Rant #2,942: V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

The time has finally come!
 
After three absolutely horrible years—personally, professionally, and for my family as a whole—we are finally off on vacation, beginning tomorrow.
 
We will be off to Baltimore, Maryland, and then, Senoia/Peachtree City, Georgia, and we will be away for about a week.
 
We are going to do all of this by car, and with gas prices falling, it will still cost us a pretty penny at the pump, but not what I thought it would … I thought we would be looking at $6 a gallon, for sure, but I now know that in some places, it will be below $4 a gallon.
 
We set aside separate money for that, and while the prices are down, I do expect that most of that money, if not all of it, will be used to fill my car’s gas tank as we traverse up and down the I-95 corridor.
 
It should be a fun week, a week that my family and I need, a couple of days just to soak in the sun—and it is going to be brutally hot all up and down the Eastern Seaboard—and just take it easy for a few days.
 
We won’t be even near the beach during our trip, and like the picture of Annette Funicello that accompanies this Rant, we will be doing whatever swimming we will do in a shark-less pool.
 
We were originally supposed to go on a cruise, but with that being scuttled several times by the cruise Ines due to the pandemic—I am sure President Biden will be fine—we simply decided that now is not the right time to go on such a trip, and we decided on a car trip this time around.
 
And yes, we have our masks, our COVID-19 test kits, and we will use them if and when they are applicable, if necessary, more the masks than the test kits, I am sure.
 
But again, we have been in New York’s cocoon for the past three years, and now we are going to be venturing outside of that cocoon, so it is better to be safe than sorry, I guess.
 
And like the Arby’s commercial that says “We have the meats,” my family and I can say “We have the shots,” so we should be OK.
 
As you know, I had my car checked out recently, and it is in really good shape now that I spent so much money to bring it up to snuff …
 
As am I, based on my recent medical checkups, and my family also passed whatever checkups they had, too.
 
So when you put everything together, we are ready to go!
 
There are just some loose ends to be tied up today, and by tomorrow morning at this time, we will be on the road to Baltimore.
 
I was told by someone I know that the heat might force the Sunday Yankees-Orioles contest to have its game time switched from the afternoon to the evening, so we will have to watch for that, but whatever the case, we will be there, so look for us on TV.
 
We don’t have to worry about that once we get to Georgia and go to WWE Smackdown on Friday. Look for us there on TV, too.
 
In between the two sporting events, we will do a lot of sightseeing, and a lot of hydrating, too.
 
Honestly, during the lowest point of the past three years, I never thought that this day would ever come.
 
And when we canceled our cruise, it was very depressing, to say the least.
 
But here we are, poised to finally get away—I really can’t believe the day is just about here!
 
As I look at the calendar, I will be taking off from writing this weekday column until Monday, August 1, or I might just push it to Tuesday; August 2.
 
I doubt that there will be any surprise pop-up Rants during the vacation, but I have learned to never say never.
 
But I don’t think I will return to my perch here until early August, but come here to the blog site and look for me on Facebook just to make sure.
 
The time has come, and we are ready to go!
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again in August.
 
And as that true showman Jackie Gleason used to say—
 
“AND AWAY WE GO!”

Rant #2,941: Blood On the Tracks

I finally was able to have my full blood test yesterday,
 
As I was waiting for the nurse to give it to me, I took a glance at my right arm, and boy, was I shocked.
 
For the first time—and I do mean the first time after having about 1,000 blood tests done in my life—I am black and blue in that area.
 
The left arm is also a little black and blue, but not like the right arm.
 
Happily, they were able to get the blood out of the left arm, because as you can see—not the greatest picture, but the best I could do—my right arm is a mess.
 
When I showed my arm to my wife, she said to me, “Wow! You never get like that after blood is taken,” and she is correct.
 
I mean never.
 
So consequently, it is not an assumption to say that the reason that I am like this is because of the ineptitude of the nurse who worked on me on Monday.
 
She had no clue what she was doing, and hence, not only did she not get the full amount of blood out of my veins, but she made my arm black and blue in the process.
 
On top of that, it took about two minutes to get the blood out of me yesterday morning, and I was not damaged beyond the initial damage inflicted on my left arm on Monday evening.
 
And yes, for the first time ever, I hurt during the initial try at getting blood out of me.
 
I did not hurt at all after three coronavirus injections, but I hurt after the nurse tried to get blood out of me the first time, for the very first time in my life.
 
Thank goodness that procedure is over and done with, and more importantly, I came out with flying colors at my physical, or at least prior to the blood analysis.
 
Next year when I get my physical, I will remember this fiasco, and hopefully, someone else will do my blood work.
 
They told me the discoloration would go away, and, “We would be more concerned if it went up your arm.”
 
Very reassuring words indeed.
 
Now that that is over and done with, I can focus on other things, talk about other things, such as that idiocy that happened at Sesame Place the other day.
 
Evidently, a woman and her cousin--two adults--are taking the children’s amusement park to task about their handling of the two children who accompanied these people to the park the other day.
 
