Rant #3,995: Something In the Air

This summer has been a very warm one, and I read today that for the contiguous 48 states, we just went through the hottest July on record.

The average temperature was 76.89 degrees, which made it the warmest month ever in the U.S., less Hawaii and Alaska.

This temperature edged out the July temperature registered during the Dust Bowl, in 1936, so it broke a 90-year-old record.

Personally, I simply cannot take the heat, but my family and I wait until the evening to put on the air conditioning, because the price is simply too costly to do it during the day.

When I drive around, I do use the air conditioner pretty liberally, and during our recent vacation, I probably had the AC on about 90 percent of the time when driving.

And this has brought up some other interesting things, at least in my own mind.

As you know, I am a big Yankees fan, and my team has been flailing for some time, and their bats have been nearly silent, in particular, at Yankee Stadium.

The team has been very successful playing away on the road, but when it comes to playing at home--where they should be excelling, since the team is supposedly built around the stadium that they play 81 games at during the regular season--they are not doing well, and I think the weather has a lot to do with it.

Here is what I put up on Facebook the other day, and what do you think about it?

"Watching the Yankees since 1965, and watching them play in the new Stadium since 2009, I think the Yankees' current lack of offense has to do with the ballpark itself.

The current Stadium's wind pattern appears to be different than it used to be, and balls that would fly out of the Stadium in the past are just long outs today.

The wet weather New York has experienced this summer hasn't helped matters, making the ball heavier and harder to hit out.

I just feel that the changing atmosphere, while not the full culprit in their offensive malaise, is certainly part of the problem. I have never seen so many near misses at the Stadium as I have this season. What do you think?"

And the responses I received back were pretty mixed.

Some thought it was an interesting observation that they hadn't heard before, others scoffed at it, and others said that the opposing team has to play in the same conditions, so what I said doesn't make sense--

But those opposing teams don't have to play 81 games there, just a few games at a time.

In later posts, I pointed to the Mets' CitiField stadium, which used to be a downright pitchers' park, but now--and I believe also due to changing weather patterns--has become a hitters' panacea.

(Yes, I know they brought in the fences a few years back to make it more hitter friendly, but it is only being felt to a larger scale right now.)

I wonder why none of the professionals--weather, sports writers, and the like--have not brought up this point, but I do feel that the Yankees aren't hitting--

And not necessarily because their biggest guns, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, are injured and out of the lineup for months.

Look, I could simply be looking for a needle in a haystack here, but I think I am onto something.

Anyone have anything to say on this subject?

It could be a real grand slam of a topic if it proves to be true ...

And since Yankee Stadium is an open-air arena, I have no idea what can be done about it.

But I think it is an interesting thought ...

A perfect one for another hot summer day.

Rant #3,994: Eye Candy

Now that I got my eye thing off my chest ...

So to speak, of course.

I learned a little more about why it happened yesterday morning.

Coincidentally, I had to take my son for his yearly eye checkup at the same place that I used to go regularly, but now can't because of my impending eye surgery.

I mentioned all of this to the doctor, and yes, she said that the prescription might have led to the retina tearing ...

Because since I am so near-sighted, the eye strained to fit the new prescription I had, and after three years, it just tore very slightly.

She said it is a rare occurrence, but it does happen, so I guess I am once again God's chosen person to suffer this year.

Thank goodness my son's eyes are OK.

His examination went quite well.

Me, I am not too happy right now, but eye ... err ... I ... will get over it, I guess.

I also brought in my car for an oil change.

After driving 2,100 miles in about a week with one good eye, I figured it was time to get my car some new oil.

It was time anyway, so it all worked out, scheduling-wise, pretty well.

And I was expecting the worst here ...

You know, you go in for an oil change, and they tell you about 23 other things that are wrong with your car, and you have to fix them NOW--

And you come out with a bill eight or nine or 10 times what just the oil change costs.

It has happened to me many times in my driving life, and it happened to my wife about two or three weeks ago.

And I have a six-year-old car, one that I just refinanced, so I was expecting the worst.

Happily, I only needed the oil change, so that made me feel good.

At this point, I look for little things to make me feel good, and this was one of those things.

And I didn't get any further surprises during the remainder of the day, so I guess that made me feel good too.

I don't know if you know this, but the one organ in your body that stays the same size when you are born to when you leave this earth is the eyes.

