Top Dollar

Hello World,     Well, you know it can only be described as "the end of an era," when even the iconic Aretha Franklin has crossed over to the other side, and where that leaves the rest of us pathetic wastrels, I'm sure I don't know. Along with everything else around here, it does seem as if stuff is just going from bad to worse, and you don't know what to expect next, between the ridiculous weather, and sports, and politics, and every other darned thing, that's for sure. In fact, in many ways it reminds me of one of those crusty old wheezers from one of "The Thin Man" movie franchise, where the estimable Nick Charles offered the opinion of a local henchman that, "He couldn't hit the ocean from a rowboat," and he wasn't laughing when he said it, believe me. Because after all, here we are, more than halfway past the middle of August already, and let's face it, that rowboat joke was more than 80 years old.     In other recent news, I'm sure that very few people nowadays watch TV commercials any more, and I can certainly understand why. On the other hand, so many times lately, I genuinely think I'm awake, and actually watching television, when in reality I've dropped off the scruffy side of after-dinner activities, and only pretending to be truly awake at all. I want to believe that I can trust this background data from Carvana, but even I can see far too many little left-over window frames, for any of this to seem actually realistic on my part. I do know that if you try to buy a used car from the nice folks at Carvana, you have your choice of hundreds of makes and models to choose from, so that all you have to do is narrow down your choices, to pick whatever it is that you are most interested in. So first, you log in to their web site, find something that you like, and pick it out. At that point, the helpful minions at Carvana will either deliver it directly to you, or you have the option to pick it up yourself at a sort of vending elevator, like toy Hot Wheels cars. Now I mean, even if I was sound asleep at the time, how cool is that?!     In other technology matters lately, the office where I work now is unceremoniously squeezed into what can only be kindly described as the upstairs of a garage, and that's about the best that can be said about it. The office has its own door and window, plus a small window air conditioner, and with the door closed, it keeps itself pretty well separated from the garage as a whole - especially in terms of keeping the assorted insects or furry critters apart from each other. But at least on this one day, we had a small but persistent housefly on the office computer monitor, and he (or she) was pretty sure this was the place to be, above everything else that might have presented itself. Of course nowadays, computer monitors also function as touch screens (which this one does, but we don't make use of that functionality, even though we could) and it took until right up to that very moment to recognize how inconvenient something like that could turn out. I was sitting at the desk as usual, and pulling together a bunch of paperwork, while the little housefly was busy walking around on the monitor, and sending the poor computer into veritable fits of partially exposed data or even worse. I finally had no choice but to turn everything off in the office, and keep the door open, so the little housefly would go back out into the garage and leave the monitor alone.     It was a few weeks ago now, after I had cut short my vacation so we could attend the gala New Rochelle High School 50th anniversary reunion for the Class of 1968 on Saturday night, at the appropriately impressive Womens Club of White Plains, and the Reunion Committee had done everything possible to make it a night worth waiting 50 years for, I can tell you that. Keeping the magic alive in the cold light of day, a sensible bunch of us went downstairs in the morning to a small banquet room for a Sunday morning brunch of muffins, bagels, and a variety of other tasty temptations. The still hard-working members of the Reunion Committee were there to fill everyone in on the details of the night before, and of course, share many of their own individual amusing tales from the event. What I found most curious about the brunch was their spread of hard-boiled eggs in among the other treats like cookies, fruit, and whatever. Unlike most hard-boiled eggs in hotel brunches, these were still in the shell, which I found a strange anomaly, and I didn't try any while we were there. But lots of folks did give them a try, and I was surprised at how many people were game to shell them, and then pulled the yolks out and ate just the whites. (???) It was a fun time at the brunch, and after a busy and interesting weekend at the hotel, it was a shame to finally bid farewell to 1968 at long last. Not so fast! It was a couple of weeks later that the Reunion Committee met one final time (at the regular White Plains home of the Reunion catering outfit) to present all of the last round-up of numbers and final totals of all the dollars going in and out. The hard-working caterers put together another excellent meal, and the Reunion Committee finished up strong and in the black, so there was much to be thankful for. Realistically, for a crowd of people with no previous Reunion organizing experience, they certainly made it look easy and put on a Reunion like they had been born to it. And let's face it, they weren't the Queen of Soul to start with, so I think 1968 came out pretty good, all things considered. Elle

