It is Sunday September 28 and there are only 61 days until Black Friday.  By now you should be plotting your route to the various stores and staking out your spot at the most important one.  Today we recognize the birthdays of Confucius, Caravaggio and Brigitte Bardot.  On this day in 1542 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered California, at San Diego Bay, in 1924 US Army planes ended their around-the-world flight, Seattle to Seattle, making 57 stops along the way and in 1968 the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” single went to #1 and stayed there for 9 weeks.  In Guinea it is Referendum Day, yesterday was Kiwanis Kids’ Day and today is Good Neighbor Day in the US.

Last week we had the opportunity to travel to Long Island for a birthday party.  What made this different is that the party was for a 95 year old woman that we have not seen in well over 35 years.  She is the mother of two very good friends of ours that we also haven’t seen in some time.  Henrietta and her family used to live just down the street from where the lovely Elaine lived with her parents.  Doug and I were great friends through high school, but as with many people, we went our separate ways and lost contact over the years.  His younger brother Kenny and his wife became great friends with Elaine and I later on.  We went out together all the time and I am surprised at the number of times we were not thrown out of restaurants and theaters.  We tended to not behave in an adult way.

Unfortunately, we lost track of each other when Kenny moved out of the area.  It was too bad because we all had a lot of fun together … but I digress.  We went to the party and had a great time.  It was great to see Doug and Kenny and to relive old times.  It was especially good because it was at a celebration and not a wake.  Henrietta looks great.  It was so nice to see her.  She was always one of the favorite mothers in our crowd of kids.  She has a hearing problem and did not always track what was going on (sounds a lot like me, but don’t call me Henrietta), but she was sharp and great to talk to and reminisce with.  The lovely Elaine and I were very happy to have been included in the celebration and glad that we were able to make it.

I would like to take a few minutes to discuss to ride there and back.  It was a convoluted route that involved several different highways, a couple bridges and some terrible roads.  We had to take the turnpike, I 95, the George Washington Bridge, the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Throgs Neck Bridge, the Cross Island Parkway and the Long Island Expressway.  We had to make the drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic, both ways, much of the time and drive with the maniac drivers of New York.  The roads are in terrible condition and there was some construction work that slowed things down even more. 

It is interesting to watch the New York drivers in action.  They poke along in the crawling traffic, but are always on the lookout for a space to swerve into that will get them a half a car length ahead of where they are.  Once they are in their new lane, they are looking for the next opportunity to switch.  I saw several cars jump into a lane that appeared to be moving faster and then jump back into the lane they were just in because it had started to move.  I was exhausted just watching others drive.  Add to that frustration the tolls – the GWB was $13.00 and the Throgs Neck was $7.50 each way – and it is no wonder New York drivers are crazy.  At least now I understand why they drive like maniacs when they come into New Jersey.  By comparison to what we experienced, our roads are wide open.  While our tolls have increased over the years, they are nothing like NY.  Take the trip to Long Island some time and you will realize that driving in NJ is not so bad.

Here is something else that has puzzled me for some time.  Why does the rear view mirror on the passenger side tell us that objects are closer than they appear?  Why is that done?  Do we really need to be confused when we are driving?  The mirror on the driver side is a standard mirror that shows us what is where and does not alter our view.  Why couldn’t they just use the same type of mirror on the passenger side? 

I don’t know about you, but when I am driving along at 65 mph and want to change lanes to the right, I really do not have time to look in the mirror and then try to determine how close the car behind me is.  Even more confusing is that the mirror in the car shows me that the car is close, but when I look outside, the mirror shows that it is farther away.  Now I have to take a moment to read the notice on the bottom of the right side mirror, realize the inside mirror is more accurate and then hope that the car does not get so close that I can’t use the inside mirror anymore.  Just my opinion, but I think this needs to be corrected.  Of course, we have become so used to it that if it is corrected, drivers may not read the notice that objects are as close as they appear and we could have other problems.  So, in the words of Emily Latella – “Never mind.”

This week our fact tells us that Charlie Brown’s father was a barber.  With that in mind, you’d think that he could have done something better with Charlie’s hair.  Oh well.  See you next week.