Life In The Slow Lane

I’ve extended my long Labor Day weekend by taking a couple of vacation days today and Wednesday and heading back to work on Thursday for the opening - again - of the new school year.

I need the couple of extra days to mentally prepare myself for driving around to every school I cover and taking the same pictures I took last year and the year before and the year before that and doing the same interviews I did last year and the year before and the year before that.

Some things never change.

So far I haven’t done anything of any substance over the long weekend except clean the tub.

Excitement personified.

Not that there aren’t a million and one things I could do. The garden needs to be weeded, the gutters need to be cleaned in anticipation of the falling autumn leaves that will no doubt end up in them, the interior of the house needs a general GI party, I need a haircut, I’ve got a slew of garbage bags filled with soda cans and bottles to turn in for redemption, and it wouldn’t hurt to take some of the stuff in the garage up into the attic for storage.

But will I get around to any of this?

Well, the haircut, maybe, because it’s starting to make me look like Shaggy in Scooby Doo - or even Scooby Doo himself. I keep telling myself I’m going to see Bob the Barber on a more frequent basos and I always renege on that vow. But when it’s time to start putting gel in the hair to keep it from looking like a porcupine, it’s time to see Bob.

It’s a great day to be outside anyway. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the temperature’s a balmy 70 degrees. There’s a hint of autumn in the air as leaves start to change their colors, and the pumpkins in the garden are just about ready for picking.

What I’ll do with them after they’ve been picked is anyone’s guess. I don’t think that far in advance when I throw the seeds into the ground.

Maybe I’ll try my hand at a pumpkin pie.

Maybe I’ll carve them out for Halloween and hope they stick around for the next two months.

Or maybe I’ll just go ahead and toss ‘em on the ground to save the young punks the trouble on Halloween.

The days are starting to get cool and crisp. The latest temperature reading is 55 degrees. The beach officially closes on Monday. School officially starts on Sept. 4.

The dog days of summer, it seems, are winding down.

Rough, rough.

As of today, there are 6 days until Labor Day, the last hurrah of the summer, 27 days until fall begins and, with that in mind, the stores are already peddling the Halloween stuff because there’s only 66 more days and we don’t want to wait until the last minute to get that giant inflatable glow-in-the-dark ghost for the front yard.

Yup, fall is in the air.

It hasn’t been much of a beach summer. We haven’t really sweated this one out like we’ve done in recent summers. Oh, there have been a few days when the cool water of the St. Lawrence River would feel like a Godsend, but they’ve been few and far between.

Which is a good thing because if I hit the beach I probably would have been mistaken for a beached whale and got harpooned on the spot.

I’ve changed my diet pretty radically lately, but it doesn’t seem to help. I’ve started eating more salads and more Japanese noodles. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to a McDonalds or a Burger King because I honestly can’t remember. It’s been that long.

So theoretically I should be losing weight, right?

I probably would - if I didn’t have the Peanut M&Ms filling the candy container on top of the microwave or the two packages - buy one, get one free - of Triple Chocolate Klondikes in the freezer.

Hey, a man’s gotta have his vices.

At least I put them out of my reach so I need to walk (translation: exercise) to get them.

Still, the pounds continue to sit in my belly.

There is a bright spot though.

I’ve got plenty of time to get “beach-ready” for next summer, which doesn’t start for another 299 days.

It’s been a depressing week around the house since Sissy was laid to rest. Tabu - her best friend - seems like she’s been in the dumper without Sissy around. Katie, well, she never changes. Just a rambunctious ball of fur. And I worry about Holly, who’s prone to seizures and has a heart murmur.

It’s been quiet and lonely without hearing Sissy purring like an engine as she munches on her evening snack of treats. In fact, the treats are going largely untouched these days. The cats just don’t seem to want them, no matter what flavor I put down in front of them. They’re not eating well either, just kind of moping around. I don’t know what goes through a cat’s mind, but I can only believe that their heart is as broken as mine.

I thought maybe work would take away some of the hurt, but it’s been a tough haul. Sissy’s not in the window when I get home and she’s not sleeping with me at night. Holly’s taken her place at my bedside, which eases the pain somewhat.

It’s hard to describe the hurt I feel without Sissy. I’ve always gone through a mourning period with every cat I’ve had to lay to rest, but for some reason it’s hit really hard with her passing. Maybe because she was only around for three years. Perhaps that makes it harder to swallow than having a cat around for 20 years. Whatever the case, my heart still hurts and aches every time I think about her - and that’s often.

In fact, I think about all the cats, no matter how long they’ve been gone, and I’m thankful for those who still befriend me.

I’ll never forget my friends.

If you’re older than the hills like me, you probably remember this sage piece of advice passed on to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”:

Well yessiree, it appears Mr. McGuire knew exactly what he was talking about in the 1960s.