That is why newborns have that "full," adorable face when you see them, with the eyes almost too big for their head and face.

But all your other organs grow with you, but the eyes stay the same.

I would have never thought I would have eye problems other than being near-sighted, but that is what I am facing right now.

OK, I said enough about my eyes.

No more talk about that part of my body for a couple of weeks.

Let's talk about my kidney, my prostate, my quad muscle, my butt.

How appetizing that kind of talk is!

But nothing more about my eyes ...

OK?

Say "eye" ... err ... "aye" if you agree.

Rant #3,993: Eyes Without a Face

Eye, eye, eye, eye, eye!

I regret to report to you that I am going to undergo eye surgery on September 21 to repair a partially torn retina.

The beat goes on with me in 2026, a year where one thing gets fixed and then another thing pops up to frustrate me.

And it is just so frustrating.

I had three surgeries to correct one thing, had cancer taken off my scalp, and had several other issues that were just beginning to heal, and now I have this thing to contend with.

I have actually had this problem for several months, but I put off getting it repaired because, quite frankly, I was in no condition to go through this surgery.

I was weak from the other surgeries, and the bad right eye didn't really impede me from doing much of anything.

In fact, as you know, my family and I just came home from vacation, and I drove 2,100 miles without any problems.

But now that I am supposedly back together again, it is time to get this thing done.

There are two options: a "bubble" procedure, where this is implanted in the eye, and a "gel" procedure, where this is also implanted in the eye.

Both are good for me, but my doctor and I are going for the "gel" procedure, because it takes much less time for healing ...

But the negative is that it will take another procedure to get the gel out of my eye over time.

All told, once I have the procedure done, I will need constant followups, and after about six months, I will supposedly be good to go.

In the meantime, the gel procedure will allow me to do my work, to drive, and to do what I need to do, and do it more rapidly than the bubble procedure would allow.

So we are leaning toward the gel procedure, but my doctor will have the final say.

During this period, I will be in and out of this Blog at regular intervals, but i am certainly not going to give it up.

I will let you know when that happens.

This has just been a terrible year for myself and my family, and I really cannot wait for 2026 to be over and done with.

Heck, I still have to go for followups and other things that have ailed me during this year--including things that were operated on--so I am not completely out of the woods on those things just yet.

And let me tell you, all of this has prepared me for ANYTHING.

I have learned that you have no idea what is going on in your body at any given time, and that upkeep is the key.

Yes, it is all frustrating and depressing at the same time, but hopefully, the eye procedure--yes, it is surgery--will be the final such thing I will have to go through in the immediate future.

I was the guy who was never sick, never injured, pretty much healthy my entire life, but the last couple of years have been a collective nightmare ...

And at this juncture, I don't know which way is up.

I just know that I have to get this done now, because if I don't, it can lead to a fully torn retina, and I don't want that.

So I am not happy right now, but at least I know that this will get done and that hopefully, I won't have to worry about it ever again.

There are no guarantees, either.

And to add to my current splendor, this problem could have been due to my lenses.

Not necessarily a misdiagnosis, but the lenses I have might have strained my right eye to the point that the retina tore.

I got those new lenses about three years ago, when I was seen not by my regular eye doctor, but another doctor in the same practice who had not seen me before.

I had an appointment with my regular doctor, but unbeknownst to me, he had to leave that particular day for whatever reason, and instead of making another appointment with him--I found out he wasn't there when I arrived at the office--I elected to go with this other doctor, who I had not seen before.

My mistake ... but who knew?

And my regular eye doctor has now retired, so I will never be in his care again.

So that is where I stand now.

I am nervous ...

No, make that petrified ...

But I will get through it.

I am prepared ...

So let's go!

Rant #3,992: See

Today, I have to go to the special eye doctor to see where I stand with my right eye, which has a partially torn retina in it.

Honestly, I am completely torn--yes, there is that word again--about getting the procedure done and letting it go.

Yes, my vision is not as good in the right eye as it was before this thing happened--I have no idea how it happened--but I have managed pretty well, even with the bad eye.

I have been able to do my work, drive, drive at night, read the newspaper ...

Basically do everything I had done before this happened.

Heck, I just drove 2,100 miles, and I seemed to manage pretty well.

So, do I get this done or do I not get this done, at least right now?

I just don't know.

I do know that the surgery takes about 40 minutes, and the way it was described to me, some type of bubble gets placed in the eye, and I have to really do nothing for at least five days, other than keep my head low so the bubble can do its job.