Smooth Talker

Hello World,      Well, in so many ways, it seems like I've just gotten back from my vacation, and yet here it is, almost the middle of August already. Time certainly does just go charging along, when you can't be bothered paying attention to it, and suddenly whole months have gone by, and you don't know where you're at anymore. I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't done any camping laundry, even now, and everything I brought home from the campground is still piled up in the den, or outside in front of the garage. This is still very much a work in progress, and it's obviously going to take a considerable amount of work, before we can see any real progress in the whole picture, that's for sure. Realistically, I think the time has come to have a separate vacation crew that takes care of all of the pre-event planning and post-event wrap-up, so I can just focus on going to the park and enjoying the week, without all of the headaches that go along with it.     One thing that I actually did get done after vacation (and that can only be chalked up to Bill, in reality) is that I went to the hair salon, and their very competent professionals made short work out of my frazzled and woe-begotten hair, until I was ready to face the world again. Coming back from my week in the woods, my hair is nothing but an ugly tangled and ratty mess of too much sun, salt water, seaweed, soap, sand, and worse - and even more so, grabbing it all together, and putting it up in one big plastic clip, with no thought for the details. After a week like that, there's no managing it once I get home (and the Reunion as an extra additional on top of everything else was no help either, believe me) and I throw myself on the nice ladies at the hair salon and hope for the best. Frankly, I don't know how they do it, but they somehow manage to get all the knots out - plus the accumulation of seaweed, insects, leaves, twigs, and other campground paraphernalia, thank you very much - trim off the disreputable split ends, manhandle it into shape, and make me look like a super model walking out the door of the shop, rather than the derelict vagabond that walked in at the beginning. In fact, I mentioned to Bill that after their attentions, my hair was so soft and smooth (like a pampered bunny rabbit) that the plastic clips wouldn't even stick to it, they slid right off onto the floor, which somehow manages to be both good and bad at the same time, thanks not.     In other local news of the post-vacation sort, one unexpected happenstance was an oddly rag-tag gathering of young nerds holding down a conference room and hallway off the side of the Crowne Plaza's main entrance. If you came in the front door and took the elevators up to your room, you would never have any idea they were even there. But if you parked in the hotel's parking garage, as we did, you would have no choice but to fight your way through them every time you came in or went out - and after 3 days, that really lost its charm, I can tell you that. Little by little, we found out they called themselves Defenders of the North, and were based on a television show running on a cable channel for young people. Mostly it just looked like a sea of humanity in hoodies, but it also turned out that they included some costumed characters as well (selfies with Dude Man, anyone?!) and it can't be denied that for 3 whole days, they seemed to be having a great time. I can't say if it was expensive or not, but they certainly didn't seem to lose anyone over the course of our stay there - and I can also state quite confidently that all of the regular hotel guests, who ran the gauntlet of them in and out from the parking garage, found them extremely diverting and often worth a trip over there for no particular reason at all. In retrospect, this is one of those things I would describe as an unexpected but powerfully addictive secret ingredient, which might make all the difference.     Meanwhile in recent work news, I had sent a spare copy of an open invoice from 2016 to one of our property management big-wigs, with the hope that he would do something about it. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but getting it paid would be the ideal situation in my estimation.) His email service at work had kindly and promptly responded to my note, and very carefully explained that he was on vacation, and would be out of the office from Monday, July 30th, and up to Friday, July 10th (???) and expecting to return on Monday, July 13th. (Not without some sort of cartoon time-travelling machine, I'm thinking.)  In the rosy bloom of innocent expectation, I had sent the message to him during the previous week, on July 27, and received an automatic broadcast email back from his account on Monday, July 30th instead. Frankly, I was fine as far as it went, but after that, things went a bit haywire on the whole email front, and without any of the year markers to narrow it down, I couldn't piece together when he actually intended to return afterward. Unfortunately, the next time I found a Friday the 10th and Monday the 13th after August would be May 2019, and that really did seem like too long to wait for this way overdue invoice from 2016 at this point. It's now a couple of weeks later, and I have not heard from him yet, and although I am resisting giving way to despair, I admit that I don't care for the whole direction that things have been going in, I can tell you that. Luckily for me, I figure that I can turn to the professionals at the barbershop if all else fails, and those ladies would soon have everything put to right and caught up to date. He'll have to find a way to hold onto his own hair clips, though. Elle