Here we are in the new century and it’s plastics, plastics everywhere.

And I can’t stand it anymore!

Have you tried to get a pill out of its plastic compartment these days? It’s not just impossible, it’s enough to send a sane person over the edge.

I needed a pill for my back this morning and they come in those nifty individualized wrappers in which you’re supposed to grab the edge and give it a twist and pull the paper back and the pill’s supposed to pop out with ease.

Question.

Did anybody in the laboratory actually test that concept before they put it out on the market?

It doesn’t work as advertised, folks, and I pity the poor people who have to go through that drill to take a pill for arthritis.

When is childproof too childproof?

You’ve got pills like the back pills that you can’t get out of their little compartment without using a pair of scissors or a drill or a hacksaw.

And if that’s not bad enough, you’ve got pill bottles with tops that you’re supposed to press down and twist and, if you’re actually successful in removing the top, you’re faced with heavy-duty paper covering the opening to the bottle and a wad of cotton about a mile long stuffed inside the bottle - and of course, it comes out piece by piece instead of in a mile-long strand.

Sick people don’t need to go through this aggravation.

Mr. McGuire told Benjamin Braddock, “One word - plastics.”

Well, I’ve got two words.

Plastics suck.

I don’t know why, but sleep hasn’t been good to me lately. It seems I’m tossing and turning and waking up all hours of the night and, even if I went to bed at 5 a.m., I’d still be awake at 8.

Maybe it’s because of the three cats who insist on using my body as their bed, pinning me motionless for the evening. If I really need to turn over, I’m fending off 60 claws - estimating 20 claws per cat on the front and back legs - embedded in my skin.

Of course, they don’t lose any sleep over it.

Or maybe I’m not getting enough sleep because I keep dreaming I’m someplace else - and lately it’s been back at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, my final assignment in the Army.

I don’t know why I’d dream about Dugway. There’s really nothing to dream about as you can tell from this YouTube video.

I’m so tired these days that I can’t think straight - which maybe means I could get my own newspaper column just like Clay Thompson. Seems Mr. Thompson doesn’t need to work very hard to answer people’s questions - and I’d be perfectly suited for that role.

Here’s an example:

Dear Clay: I have some large wind chimes on our patio and the pipes are like 20″ to 30″ long and an inch or so in diameter, but they are not tuned. Do you know how I can tune them?

Clay responds: I have made tuned wind chimes in the past, but like making bird feeders out of old pill bottles the directions are long lost. Go to Google and type in “tuning wind chimes.” You’ll find some books for sale there on the procedure. I haven’t read them, so I’m reluctant to suggest one. And buy a hacksaw.

Geez, I could do that.

Dear Bob: I’m having trouble making ends meet on my measly paycheck. How can I make money go farther?

Bob responds: Simple. Tear your $5 bill into four pieces so it makes it seem like you have more money than you really do. And stop buying food.

But getting back to this sleep issue, I’m thinking maybe I should start shoving a DVD into the player and let a boring movie lull me into a deep sleep - or in the case of some movies, death from boredom.

And if you don’t like the movie, great news. They’re disposable now. Really. I saw it at Kinney Drugs yesterday when I was picking up my supply of M&Ms and Pepsi for a grueling day of work. Apparently you buy the DVD for like $5 and it plays twice before it goes kaput. Then you just chuck it in the trash.

Sounds like a perfectly good waste of money to me - even if you’ve taken that $5 bill and torn it into four pieces.

And if you happened to like the movie? Well, not only have you just shelled out $5 for a copy that’s no longer any good, now you’ve got to plonk down another $20 to get a version that will keep playing more than a couple of times.

Who says technology is smart?

Or are people just stupid?

Especially those of us who don’t have much brain left because of sleep deprivation.

As you can see, I haven’t been able to update for a few days. My humble apologies. Sometimes day-to-day activities keep me so on the go that I’m hard-pressed to find time to eat.

Not that dieting is a bad thing for me these days. I might be mistaken for a beach ball if I headed out to the Town Beach and removed my shirt.

But I digress.

Sometimes the sounds of silence - as we’ve had here for a few days - are a good thing. This is, after all, Life In The Slow Lane

But if you insist on driving in The Fast Lane, here’s a website that might keep you out of trouble, courtesy of Bill.

Want to know where those police speed traps are located in your area? Just click here and you’ll find out in a jiffy.

Unless you want to face a local judge, slow down.

Life In The Slow Lane. It’s a good thing.

I shared some of my frustrations yesterday about the way things have gone this week.

Well…. I wasn’t done.

You’re never gonna please Bob, no matter how hard you try.

So, in no particular order, here’s some more things that have been sticking to my craw lately.

