It is Sunday, May 31 and there are only 99 days until Labor Day.  Keep an eye out for the Back-To-School sales coming soon.  Today we remember the birthdays of Norman Vincent Peale, John “Bonzo” Bonham and Brooke Shields.  On this day in 1678 Lady Godiva rode naked through Coventry in a protest of taxes, in 1790 the US copyright law was enacted and in 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded “Give Peace a Chance.”  It is President’s Day in Botswana, Union Day in Namibia and South Africa and Independence Day in Zimbabwe.

I would like to take a minute to go back to Memorial Day.  I thought it was interesting to hear people wish others a Happy Memorial Day.  I understand that it is a holiday, but it is not a day that warrants the greeting “Happy.”  It is a day to remember those who gave their lives in service to their country.  Unfortunately, it has become the day that unofficially ushers in summer.  It is a day that everyone looks forward to.  I get that and I enjoy the day as much as anyone else.  I just think that we need to make a better effort to understand what the day means.  I want to start a trend – from now on instead of saying “Happy …” let’s say “Remember Memorial Day.”  Thank you for letting me vent.

My question this week is what is the deal with the way we price things?  The other day I went to get gas in my car and the price was $2.42 9/10.  Really?  Why don’t we just say $2.43 and be done with it?  What I find even more interesting is that when someone asks what we paid for gas we say $2.42.  We don’t add the 9/10 and we don’t round up to $2.43.  When you go shopping, the item you want to buy is never priced at a straight $60 (as an example).  It is usually priced at $59.99.  Do you really feel like you are getting a bargain by seeing a price of $59.99 rather than $60?  Especially when you know that the item you are getting probably only cost about $20 to produce, ship and put on the shelf.

I know that some stores set the price so that the register can tell if it is a specialty item or a store brand or special sale or whatever.  That explains why some prices end in a 7 or 8 or 9, but I would think that with the level of technology we have today, the register would know regardless of what the price ends with.  The different prices are not for the employees.  Some of the people I have dealt with are lucky they can remember their name, let alone what the various numbers mean.

In the future, I would like to see prices be more honest.  Tell me that gas costs $2.43.  Let me know that the shirt I want is $60 and that it is a special sale that will end on a certain date.  The idea that it is necessary to confuse people with the way we price things bothers me and, frankly, confuses me.  There was a time when it was believed that the price was set so that when sales tax was added, it would create a round number.  I think we all know by now that is a myth.  

On the home buying front, it appears that the lovely Elaine and I have found our next abode.  We went and viewed it a second time and checked certain things we glossed over the first time.  It offers us the space that we wanted, it gives us one floor living and it is close to the kids.  After seeing it the first time, we were discussing it and the lovely Elaine suddenly realized that she did not remember seeing towel racks in the bathrooms.  She started to get worked up over this.  I assured her that there were towel racks.  I also pointed out that if there were not, we could buy some and install them ourselves.  That mollified her, somewhat.

When we decided to make an offer, we went back the realtor’s office and began filling out the pounds of paperwork that are required to make this purchase.  I get the feeling that the amount of paperwork is commensurate to the size of the purchase.  I thought we had to sign a fair number of documents when I purchased my car recently.  That size pile was nothing compared to what we signed for the house and that was just the initial offer and contract.  I know there will be more when we finally close.  I just hope that some of the paper is made from recycled products – such as paper.

I know that there will be a number of issues for us to deal with as we progress, so I will keep you up-to-date on things as we go along.  There will be the need to schedule inspections, knowing that each inspector feels that his or her time is more valuable than ours and will schedule the inspection when it is convenient for him or her.  Fortunately, they get done before we buy the house so the current owners will have to deal with the inconvenience, I hope.  We will also have to deal with selecting paint colors, some floor covering and other incidentals.  The lovely Elaine and I each have our own ideas on what we want so it will be interesting to see which of her ideas we will use and which of mine we will chuckle about and then ignore.  Anyway, watch this space for updates.

