myweekandwelcometoit

Friday, August 07, 2009

Long Ago And Far Away

Hello World,

Happy August! Of course, this is the time that, back in the day, the dinosaurs and I would be wishing each other a Happy Sextilius instead, which was what it was called before the Romans decided to rename it in honor of Caesar Augustus, and the rest, as they say, is history, and I ought to know. In the local area, this is the first week that it actually felt like summer around here, with a couple of sultry days that were hot and humid, interspersed of course, with the inevitable thunderstorms and drenching downpours that have been the hallmark of the season to this point. They actually said on the news that as cold and wet as it has been up until now, they expect August to be very hot and very dry, but I said I would believe that when I see it, and I'm not packing away my galoshes just yet. By golly, if these are the "dog days" of summer, that dog sure better know how to swim, and that's not just a lot of bow-wow-wow, believe me.

Speaking of days gone by, I found myself poking around in the desk drawers at the church office, and buried deep in the back of a drawer that was stuck so that I had to pry it open with a screwdriver, I came across a little plastic cube that people use to store rolls of stamps. Sure enough, it had stamps in it, and I thought to myself, I should move this to some place more convenient for anyone looking for stamps, so they wouldn't have to go digging for it and break out their screwdriver besides. When I moved it, I noticed that what we had here was a plastic cube full of a roll of 33 cent stamps, which even in this economy, isn't going to get you far when it costs 44 cents to mail anything these days. So that was an unexpected stroll down Memory Lane in the church office, and a stark reminder, if any was needed, of how times have changed. Gosh, I really miss the Reagan administration, don't you?

It happened that what I was poking around in the office for was a spare box of offering envelopes, which we use at church for a variety of purposes. I don't like to use the regular ones that we give to our members, because they're the more expensive ones, with the date printed on them and all. When I didn't find any, I thought I would take a trip to the local religious supply store, handily located around the corner from the Sunoco station, and pick up a box there. Not so fast! When I got to the shopping area where the Good News store should have been, it had apparently long since gone out of business, and was now a barbershop, of all things, complete with spinning barber pole outside. Right next to it was a brand new Subway snack shop, so there had obviously been a lot of changes in that block of stores since the last time I looked. (Which, I don't mind saying, was only as long ago as April, when I went to the nearby Carvel on Secretary's Day, so it all had to have happened since then.) I was very surprised, but I won't say discouraged, because everyone knows that I'm made of sterner stuff.

I did a search for "offering envelopes" online, and came up with a wide array of commercial printers, church supply dealers and specialty stationers. That seemed too much of a bother for me, since I didn't have other items that I needed to buy along those same lines. Later when I was at amazon.com, I figured if I was going to buy stuff anyway, I may as well check and see if they had anything like offering envelopes, even though they didn't come up in the search results when I looked originally. Sure enough, there was quite a selection of offering envelopes in a variety of designs to suit most any purpose, and some of which, I couldn't even figure out what the purpose was supposed to be. My favorite part was where they said that the envelopes were available from different sellers, and I had the option of buying them "new or used." Here I'm thinking that used offering envelopes would not be at the top of my list of things that I would find most useful, after all, we probably already have years worth of used offering envelopes already upstairs in the balcony of our church as it is. I thought that was so funny.

For alert readers who may be wondering about news on the fence front, I did bump into Regina, the nice new neighbor next door, and show her my pictures of the fence being installed in 1993, and she was suitably impressed, and I guess by that, I mean embarrassed at the realization that they were the proud owners of the ratty and falling down fence, and not us. We had a nice long chat on a wide range of topics, and it would come as a surprise to no one (it certainly didn't to me) that she is from Long Island, because I find that no matter where you go in this world, you always meet people from Long Island. It really doesn't matter where you go, it's the same everywhere, every time. I call it the launching pad of the universe, because the island natives have been flung far and wide to every place you can think of, or even places you can't, and it's amazing to me that there's anyone left still there at all. It's one of the reasons that space travel holds no allure for me, because I'm sure the same thing would happen even in the far reaches of the most distant galaxies, and frankly, I've already met all the people from Massapequa, Hicksville and Franklin Square that I care to, thanks so very much not. Anyway, Regina is a nice enough girl from my old stomping grounds, and my favorite part was when she commented that even though I was from Long Island, I didn't have an accent. I said, "Of course I don't have an accent ..... TO YOU ..... because you're from Long Island, and you think everyone sounds like this!" She laughed.