E-Mail

In a nutshell, I’m tired of spam.

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me “update your penis.” What the hell does that mean?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me “you look stupid bbeckstd@ogd.com.” Not stupid enough to click the link the e-mail carries, no doubt to download a virus onto my computer.

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me I can make millions by processing rebates at home. If the job is so lucrative, why isn’t the world full of millionaires processing rebates at home?

I’m tired of the e-mails that want to sell me Vicodin when I’ve been put on the drug before and it’s done absolutely nothing for me, so why would I want to put any more into my system?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me they’re going to close my Wells Fargo Bank Account if I don’t update my information when I’ve never been near a Wells Fargo Bank in my entire 48 years of existence and wouldn’t know one if it bit me in the ass.

I’m tired of the e-mails that have a picture of some chick who’s telling me, “Hello. I am so tired tonight. Won’t you please write me at xxxx@xxxx.com. Well, if you’re so tired, why are you up sending e-mails?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me this is the second notice that I’ve been awarded a gift certificate for Bloomingdales when (1) I’m not traveling hundreds of miles to New York City to visit Bloomingdales, and (2) I never received the first notice or the third, fourth, fifth, sixth or even seventh - so please give your gift certificate to somebody who gives a shit.

Yeah, I’m tired of the whole kit and kaboodle, but I have to sift through the crap day after day after day, wasting an hour of my time to get to real messages.

Like the woman from Nigeria whose husband passed away and she wants me to have his $50 million.

Verizon

I railed on Verizon yesterday for taking away my newsgroups and I’ll rail on them again today.

Who the hell is calculating their phone bills?

It’s amazing that I could have the slimmest of phone services - essentially a dial tone - and the $29.95 bill for my Verizon DSL and still have a bill that hovers around $100.

Are dial tones that friggin’ expensive these days?

I can’t figure it out because there’s so much gobbledygook in the list of “charges” that your head swims.

I may have to call them.

But then again, you can never get a human when you call your own phone company.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

The Weather

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder why, whenever it pours like hell and you have to close every window in the house, the temperature is like 95 degrees. And when you can finally open your windows on sunny days, it’s 50 degrees and you don’t need to open them to begin with.

Phone Redialers

It gets a little annoying at night when I’m at work slaving away on stories trying to meet the deadline and the phone rings and I have to answer it and I get some idiot who says, “Yeah, your number was on my Caller ID. Did someone there try to call me?

Listen dude, do you know how many people work at our newspaper plant?

I don’t know you and I don’t know who called you and I don’t have the time to find out who called you and I really don’t give a shit who called you because if it was important enough obviously they would have left you a friggin’ message.

Alright, I think by now you get the general idea.

Life sucks the big one these days.

Maybe I will take that company up on its offer of Vicodin.

I could use a few happy pills right about now.

Seems like I was just covering the opening of school and now it all comes to a close this weekend with area graduations.

Again.

I always begin to lament about my age whenever this time of year rolls around.

It’s been 31 years since I walked across the stage of the Massena Arena to receive my diploma.

The kids graduating this year - OK, they’re not kids anymore - were in second grade when I started at the newspaper. A couple more years and I’ll have covered them through their entire school career.

You know what else makes me feel like a geezer? My co-worker wasn’t even born - or even a gleam in her parents’ eyes - the year I graduated from Massena Central High School.

Yup, I’m officially an “old fart.”

Pass the Geritol, will ya, and pull up the chair and we’ll watch some Lawrence Welk together.

A one and a two and a…

On a serious note, RIP George Carlin, one of the comics I grew up loving.

It’s only fitting today that in this clip he talks about the dangers of education.

Enjoy.

Don’t let anybody ever convince you that you’re just a little fish swimming in the big ocean they call the Internet.

You can be found.

And you will be found.

As I learned from this letter from my dear friends at YouTube:

Dear YouTube Member:

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

So the video’s still up and running, thanks to the kindness and generosity of UMG

But it reinforces the old adage, “Big Brother is watching you.”

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

I was driving back from a meeting last night and I’m just passing the drive-in - yes, Massena still has one of those ancient critters - when I get this severe hankerin’.

I needed ice cream.

I don’t know what came over me, but I started salivating furiously.

For a minute I thought I might have rabies.

So, instead of heading back to the office, I dropped by P&C and ran like a bullet to their frozen food section and pondered and pondered and pondered before settling on Eskimo Pies - the triple chocolate kind that has chocolate on the outside, chocolate with a tinge of vanilla on the inside and a gooey chocolate sauce that miraculously appears out of nowhere.

I put on 50 pounds just thinking about it.