This week our fact tells us that it takes about 142.18 licks (see that is what I am talking about – not 143 licks, but 142.18) to reach the center of a Tootsie pop.  I am still not sure why people feel they need to find this type of information out.  Why do we care?  What is the official definition of a lick?  Most importantly, how does one measure .18 of a lick?  I just hope that now that we have solved this weighty issue, we can move on to more important issues like where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

It is Sunday, May 24 and there are only 186 days until Thanksgiving, so start thawing that turkey now.  Today we remember the birthdays of Oliver Cromwell, Victoria Alexandrine and Bob Dylan.  On this day in 1626 Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Indians for trinkets valued at $24, in 1830 “Mary Had A Little Lamb” was written and in 1954 IBM announced the vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour.  In Bulgaria it is Education Day/Enlightenment and Culture Day, in England it is Victoria Day/Empire Day and in the US tomorrow is Memorial Day.

Quick question for you – when you read about “Mary Had A Little Lamb” being written, you started humming the tune didn’t you?

As you may have realized by now, I do not usually let holidays like Memorial Day go by without talking about them.  I will try to be brief.  Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America.  Over two dozen cities and towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.  Regardless of the exact location of its origins, one thing is clear – Memorial Day was borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead. 

It was officially proclaimed by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.  “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

So tomorrow, take a moment to bow your head in silence to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country.  You don’t have to agree with the wars, but you should recognize the sacrifice.

“All gave some, but some gave all.”  Thank you.

Last week, we went down the shore to meet up with our kids and walk the boardwalk.  Yes I said down the shore.  For those of you who are not from around here, “down the shore” is how we refer to going to the various communities that are on the Jersey coastline.  We go to the beach, but only after we go down the shore … but I digress (and possibly confuse).

It was on the cool side but it was fun to be there and enjoy the time with the kids.  We walked the boardwalk and tried something that my son had told me about, but I had not done before.  We went to a stand that sold fried stuff.  My son and I got two different items and then shared them.  He got fried creamed corn nuggets and I got fried chocolate covered bacon, which was like having chocolate covered bacon in a zeppole.  OMG!  Both were incredible. 

This place did so many things that I am going to have to go back many more times.  They had fried Oreos, Snickers, Milky Ways, Twix bars and on and on.  One of the things I want to try is the Fried Elvis, which is a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.  One of my grandsons had fried cheese balls.  Give me a glass of wine and a plate full of those and I would be good.  My cholesterol would sky rocket, but you only go around once.  You might as well enjoy some fried foods in the process.

Our younger grandson went on several rides.  He is amazing.  He goes on rides that I get nauseous just looking at, especially after eating fried bacon.  He gets on these rides and just goes, no hands, laughing and having the time of his life.  God bless him, he knows how to enjoy being a kid.  We went into a couple of the arcades and the boys played the various games to win tickets for the prizes.  I am amazed by what a rip-off that deal is.  It took 100 points just to get a piece of gum.  If Peter Minuit had to get his trinkets to buy Manhattan at the arcades on the boardwalk, it would have cost him several hundred dollars for the $24 worth of trinkets.

I won’t go into the details of the sights we saw on the boards that night, because you probably have been there and seen them for yourself; or, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.  I will say, at the risk of repeating myself, there should be a law that requires people to look in the mirror and see themselves the way they are seen by others.  There is no way some of them could look in the mirror and think, “Yeah, this looks good.”  I saw one woman wearing an outfit that would have been too small and too tight for a woman half her size.  All I could think was, “Put on a caftan or something.  No one wants to see that.”  I think every group should have a designated critic who will tell people honestly what they look like.  Someone had to tell that woman that she looked like a hippo in her baby daughter’s sun dress.

 This week, our fact is a list of more obscure laws that I thought you might find interesting.

It is against the law to doze off under a hair dryer in Florida.

It is against the law to slap an old friend on the back in Georgia.

It was once against the law to have a pet dog in the city in Iceland.

It was once illegal to slam your car door in the city in Switzerland.

It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy if your name is Mary.

It is illegal to eat oranges while bathing in California.

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

It is against the law to water a garden in the rain in Montreal, Canada.

It is against the law to sell an ET doll in France.  They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces.

My questions are what could have happened that required these laws and are they ever really enforced?  I imagine you could generate some income if you did actively enforce them.

 

Happy unofficial first day of summer!

It is Sunday, May 17 and there are only 48 days until July 4^th, so get your sparklers and fireworks ready.  Today we remember the birthdays of Sandro Botticelli, Dewey Redman and Brigitte Nielsen.  On this day in 1792 24 merchants formed the New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street, in 1883 Buffalo Bill Cody’s first wild west show premiered in Omaha and in 1989 Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr Gachet” was auctioned for $82.5 million.  In Norway it is Independence Day and in Cuba it is Agrarian Reform/Peasant Day.

