Quick Fix

Hello World, Well, will you look at where we are in January already, where does the time go! It seems like one minute, we're getting ready for back-to-school, and suddenly before you know it, here's Valentine's Day traipsing up to our very doorstep, by Cupid. (One good thing already about this year is that Easter is so late in April that Ash Wednesday doesn't happen until well after the saint's day devoted to indulgence and excess - not smack-dab in the middle of Lent as it often does, when you have glowering hordes of grouchy Christians to deal with.) Of course, Valentine's Day candies have been in the stores since before Christmas, heaven knows, and even though Easter is late, there's certainly no lack of Easter baskets, bunnies, and chocolate eggs on all sides as well. At this rate, pretty soon it will be time for the back-to-school supplies all over again, and eager retailers will be hawking their colossal Black Friday discounts and extended hours for our shopping convenience. In fact, I actually did just receive a fashion catalogue featuring a sale on swimsuits, so that tells you something right there. Suntan lotion, anyone? The dust had hardly settled on the hoopla of the holiday weekend's events, while a clamoring populace hurried on to the next big thing, and left Dr. King unceremoniously behind in their wake. That would never do for us, and we made sure to enjoy the weekend for all it was worth, and then some. As usual, we followed our noses north, to bivouac with our friends in the Albany area, who very kindly left their Christmas decorations up for us, putting us firmly in the holiday spirit like the veriest and merriest elves on the holliest and jolliest sleigh ride ever. Since we arrived on Saturday afternoon at lunchtime, we hurried to the 76 Diner with all haste, and dove right in. I was especially glad to be there, because it happened to be a day they were serving their signature fried ravioli, which is a treat that is only available occasionally, and often does not line up with our visits north, alas. It was excellent, as well as the Greek fries, which are regular shoestring fries dressed up with crumbled feta cheese, lemon, and oregano for an international flair that is hard to beat. Thus fortified, we dashed off to infuse some cash into the local economy, starting at the brand new Salvation Army Thrift Store - which admittedly is small potatoes when it comes to lighting up cash registers, but we were still glad to check it out and do our part. After that, it was off to Hewitt's for their after-Christmas discounts on decorations, and it's always interesting to discover what modern technology has made possible in the way of lights, lawn ornaments, and various gadgets that are new to us, and snap them up at bargain prices. Soon our friends' trunk was bulging with our bounty, and we declared the excursion a success on all counts. We had one more stop to make, if we wanted the perfect breakfast to look forward to, so we set off for Price Chopper, and for anyone who hasn't tried it, here is my unsolicited testimonial for Cinnabon's delightfully decadent "Gooey Bites," now in your grocer's freezer. All you have to do is take it out of the box, pop it in the microwave, and in seconds, you have a luscious, pull-apart cloud of soft warm nuggets, drizzled with cinnamon sauce and icing, that turns your mouth into a Valhalla of utopian ambrosia, where the gods feast on delicacies unknown to mere mortals. Our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery may well snicker all they like, but you can go ahead and ask anyone who's tried them, and they will assure you that I am not overstating the case by any means. We did make kind of a spectacle of ourselves when we found them in the frozen foods, and jumped up and down in the aisle, but let's face it, after all this time, you have the figure that the general population of Latham must have grown used to us by now. After a day of careening around from pillar to post, we elected to stay in for dinner, so pizza and garlic knots from our friends at Paesano's was just the ticket to please the hometown crowd, and I ought to know. Often after dinner, we peruse the on-demand offerings available on our hosts' big screen TV, but there can be some difficulty finding something that we are interested in, but haven't already seen. This time we took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and brought a couple of DVD's with us, that we expected our friends would like, and which we were sure they had never heard of. The first was a personal favorite of mine from decades ago, "The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space," which I have always recalled fondly as campy hilarious fun. Unfortunately, it did not hold up well over time, and although our friends were gracious about it, in the cold hard light of day, it had nothing to recommend it, and I was sorely disappointed after all this time. We fared better with our second option, the seasonal charmer "Christmas in Connecticut" from the golden age of Hollywood, and it has always made me wonder that it never achieved the popularity of other well-known holiday movies like "It's a Wonderful Life," "Miracle on 34th Street," or "White Christmas," for example. Barbara Stanwyck is at the top of her game as a lifestyle guru (think Martha Stewart) who is a complete fraud that knows nothing at all about the domestic arts, and couldn't tell a spatula from a spinning wheel at gunpoint. In a bald-faced bid to boost circulation at the magazine, her editor decides to foist an injured sailor (the yummy Dennis Morgan - all but forgotten these days, but kids, ask your grandmothers about him) on her for the holidays at her family farm, and it takes all hands on deck to suddenly scare up 1) a family, B) a farm, and iii) anybody who knows how to do all of the creative wizardry that she's supposed to be such an expert at. (If the part about the second baby doesn't make you laugh out loud, you would have to be declared legally dead, believe me.) That did the trick of washing the bitter aftertaste of Captain Zoom out of our collective mouths, and we toddled off to bed full of high spirits and happily-ever-afters. Of course, in the morning we pounced on those Gooey Bites and polished them off in nothing flat, and while I couldn't recommend to Cinnabon that they hold a speed contest for eating these - for safety precautions, you understand - frankly, I would stack our chances up against anybody, with a good bit of confidence. There were other breakfast selections, such as muffins, pastries, and fruit, but honestly, with Gooey Bites on the table, who could really care? Soon it was off for another round of shopping, this time taking in a favorite dollar store of ours, Goodwill, and Cracker Barrel, and it would be a sure bet that we didn't come back empty-handed - and we've got the rock candy and peanut brittle to prove it, by golly. It wasn't long before we noticed the time slipping inexorably away from us, and with a long way to go, we were anxious to make a start of it before it got dark, so we tossed all of our voluminous variety of bags and boxes willy-nilly into the car, and took off at a flat run for all parts southward and home. Once again, the traffic was not an issue, and we were not in the least embarrassed to stop at Denny's in Newburgh for the 3rd time in 3 months, thank you very much, and they were just as happy to have us, I'm sure. The rest of the trip home was uneventful, and even the cats declined to raise a disdainful eyebrow at our return, so at least we knew that we had arrived at the correct household, and not some other place where the family pets actually care if the family is there or not. In fact, the only fly in the ointment for us was that the MLK weekend effectively closes the door on the yuletide season for good, the Christmas caravan is packed away for the duration, and we have nothing but our memories to console us for the next too many months on end. On the other hand, it will soon enough be time for the Super Bowl on the first Sunday in February, quickly followed on February 12th by the three most beautiful words in the English language: "Pitchers and catchers." Let me at that suntan lotion! Elle