But they were good, oh so good when I got back to the office and started biting into them while cranking out my stories for the day. And they were still oh so good when I got home and sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and dropping hints of chocolate on the sports section. And they were oh so good this morning when I said to hell with the M&Ms, gimme one of them there Eskimo Pies.

Does that officially make me a resident of Alaska now?

Alas, all the joy went out of my life when I popped open the gas bill that had come in the day’s mail.

The gas folks around here would have you believe that natural gas is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and they claim it’s cheap.

Oh really!

Then how come a bill that would normally be in the 30-something range this time of year was more like 90-something?

It’s not like I cooked up a feast on the gas-powered stove. I’m a microwave man, baby.

It’s not like I took any more showers than normal. Once a day’s enough for me unless it’s been a really muggy day and then I’ll probably throw myself under the water again.

It’s not like I’m doing any more laundry than I was last year. Two loads a weekend - one for whites, one for coloreds. See, I know what I’m doing at the washing machine, ladies.

It’s not like the furnace is going full blast. It hasn’t been turned on in over a month.

So why, oh why the hell has the bill risen - other than the pay the bandits providing the gas.

It’s absolute starts with a B and ends with a T and has the letters ullshi in between.

If ya get my drift.

I do have some solace though. I’ve been without hot water for the last two days for some strange reason, so I’ve been taking ice-cold showers that make me feel like I’ve been thrown into the Atlantic Ocean in January.

Quick showers, I might add - soap up, rinse off and dry off in a record-setting 5 seconds.

We used to call them Navy showers in the Army. Go figure.

So, since I have no hot water, then surely St. Lawrence Gas can’t charge me for that.

Or maybe they can because anybody affiliated with gasoline supply these days seems to be like Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Gotta go. Time to shower.

I’ll be back - in about 2 seconds.

And then I’ll have another Eskimo Pie to make me feel better.

I don’t like change.

I don’t adapt well to change.

Especially when it involves the store where I do my grocery shopping.

I needed a few things at P&C - it should have been a run-in, run-out kind of deal.

Except they threw a monkey wrench into the plans.

They rearranged the store.

I went looking for cat litter and found myself face-to-face with tampons.

Paper towels? They’re way over yonder when they used to be “here.”

Tuna? Check the former shampoo aisle.

It’s almost like they reversed the store, taking all the product that used to be on the right side and switching it over to the left.

Maybe they just like us and want us hanging around longer in the store.

Or maybe they just thought, “Let’s see how alert these jerks are who come in and pay damned near $5 for a bag of M&Ms.”

Or maybe, just maybe, they’re trying to do a store version of a comb-over.

Their parent company, Penn Traffic, hasn’t been doing so hot in recent years. Most people declare bankruptcy and set themselves back on track. Not this company. They continue to lose millions - and sometimes it shows on the shelves.

One night there was no bread.

Another night there was absolutely nothing in the freezer case.

Hell, one time they didn’t even have big bags of M&Ms, you know, the 20-pounders that you need a dolley to haul out to your car.

Oh, but there’s one thing they have plenty of now.

Aggravated customers who can’t find the coffee .

You just don’t mess with people who haven’t had their coffee.

I think my back can now officially be classified as “gone to hell in a handbasket.”

And now my knees aren’t far behind.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I woke up yet again this morning feeling like I had been run over by a tractor trailer.

Remember years ago when Billy Ray Cyryus lamented about his achy breaky heart?

Well, I’m lamenting about my achy breaky back and my achy breaky knees and my achy breaky whatever’s next in the line of medical dysfunctions.

Old age sucks.

And it doesn’t help when I receive e-mails that ask me to click on a link so I can find out what happened the year I was born.

How old do you think I’m supposed to feel when Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states the year I was born?

Good lord, I’m an old coot.

I should be sitting around the fire with a grandchild on my knee - as opposed to a banjo on my knee, of course - telling stories about the “good old days” when we only had 13 cable stations and radio stations were actually staffed by real people and we had to walk two miles in the snow and cold to get to school and the Beatles were taking America by storm and we could only go so far with a phone because of this thing called a cord that was attached to it.

And that was after we were able to actually use the phone because of this primitive thing they had called a party line, when you cut back on your phone bill by sharing the phone with another person somewhere else in town and you never knew who it was but wasn’t it great fun to get on the phone and start doing the armpit farts while they were talking.

Kids don’t have it like that anymore. Now they sit down and try to figure out what they’re going to watch from the 500 stations available on cable - and they still can’t find anything. Or they’re busy playing their video games. Or they’re spending every waking hour on the Internet. Or they’re yakking and texting on their cell phone.

Or they’re blowing balloons with their nose…

Boy inflates 213 balloons - by his nose

Andrew’s first attempt - 184 balloons in February - was rejected because his father tied the balloons. This time he tied them off himself.

What’s this world coming to?