Fun and Games Dept

It was 10ºF in Syracuse, New York when we departed our hotel this morning at 8:00 a.m. By the time we were west of Cleveland, Ohio and stopped for lunch, it was almost 50ºF and the forecasts on the various radio stations I was hopping around on indicated it could be nearly 70ºF tomorrow and Tuesday.

Spring has sprung?

I have a feeling this is fake spring and there will be another winter storm before Mother Nature gets her act together. But when we got home the Chicago forecast also indicated very spring-like weather this week, and that has me in a sunny mood.

We’ll be packing this last week of Standard Time for 2020-2021. At least we’ll have some warmer temperatures outside to make the task more pleasant.

In the meanwhile, a selfie from a Service Plaza on the Ohio Turnpike.

We took a walk around a local mall during our travels this weekend. Still concerned with COVID-19 and the behavior of society in general, we’ve been social distancing as best as we can, while wearing our masks whenever we’re out in public. But sometimes nature calls and the closest bathroom is in a mall.

I was very surprised to see how busy this mall was.

To be fair, everyone we saw, save for one person who looked confused in general, was wearing a mask in some way. Too many people weren’t doing it properly; if people are wearing condoms the way they’re wearing masks it’s no surprise how many accidental births we have in the country today. For the uninformed and/or confused: the mask goes over the nose and mouth. Covering just your chin (what the hell is that about?) or only your mouth is like putting the condom over the testicles instead of the penis.

I decided to word that in a way that isn’t as crude as it probably should be. Today’s finer American needs “crude” to understand concepts.

While we maintained plenty of distance from the mall patrons, I couldn’t help but feel very anxious and trapped as we made our way from finer fashions to the mall bathrooms. Folks still ignore signs on the floor that encourage social distancing. People congregate in packs. I said to my husband, “let’s get out of here”. So we did.

This particular mall has four anchor stores. Two of them are gone: JCPenney had departed and Macy’s was in its final days of a store closing sale.

I do believe the retail landscape has been changed forever.

In the early 1990s the New York State Thruway Authority spent millions and millions of dollars to rebuild all of their service plazas along 496 miles of the toll road in Upstate New York. Old Howard Johnson’s and other 1950s buildings were razed and replaced or heavily redecorated to get the facilities ready for a 21st century motoring experience. Sit down restaurants were replaced with fast food selections, often alternating in either direction between McDonalds and something else. Sometimes the alternate was Burger King, other times it was Roy Rogers, and then there were Tim Hortons on the western half of the roadway. Other franchises made an appearance: Arby’s, Checkers, and Pizza Hut showed themselves at one time or another.

We made a trip to my old stomping grounds to say hello to the relatives before our move to the desert southwest later this month. On our way we stopped at one of the Service Areas to grab a bite to eat. We hadn’t had Checkers in forever, so we stopped at one of the services areas that had a Checkers.

Nope, it’s closed down. And so was the pizza place there.

We hopped back on the Thruway and stopped at the next service area. I wanted a sandwich, and Tim Horton’s has decent sandwiches. Except, Tim Horton’s has also been closed down.

We opted for Arby’s. They don’t have brewed iced tea.

I believe all of these closures are a sign of the pandemic times. Theoretically there’s less people traveling. Before we moved to the midwest the Thruway Service Areas were starting to look a little sparse during the week; the pandemic has just made it worse. Thank goodness for Arby’s Curley Fries.

Apparently the Thruway Authority has a new vision for the service areas and will be ripping them down and replacing them again.

I have a hunch they won’t be as huge as the plazas today. That’s part of the past.

Over the past year we’ve all had the COVID-19 pandemic on our minds. If there’s a positive thing that’s come out of all of this, it’s the creative use of technology combined with brilliant artistry to do some amazing things.

Here is one of the best, if not the best, cover of Swing Out Sister’s “Breakout” I’ve ever heard. It’s absolutely amazing. Enjoy.

When I was a kid I envisioned a life of fame. I was going to be a darling of Hollywood, doing something like Bewitched or Star Trek or some comedic shtick and people would fawn over me and want my autograph wherever I went. I wanted to act, I wanted people to like me, and I wanted to be recognized in public. So very gay.

I tinkered with this a little bit with my days in radio; people would recognize my voice and my face from a TV commercial or something and say hello in the mall. I also toyed with the idea of being on a reality show in the early days of the travesty, getting so far as to one of the final rounds of “Big Brother” auditions. But my husband told me he had no interest in standing outside of the Big Brother House when I came out and I didn’t want to be the next Bunky anyways. The producers wanted another Bunky. You don’t remember Bunky? Neither do I.

