It is Sunday, June 28 and there are only 87 days until Good Neighbor Day, so cut your grass and clean up the weeds.  Today we remember the birthdays of Peter Paul Rubens, Richard Rodgers and Mel Brooks. On this day in 1770 Quakers opened a school for blacks in Philadelphia,in 1820 the tomato was proven to be non-poisonous and in 1971 Filmore East closed.  In Malta it is Mnarja Day and in Iowa it is Independence Sunday.

I was in our local grocery store recently and wanted to get some cold cuts.  They have a section that has some of the standards pre-cut so you don?t have to take a number and wait in line.  I was looking for ham and knew they would have it in the pre-cut section. I went over, picked up the ham and read the label to be sure I had what I was looking for.  The label told me that I had selected "Store-sliced Domestic Ham."  I wondered where else it would have been sliced.  Maybe at the bowling alley across the street or at the motorcycle store down the block.  Why did they feel it was necessary to tell me where it was sliced?  Were they afraid I wouldn't buy it if I wasn't told?

My bigger issue with them is not so much where it was sliced as how it was sliced.  The store has a machine that allows you to order your cold cuts when you first come in.  You select what you want, how much you want and how you want it sliced.  The "how you want it sliced" is where I have an issue.  There are no standards and the thickness is determined by who is preparing the order. The choices are thick, regular (?), thin and very thin.

I usually choose thin. What I actually get is a crap shoot. Occasionally, I get it the way I want it.  Sometimes I get what I would suppose is regular because it is slightly thicker than I want.  Sometimes it is so thin that I can see through it.  Once it was so thick that I ordered a half pound and got six slices. I could tell by the feel that this was wrong and had it re-done.  One time, as I was picking up my order from the case, one of the deli workers came over and proudly told me that he had done my order.  I looked at his name tag and said, "Good. At least now I know who to blame if it is wrong."  He disappeared quickly.

The other evening, the lovely Elaine and I were watching TV and I did something I don't usually do. I listened to a commercial.  It was for the medication of the week.  You know what I mean.  Just about every week there is a new medication for some ailment or another.  Sometimes I think they create a condition just so they can push another drug on the unsuspecting public ... but I digress.

As I listened to the commercial, they started to go into the side effects.  I often wonder how most of these drugs get on the market.  It takes them longer to list all the problems than it takes to tell you what the drug is for.  Why is it that almost every drug requires that you be tested for tuberculosis? Another question is why do almost all drugs make you have suicidal thoughts?  How is this reaction a good one when you take the pill to battle depression?  And, do I really want to take a drug for arthritis that can cause cancer?  When my son was younger, he had a congestion issue and the doctor prescribed a medication for him.  One of the side effects was that it could cause nasal congestion. I?m sorry, what was that?  But I am digressing again.

The specific commercial I listened to said that the drug should not be given to children under six and was not recommended for children ages six to 17.  Wouldn't it have been easier to just say that children under 17 should not take it?  Is it me or do others hear this stuff and wonder the same things?  That was rhetorical so don?t worry about getting back to me on it.

As a result of listening to that commercial, I started listening to others.  There is a tea that claims that their drink is made from tea that is mountain grown.  My issue with this is how do we prove it?  Maybe they have a field of plants in the mountains that they show to people who ask and the rest of the tea is grown in climate-controlled sheds in the desert somewhere.  In any event, would most consumers be able to tell the difference?  Probably not, but they will buy the beverage simply because they are told it is better having been mountain grown.

I find some commercials interesting because they claim their product is better than their competitors, naturally.  Then you see the competitor's commercial and they claim their product is the best for the same reasons.  There are always demonstrations that show the advertising product to its best advantage while showing the competition as totally ineffective.  Then you flip to the competitor and they show the same comparison, only this time their product wins.

I think the lovely Elaine has the best solution.  Buy what you think will do the job you want done.  If it doesn't, return it!  Her attitude is that if your product doesn't deliver as advertised, then take it back and give me my money back.  I usually make the returns because I have more fun with it.  The person doing the job asks why I am returning it and I tell them, "Because my wife told me to."  Or I say, "Because I thought it was a better idea than she did."  That type of response usually cuts down on the chit chat and makes the process go much quicker.

This week our fact tells us that lightning strikes the earth6000 times per minute.  6000 times per minute!  And there are still people walking around that I have wished would get struck and haven?t.  You would think the odds would be more in my favor.Have a good week and watch out for lightning.