Ponderings and Musings

I am somewhat sick for the second time in as many months. For a person that doesn’t get sick and refuses to get sick, I find this to be quite startling.

I am trying to determine why I am getting sick. Right now I’m blaming the measles vaccine I had to get at the beginning of the year so that I could go to college. I think there’s something inherently wrong with purposely injecting a person with a little measles. “Here, have a little dab of measles, it’ll do you good.” It’s the same reason that I’ve never gotten a flu shot and I won’t get a flu shot.

Aside from beer consumption, which has been cut drastically in the past two weeks, I eat relatively healthy. I’m wondering if I’m not eating enough calories in the hopes of losing weight again. My Monday schedule dictates that I eat lunch at 10:15 a.m. as I have classes from 11 straight through until 5 p.m., so that probably didn’t help the situation last night. I’m going to have to find a better way of dealing with that. Ideally I’d like to drop that infernal math class (love the class, not so wild about the teacher), but I need the course to stay in my engineering classes so I guess I’ll have to come up with another plan.

Last night I slept 11 1/2 hours in one hour increments. God bless Earl. He put up with the tossing and turning and the bouncing around (not in a good way) in bed last night and he seemed quite chipper this morning. But I’d really like to know what’s going on.

Maybe I’ll feel better tonight. I’ll just think lots of positive thoughts.

Over tired, slightly cranky and feeling a little stuffed up today, I plodded through my longest day of the week of classes. I’d write more but I’m just hoping tomorrow will be a better day.

I’m going to bed.

The unofficial end of summer is now a memory. The youngsters head back to school tomorrow. Mother Nature is readying her paintbrush to give us a vivid display of reds, oranges and golds. You know what that means.

Football season is upon us.

I have become quite accustomed to being a football husbear. For the past 11 years social calendars have been modified, satellite dishes have been installed and TiVos have purred as every minute of every Philadelphia Eagles game is documented, analyzed and mulled over.

I even ask Earl if he wants a glass of “wooder” to go with his snacks to keep the whole Philadelphia spirit alive. He’s so proud of his hometown team.

The transition to football season is particularly interesting this year, because Earl has been giving poker the same amount of interest for god knows how long. We sat down for a little evening snack just a few moments ago when he flicked on the television set. The channel of choice was GSN, the hip name of the Game Show Network.

“Oh, are we going to watch ‘To Tell The Truth’?”, I ask excitedly.

He mumbles something that shouldn’t really sound like “would the real idiot in the room please stand up” and lo and behold there’s the beginnings of a poker game.

“Where’s Peggy Cass?”, I inquire as … “Wait a minute, what is Welcome Back Kotter doing on the screen? I thought he was a distant memory.”

There he is Gabe Kaplan, sans bushy mustache but with a retro-chic Miami Vice thing going on, whining about the poker proceedings.

I can’t follow poker. I’m not good at cards. While others at the table are doing their best poker face, I fall victim to things such as yelling “Oh goody!” when I get an Ace. Or maybe it was a four. I don’t remember. What I do remember is a Royal Flush, which was demonstrated to me in seventh grade when the mean boys in gym tried to flush Peter Vida’s head down the toilet. That was called the Royal Flush.

So Welcome Back Kotter is talking with another unshaven man about a woman named Harman and her strategy for poker. Earl goes into his poker trance, studying every nuance and stragedy exhibited on our set in technicolor, his lips silently moving as he makes mental notes. There’s no yelling of “Yeah!” or “Go!” like during an Eagles game. I find this unnerving. He just sits there, studying. Me? I don’t get the attraction and I decide to blog instead.

At least football has hot looking uniforms.

Has anyone notice that the expiration date on foods has started running out of control? Earl and I went grocery shopping a week and a half ago. We picked up the usual fare; bread, milk, orange juice, etc. It’s been 10 days and everything is still good. This seems rather unnatural to me. For example, I’m looked at our bread wrapper and it still has four days left in it, making it good for a full two weeks before it goes bad. I don’t trust this. It just doesn’t seem right. As I make my sandwich I’m constantly inspecting the crust and non-crust part (is that just called ‘bread’?), looking for the tell-tale signs of mold. There’s none to be found. I think this bread was engineered to last longer than a piece of wax fruit.

I have to admit that I have a bit of a phobia about food going bad. I can’t stand to clean out the refrigerator. Leftover gravy makes me weasy. I panic when we have bananas in the house. On the rare occasion that we buy them, I end up eating bananas like nobody’s business, overdosing on potassium in cosmic proportions lest the bananas turn brown. I mean, I seriously stress over the bananas turning brown, waking up in the middle of the night to get high on another hit of banana.

I remember the first time I saw mold. I was nine years old. I had grabbed a plain donut out of a box of donuts from the P&C, having devoured Grandma Country’s homemade donuts earlier in the week. I didn’t even glance at the donut, I just shoved part of it in my mouth during Scooby Doo on a Saturday morning. It tasted kind of odd. I turned it over and there were little pieces of green fuzz on the donut. I shrieked, startled the cat and hurled the donut into the fireplace. My father burned it the next day when he built our occasional Sunday fire. No one knew the donut was in the fireplace except me, and I watched that mold burn. Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

To this day I won’t buy a box of donuts from the grocery store and I don’t trust any “sell by” dates stamped on packaging. I subtract one day from the “sell by” date and chuck it out.

I’d rather make multiple trips to the market instead of risking another fuzzy donut.

The energy of downtown seems to be missing today. Not that there’s a lot of energy to begin with but there just seems to be a stillness in the air. I don’t know if it’s the cooler temperatures or if people have gone on vacation or what, but the streets seem rather barren.

