It is Sunday, April 28.  There are 197 days until Christmas so start watching for the decorations.  Happy Birthday to Charles Sturt, Karel Doorman and Leopold Eyharts.  On this day in 585 the war between Lydia and Media was ended by a solar eclipse.  In 1788 Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the constitution.  And, in 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and “Kon-Tiki” sailed from Peru to Polynesia.  It is Ratification day in Maryland.  Monday will be Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

This week I have nothing.  I’m sorry, but sometimes things just go that way.  No one bothered me at the grocery store, no annoying driver stories and no trips to the ER.  We have not been to the ER in a while.  I was thinking maybe I would stop by this week and say hi, just to let them know we are okay.  We’ll see.

I hope things will be better next week.  Thanks for checking in.

Happy Sunday!  Today is April 21 and there are only 14 days until the lovely Elaine and I celebrate our 40^th anniversary and only 204 days until my birthday.  Feel free to contact me regarding gift lists.  Today is the birthday of Vincenzo Pallotti, Iggy Pop and Jesse Orosco.  On this day in 1789 John Adams was sworn in as Vice President (9 days before Washington was sworn in), in 1913 Gideon Sundback of Sweden patented the zipper and in 1956 Elvis Presley’s first hit record, “Heartbreak Hotel” became #1.  It is Kartini Day in Indonesia, Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan and San Jacinto Day in Texas.

I was watching the news the other night and saw something that I found interesting.  Not the news itself but the location of the reporter.  Let me first point out that my watching the news is, in itself, a rarity.  I find it difficult to watch the news and see all these earnest people telling me what is going on in the world, as if they really knew.  If it does not show up on the teleprompter, they have no idea what they are talking about.  That becomes obvious when they try to engage in small talk with the people on the scene.  I wait until it is in the paper the next day.  That way I get a better idea of what happened and they do not try to cram it all into a 30 second sound bite.  But I digress …

The talking head was discussing an accident that occurred earlier in the day.  Several people were injured, one person was killed and a car smashed into a building.  “We go now to Tony Baloney, live at the scene.”  When they say that, I am expecting to see Tony standing there with emergency vehicles in the background, police and EMT’s rushing around and just general chaos all over.  What I see is Tony standing in the dark with yellow accident tape flapping in the wind behind him.

As he describes the accident, it becomes apparent that it occurred earlier in the day.  Taped footage shows the activity that I expected to see, but it is going on in the daylight.  Why, then, is Tony standing out there now?  There is nothing to see, no bodies strewn across the pavement, no pools of blood, just Tony … in the dark. 

I find that they are doing this more and more and I cannot help but wonder why.  A policeman is injured in the line of duty during a raid in the morning.  The story comes on the news at 11 PM and there is a reporter coming to us live from the hospital.  There is nothing going on, there is nothing to see except for the reporter standing outside the hospital coming to us live.  What is the purpose?  Have we really become so shallow that someone talking to us in the dark about something that happened 6 hours earlier is exciting?  OMG!

Imagine what it will be like in the near future.  I call my wife on the phone at 9 PM and, using Face Time, say to her “I am calling you live from the grocery store to let you know that I went shopping this afternoon.  The limes are still 5 for $1.99 and I picked up the sour cream that you wanted.  I got the other items on the list, but could not get the peach pie for your mother.  This is me live from the store.  I will see you shortly.”  With that I hang up and go home.  Is this really necessary?  Do we really need to have them report to us from the scene if nothing is going on?

That is like when there is a hurricane coming and the Weather Channel has people out in the field reporting.  “This is a very dangerous storm.  Stay inside and stay safe.”  The reporter is being blown away by the force of the wind, the rain is pounding down and they tell us that it is not safe to be out there.  Then why are they out there?  How am I supposed to take that person seriously when they are outside doing the exact thing they are telling us not to do?  Duh!!

