Today is Sunday, August 7 (I know it seems like the last time I wrote it was July and now we are in August. Tempus really does fugit.) and there are only 109 days until Thanksgiving.  There is still time to go hunting for mince so you can make mince meat pie.  Today we remember the birthdays of Carl Ritter, Mata Hari and Garrison Keillor.  On this day in 1498 Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, in 1782 George Washington created the Order of the Purple Heart and in 1974 Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  On the Ivory Coast it is Independence Day, in Trinidad & Tobago it is Discovery Day and in the US it is National Lighthouse Day and National Friendship Day.

This past week, I took a day to go and spend some time sitting on the beach.  There is a state park that the lovely Elaine and I used to go to and I thought I would spend some time there.  It was a nice day, not too hot and a decent breeze was blowing.  What made it even better was there was a good crowd of people there.  I am constantly amazed at how some people present themselves in public.  Ladies, just because you like how a bathing suit looks on your 16 year old daughter, doesn't mean it looks good on you, too.  Especially when you are still working on losing that pregnancy weight.  I saw one woman that I wanted to go over to and tell her to cover up.  I mean really, no one wanted to see that.  She was one of those people who should be required to have supervision when buying swimwear.

Believe me, the guys were no better.  At one point I wanted to check to see if I missed the regulation that required men to have a belly that extended a minimum of six inches out over their waistband.  I walked down to the water and stood there for a few minutes to see if I would be chastised for not adhering to the rule, but I wasn’t, so I assume it is not a requirement.  I also saw a lot of people who thought they were working on their tan, but looked more like they were working on sun poisoning.  Some of them made cooked lobsters look pale.  There was going to be a lot of sore people that night.  I wisely had a cap and used plenty of sun screen.  If you want to see a lot more of some people than you need to, the beach is the place to go.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some really nice looking women walking along the beach.  I am sure there were men, too, but frankly I was not looking for them.  I wasn't specifically looking for women, either.  I just happened to notice them more.  There were also a lot of people who would be considered slightly overweight.  They were not unattractive and wore bathing suits that did not hide their charms, but fit them and were made for people their size.  At one point I saw a family walk by and all I could think of was the comment my younger grandson made regarding witnessing the migration of the whales.

Moving on, I hate to be repetitious, but I am getting tired of all the stupid commercials that are coming out lately.  There is one that touts the water resistance and durability of their phone.  Those are good qualities and they should want people to know about them.  However, they chose to do so by having a guy fumble the phone out of a building, through traffic, across town and through his house, then drop it, have it fall down stairs and into a puddle of water.  Then he picks it up and responds to a text and it works.  If you want to be humorous to get your message across, fine, be humorous, not stupid.
I continue to find insurance company commercials the most annoying.  All I can say about one company is, “Flo, please retire!”  Another company seems to have two requirements for their commercials.  The first is that the script has to be ridiculous.  You know the ones I mean.  The ones where you named your car or you smashed it into a tree or they don’t want you driving on three wheels.  Yeah, those.  The other requirement seems to be that the people doing the commercial have to be annoying while they do it.  There is one that has a woman doing the commercial and every time it comes on, I just want to slap her.  Sorry, every now and then I have to vent.

For something to do the other day, I fell back on a favorite pastime, I went to the mall, got coffee and watched the show.  On this particular day I chose to wear one of my Vietnam Veteran shirts.  As a result, I was given my coffee for free.  The young lady at the counter also thanked me for my service.  She was taken aback when I responded by saying thank you for caring … but I digress.  As I said, I was at the mall and again I must not have gotten the e-mail announcing that it was go out dressed like a slob day.  I wear better clothes when I am gardening than some of the people I saw.

One guy looked like he mugged a homeless man and took his underwear.  I spotted a woman who was wearing what my mother used to call a housecoat and a pair of flip-flops that seemed to have lost their flip.  There were also the young guys who were trying to see what they would look like when they were in their 70’s, wearing shorts, dark socks and sandals.  I see that often, but don’t quite get it.  I realize that you are just going shopping, not to a wedding, but you don’t have to look like you didn’t quite make the cut to be a Walmartian.  Use a mirror before you go out!

This week our fact tells us that if humans had the same metabolism as a hummingbird, they would have to intake 150,000 calories a day.  Let me just say that I saw a number of hummingbirds on the beach, if you know what I mean.