Classic Rant #1,035 (September 4, 2013): Happy New Year

Tonight, at sundown, begins the holiest period for Jews around the world.

It is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, and unlike other New Year celebrations, this is a very solemn one.

Jews take basically about a week and a half, bookended by two major holidays, to review themselves and where they are, and atone for any sins they may have committed during the year.

This holy period also includes Yom Kippur, which this year begins at sundown next Friday.

As I reflect on the past year, I have not been perfect.

There are many things I would like to change, and now is my time to reflect on them, and do something about them so they do not happen again.

This has been a tough year on me physically, mentally and emotionally, and being an eternal optimist, I am hoping that things can turn around as I look ahead.

Most Jews go to synagogue to pray during this holy period, but others do it away from a house of worship, which is all fine and good.

I remember going with my father to our temple, and spending long and hard days there praying for forgiveness.

I do not go anymore--since my son was bar mitzvahed, we do not belong to a temple anymore, and that is a story in itself which I am not going to go into here--but it is still a day of reflection.

Tonight, we will have the traditional meal, and most of my family will be there, including my sister and her boys.

Then we go right into it tomorrow.

Rosh Hashanah is actually two days, but I will take off from work tomorrow and go back on Friday.

This all leads up to the most holy day on the calendar, Yom Kippur, where you demonstrate your belief in God by fasting and praying for forgiveness.

Anyway, I will take tomorrow off, and be back on Friday.

To my Jewish friends, I hope you have a nice New Year and that the holiday goes well.

L'Shanah Tovah!

Rant #2,389: Welcome to My Nightmare

Today is June 5.

It is just another day for me, another work day, another day of toil and servitude.

That is OK; the alternative is so much worse.

Twenty-six years ago today, I was getting ready for my wedding to the girl of my dreams.

Today, it is just another day.

Last night, I had something of a nightmare, but it wasn't one where you got up rocking and reeling and with the shakes.

During this nightmare, which I have no idea how long it actually lasted, I sort of got a new job.

Sort of, because it wasn't confirmed 100 percent yet.

However, I jumped the gun, and told a couple of my co-workers that I got a new job.

Interestingly, not a single co-worker that I told actually exists in real life. I was telling people where I worked that I had a new job, but the faces were not familiar.

And we got to the office by elevator. In real life, we have no elevator where I work, and our working quarters are on one single level.

I was sitting in my car during lunch I presume, and my mother came out of nowhere. I asked her if anyone called to tell me that the job was mine. She said to me that that had not happened yet.

There was a co-worker sitting in the back of my car, and he heard everything, and somehow, it made it up to one of the executives of the company--again, someone I do not know in real life--and if I remember correctly, the person wished me well, but I actually did not have the job, as it had not been confirmed.

And then I woke up, and it was time to get up anyway, and I proceeded to get ready for work.

A very strange dream indeed. There was also a segment in it that I am not going to go into because it is embarrassing, isn't me in real life, and I guess one can dream, but one can't do what I did. It was somewhere in the middle of the dream, and really had nothing to do with what the dream was about, so I will leave it at that.

I find that as I get older, I am dreaming more, or at least having literate dreams, some of which I actually remember. I went for decades as a person who obviously dreamed while asleep--we supposedly all do--but who never remembered a single dream that I had.

Now, as I am getting older, my sleep pattern is not only changing--I go to bed a bit earlier on most days than I ever have in my life, and I wake up more, like two or three times a night--but I am remembering my dreams.

Most of them are nonsensical, or I remember bits and pieces of them.

I also recently read that in a study that was done some time ago, it was found that 17 percent of us have nightmares about work. I guess that includes me.

Last night's dream, or nightmare, or whatever you want to call it, was one that actually stuck to me, including the part that I am not telling you about because I am embarrassed by it.

It sent chills up my spine, in particular because my work situation still appears to be unresolved.

The latest is that we appear to be good through the summer, but beyond that ... I simply don't know, but I have heard from others that it does not look good, and I have heard plenty of murmuring about this possible inevitability.

Maybe that spurred the dream, I really don't know, but in the real world, it is frustrating to be living like this for the past couple of years, not knowing if today will be your last day at your place of work.

It is not like that now--I know we are going to last through the summer--but beyond that, the unknown awaits, and the dream somehow fit into all of this, but how, well, I am not too sure about that.

As it is, it is time to move on from the dream and just be happy that in the real world, I am working, but for how long I do not know.