When I read about the Van Gogh piece being sold for $82.5 million, I thought that I should look at it, thinking that it must be one magnificent piece of artwork.  I pulled it up on my computer and thought, “Are you kidding?”  Let me first admit that I am not an expert in art, nor do I profess to be able to discuss the quality and workmanship of someone like Van Gogh.  Having said that, when I looked at the picture I was puzzled as to what made it worth over $80 million.  Take the time to look it up and tell me if you think it is worth that much.  I realize that it is a Van Gogh, but come on.  Even if I had that kind of money, I would not have spent it all on that picture.

This portrait is one of Van Gogh's most well known since it holds the distinction as the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. “The Portrait of Doctor Gachet” was sold within three minutes for $82.5 million (U.S.) to Ryoei Saito, Japan's second-largest paper manufacturer. This record remains unbeaten, but an ironic footnote to this sale is the recent news that Christie's has purchased the work back from Mr. Saito for one-eighth the price he paid for it.  So it appears that Christie’s didn’t even think it was worth that much money.  

I am sure that I have mentioned this in the past, but I am constantly amazed by people and their smart phones.  They are constantly looking at them, texting, tweeting, googling and who knows what else.  Part of it may be that I do not have a smart phone, I have a dumb phone.  I can make and receive calls and I can send and receive texts, but that is all I can do.  As hard as some people find it to believe, I am still using a prepaid program.  I pay a fee once a year and that is it.  I really do not need much more than that.

I do not use my phone often.  Generally, no one calls me because very few people even have my number.  When they ask what it is and I explain that they can’t send me pictures or group texts, they usually say, “Oh.  Never mind.”  The lovely Elaine calls me once in awhile to remind me to pick up something at the grocery store.  My doctor’s office uses it to remind me that I have an appointment.  I do not know why they don’t just use the home phone like they do for Elaine’s appointments, but they call my cell.

My brother Jack sends me text messages to let me know what is going on and I usually end up calling him because it is easier to talk.  Keep in mind that it takes time for me to send a text.  When I type, I use two fingers.  I never learned how to type and I am not about to start now.  I use two fingers, generally.  When I text, I have to hold the phone with one hand so I can only use one finger to type.  I have watched others text with their thumbs and marvel at the speed with which they can get a message out.  I cannot.  I tried it once and was smart enough to read it before I sent it.  What I saw on the screen was not what I thought I was typing.  Apparently, my thumbs are not capable of only hitting one letter at a time.

So one finger it is.  The lovely Elaine says it is painful to watch me text.  She claims that my mouth is open as I slowly type out my message.  It may be.  I am so busy concentrating on getting the words spelled right that I am too busy to notice that saliva is running into my beard.  Part of my problem is that I feel that I have to use proper punctuation, so it takes extra time to press the function button and then find the right key for what I want.  

Why can’t people just talk to each other.  I see this all the time when I am people watching.  Someone is walking along texting to another person.  Their head is down and they are typing rapidly.  They stop, presumably because they have sent their message.  Soon they receive a reply and start to send the next text.  This goes on and on – head down, typing, looking at the phone waiting for the reply, typing some more, waiting some more – and so on.  Wouldn’t it be simpler to just call the person, walk with your head up so you can see where you are going and just talk to them?  I am amazed that more people do not walk into each other because they are so busy looking at their phone and not where they are going.

I find texting less than satisfying because you cannot express yourself completely.  The recipient does not know what mood you are expressing, they cannot always identify sarcasm or humor and it is not always apparent when the conversation is done.  I always wonder if they are waiting for me to text more or if we have finished what we were texting about.  I suppose I am old fashioned in that way.  The only good thing is that, because I don’t text a lot and have had carpal tunnel syndrome will not be a big problem for me.  Besides, I’ve had it corrected in both hands already and do not want to go through it again.  The lovely Elaine has said that the two medical fields to go into are treating people with neck problems and people with carpal tunnel.

This week our fact tells us that it costs more to buy a new car today in the US than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to the New World.  Of course if he had spent the extra money he could have gotten the GPS package and actually found the Indies.

