Rant #2,823: Nature's Way

Well, we certainly did get zonked on Friday and Saturday.
 
Long Island got hit with the first major snowstorm we have had in several years, and most places on the Island received at least a foot of the white stuff as a gift from Mother Nature.
 
In my neck of the woods, 16.5 inches fell to the ground, and while we have gotten more during storms in the past, well, I wasn’t 64 years old way back when, so everything kind of equaled out when it came to getting rid of the stuff.
 
We also had to contend with gale force winds and temperatures in the low double digits, so yes, it was a bloody mess without the blood.
 
The snow plows probably did as best as they could do with the snow falling roughly for two days straight—all day on Friday, although the early stuff was nothing, all the way through to about 4 p.m. on Saturday—but let me tell you, while the main roads were pretty good yesterday, the side streets around me are terrible—and that is the best word I can use to describe them.
 
They are full of ice and snow, and pretty treacherous if you don’t know what you are doing, or worse, think you know what you are doing but actually haven’t a clue.
 
I had one incident yesterday that shined a light on that thought.
 
I was driving on one of the side streets to get home after dropping my son off at work, and as I was about a half mile away from my house, a small truck was coming towards me—and I do mean coming towards me.
 
He was on a straight path to my car, and I beeped and honked and finally stopped my car as he ever-so-dangerously moved out of the way a few feet before we would have had a head-on collision.
 
Yes, the side streets are so bad around here that the driving area has been halved, what with the snow and the ice and people parking on the street about a foot from where they would normally park, putting their cars in the middle of the road, but this guy—or gal, I never got a good glimpse of the person—was either not paying attention—quite possible—or perhaps simply misjudged the driving area that was available—also quite possible.
 
Whatever the case, having had one accident that I had nothing to do with about a month or so ago, I certainly did not need another one, but happily, the driver woke up just at the right moment.

 
Today, everything is back to normal, pretty much, other than the fact that there is still plenty of snow on the ground. You can see the before (at the top) and the after (t=right here) photos of my street to see that while plenty was done, we might need Mother Nature to help us—and she is supposed to do just that, with temperatures in the near-50 degree range later this week, and a lot of rain too.
 
So other than taking care of the snow around our house, what did I do this weekend to make the time go faster?
 
Well, I digitized more singles and albums that I had in two months in just about three days. I am now 100-percent caught up in everything I wanted to put into MP3 format so I can listen to the music in the car.
 
Sure, I have thousands of other records that I have not yet digitized, but for right now, for the things I wanted to put into that format, I am all caught up for the first time in years.
 
I watched a bit of television, and the Decades channel had a marathon of the earlier “My Three Sons” episodes during Saturday and Sunday. The show was really something a little different in its early years than what it became later on.
 
It was fun to watch these episodes, with William Frawley as Bub, the combination grandfather and chief cook and bottle washer, in these early years of the show. If you have not seen these early shows, Frawley basically continues his Fred Mertz character from “I Love Lucy,” but Bub is really Fred Mertz on steroids in his “My Three Sons” role, and as with “Lucy,” he demonstrated once again what a talented actor he was.
 
And I also watched a few movies, none of which really demand much mention here, because they weren’t very good—

 
Except for “The Haunted Strangler,” a movie starring Boris Karloff that I missed on Saturday night’s “Svengoolie” entry on MeTV because I watched a WWE pay-per-view event with my son—which was quite interesting in itself—and which my wife fell asleep on when she tried to watch it herself.
 
We found it on YouTube and watched it on Sunday, and this 1957 film was about a man—Boris Karloff, who gave a great tour-de-force performance—who dives into what we now call a “cold case” about a strangler, and ends up being the strangler himself.
 
Karloff was relegated to trashy films later in his life, but this one is one of the better of the later films that he appeared in, and while it wasn’t a movie that I say that “you can’t miss,” he was absolutely terrific in it, so if you want to see an actor take what he is given and life it to a higher level than it should be, this is the film to see.
 
So that is how I spent my winter weekend, nothing that great but nothing that bad either, other than the wretched snow.
 
Did you suffer, too, at the hands of Mother Nature?
 