Just wanted to give everyone an update on my mother-in-law.  She has moved into an assisted living facility and seems to be adjusting very nicely.  She has made some friends and seems to be getting along.  The only thing I should warn you about is if you go to one of these facilities to visit, do not go around dinner time.  We went the other day and went down to the dining room with her just before dinner.  All the people who ate at that sitting were gathering in the area outside the room.  When it was time to go in, all these people started moving their walkers toward to the two doors going in.  It was like Senior Citizen Roller Derby.  God help you if you got in the way.  The funny part is that they always sit at the same place, with the same people.  It isn’t like they have to scramble for a table or to sit with the popular people. Ah well, I guess it’s good for them to get worked up just to keep them active.

That’s it for this week.  Enjoy the flowers that are popping up and go see the cherry blossoms if you get a chance.  If you are not in the area, let me know.  I will get some pictures and send them to you.  Yes, Randy, I will be sending them soon.

It is Sunday, April 14.  Are your taxes done yet?  Today is the birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Loretta Lynn and Ty Grimes.  In the year 193, Lucius Septimus Severus was crowned emperor of Rome; in 1859 Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” was published and in 1960 “Bye Bye Birdie” opened at the Martin Beck Theater in New York City.  It is Water Festival in Burma, New Years Day in Laos and Varusha Pirappu in Mauritius.

I have to be honest, I don’t have much this week.  It has been a weird week, to say the least, and there really isn’t too much to talk about.  I could comment about a number of things, but it would just be repetitious.  I will admit that I may have been misleading a few weeks ago when I talked about speeding.  I said that I do the speed limit.  I do not when the limit is 55.  I always thought that it was silly to change the limit from 60 to 55, especially since no one paid any attention to it.  I go 60 and people still fly by me.  If they really wanted people to go 55, they should have lowered the speed to 40.  That would have gotten everyone up to 50 or 55 and would have accomplished the goal.

I would be willing to bet that most people do not even know why the limit was lowered to 55 in the first place.  The limit was lowered by Congress as part of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act which was passed to try and cut the gasoline consumption levels in response to the 1973 oil crisis.  It was also felt that there would be a decrease in accidents and auto fatalities.  The law was repealed in 1995, but many states left the 55 limit in effect.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe it was easier than having to change all the signs back to the original limit.

Another thing I suppose I could go into would be older people who try to make themselves look younger than they are, unsuccessfully.  I saw a woman the other day who had to be in her 70’s.  She was wearing very tight slacks (that did nothing for her), high-heeled boots, a low cut V-neck sweater and her hair was styled short and spiky.  The problems – she was having a hard time walking in the boots, the neckline showed wrinkles that you could hide children in and her hair was black, unnaturally black.  I wanted to buy her a can of spray paint in case she needed to do a touchup.  There is no way anyone looking at her thought she was younger than 70, except maybe herself.

I also saw a man who had a comb-over that started just above his right ear.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to comb over so he had these long strands of thin hair that still did not cover most of his head.  I wanted to tell him that everyone knew he was bald.  Cut the hair and deal with it.  Another guy I saw had a wig that reminded me of that old line, “It’s not fake anything.  It’s real dynel!”  What made it worse was that it was not fitted to his head well and he had about a ½ inch border of gray showing on his neck.  I do not see how any of these people look in a mirror and say, “Yeah, that looks great.”

Understand, I do not think that I am some manly stud who makes women swoon.  I am what I am and look how I look.  My goal is to look as good as I can with what I have and try not to look ridiculous when I go out.  I keep my hair short so that my bald spot is not as obvious.  I told my grandson that it was not a bald spot, it was a solar panel to help give me energy.  He got it and kids me about it sometimes.  The bottom line is that I am comfortable with how I look.  If someone doesn’t like it, look the other way.  I figure that as long as I am clean, shaved, neatly dressed and not bathed in cologne that you can smell two minutes before I get there and ten minutes after I am gone, then I am good.

Here is another question.  Have you ever been out in public and had an itch that could not be ignored, but was in an area that you really did not want to scratch while the world watched?  The other evening, we were out for dinner and I had an itch on my upper thigh, in the back.  There is no way, when sitting, to surreptitiously scratch that itch.  It would have looked even odder if I stood up to do it.  Of course I knew that when I scratched it, the lovely Elaine would say, “What are you doing?”  This would have immediately drawn even more attention to me.  But sometimes you don’t have a choice so I took care of it, she responded as anticipated and fortunately no one stared directly at me.  But they knew, they knew.

