Ocean Home Magazine has just come out with what it calls the 25 most desirable oceanfront homes currently for sale in the USA. I do know a couple of people who might be able to afford one of the homes on the list, although certainly not the most expensive. One in East Hampton is two blocks from the ocean. Is that cheating? The one in Alaska overlooks Cook Inlet. Since I can’t afford it, I don’t even have to politely decline because I hate to be cold. I do like to look and if you don’t mind drooling on your computer keyboard, you might like looking too.
Teva sandals stink! Otherwise, they’re great. I’ve been wearing rubber Tevas like the current Hurricane model at the beach and for other outdoor activities for years and years. The ones I have on now are about seven years old so they last a long time. I have plantar fasciitis, and my podiatrist thought I was crazy when I told him that my beach sandals are among my most comfortable shoes. But the rubber gives a little while still having good arch support. Teva advertises that the sandals have a zinc-based anti-microbial technology. I thought the zinc stuff wore out and that’s why the sandals stink, but I’ve been reading up on it. Turns out you should wash them even scrub them much more often than I have. I’m going to try that because other than the fact that they occasionally smell, I love Teva sandals. Don’t throw them in the washing machine though.
On the 4th of July, two women in East Farmingdale NY were seriously burned when aerosol cans stored under their barbecues exploded. I wouldn’t have been that concerned about aerosol cans, but the barbecue I own has a cabinet under the burners and by design, you’re supposed to keep a 20 pound propane cylinder in there. I did that. Once! It gets really hot in that cabinet. Now, I don’t keep anything in it. In fact, when I buy my next barbecue, I’m going to see if I can find one without a cabinet beneath the fire. The cabinet adds to the expense of the barbecue and I think it’s too hot to use for storage of anything flammable.
On the evening of the 4th, a 34-foot cabin cruiser capsized in the Oyster Bay-Cold Spring Harbor area of Long Island’s north shore. Three children trapped in the cabin drowned. Police say they’re investigating whether the boat was overloaded. I’m no expert, but with 27 people on a 34-foot boat, I imagine it must have been. Even if it was overloaded, other factors could also have contributed to the tragedy.
On the 20th, I’m going to see my first Dodger game in 55 years when the Dodgers play the Mets at Citi Field. No, I don’t think they’re going to come back, but I do want to assure everyone that I won’t root for them.
If you have a Facebook application on your smart phone, under certain circumstances, Facebook will populate your phone’s address book with the names of your Facebook friends and with any contact information they’ve supplied to Facebook. This is not necessarily a good thing since I almost butt-dialed someone who lives in Brazil the other day.
When my son was in China, I got a Google Voice phone number and used it to chat with him. Now, I use it less often and have it set to forward any incoming calls to my cell phone. That’s why I was glad my cell phone was off when someone I’ve never heard of called my Google Voice number the other day at 5:30 AM.
The city council in Houston TX recently passed a $5.00-per-person fee for patrons of strip clubs. Wags are calling it a pole tax. The money is being earmarked to clear a backlog of something like 4,000 unprocessed rape kits. Pursuing rapists is something police everywhere ought to have the resources to do, but I’m unaware of any evidence that suggests strip clubs cause rape.
If my wife and I could learn to fight with each other often enough, we could probably stop paying for all the cable TV channels that run reality TV shows.
I have a solution for the programmers who work on MS Word’s grammar & spelling checker as well as for speakers of English. MS Word can’t discern a correct usage of the word its or the contraction it’s. So, it almost always labels their use wrong, even when it’s right. I suggest that all English speakers be like my Irish grandmother and use the contraction t’is instead of it’s. T’is can’t be confused with it’s. Of course, the substitution would bring into common use the contraction t’isn’t, which is the only contraction I can think of that has two apostrophes in it.