I guess it is nature’s way of telling us that she is still the greatest force we have to deal with, even through everything we have had to deal with lately.
 
“Don’t mess with Mother Nature!!” indeed!

Rant #2,822: I Don't Wanna See You

 

Yes, I overslept, but at least I know why …

 
My body is telling me something …
 
My eyes are watery, my nose is running like a faucet …
 
I feel slightly off right now …
 
It can only mean one thing …
 
No, that one thing IS NOT COVID …
 
It is that a storm is approaching, a storm is on its way, and my body is giving me the alert to be ready for it.
 
This usually happens to me, as I am a very allergic person, and when there is some type of weather thing going to happen, my body pretty much tells me to be on the alert.
 
The worst of this will leave me in about two hours or so, but right now, I really can’t see too well, I keep on blowing my nose, and my mouth is dry as the Sahara Desert.
 
So I know a weather disturbance is coming our way, and evidently, I am not the only one who knows this.
 
Weather forecasters have been telling us for about a week that “a major snowstorm/Nor’easter” is on its way, and that Long Island is smack dab in the middle of its most major thrust.
 
Depending on who you listen to, we are going to get anywhere from six to 24 inches of snow, and all of this will be buffeted by winds of 60 mph or even higher than that in certain spots.
 
It is all going to begin tonight, picking up in intensity around midnight, and drop like two inches an hour for a period of time, making Saturday a day to let the snow come down all day, and then basically clean up on Sunday.
 
No, I am not looking forward to any of this, as it simply becomes nothing better than a major nuisance tor myself and my family, in particular the clean up.
 
And isn’t it funny that each and every gas station around me raised their prices the last day or so, to help us to prepare for the storm by taking more money out of our pockets?
 
I planned to go to one gas station that I pass when I take my son to work. They had the cheapest price that I could find, so since I needed gas anyway, I figured that after dropping him off, I would fill my tank up.
 
I drove to the station, pulled in, and saw that in a period of 10 minutes or so, they raised the price by 12 cents!
 
They lost my business right then and there, I pulled out of the station, and I went somewhere else to fill up.
 
That is price gouging at its worst, but who you gonna call on this?
 
Certainly not Ghostbusters … are there any Gasbusters out there?
 
And I also noticed that prices continued to spiral upward at the supermarket.
 
I don’t know if this has to do with the impending snowstorm or simply because inflation is really and truly out of control right now, but yesterday, I spent more in one supermarket visit than I have ever spent, and I do mean EVER.
 
And it was about $30 more than I spent the previous week, so things have been going bad at the supermarket for quite a while … but yesterday was the absolute pits … and I even actually used a coupon with my purchase, the first time I have used a coupon in months.

It didn't help much.
 
You just cannot win … and then we have the white stuff to contend with, too.
 
And to contend with that impending horror show, one of the things that I am going to have to do is move our cars into the driveway, so that our driveway is not blanketed with snow and also so the snow plows can get through to do their jobs.
 
I have already moved my mother’s car into the driveway, since she rarely uses her car anyway.
 
Next is my wife’s car, and then mine.
 
At least it makes shoveling our property a little bit easier, and it allows the plows to go through so they can clean the roads as best they can … and also so they don’t bury our cars with snow that they move over to the sides of the road.
 
I simply hate all of this, every bit of it.
 
Show is no fun, but we are going to get it whether I like it or not.
 
And with the winds, hopefully we won’t lose power.
 
That, itself, can even be more disastrous than the snow.
 
So stay warm, stay out of the snow, and try to have a good weekend.
 
I will speak to you again on Monday, and hopefully, my snow report won’t be that bad.
 
But my allergies tell me that it will be bad.
 
I blow my nose again, and that stuff tells me so.

Rant #2,821: Beyond the Sea

Today, I am going to try to not talk about the coronavirus directly, but somehow, it is going to worm its way into what I am going to talk about on this winter Thursday.
 
And yes, I say the word “winter” purposely, because my mind is truly on the summer.
 
This summer, my family and I are supposed to go on a cruise with some other family members, but with the pandemic still around, who knows if we are actually going to go.
 