In other local news, I did actually plow through all of my camping laundry, get it dry and folded, and repacked it back with my camping supplies in the attic, and that was no job for sissies, I can tell you, as hot as it was up there. Even the tent and tarps and beach chairs and fire bucket got packed up and put away on the shelves in the garage, rather than just laying around underfoot for a year until I go camping again. It seems like every year that I go, I end up taking more stuff with me, which would seem impossible for one person staying alone in the woods, but that's the way it happens. (In my more lucid moments, even I would admit that I don't technically need to take 4 chairs and a cot, or 5 different beach shelters, but I will say that the Twinkies are non-negotiable and that's all there is to it.) But even still, I managed to assemble everything into a small corner of the attic, where it can be out of the way, but also ready at a moment's notice, for any emergency camping needs that may arise at any time. You never know when a beach is suddenly going to need sheltering, but I'll be ready, by golly.

Speaking of beach shelters, I have a variety of them that each do one thing well, as a result of my efforts to discover one that does all those things well, which I have yet to find. One that I had high hopes for, and Bill was kind enough to splurge on it for me, is a large mesh structure with a zippered door, that pops open using that new-fangled memory wire, and then folds back up into its carry case for easy travel. Well, that's the theory anyway, but I have never found that it lived up to its potential, right from the start. What I liked about it was that it was big enough for me and my beach chair, and tall enough to stand up in. Having a door is very handy, but without a floor, it was not as stable or bug-free as it might have been. The first day that I opened it up at home, it took me 45 minutes of wrestling with it in the living room to fold it back up again and put it away in the carry case. After that, I found that every time was a hit-or-miss proposition as far as taking it down, where sometimes it would fold right up, and other times, it would just be impossible. Also, even when it was folded up and in the carry case, it was still large and unwieldy, as well as being very heavy, so carrying it was a chore, especially all the way to the beach and back by myself. But I really wanted to like it and didn't want to give up on it, in spite of what were turning out to be its numerous drawbacks. This year, I took it to the beach on Tuesday and didn't have much trouble with setting it up, but putting it away was one of those knock-down-drag-out affairs that turned this thing into a nightmare. I used a different shelter on Wednesday, and when I tried it again on Thursday, I noticed that in putting it away on Tuesday, I had snagged part of the mesh screen into the zipper of the carry case, so when I tried to open the zipper, I not only ripped off the handle, but tore a big hole in the screen, making it even less bug-free than it already was without a floor. When I set it up at the beach, the memory wire had developed some sort of kink in it, so that it wanted to keep collapsing on me instead of standing up straight, and it was only lucky that it couldn't collapse all the way since my beach chair was in the way, because I was already annoyed at it, without getting any worse. This was also when I noticed that the memory wire had worn right through the fabric seams in spots, which really surprised me, since this was only the second year that I was using it, and had probably not set it up and taken it down more than 10 times since I got it, which was hardly the sort of endurance that I would expect from something in that price range. Thursday happened to be a very quiet day at the beach, and not a breath of wind, so the flies were unusually aggressive, which is exactly the reason that I take a shelter with me in the first place. But it was such a bad day that when I opened the zipper to go in, the flies came right in with me, and the ones that didn't, came in through the hole in the screen anyway, and instead of relaxing, I spent most of my time trying to chase flies out of what was supposed to be my bug-free sanctuary, thanks not. It was at just this moment, of all times, that some stranger approached me with something like reverence in his eyes, and asked me where in the world I had found this marvelous shelter, so he could get one for his own family to enjoy. Mind you, this was with the flies inside, and the roof collapsing on top of my chair the whole time, not exactly the rousing endorsement that the company might have hoped for, I'm sure. I did tell him, and wished him luck with it, although I did point out that nowadays, sun shelters are all the rage and can be had in all different shapes and sizes, not just this one. He doesn't realize how lucky he is, because my first thought was to just give him the darned thing on the spot, and be done with it, but I couldn't let myself foist this wreck on some unsuspecting stranger with the broken handle, the hole in the screen, the torn seams, and the amnesiac memory wire that had forgotten how to hold itself upright. After all, I certainly don't want to get on the wrong side of a fellow Long Island native, because with my luck, I'll just bump into him again, at some point way in the future, in some far distant solar system, with nowhere to hide. In fact, I won't even be able to hide behind my accent, because as Regina will tell you, I don't have one, and she ought to know.

Elle

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