Then, I can gradually return to normal, with increased activity.

There is no assurance that this will work, by the way, so it is a crapshoot, even if I have the surgery.

It took three surgeries on the same area to fix my other major problem, so I am not immune to doing what it takes to fix a physical problem.

But with the eyes, I admit it is a different thing altogether, and I have to ask myself if it is worth the toil and trouble, at least right now.

I want my vision to be what it was, but is this procedure worth it to me so much that I get it done right now?

I just don't know.

I have been going back and forth on this, and I still have not come to a conclusive answer.

I think the best thing to do is to talk with the doctor, see what she has to say about it, and go from there.

Yes, another surgery would be nerve wracking, but it would be for my betterment.

But this is elective surgery, and I have proven that I can live with what I have now ...

Again, it could get worse--complete retinal detachment--if I put things off too long, so maybe now is the time to get this done.

We will see ...

With "see" being the operative word.

I want to give my eyes a rest, so this will be my final Rant for this week.

Have a great weekend, and I should be back in the saddle on Monday.

"See" you then ...

I hope.

Rant #3,991: Come Home

Yes, my family's vacation has come to a close.

We finally got back to our home on Monday afternoon at about 3 p.m., and between the beginning of the trip and the end of it, we drove more than 2,100 miles, give or take.

It was fun, but the moment we got back to our home, we all jumped into work mode and my wife, son and I had plenty to do to return to a semblance of normalcy.

Me ... yes, I had work, and I think I caught up on Tuesday morning, but I had a lot of other things to do, in particular with one of the banks I use.

Right before we left--and on a Sunday, when this particular bank is not open--I found a huge error that this bank made with one of the checks that I deposited into it about a month ago.

My bank account was awry for the past month, and a lot of it had to do with the non-delivery/delivery problems I have had with things that I ordered online.

So I gave it a few weeks to iron itself out, but it never did, and on the day before we left, I found out why.

I use another bank for some of my accounts, and I made out a check for a certain amount to be deposited into the bank in question to help pay our rent.

I do this every month without problem, but this time, the bank in question made a tremendous error--

They deposited about one-tenth of my check's amount into my rent account instead of the amount I wrote on my check ...

And since it was related to rent, you can imagine what a problem that caused for me.

I had plenty of money in the rent account, so I covered the latest rent payment fine, but it threw off the balances of my regular account at one bank and the rent account at the bank in question.

So the first thing I did when we arrived home was to go to the bank in question and sort the whole thing out ...

And they told me that since a month had elapsed, I should simply write a new check, including the difference, and deposit that check into the rent account.

Yes, they did apologize for this error, and yes, the fault was at least partly mine, because I did not check the receipt as thoroughly as I normally do--

But it created a kerfuffle that took me a few hours to rectify.

I had to rewrite my registers to reflect all of this mess--including the returned monies from the orders that I had a problem with--and I am still not 100-percent sure if everything adds up, but I think I did it right.

Then we had the mail ...

I put in to have the mail stopped for the period that we were gone for, but evidently, doing it online was not the way to go, as they never stopped the mail during the period.

Just on a whim, I opened up the mailbox, and lo and behold, the box was brimming with stuff, mostly garbage mail but some important stuff too.

I wonder if they stopped someone else's mail for this period instead of ours ... but stopping the mail online did not do the trick.

Thank goodness newspaper delivery started again on Tuesday morning ...

At least that went right!

I guess doing that over the phone was the right way to go.

Anyway, about the vacation ...

Yes, by the time we got home, we kind of needed a vacation from the vacation.

Lots of driving here, there and everywhere, and I found that to be fun.

Except on Sunday night, when we came closer to home in droves of rain, and that was difficult, to say the least.

But it was good to get away, see a different part of our country, see relatives who just recently moved to these new environs, and enjoy "southern hospitality," so to speak.

This is a huge country, a wonderful country, the best country in the world, and to discover new parts of our country while on vacation was a great thing to do.

And I listened to so much music that I programmed on my little thumb drive--nearly 800 songs during the entirely of the trip--that it kept me going full throttle.

It was a fun couple of days away--even thought I had to work throughout the trip--and it provided some good memories for us.

But now, it is back to the same-old-same-old, and my son went back to work yesterday, I seemingly work 24/7, and the first thing my wife did when we go home is do the drudgery of the wash.