The cruise industry has been one of the hardest hit of all the industries when it comes to the past two pandemic years, as these floating cities have been found to also be Petri dishes for just about every illness to fester, and that includes COVID.
 
These cruise lines were shut down for months while protocols were developed so that they could operate, but even with the most stringent rules in place for any business, they still operate in something of their own black hole.
 
Inoculations and testing is the only way you can get on these ships, and once you are on them, further protocols have been put into place so that all guests and ship employees are protected … but that does not mean that they are 100 percent virus free—they aren’t by a long shot.
 
I read the other day that one cruise line was proclaiming that their ships were 94 percent virus free, but the problem is that that means six out of 100 people are coming on the boat without the virus—you can’t even get on the ship if you have the virus, of course—and somehow, they are picking up the virus while sailing.
 
Cruise lines have cut down on the number of people that are on their ships, so we are talking about at the very least several dozen people on board each of these ships who has contacted the virus while on these boats.
 
And let’s say that you are OK, as 94 percent of the people supposedly are. It appears that you have to go through some type of testing while on the ship, and if you want to get off the ship and do some excursions, there is more testing to be done.

And the excursions themselves are being called "bubble excursus," and that could mean just about anything related to that word "bubble."
 
And back to the testing ... I am confused right now as to who pays for all of this testing, which makes the situation even worse.
 
We have all heard of ships being turned away from different ports because the ports simply don’t want people to leave these ships and infect their own people. The Bahamas has turned away numerous cruise ships because of this, and they have not been the only ports turning away these boats.
 
And then we have the ship itself.
 
With all the protocols put in to thwart the virus, will one still be able to move around the ship like one did in the past?
 
Will you be able to go to the pool, have a drink, shop in the retail area, play basketball, and pretty much do what you want to do, when you want to do it, on these ships with all the safety protocols up and running?
 
So what is supposed to be “the ultimate vacation” is beginning to turn into potentially “the ultimate nightmare,” so whatever plans we had—and mind you, this cruise has already been postponed a few times—are completely and totally up in the air.
 
A lot of our final decision will have to do with continued safety protocols that will shape the voyage.
 
Once the CDC decides that “full vaccination” means three shots—including the “booster”—and not two shots, that adds another layer of protection against the virus, but it also might put some people into a dither, as they begrudgingly got the first two shots and do not want to get a third shot.
 
But again, as I said yesterday, whether we like it or not, no one cares that you don’t want to get a third shot, and if you have to get one to get on board, then that is the way it is.
 
Personally, my son and I will get our third shots probably in February or early March, when he becomes eligible to get the booster, and my wife can’t get her booster until the summer, or right before we had planned on going on our cruise.
 
The three of us will most probably get the booster cruise or no cruise, but you just know that the CDC is going to go the three-shot route in due time … and yes, a fourth shot is probably around the corner, too.
 
So my family and those we are supposed to be going with are all in a pickle now. We have to make a final payment soon, and we simply do not know what to do.
 
Personally, I think my family and I can handle all the protocols put before us by the cruise line we are using, but that being said, if we do cruise this summer, it will certainly be a cruise unlike any other cruise we have ever taken.
 
Is it worth it?
 
I simply do not know at this point in time.
 
August seems a long way off, things could change, but it really isn’t that far off.
 
Bon Voyage?
 
“Gone Voyage” is more like it. 

Rant #2,820: Roll With the Flow

Yesterday, David Ortiz was voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, the only candidate who received the required at least 75 percent of the vote for entrance in the latest class.
 
He was a great player, more a hitter as a designated hitter than an all-around player, he tormented the Yankees as a member of the Boston Red Sox, and he had a sterling career …
 
Except for the fact that he was named as a steroid user on a report naming names during the sport’s steroid era.
 
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, the figureheads of that era, all failed for the 10th and final time to gain entrance, so they are off the ballot, and will have to rely on subcommittees to get in.
 
Ortiz claimed that even though he was named in the report as a steroid user, he never used them.
 