Fifty-Fifty

Hello World,     Greetings, everyone! How good it is to be back here, back from Vacation Land, and back here at home safe and sound in one piece. It doesn't seem possible that my vacation is already behind me, and there is nothing else going on after that. Although I felt that my vacation was doomed from the start, it turns out that at least it was good that it happened when it did, because the weather was so much better then than it was after that, so that was one good thing, anyway. Since I'm back home, my car has been fine, going back and forth to work every day with no problems, no funny noises and no rattles, clangs, or waves of smoke, thank heaven. But for anyone who longs to be back in the virgin campground once again, here are a few wooden combo stories to get us back into a vacation frame of mind all over again.     I would guess that it was probably many years ago, when I first started going out there with Bill, that I started searching for a local radio station to listen to in the car when I was out and about. I liked what they listened to at the pizza parlor, WPLR at 99.1, so I changed one of my regular radio buttons over to that, and listened to it while I was out there. Mostly, that was going to dinner, or shopping after dinner, since the rest of the time, the car just sat at the campsite by itself, and I never touched it. However, it all changed this year, when I liked the radio station they had on at the beach concession stand, so I asked them what they were listening to. They said it was 105.9 WHCN "The River," and they liked it a lot. So on Tuesday, after I got my car back from the service station, I changed one of the radio buttons in my car to that, and was surprised to find that I couldn't pull the station in, no matter where I was. I had to drive the car all the way to the picnic area parking lot, just up the hill from the beach, in order to get the station to come in to the car at all, thanks not. So it was back to WPLR 99.1 for me again, and 105.9 was just a beach fade toss-away, alas.     Alert readers may recall a few previous years at Wildwood, when I stopped to turn around at the nearby Baptist church, and found a red Chevy Aveo in their parking lot, and took pictures of it with my own Aveo. Alas, this time around, there was no Aveo anymore in the parking lot at the Baptist church, no matter where I looked for it. The lot isn't especially big, but it's extremely flat, and you can easily see from one side of it all the way to the other, on both sides of the church building, so there is simply no way to hide a red Aveo in there, believe me. Of course, it's entirely possible that whoever has the other Aveo might have retired or changed jobs, or taken the same week off as I did, or taken the Aveo away to university, or any number of other perfectly reasonable vehicle-related happenstances, I'm sure. I just find it a curious turn of events on top of everything else, I can tell you that.     During the week out there, we had one night (Tuesday) that brought all the thunder and lightning that it had, and tossed it all at us with everything including the kitchen sink. Mind you, at the time, I had hunkered down the two sites, and left them in the afternoon, safe and snug, without anything to worry about. Or so I thought! When I went back in the morning, I was certainly surprised to see that the rain fly had collapsed, with the poles knocked out from under it, and just scattered about on the ground. Fortunately, the bungee cords were still holding onto the corners of the tarp, so at least it stayed put over the tent and still kept everything dry inside, so that really was the important part after all. Even worse was the clothesline collapsing, and a lucky thing that I had pulled all of the clothes off of it previously, so there was just a small amount of outfits that were on the ground and covered in mud, thanks not. I wasn't at the park overnight, so I really don't know what it was like there, but when I went to the beach in the morning, you can believe me when I say that there were some seriously gnarly waves pounding on the sand, and looking like they meant business. The water was completely brown, and I went in for the novelty effect, which was fun in its own way, but came out all covered in seaweed. It settled down later in the afternoon, but it was fun while it lasted, and what I would consider unusual conditions for us old-timers at Wildwood, for sure.     So we cut my vacation short by one whole day, packing up and checking out on Friday rather than Saturday as usual, and having a sort of unsettled brake-related headache after we left. We took the car back to our service station one last time, to see what they had to say about it, but since we had 2 cars, we decided to take a chance on driving them home, and have our own mechanic look at it once it was back here. A stop at Denny's for a late lunch/early dinner was just the thing for a Friday on the go, and helped to make the day end up better than it started. We threw some things out of the cars into the garage, dragged a few others into the house, and pretty soon, we were back on the road to the elegant Crowne Plaza in White Plains for the next few days. This is a serious corporate hotel, chockfull of serious corporate guests, and we were trying our best to fit in as much as possible. We hit their shower and scrubbed off the last of the sand, salt water, and seaweed from camping, and made our way into the New Rochelle High School 50th Reunion mixer at the cafe downstairs, where everyone seemed to be having a great time, even the spouses. Bill had been working with the Reunion committee on their invitations, and some other negligible matters, and they met up in small groups to make sure that everything was staying on track. On Saturday was the actual reunion, at the Womens Club of White Plains (officially known as the C.V. Rich mansion) with almost 200 attendees, and it was definitely a blast. There was a DJ cranking out all the oldies, there were pictures from all the elementary and middle schools, there were games, food, dancing, and drinking, and you can believe me when I say that it was nothing but a whole lot of fun, fun, fun. I actually knew some of Bill's old classmates, so I was not like a fish out of water, and the Reunion committee who assembled the event did a heck of a job keeping it real and interesting. When it finally broke up, we pushed out into the parking lot in the pouring rain, clutching our prizes and give-aways, and there was not a complaint to be heard from anywhere. In the morning, we hurried downstairs to the post-Reunion buffet at the hotel, and it was great fun to catch up with everybody one more time, in the bright and clear day-time, before finally breaking up and going our own individual separate ways once more. Can't wait for the number 100 Reunion! Elle