Today is Sunday, May 20 and there are only 219 days until Christmas.  Make sure your family members are doing spectacular things so you can brag about them in the annual letter.  Today we remember the birthdays of William Thornton, William George Fargo and William Cullen Bryant.  On this day in 1310 shoes were first made for both the right and left feet, in 1639 Dorchester, MA, formed the first school funded by local taxes and in 1874 Levi Strauss marketed blue jeans with copper rivets at a price of $13.50 a dozen.  In Bulgaria it is Botev Day, in Cameroon it is Constitution Day and in the US it is National Pick Strawberries Day, National Quiche Lorraine Day and National Take Your Parents to the Playground Day.

I have noticed, lately, that it is becoming easier to annoy me.  I am not sure if this is because I am becoming less tolerant, people, in general, are becoming more annoying or a combination of both.  I know I have talked about this group of people before, but they are still around.  I like to think that it is coincidental and not a conspiracy to make me crazy, but they are there.  I am talking about the people who wait until I am working on a tight time frame and then decide to get in front of me and drive like they are having a grand mal seizure.  Just the other morning I was taking Barbara to a doctor’s appointment and a car pulled in front of us and drove as if he was practicing to pull a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

What made it worse was that he did not seem to have any idea where he actually wanted to go.  We finally came to a traffic light.  I was turning left and he was going right.  When the light turned green I went and was a fair distance down the road when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw that he had finally made the turn.  I can only guess that he was not aware that I was no longer behind him.  It is really very simple, people.  Know where you are going before you leave the house, at least do the speed limit and try to stay out of my way.  Thank you!

I am one of the first people to admit that I am not very tech savvy.  Fortunately, my son works in IT.  I am sure I give him a fair amount of amusement when I call and ask questions that my 12 year old grandson could answer.  I am still in awe of how the Polaroid camera works, so the current stuff can befuddle me.  What really grinds me is just as I am getting used to how an app works on my phone, they decide to update it and now, suddenly, it does not do things the way it did before, the screens all look different and I have to spend another two weeks figuring it out.   There should be some kind of method that allows older people to keep the app the way it was to avoid confusion.

I am going to express an opinion that I am sure is not held by many people, but here goes.  Frankly, I would have preferred it if Meghan and Harry eloped and got married in a drunken party in Las Vegas.  I got tired of hearing about the upcoming nuptials back in February.  As we got closer, things got worse.  There was Meghan’s father not going to the wedding, then going to the wedding and finally not going.  We had people wondering if Harry’s ex-girlfriends were going to the wedding.  Unless we knew for a fact that one of them was going to stand up and announce her pregnancy when the priest asks if anyone knows just cause, etc., who cares if they go or not!

One of our local channels was running a special on Meghan’s beauty secrets so that everyone could do them.  Frankly, I think I look good the way I am and don’t need to use her methods.  I kept waiting for commercials telling me about what underwear Harry uses so that I could have that royal feeling and comfort for the family jewels.  As things got closer I kept waiting to hear news reports like, “We have a report that Harry and Meghan had breakfast this morning and then Harry walked off with a newspaper and did not come back for 10 minutes.”  Or, “It has been reported that Harry does, indeed, put his pants on one leg at a time.”
We have heard about Meghan’s mother Doris, too.  We found out that she had arrived in London.  What a surprise!  That is, after all, where the wedding is being held.  We hear that Meghan’s celebrity friends will be there.  Again, who cares?  This should be about the bride and groom, not the celebrities that may attend.  You want to impress me?  Open the place up to the “common folk” and keep the others in a gymnasium and let them hear the ceremony over loud speakers.  One final tirade within this rant and then I am done.  There are people who flew to England from the US and started camping out on the road the wedding cortège will follow so that they can catch a glimpse of the couple.  People, get a grip on yourselves!  You are Americans!  You only do stuff like that on Thanksgiving so you can go shopping at five in the morning.  Thank you. I feel much better having gotten that out of my system.  I just can’t wait until they start having kids.

This week our fact tells us that in Holyoke, Massachusetts it is unlawful to water your lawn when it is raining.  Frankly, it is dumb, too.  Of course, I do not see what difference it makes, but I am sure that Holyoke has an explanation for it.  I hope some day I can discover what that reason is.