Andy Pettitte, who was also on the ballot this year, admitted that he used steroids one time, yet he didn’t even get half the votes needed for enshrinement.
 
If you don’t get it, then you are not alone.
 
And now onto the coronavirus … I mean, is there anything else to talk about?
 
And this is something you should get … not the virus, of course, but why so many people don’t know which way is up—or down—during this pandemic era that we are in right now.
 
New York State’s indoor mask mandate will remain in effect—including for children in school—at least for now, after an appeals court judge on Tuesday blocked a lower-court ruling from a day before that shredded the mandate.
 
So one day you must wear masks in public places and schools, the next day you don’t have to wear masks in public places and schools, and the next day, you have to wear masks in public places and schools.
 
If you think that any of this makes the least bit of sense, then you are certainly better than I am.
 
I don’t think any of this makes any sense.
 
In fact, the daily changes in policy only serve to confuse the public, and makes it that much harder and difficult for all of us to be on the same page.
 
In New York City, this is a moot point, because the city has its own masking policy, which will not be upended by the courts this time around.
 
I don’t believe in edicts and mandates related to the pandemic, and I do believe that school districts—in particular, on Long Island,, where there are well more than 150 separate school districts—should be able to guide their own individual policies.
 
Suffolk County has its own masking policy, but Nassau County, led by supervisor Bruce Blakeman, has vowed to defy the order from the get go, and they will continue to defy the order, to the chagrin of Governor Kathy “The Yokel” Hochul, who has threatened the county with a loss of funding if they continue their stance against her edict.
 
This entire thing is preposterous, in particular when various courts are playing yo-yo with the rulings.
 
What's worse, I don’t blame the kids at all for being so confused about everything, but I do blame their parents, who are using their kids as political pawns in this game of our current lives.
 
It is time we all got on board with the current reality, and stop denying what is going on now.
 
No, it is not right to force people to get their shots, to wear masks, etc., but let’s stop acting as if we are in prison and are without rights.
 
This is the current reality, whether anyone likes it or not.
 
These are things that need to be done in order to survive and in order to be able to do anything in our current world.
 
Let’s be honest about it; nobody really cares if you don’t like that scenario. You can scream and yell and stamp your feet like an infant, but nobody gives a hoot about how you feel, which is wrong, but that is the way it currently is.
 
Like it or lump it.
 
Everybody is going to have to get the shots, and we are coming to a time when everyone is not only going to have to get one or two shots, but a booster shot too, in order to be “fully vaccinated” in the eyes of our country and maybe even the world.
 
These are the current realities ... and you don't have to like it. 
 
I do believe that there is going to come a time—and it is not in the too distant future—where everything will settle down, all sides will accept the fact that this virus exists, but when one gets it, we will simply handle it like we handle things when we get the regular flu—
 
Stay home for a week until it subsides, take the recommended medication and be done with it.
 
I did believe that the repudiation of Hochul’s mask-wearing edict was part of the natural progression to this eventual situation, but with the yo-yo handling of this by the courts, this return to somewhat normal has been pushed back even further from reality.
 
We now have the weapons and tools to keep this thing under control—and yes, that includes the shots and other tools that are being developed as I write this—and normalcy will come when our leaders come to the conclusion that we can take care of ourselves--meaning we know exactly what to do—when we get this virus.
 
They have confused us and talked down to us from day one, in their terminology and the way that they are handling this mess.
 
One day soon, they will understand that we can take care of ourselves just fine with the weapons we have to combat this thing.
 
We cannot continue in the situation that we are in now, that’s for sure.
 
All I ask is for you to become a bit more realistic in your approach to this, accept the fact that this is the way it is now, do whatever you can to protect yourselves and your families, and roll with the flow and take this in stride.
 
My family and I have done this, we have never gotten the virus, and hopefully, that will continue.
 
Maybe we were just lucky, but I think that it is more than luck—I think being realistic about the entire matter, and the current world we live in, has certainly helped us fend off this thing perhaps better than others.
 
Roll with the flow and use yoiur brains—and that goes for politicians, health experts as well as the general public—and this thing will be thwarted better and more efficiently than any protection an inoculation can possibly provide.