I have just looked over what I have written and all I can say is imagine how much there would be if I had something to say.  Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll see you next week.

Here we are in April already!  Today is Sunday, the 7^th.  Happy birthday to Michel Adanson, Francis Ford Coppola and Tiki and Ronde Barber.  In 1798, the territory of Mississippi was organized; in 1891 Nebraska introduced the 8 hour work day and in 1957 the last of New York’s electric trolleys completed its final run.  It is Republic Day in Yugoslavia.  In China it is Ching Ming – that is when families gather at the graves of ancestors.  On Friday it will be Student Government Day in Massachusetts.

I was grocery shopping recently and it occurred to me that I am becoming, at best curmudgeonly and at worst a curmudgeon.  The former means that I am still the “me” I have always been, but things can get me peeved.  The latter means that everything gets me peeved and I am not the loveable guy I used to be.  I want to believe that I am curmudgeonly, at least for now.

I realized that many of the things I experienced on my shopping sojourn set me off.  The drive to the store entailed riding behind every 90 year old with a driver’s license.  I swear that one woman in front of me had to alternate between seeing where she was going and using the gas and brake pedals.  There was no way she was doing them at the same time.  I managed to get behind one guy that made me want to run up to his car and ask if he was okay.  He drove as if he was in the middle of a seizure or something.  I found myself complaining out loud, as if it would help.  For information purposes let me just say that it does not.

When I got to the store parking lot, it seemed like every car in front of me was waiting for the same handicapped parking space to open up, although I did think that a couple of the old guys were just napping.  At least one third of the lot was empty, but most of the cars were waiting for people to load their groceries and leave so that they could take the space and not have to walk an extra 10 feet.  Maybe if they walked a little they would not have a butt the size of Rhode Island.  The problem was getting by them to the open spaces.  These people who are so reluctant to walk pull their car up in such a way that you cannot get by them.  I guess they feel they are preventing you from getting their space.  What makes it worse is that they pull up so far that the car in the space cannot get out.  Now they have to back up which creates a whole other set of problems.

Let me just tell you something else I discovered.  Early afternoon is not a good time to go grocery shopping.  Unless, of course, you like putting yourself in situations that make you want to strangle people.  I was behind one man who walked down the middle of the aisle.  He would take seven or eight steps, stop and look around as if on a tour, take another set of seven or eight steps, look around and on and on and on.  Fortunately, the rows are not that long and after 15 minutes we got to the end and I was able to get around him.  When I was finished and leaving the store I saw him again and he was only about one third of the way through the store and only had six items in his cart.

Understand, I do not expect everyone to move through the store at the same pace as I do.  My pace is motivated by a desire to get done and out of there and by the need to do so before I have to hurt someone.  I really think that you should have some idea of what you are shopping for before you go to the store.  The best idea would be to have a list.  The lovely Elaine makes her list based on the layout of the store.  This way you can go in and find the items in the order that you come across them.  There were people in that store who were not even sure where they were, let alone what they wanted.

One thing that bothered me was my concern that in a few years I will become one of those people who were driving me crazy today.  I suppose that will be my revenge for all the times I was made crazy.  Maybe I will be lucky and will be a vexation for the family members of the people who were such an ordeal for me. 

The ride home was no better.  The second shift of crazies was out and this was comprised of the same old folks as earlier, with the addition of moms trying to get things done before they went to school 45 minutes early to get a parking space so they could pick up their offspring.  The whole “don’t park too far away” and Rhode Island butt thing was at work there, too.  I managed to get behind one person who was apparently practicing to pull a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  Based on our progress, this person is set to go.

As I said, I wonder if I am curmudgeonly or a curmudgeon.  I would like to think that I am the former, but it won’t take much to move me to the other side.  So, watch it and stay out of my way!