It would be nice to have a pleasant dream once in a while; maybe I have had them, and they are just so pleasant that I cannot remember them.

We tend to remember the bad things over the good, or at least there is more to talk about when you are talking bad versus good, so maybe that is why I remember the bad dreams and not the good ones.

I guess it is time to move on.

And as John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful warbled more than 50 years ago, "What a day for a daydream ... ."

And I hope it is a nice one, one that I can really cherish.

Classic Rant #1,034 (September 3, 2013): Close Shave

I hope you had a nice Labor Day.

As I said yesterday, I labored on Labor Day, so my holiday, well, wasn't much of a holiday at all.

Now, on to something else.

Electric razors.

Along with putting on a tie, the thing I least like to do is shave.

It is an annoying exercise in futility, because you can shave all you want, but the hair is still going to grow back again.

But on to electric razors ...

Those are the types of razors I use to mow my face.

I simply find them easier to use than regular razors, cheaper in the long run, and better for my skin.

But every couple of years I need a new one, because I shave three times a week.

It wasn't that long ago that I was Ranting here about the razor I have just had to get rid of, how it didn't have the features of other razors I had, including a sideburn trimmer (Rant #754, to be exact, in June of 2012, so not even two years ago).

But my latest escapade with buying a razor trumped that.

I figured I would go to Wal-Mart to purchase a new one, because I figured that they had a better selection at cheaper prices.

So I entered the store this weekend, all ready to get a great deal.

After about five minutes, I found the selection, and I have to say I was disappointed.

They really didn't have much, maybe five or six different razors.

But what was most astonishing was the prices for these things.

They had doubled, or even tripled, from the last time I went electric razor shopping.

And there is a very good reason that this has happened.

The industry has created another tier for electric "grooming" items, and that tier is the trimmer.

The trimmer is being pushed as the razor to trim your sideburns, beard, mustache, and take off unwanted body hair.

Of course, a regular electric razor can do that too, but the industry figured that they could make a bigger buck by adding in another tier to the market.

So what has happened is that trimmers are now the price that razors were, and razors have jumped in price because of that.

So, the same razor that you could get for $15 or $20 a while back is now about double in price, as the trimmers are now in that lower price range.

So I was pretty perturbed, found the cheapest razor I could find, and still spent, with tax, nearly $50 on this thing. The last time I spent about $40, so I wasn't going for the cheapest razor then, although I know that when my son needed a razor, I bought him a good one for about $15-$20.

Look, I know that in the long run, I will actually save money, because I don't have to go out and buy new cartridges all the time as one would do is they used a regular razor, but $50 in one shot for an electric razor is ludicrous to me.

But at least this time I have that sideburn trimmer built into the thing. Last time, that feature was gone.

Heck, I wish my facial hair was gone so I didn't have to bother with this thing, but alas, as I am typing this, it is growing back.

How I wish that would be the case on my head!

Rant #2,388: Bad

I am a good guy, a nice guy, someone who is a pleasant person and a decent human being.

I think I have always been like this, and it has to do with my upbringing, and when you know people who are like me, it really always has to do with their upbringing, and how their mother and father raised them during their formative years.

That is why I looked back with a smile at a Facebook post from yesterday, even though at the time, the situation I was involved in wasn't funny at all.

The question was this: "When you were in school, were you ever sent to the principal's office?"

I really had to chuckle at this, because I have what I think is a great story about myself and a group of about four or five others, who got sent to the dean of boys office and were punished for something we did not do.

This all goes back to my own formative years growing up in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, certainly one of the most incredible places that a kid ever grew up in.

It was a new development right in the heart of one of the longest-running and most famous black communities in the U.S.A., and this was a mixed race development that really set the tone for any kid who grew up there.

We may disagree on many things, but we can't disagree that this place was not only an astonishing place to grow up, but it still resonates in just about everything we do more than 50 years after the fact.

Anyway, myself and my partners in pulchritude must have been about 12 or 13 years old, so I suspect we were in seventh grade back in 1970, when this incident happened.

Among other calamities impacting our education at I.S. 72--an incredibly complex powder keg of supposed education and lots of other violent and non-violent events that took place during that very volatile period in New York City's history that incredibly, still stands today under a different name--was that we were being randomly stuck with pins, without any provocation, and without any sense or reason.

Everyone knew who was doing it--I still do, but won't mention the person's name--but it had gotten to the point that the pin pricks were starting to rile many of us, and the school, which clearly knew about what was going on, was doing absolutely nothing to stop it, including not suspending the kid who was actually doing the pin pricking.

