Today is Sunday, November 13 and there are only 42 days until Christmas.  I am already starting to get stuff I need for Christmas Eve dinner.  Today we remember the birthdays of St Augustine of Hippo, Robert Louis Stevenson and Oskar Werner.  On this day in 1775 American Revolutionary forces captured Montreal, in 1895 Hawaii sent out the first shipment of canned pineapple and in 1982 the Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.  In Grenada and New Zealand it is Remembrance Day, in Laos it is the King’s Birthday and in the US it is National Indian Pudding Day.

For those of you who might care (if you don’t, skip this paragraph) Indian Pudding is a traditional New England Thanksgiving dessert.  It is a baked custard with milk, butter, molasses, eggs, spices and cornmeal.  The name probably comes from the cornmeal, which was known as Indian meal way back when.  In case you were wondering.

This past Friday I celebrated the 37th anniversary of my 30th birthday.  I had a great day with the kids.  I got some great gifts, but one of the best was a can of coffee and chicory from the Café du Monde in New Orleans.  When we were down there last year, we had coffee and beignets almost every day.  Talk about a treat!  Anyway, the kids were able to get the coffee for me.  Unfortunately, the café does not ship frozen beignets.  I had the coffee with breakfast yesterday and it was great.

As if great gifts were not enough, we also went to Asbury Park to a place that is filled with pinball machines from as far back as the ‘60’s.  You pay a straight price when you go in, get a wrist band and then just walk around playing pinball.  It was terrific.  We finished the day off with dinner at a restaurant that gave veterans their meal for free.  Great gifts, spending the day with my family and a free dinner, what more could I ask for!

I have a couple issues I want to discuss today.  One is a commercial that is just a perfect example of bad.  The product is a spray that you use in the toilet.  Supposedly, you spray this and then go to the bathroom and the spray suppresses the odor.  The name of the product alone is tasteless.  The commercial starts out with the spokesperson talking about going to the bathroom by saying she has to “punish the porcelain.”  She goes on to say how the product covers the odor of “the devil’s donuts” and how it prevents her co-workers from having to share her breakfast burrito.

I am sure that, if it actually works as advertised, it is a good product.  I would have chosen a different name for it, and no I will not use the name here.  I would also have spent some time coming up with a better commercial.  At one point it shows people entering the bathroom after her and wafting the air with their hand.  If I were going into a bathroom as someone else was leaving, the last thing I would do was waft the air.  I might stand there with the door open for a minute or two, or look for air freshener, just in case.  I would not try to get a better whiff of the odor.  I hope you get a chance to see this commercial.  I think everyone needs to be appalled once in a while.

I am still in the throes of getting matters taken care of after the lovely Elaine’s passing.  Most recently, I have been dealing with banks.  All I can say is that there are a number of people who should be happy I do not own a gun.  In this state, when a spouse passes, you need to use one of two different forms when dealing with banks.  Based on my circumstances I needed to use the Inheritance Tax Waiver form.  For various reasons, I had to deal with three banks and a credit union.  The number of banks was due, partially, to having parents who grew up during the depression and did not put all their funds in one bank because if one bank failed … but I digress.

You would think that because all of the banks are in the same state that they would all do things the same way, based on banking regulations.  You would be wrong.  As I said, three banks and a credit union and all had their own way of doing what had to be done.  Keep in mind that I worked in a credit union and know the process that should be followed.  One of the banks did not ask for the tax waiver and just went ahead as if it was not needed.  The credit union did not ask for any supporting documents (death certificate, etc.), said they would take care of the changes and ultimately have not done anything and claim, when I call, that it is all taken care of.

The other two banks are the worst.  One bank cannot do anything in the branch and has to do everything through their corporate office in another state, which requires that everything be done by mail.  For example, the branch could not go into their computer and give me the balance of the account as of the date of death.  That had to be done through the corporate office, who, by the way, would just go into the computer and look at the same information that was available in the branch.  Ultimately that place was taken care of.

The best was the bank that gave me the date of death balance.  My lawyer filed the forms and we got the tax waivers.  I took it to the one bank and it turns out that the balance they gave me was the wrong one.  I asked how the amount could be wrong when they were the ones who gave it to me.  The person I was dealing with just looked at me and shrugged.  They told me I would have to get an amended waiver.  I told him to note this in the computer so they would understand why I closed my account.  My lawyer had never heard of this before.  He is now trying to get in touch with the tax people to find out what we have to do.  Stay tuned!

This week our fact tells us that if you spell out all the numbers individually, you’ll have to get to a thousand before you find an “a”.  I can see you running numbers through your head now to test this.  I am not going to wait, but trust me, it is correct.

One final thought that I read recently – The fact that there is a highway to Hell and only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.  Have a good week and save me some Indian Pudding.