(pause for Google)

Bunky lives in Arizona and does something with IT now. Good for him.

With TikTok and Twitter and YouTube and the like everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame and most people will do anything to claw their way to the limelight. They’ll say stupid things on television. They’ll run for an elected office. They’ll try to eat a corn of cob connected to an electric drill. They’ll burn their hair off. They’ll make “tech videos” which are thinly disguised audition tapes for a soap opera. They’ll appear on Ellen’s game show and get pushed around with a gigantic plunger. They’ll appear on “Today” for being wonderful and then a month later turn up on “The Wall”. They’ll sing in front of old people.

And they’ll say really stupid and idiotic things on Twitter just to get likes and follows and retweets. The sad part is that the vast majority of these idiotic endeavors don’t end up in fame, but notoriety.

I gleefully gave up the idea of being famous decades ago. The pool has been so diluted with idiocy and too many Americans now applaud asshattery and I definitely don’t want to land in that category.

I’m quite content with being a middle aged guy with a husband and a cat, a wonderful family, and a wonderful group of relatives and friends. Maybe that’s just part of getting old, finding contentment in what we have.

I just really hope I live long enough to see the natural ending of this American desire for notoriety.

With the arrival of spring-like weather here in Chicago you’d think I’d be all excited about spring being right around the corner. I am excited about this, but I’m more excited about relocating to Tucson at the end of next month.

The real thing is, however, it doesn’t feel like winter to me. It doesn’t feel like spring is just around the corner, though the human construct of time just marches along and tells us that’s what’s happening in the Northern Hemisphere. Ever since COVID-19 became the thing in most everyone’s life, time has felt odd. Routines have become more repetitive, activities have been restricted, and milestones that denote a certain place in the year (picnics, festivals, going outside, etc.) have not happened with their expected regularity.

I know we celebrated the holidays two months ago but it doesn’t feel like we really did it. To me it feels more like we just went through the motions.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling little spats of “the blues” and not really understanding why, but in reality it’s been my usual winter season blahs I feel every year; I just didn’t pin it down to the proper place on the timeframe because it doesn’t feel like we’re in winter. It feels like some odd nebulous season right now. Limbo, I guess, for lack of a better word.

While the temperatures warm up a bit here in The Windy City, I appreciate the sunnier days and the snow melting.

I guess I just want to get outside and enjoy it without restrictions again.

It looks like this latest storm brought us about a foot of snow. It’ll still be quite cold here but warming slightly as the week goes on. There’s a chance of a smaller snow storm arriving this weekend.

It’s February. This weather is not a surprise for this part of the country. However; this is the most snow I’ve seen in Chicago since moving here 3 1/2 years ago.

Bundle up!

The snow continues to fall. According to the weather forecast, they heavier snow won’t arrive until later this afternoon and continue through the overnight. When all is said and done, we should have around a foot of new snow.

Winter is grand!

Since starting our trip last Saturday I have purposely stayed away from most social media but specifically Twitter. It’s not that Twitter has done anything wrong, it’s just that it’s an endless stream of “stuff” that I don’t need in my head right now. The move to Tucson has me very excited about life; dulling the sensation with outrage, gasps, and other clutches of pearls is not jam. I don’t need the angst.

I mentioned this to Earl and Chris during dinner on Tuesday night. We were reviewing the inspection report on the new house at a Starbucks in Tucson and I took a quick glance at Twitter. After a few swipes of the screen I felt my jaw tighten and my mood harden. I mentioned, “Wow, Twitter can really suck”. Chris responded, “Maybe it’s not Twitter that sucks, but the people you follow. I follow artists and interesting people and try to stay away from politics. Maybe you should try that”.

He’s right. I’ve tried to curtail my following list to non-political posts, but with all that’s going on in the U.S. government these days, both during and after the Trump administration, there’s a lot of people who will just start screaming on Twitter about the latest outrage. I should know, I can be one of them! And honestly, I’m not in the mood for that drama.

I haven’t done anything outrageous with my Twitter account, but I am taking the lead of my friend Séan from the U.K. and starting to delete my tweets after X amount of days.

I don’t need my former outrage following me around like so much baggage.

I know the script, I don’t need to follow it along word by word on Twitter. Many in the GOP are going to be spineless, the Dems will lean toward making sure everyone likes them, and we’ll eventually get to some sort of outcome on the latest crisis.

Just tell me when to vote