I told Earl last night that I am really looking forward to going back to college next Monday. Armed with my new school clothes (the aforementioned new t-shirt from Boscov’s), I feel like one of the cool kids now. I think I’m going to be able to maintain some part-time hours with the phone company while I’m at school this semester so I’ll have some mad money to play with, er, rather, _we’ll_ have some mad money to play with. I’ve already picked out Earl’s Christmas present (usually I wait until December 15th or so) and now it’s just a matter of securing the funds. Maybe I’ll make like Lucy and squirrel some money away from the grocery budget in the cookie jar.

While I’m having a good, albeit quiet day today, I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to this coming weekend. Earl and I are going camping at Hillside Campgrounds. It’s Bears In The Woods III (we missed the “II”). Bears In The Woods are always a good thing.

My friend Eric and I got together for supper and just to hang out this evening. We’ve known each other for several years, and though we get together rather infrequently, we always have a good time when we finally get around to seeing each other. Tonight was no exception to the trend.

During supper we got talking about classic television shows, reminiscing about the oldies such as “One Day At A Time”, “The Electric Company” and “Benson”. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the alarm clock on his cell phone plays this tune:

I don’t know what was more frightening, the fact that he has this theme song on his cell phone or the fact that I was able to tell which season the track was from.

I took a moment today to write a letter to the mayor. The city has spent $40,000 to put up 52 new “wayfinding” signs for tourists. The signs guide visitors to attractions such as the zoo, the train station and the local brewery. While I find these signs to be a good thing for the area, I’m rather dismayed at how they’re being installed. I don’t like the fact that in some spots they’re installing them in the middle of the sidewalk. Not only does this create a hazard for pedestrians, but it also makes it so wheelchairs can’t pass the sign without dropping off the curb, wheeling down the street (and risk getting hit) and then struggling to get back up on the curb again. To make matters worse, the breakaway mounts on the sign posts are installed too high, which could be an increased hazard to any vehicle that happens to run into them.

Now I didn’t bring up the fact that the signs come nowhere near the national established standards that are enforced by the state, nor did I mention the fact that 52 signs for $40,000 seems a bit steep. As a student of civil engineering I chalk that up to a learning experience and I figure I’ll deal with similar scenarios once I’m working for a highway department, but to me it just doesn’t make sense to block a sidewalk for these signs. They should have been installed on a light post.

If that’s not enough to complain about, I’ve also written on the local paper message board my dismay that the county has spent $5.4 million dollars since 2004 renovating ONE court room at the local courthouse. That’s right, $5.4 million dollars on renovating one room, including the custom carpets handpicked by the judge.

And we wonder why at 9.25% we have the highest sales tax rate in the state. They say it’s to pay for welfare (don’t get me started) but we now know it’s just for pretty rugs.

And last, but not least, I’ve had it up to here (imagine waving hand) with the Bible beaters and their obsession with homosexuality. Why are they so obsessed with gay men and lesbians? Trust me, we are not going to move in on some place like Big Oak, Arkansas and take over the town. We don’t know where you are, we don’t care who you are and we quite honestly we don’t mind if you get off on sleeping with your cousin/brother/sister/mother/father. Frankly, it’s none of our business and we wish that you bid us the same honor.

I’m just saying.

The highlight of the week for many suburban based men is when the lawn is over 1/8 of an inch too long so that they get to ride their lawn mower. I am not to be counted among these men, for I mow the lawn on two conditions: 1. Someone is coming over for a party or 2. we can make a mint baling it and selling it to a local farm.

I’m not a big fan of mowing the lawn. Back at the old house it took three to four hours of riding the lawn mower, pushing the push mower and whacking weeds to get the lawn in decent shape. At this house I have it easy, I can get it all done is just over an hour if I keep the lawn mower set to “burn rubber” and “burn the lawn”.

As I’m riding the lawn mower round and round and round in circles, several random thoughts cross my mind. Since I had the joyous task of greenery grooming this evening, I thought I’d make a little laundry list of what I was thinking and share it on the blog. This might give the reader an insight to the chaotic thoughts that zing back and forth in my head.

1. Whatever happened to Jayne Kennedy? Last I knew she played a bad guy on an episode of Wonder Woman back in 1977. Didn’t she used to be a sports broadcaster? Did she fall overboard when she was on The Love Boat? Where is she?

2. Is it wrong of me to think that Lauren Tewes was cute? Is she still cute?

3. (hum along) “We did the bump bump bump, yes we did, yes we did, yes we diiiiiiiiid, yeah, everybody’s got the boogie fever.”

4. Why does Jimbo shave off his fierce beard from time to time? Why did I screw up my mustache? Will it grow back? Why do obsess about this?

5. Where is it written that I have people have to mow their lawn? Wouldn’t it be more economically friendly to get a goat?

6. Have any of these people that drive Hummers ever chased a bull that’s broken loose at 11:00 p.m. at night? Can they tell the difference between a bull and a cow?

7. Is it unusual that I grew up playing in a lawn that was surrounded on three sides by an electric fence?

8. What does Tom think when he’s looking out the patio door and his tail twitches?

9. Do I reveal too much in the blog? Too little?

10. Why wasn’t Mary Wickes ever invited to be on Bewitched? She would have been fabulous.

11. (hum along) “Let the time flow, let the love grow, let the rain shower, let the rose flower, love it seeks, love it finds, love it conquers, love it binds…”. Robert Hays was friggin’ hot back in his day.

12. Was I just singing out loud? Can the neighbors hear me? Did I just run over a rock?

Such fun times on the lawn mower. After all these thoughts flew around a bit I decided to just yell “giddy-up” and enjoy the ride.