So it is good to be home, but I just wish we could all be on a permanent vacation from chores and duties and work and everything else ...

Which isn't happening anytime soon.

Rant #3,990: V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

2026 has been a rough year for myself, and my family.

I have had numerous health problems, and other problems, which have made this year torture. 

And what's worse, we still have August, September, October, November and December to go before we can put 2026 into the books.

I simply cannot wait for this year to end!

In May, after my third major surgery in three months, my wife asked me if we could go on vacation this year.

I told her that while I would love to get away, I just didn't know yet if I was up to it.

It took a few weeks, I got my strength and my bearings back, and about a month ago, I gave her the thumb's up to get away.

And that is just what we are going to do!

It isn't a long vacation--we will just be away for a few days--but it will be nice getting away and trying to relax.

And we aren't going that far away, relative to other vacations we have experienced in the past.

I still have to work, so I will be bringing my computer with me, but all in all, my family and I need a vacation, and we are finally going to get one.

It should be a fun one, certainly more fun than going under the knife.

So I won't be at this perch for a few days, a relative blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again when we get home.

Bon voyage!

Rant #3,989: Shower Me With Your Love

I told you the other day about the hate I received from a few people on Facebook, hate that was actually racist and anti-Jewish.

And the moderator, who really should know better, allowed it to fester, gave his thumb's up to it--

And banned me, not the perpetrators.

I Facebook messaged him, and he still has not responded, and probably never will, because he knows that I was the victim here--

But in order to placate his comrades in arms, he had to get rid of me.

What a fool he is.

And just when things were simmering down, I received another rebuke from someone on a completely different subject.

A subject that is so insipid that I really have to wonder about people and how they fill their days with such joy.

I belong to many groups on Facebook, some of them related to the old, classic "Leave it To Beaver" TV show.

A respondent on one of these sites posted something about the "Larry Mondello" character--you remember, the chubby, apple-eating counterpart of "The Beaver" that was played by kid actor Rusty Stevens--that was so ridiculous, so vulgar, and so out of left field that I had to respond.

To summarize, he felt that the reason that Mondello's mom--played by Madge Blake--was so old was that she was not, in fact, his mother, but his grandmother, and that Mondello's sister was actually the mother, having the child out of wedlock as a teen.

And this wasn't just a two- or three-sentence harangue, as it went on for probably a few hundred words.

Well, you can overanalyze a TV show all you want, and some people question why this and that happened ...

And others can say that this is a 70-year old TV show--operative phrase, TV show--and that to compare it with the mores of 2026 are ridiculous.

That is the tack I took when I read this malarkey, and I simply said that the writer should get a hobby, or something, for posting such trash.

That was a few days ago, and I received a Facebook message from someone who took me to task for what I said.

"I find it quite sad that you would take the time to be so negative. Stop and think about how your comment might effect someone. Is it worth it? You don't like it, scroll on. Why be so mean?"

First off, I had absolutely no idea what post or site this message was referring to, so I wrote the person--who had a name that was not clearly a man or a woman.

"What message are you referring to?"

Then on Tuesday, I received back this message from the person.

"I'm sorry, it was remarks to xxxx in "The Leave It To Beaver" group. I shouldn't have messaged you, I apologize, everyone has a right to say and type as they please. XXXX is my husband and the reactions ... well, bothered him."

So I wrote back to this person, now that I knew what she was referring to.

"The original message [from your husband] bothered me. Apology accepted."

I mean, what was I going to say to this person?

I have noticed that people are very, very thin-skinned on Facebook, yet they are quick to be on the attack if something riles them, as happened with the banishment that I told you about.

But this latest one ...

I mean c'mon now!

This has nothing to do with anything important, and I get attacked for it as if I am chiding someone for their thoughts on world peace!

I guess that it is clearly open season on me, or something like that.

However, I think that with social media such a major part of many of our lives, people have forgotten how to have a discussion, a real give-and-take about things that are on their mind.

I certainly saw it in my banishment, and I saw it to this lesser rake-over-the-coals, too.

Discussions have no place on social media.

Apparently, you are either on "my" side or you don't have the right to respond in any way, shape or form.

Balderdash, I say, and I will keep speaking my mind, whether anyone likes it or not, and whether the subject is an important one or the subject is "Leave It To Beaver."

As was said on the show--

"Give someone the brush off and make it sound like you're doing 'em a favor."