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