It is Sunday, May 10 and there are just 15 days until Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of summer.   Start slathering on the sun screen.  Today we recognize the birthdays of John Wilkes Booth, Taurean Blacque and Sid Vicious.  On this day in 1497 the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci left for his first voyage to the New World, in 1752 Benjamin Franklin first tested the lightening rod and in 1908 the first Mother’s Day was observed.  In Hong Kong it is Tin Hau’s Day. In Thailand they are celebrating the Ploughing Ceremony and in the US it is Mother’s Day.

I have discussed Mother’s Day in past episodes and do not want to bore you with the same details again.  This year I thought I would just toss out a few random facts I may have missed in the past.  Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele.  More phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than any other day of the year. These holiday chats with Mom often cause phone traffic to spike by as much as 37 percent.

The roots of the modern American Mother’s Day date back to the 19th century.  In the years before the Civil War (1861-65), Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to teach local women how to properly care for their children. These clubs later became a unifying force in a region of the country still divided over the Civil War. In 1868 Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.   As I said, I don’t want to bore you by repeating facts, so I just wanted to share these couple things to help round out your knowledge.

The lovely Elaine has decided that since we are planning to move at some point, there is no reason to wait until the last minute to start getting ready.  With that in mind I have started to clean out the garage.  I spent one full day so far and I am amazed at the number of things I had in there.  As I started carrying things out for bulk pick-up, I couldn’t help but think, repeatedly, “What the hell was I saving that for?”  I had pieces of paneling from when I did the bathroom a number of years ago.  There was some wood in there that I am not sure what project they were left over from or why I would have purchased them.  I could not think of what they were used for.  I am not even sure it isn’t stuff left over from the previous owner and I never noticed them until now.  Who knows (at this point I have shrugged my shoulders)?

Why did I shrug my shoulders?  What exactly is a shrug?  It is defined as the movement of raising and contracting the shoulders in a gesture expressing indifference; or, it is a short sweater or jacket that ends above or at the waist.  Does that mean that if you wear a shrug you are indifferent to how you look in it?  I have shrugged again.  But I digress …

So, there I was cleaning junk out of the garage.  There were two benefits to this chore.  One was that it got rid of stuff that should have gone a long time ago.  The other was that it gave me a chance to drag out my table saw so I could cut the large pieces of wood and paneling into smaller pieces that the garbage men would take.  We have a good system in my town.  The second garbage pick-up each week is considered bulk pick-up.  This means you can put out almost anything; however, if it is wood and paneling, it has to be in pieces no wider than 12 inches and no longer than four feet.  It also has to be tied in bundles.

So I got to run my table saw, cutting stuff up.  One of the nice things about this was that I did not have to make exact cuts.  I could just slap it on the table and push it by the blade.  The garbage men were not going to stand there examining the bundles and rejecting pieces that were not cut straight.  At least I do not think they would.  Also, by doing it in the driveway I didn’t have to worry about cleaning up the sawdust.  

Earlier in the week, the lovely Elaine and I went to a mall we had not been to in a while.  It was nice to shop there.  The stores had clothing that was not meant to be worn by rail thin people who had no taste in colors.  The shirts were geared more toward people like me who can be called a number of things, but thin is not one of them.   I also like the colors teal, red, blue, green, purple and brown, but not all in one shirt.  Some of the color combinations that have come out in plaids lately make me wonder if the designers are suffering from adverse affects to recreational drugs.

We went to the mall on our anniversary.  We decided to go to that mall because they had a Cinnabon and a Starbucks.  We felt that would make a great breakfast.  It did!  We did some shopping, the lovely Elaine found several things she wanted and I did not buy a shirt.  One of the drawbacks to leaving her alone, with no plan, is that she finds interesting things to do.  Specifically, she recently decided to count how many shirts I have.  In my defense let me say that I tend to perspire and usually only get one day’s wear out of a shirt, so I need to have a wardrobe that allows me the ability to wear clean shirts without having to do laundry every five or six days.  I do not need to divulge the actual number.  Suffice it to say that I may want to scale back the inventory a bit.

This week our fact tells us that in the last 50 years, the average working vocabulary of a 15 year old has decreased from 25,000 words to just 10,000 words.  The three top words they use, based on what I hear, are like, dude and awesome.  I mean, like, dude it would be awesome if they could say more, like, words and stuff.

Don’t forget to wish mom a Happy Mother’s Day!