One of the costumed figures refused to acknowledge either of the two little girls, and their moms are saying that that happened because the girls are black.
 
There is also a video of this incident, which has been seen on every newscast in the country, to demonstrate, once again, how racist our country is, even at a kids’ amusement park.
 
But wait a minute … there is more to this story than meets the eye.
 
The park has a policy that its costumed characters are not allowed to pick up kids in their arms, and if you look at the video with an open mind like I did, the two children are reaching out to the character as if they want to be picked up—and they are young enough to have made such a request with their outstretched arms.
 
It has nothing to do with racism, as the moms say it does, even though the video also shows the character acknowledging a kid who is “not black” afterwards, with a simple hug.

And were these two kids the only black kids in the park that day? I am sure they weren't, and that those kids got their hugs from the character.
 
This was explained in the first message that Sesame Place sent out to the parents, but with all the accompanying charges that came out of a lawyer’s moth later on, Sesame Place evidently felt it was between a rock and a hard place, and caved in and apologized to the moms and their girls.
 
Of course, neither the lawyer or the moms are accepting the park’s apology, because they want to further the point that we are a racist country, which the media picks up on like bees to honey.
 
Watch the video—it is clear that the kids want to be picked up by the character, and the character followed the park’s rules and wouldn’t do it.
 
The moms and the lawyer want the person in the character suit fired … fired for following the rules.
 
The moms want justice, and their poor kids are in the middle of all of this.
 
Kind of very mild child abuse, if you ask me.
 
But again, “following the rules” is not for everyone, doing what you are told to do is not for everyone, and causing a ruckus over nothing is more to some peoples’ liking, I guess.
 
But all the while, I am still black and blue.
 
Maybe I should charge the nurse who tried to extract blood out of me for racism, because, well …
 
How about anti-Semitism?
 
How about ageism?
 
How about … ?

Rant #2,940: Bad Blood

I’m back!
 
My allergies are terrible today.
 
I can barely see out of each eye,
 
But at least I know that I am relatively healthy, as my battery of doctor appointments is just about over.
 
I went to the eye doctor on Saturday, my regular doctor on Monday, and my dermatologist on Tuesday, and it appears that I have passed all the tests with flying colors.
 
That is true, but one thing still has to be done, and I have to go back to my regular doctor later today.
 
While taking blood from me on Monday, the stream inexplicably stopped right in the middle of its flow, and after poking me around to see where else they could extract the remainder of the blood that they needed to fill the vials—I filled two of four before the stoppage—they told me to come back today, where, hopefully, I will give them what they need.
 
I have had blood taken from me hundreds of times, including a donation that could not be used because I am on allergy medication, and the blood is considered tainted when that is in your system.
 
To my recollection, this is just the second time that the flow has stopped in the middle … I seem to remember it happening about 20 years ago, but that was it until the other day.
 
So I guess if Barnabas Collins picked me for a victim, he would immediately throw me away, because he couldn’t get any of the red stuff out of me, or at least he couldn’t get anything out of me this past Monday.
 
We will see today what happens.
 
They told me to fully hydrate myself, which I will do in the interim.
 
The funny thing about it is that the original flow came from my right arm, and when that stopped, it really stopped, as I wasn’t even bleeding when I was disattached from the vial.
 
And when they tried my left arm, nothing came out, but slightly after I was disattached, I noticed that a drop of blood came out under the Band Aid that they gave me, which leads me to believe that if they were a little more patient, they could have gotten what they needed.
 
Now all of this leads me to the next portion of this Rant, and please, do not get offended, but I am asking questions that need to be asked.
 
When the AIDS epidemic came about decades ago, many heterosexuals ended up getting the disease not through sexual contact, but through blood transfusions with blood from gay men who had unwittingly contracted the disease.
 
When this was discovered, blood donations from gay men were stopped for a long time, so as not to spread the disease to the general population, which, of course, it spread to, anyway, through other means.
 
Now, with monkeypox ravaging the gay demographic, do we again ban blood donations by gay men?
 
Again, I am asking the question because I am not knowledgeable about monkeypox, which we know can be controlled with an already-available vaccine.
 
But the fact of the matter is that while monkeypox is not AIDS—which was a death sentence to many gays and non-gays way back when—it is still something that we do not want spreading to the general population.
 
So do we ban, at least until monkeypox is more under control, blood donations from gay men?
 
I have heard on some of the television newscasts that have interviewed gay men about precautions that they are taking to protect themselves that … well, they aren’t taking any precautions at all, while others have rushed to get the shot, so with this sort of 50-percent ambivalence, how soon will monkeypox be in the general population through sexual contact and other means?
 
Just asking … as they say on Facebook, “just asking for a friend.”
 
And with all the shots we need to get now to protect ourselves against various diseases, will we all be asked to take a monkeypox shot?
 
And you just know how that is going to fly with a population that is sick of being told to get one shot after another after another.
 
