Not In My Back Yard

Hello World, And so here we find ourselves, perched on the very last day of the month, believe it or not, and staring down both barrels of August with nothing at all to keep those Dog Days at bay. Of course, anyone in the local area can tell you that we've already had plenty of Dog Days this week and still in July - and pretty ugly by all accounts, I can tell you - so if it's planning to be any worse once August rolls around, it's going to have a tough row to hoe there, believe me. We all know that it does no good to complain about the heat in New York in the summer, and in fact, I just saw a news story that they still have piles of snow in Boston that haven't melted since the horrific storms up there over the winter - and which if nothing else should remind us to be grateful for small favors and that things can always be worse. Let's face it, those could be actual dogs instead of just Dog Days, after all. Speaking of notable dates on the local scene, we finally had no choice but to hire another landscaping company to tackle the wholesale disaster that was our yard, after our regular purveyor was laid up and unable to provide this service as per usual. (Actually, he might have been abducted by aliens for all we know, we didn't ask for a note from his doctor, and of course, HIPAA prevents us from checking his medical records.) The new gardeners showed up en masse and went straight to work with their various implements of destruction, and laid waste to the property in a "scorched earth policy" that showed no sentiment or partiality to the vilest weed, noxious vine, or treasured family botanical, regardless. They very quickly had the place looking like actual people lived there, and not the ramshackle hovel over-run with squatters, surrounded by tangled overgrowth of epic proportions, as it had been all too recently. The intrepid crew made short work of everything in their path, and carted off truckloads of debris as if it had never been there to start with. They did not even quail before our menacing masses of rampant alien mutant poison ivy, which I consider a true mark of heroic courage, and they left no remnant of it standing in their wake. [Note to Justice Department: Their rigorous ministrations entirely failed to uncover any trace of Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, alas.] My favorite part was when I spotted something newly exposed in what used to be the wild and woolly ivy patch, and when I went to investigate, it turned out to be a newspaper that we had never collected from the yard and taken into the house. From the middle of June, mind you, so that tells you something right there. And speaking of long-missing items, it reminds me of when I was getting ready for vacation, which is not technically packing, because most of my camping supplies stay packed all year long, and just have to be carried out to the car at the appropriate time. There are supposed to be 3 beach towels in my beach bag, but for some odd reason, there were only 2 of them, and the third one was nowhere to be found. I had no reason to need a beach towel aside from camping, and I tore the place apart looking for that elusive third one, going nuts in the process, and could not imagine where it could possibly be, if not with all the rest of the camping supplies as it should be. I finally gave it up as a lost cause, and dug out an old ratty torn spare beach towel to take its place, so at least we would have something. This year, Bill decided to buy a new beach chair to replace the old uncomfortable one that he had, so I figured I would take the old one out of the camping supplies if we weren't going to use it. I noticed that it had an interesting feature built right into it, that there was a handy storage pouch on the back, for whatever you might want to carry with you, or have within reach while enjoying yourself at the beach or pool. Obviously, I had forgotten all about it, if I ever knew about it in the first place, but when I looked inside - surprise! - here was the missing 3rd beach towel, all clean and neatly folded up, and just ready to be pressed into service as the occasion might demand. Did I laugh! Also on the camping front, their Wednesday night movie of the week this year was "Ice Age: Continental Drift," although alert readers may recall that Wednesday night was replete with thunder and lightning from distant storms, so I'm thinking that might have been more than a little distracting to the viewing public at the time. My plan for Wednesday was dinner at what used to be a local pizza place in a shopping center on Route 25A - although now they call themselves "Le Bistro" and fancy themselves a rather more upscale eatery with pretentious cuisine and signature specialties. Frankly, I liked them better when they were just a neighborhood pizza parlor, and their chattering sports TV at least kept me up-to-date on what was happening with the local sports teams while I was out in the woods. Now, their regular pizza seemed soggy and dense, and I even uttered words that I never thought anyone would hear pass my lips: "Too much cheese." I went back on Friday for a slice of Sicilian, and it was not much better - and their calzones, which are the size of pillows, I wouldn't dare attempt to consume all by myself. In a bizarre twist, it turns out to be a chain - Bill and I saw another one just like it on Saturday in Middle Island on our way home. And finally, speaking of movies reminds me that I was checking on the credits for "Inside Out," the animated feature that Bill and I had seen recently, and tucked away in the labyrinths of the voluminous voice cast, I stumbled across Jan Rabson, who is one of three famous people that I know from my high school graduating class. Of course, this is probably only to be expected, since there were over a thousand students in my grade, so for 0.03% of them to become famous is most likely par for the course, as these things go. It's interesting that among your own contemporaries who do become well-known, they are never the ones that you would immediately think of, while the high school go-getters that everyone expected great things from, drop out of sight and are never heard from again. Besides Jan, who hobnobs with Hollywood luminaries, there was Rich Mauti who starred as a wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints, and Steve Bach, who had a successful solo career in jazz, and is now serving as Artistic Director for Cirque du Soleil, of all things. Like the other 99.97% of my classmates, I will freely admit that I have no claim to fame, and years from now, thundering herds of strangers will not be insisting that they went to school with me. It's probably just as well, but on the other hand, if the darned landscapers had actually dug up Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater in our rampant alien mutant poison ivy, well, that would have been a different story entirely, I dare say. Elle