Chryslers too.

Gold dust plants are susceptible to fungus. I didn’t know that until all the ones in my back yard started turning black while I was in Europe.

I’ve been listening to downloads of an old-time radio called “Broadway Is My Beat.” I don’t know why I like it. I’ll give it a slight break because the show, from the early 1950s predated the Miranda decision, but there’s almost no correct police procedure in it, beginning with the fact that before NYPD headquarters was at 1 Police Plaza, it was on Centre Street which is way downtown, not on Broadway between Times Square and Columbus Circle. Plus, very few people in New York used florid language like that in New York City in the early 1950s and I’m pretty sure not a single one who did was a police detective lieutenant like the lead character in the show, Danny Clover.

Twitter, with its 140 character limit, gave me the idea for a website where everything had to be a haiku. But someone else had an idea for haiku.com before I did. It’s not exactly restricted to haikus, but it’s similar to that.

Now that July is here, I suppose it’s time for end of summer and back to school sales.

The Mets are now 10 or 11 games under .500. And while we’re contemplating that, let’s remember that they usually fade in the second-half of the season.

I get in trouble for nothing a lot. Since it happens frequently, I’m going to try to figure out how to get paid for it.

Insomniac that I am, I often go to bed hours after my lovely wife. This means I occasionally change for bed in the dark and Saint Karen (who has to be a saint to put up with me) leaves my night clothes on my pillow. Since I only need my glasses to find my glasses, I usually put them in the same place every night, on top of my armoire. Recently, I couldn’t find my glasses and Saint Karen found them in our bed. That means I took my glasses off while changing, laid them on the mattress and didn’t put them where they belong. It also means I was lucky I didn’t crush them in my sleep. More importantly than either of those things, it clearly means I shouldn’t go to bed when I’m tired.

I wondered why Bruce Blakeman is running TV ads for New York’s fourth Congressional District so far away from the general election. Then, I realized, voters in the 4th CD, NY are looking forward to the rarest of rare events, a Republican primary. It’s tomorrow, June 24th.

“All dictators should know a rigged election should be like a pleasant spring day — high 60’s, low 70’s.” –John Oliver

I have a scar a couple of inches long on my forehead. It’s there because the doctor cut off something else that used to be there. But when anyone asks me what the scar is from, I tell them it’s from my lobotomy.

I was unable to stifle ambition, so I dragged out my step ladder and changed the two burned out bulbs in the overhead fixture of our upstairs bathroom. Each bulb costs $7. Hopefully they’ll last a while. Now, it’s a lot easier to read in the bathtub than it was yesterday. It’s still difficult to read in the shower, but not because it’s dark in there. It’s not.

Going to the gym is good for something. A few years ago, I couldn’t lift my biggest room air conditioner, the one for the master bedroom into the window. Now, I can.

The community in which I live stopped paying to allow residents to carry their own trash to the local dump. I used to like to dispose of building debris from my remodeling projects that way, but now that I can’t, so I should probably sell my pickup truck.

Rarely will an incumbent politician run attack ads against his or her opponent, especially very early in the campaign. It helps the challenger gain name recognition and implies that the incumbent takes them seriously. Some PAC is running ads attacking Rob Astorino, the Republican nominee to face Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic incumbent gove