But getting back to blood, if you desire to see real/fake blood being shed on television, just watch AEW Wrestling tonight on TBS at 8 p.m., because they have a barbed wire match planned, and you just know that the red stuff—is it blood or ketchup?—will be flowing on that show during that match.
 
Over the years, I have seen matches where wrestlers really did get “busted open,” as they say, and I have also seen matches where the blood is as fake as a $3 bill, so tonight’s match will probably be a mix of the two.
 
Yes, there will be plenty of bad blood that will be seen tonight … and I just hope that my blood is good enough to flow, flow and flow some more earlier in the day.
 
Got blood? Hopefully, I have plenty. 

Rant #2,939: Down On Me

How was your weekend?
 
My perfect weekend was marred by one incident that was so ridiculous, and really didn’t have to happen.
 
My computer pretty much went on well each day, so while it is going into the abyss, at least I can use it right now.
 
We actually used the pool this weekend, and boy, did it feel great! The weather certainly accommodated us well, with temperatures in the 80s, and it only rained when we were not using the pool.
 
My son and I went to eye doctor, one of several eye doctors that I have to go to this reek—more on that later. Anyway, we passed with flying colors—which is a really big deal for me, what with my well-documented vision problems—so we don’t have to worry about this for another several months.
 
And the New York Yankees blew out the Boston Red Sox on Saturday and Sunday, and that is always a good thing.
 
So the living was easy … or so I thought.
 
As I always do, I went to get dinner on Sunday evening for my family, including my mom, who seems to eat more when she is eating with us on the weekend than when she eats by herself during the week.
 
Anyway, I went to a local Taco Bell, because that is what my mom, my son and I wanted to eat—my wife wanted Boson Market, and since they are back-to-back where I went, it should have been an easy pickup on Sunday evening.
 
I drove up to the drive-through at Taco Bell first, and placed my order, but the worker had trouble with the order from the get-go, asking me to repeat myself several tines.
 
Finally, the order read correctly on the drive-through screen, so I pulled up to the window to pay for it.
 
The woman at the window—the same one who took my order—handled me three drinks in a drink caddy, those heavier cardboard things that hold up to four drinks at a time.
 
As she was handing it to me, she almost dropped it, and as she regained the hold on the caddy, she handed it to me—
 
And as she handed it to me, it appeared that one of the holders on the caddy had buckled—that is why she almost dropped it herself—and one of the drinks popped out of the caddy, mostly exploding all over me but somehow, getting the rest of the front of my car in the process.
 
(Look at the photo at the top of this Rant, and you can see exactly where the caddy had buckled.)
 
So not only was I absolutely drenched, but the whole front of my car was too, including the passenger seat, everything in front including the radio, the drink holders in front … you name it, and it was engulfed in soda.
 
I went into a rage, never using profanity but coming thisclose to using those words, screaming at the woman about the damaged drink caddy and why she didn’t see that as she herself nearly dropped the thing handing it to me.
 
I screamed for towels, which she gave me, and as I tried to mop up everything—ever try to mop up soda with a paper towel?—I demanded to speak to the manager.
 
Another woman came up to the window. “I’m sorry” was all she could say to me.
 
“Do you think I am going to leave here with just ‘I’m sorry,” I replied, as I continued to try to clean things up.

 
She gave me a $5-off coupon, gave me a new set of drinks in a doubled-up caddy (see the second photo),and then someone else—not the woman who gave me the ruptured caddy—gave me my food.
 
“Have a nice day,” the worker said to me.
 
“How good a day could it be?” I said as I drove off, still mopping up errant soda all over the place.
 
I pulled into Boston Market next door, still mopping up everything, and I discovered that my pants were even more wet than I thought they were, and that I literally was sitting in soda, with my pants reflecting that (I will leave that image to your imagination)..
 
Happily  not too many people were in Boston Market, and I got in and out of there—they do not have a drive-through—in record time.
 
I got home, and eventually stripped down to my civvies because little had dried up, and in the meantime, I reported the restaurant on the web site that they provide to “Rate Your Dining Experience” or whatever they call it.
 
I am still pretty upset about this incident, which really should have never had happened if the person at the window would have been more alert.
 
(And by the way, the person taking my order got the order all wrong, putting sour cream where it shouldn’t have been and neglecting to put it where it should have been.)
 
Again, it goes back to what I said in a Rant not long ago, that since the pandemic, the quality of service has fallen to record lows, because it doesn’t seem that many people take pride in their work anymore … they just mosey about, puttering around until it is time to leave for the day, taking zero pride in what they are doing.
 
I have noticed that this is true across the board no matter where I go or need services done, and while it is certainly not every worker who simply goes through the motions, it is an increasing amount who really are neglectful.
 
And here I sit, told that I am unemployable, except for my freelance job.
 
Go figure. 

I have a very early doctor's appointment tomorrow, so I will next speak with you on Wednesday. 

Have a good Monday and an even better Tuesday!