So one day in the lunch room, the guys that I sat with for lunch were eating away, and in comes the perpetrator--he was not "alleged," he was obviously the one doing it--and he proceeded to pin prick a number of people, including one of the guys I ate lunch with.

This particular pin prick was in clear sight of the teachers manning the lunch room that day, yet they stood still and turned their eyes the other way.

When my friend was attacked--and that was what it was, it was an attack--the female teacher standing about five feet away from us literally turned her head when this went on. We questioned her, and she said that she saw nothing (like Sgt. Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes") and if we wanted to complain, she would write us a pass to complain to the dean of boys.

We were outraged at this point, and about four or five of us took her up on her offer, and we preceded up to the dean of boys' office.

What we didn't know is that also supposedly preceding up to the same dean of boys office was a group of four or five boys who were causing a commotion unrelated to the one we were complaining about in another part of the school.

Well, they never got to their supposed destination, but we did. We went into the dean of boys' office, and while he was not there, his secretary or an assistant or whatever she was was there.

What was odd is that she seemed to be waiting for us, specifically for us.

When we got into the office, we tried to plead our case, but she would have none of it. I was standing by the dean's deak, and I saw a note that I read upside down on the desk, which clearly pointed out "five mulatto boys." This was a note alerting the dean that these boys would be coming to his office for disciplinary reasons, but for some reason, the woman evidently mixed us up with the "five mulatto boys," and thought that we were the ones who needed to be disciplined!

I don't remember the exact racial makeup of the four or five of us who went to the office that day, but a few of us were white, we might have had one Puerto Rican and one black fellow with us--that I don't remember exactly--but we were certainly not "five mulatto boys."

The woman would hear none of it despite our protestations that she had the wrong five boys. I even said to her to read the note on the desk--which was probably called into the office so they knew who was about to come there--but she would not listen.

She herded us in to to or three rooms that were part of the office, none bigger than a small single serve bathroom. The rooms were pitch black, and light could only be controlled from the outside of the room. There was a window high up in the room, probably eight to 10 feet off the ground.

She herded us in there, with no light at all, and not only shut the door, but locked it. We were caged like zoo animals, and even though we banged on the door and yelled that we were the wrong guys, she did not listen.

These were discipline rooms, plain and simple, and they resembled jail cells, but without a toilet and without bars.

I don't exactly know what happened, but after about 20 minutes in these rooms--and cutting into our next supposed period of education after lunch--we were let out of the rooms with no explanation at all. We were given passes, and told to go to our next class.

No explanation, no apology, no nothing.

I was so young then that it made an impression on me, even to this day, to be locked up like that because of a case of mistaken identity and nothing more.

Nothing happened after that, but in today's world, if something like that happened, you can bet that it would be all over social media, the woman would have been suspended, and more to the point, the pin pricker would have been at the very least removed from the school and all of us who were pricked would have been tested for everything including AIDS.

But back then, nothing happened, nothing was done, it was almost seemingly just another day at I.S. 72.

So as you can imagine, when I saw that question on Facebook, my smile may haver masked the fact that I was probably gnashing my teeth at the same time.

That was not a memory I really cherish, but it was just one of a load of unpleasant memories from that school.

If you wanted a definition of what anarchy can do to destroy a perfectly good school, staffed with dedicated teachers and filled with a cadre of kids who wanted to learn and progress with their education, I.S. 72 back then would have been a great place to start to understand what was happening in the city schools during this period.

And that incident, in my mind, was the real beginning of the end, for me at least, in the potential of this school and what it actually delivered to its students, or at least the ones who wanted to learn and be educated.

Nearly 50 years later, I still look at it as a shame, a real shame.

Classic Rant #1,033 (September 2, 2013): Laboring On Labor Day

My place of work takes Labor Day literally.

We are open, and I will be going to work in several minutes on a day that most people have off as a holiday.

And most of the other fellow employees are off on Labor Day, too.

Why will I be going to work?

Very simple.

This is the time of year where we put together our biggest edition, and it is full of various facts and figures related to the area that we cover, which is known as military resale, military stores for service members, their families, and retirees.

We cover military commissaries (supermarkets) and exchanges (department stores) that have been expressly set up for military folks.

The book has to get out, so I labor on Labor Day.

I have been at this job since March 1996, and I have had exactly three Labor Days off in that period.

So, yes, I labor on Labor Day.

It is a somewhat slow day. We are working on getting out the book, but our contacts are not in, so there  is a lack of phone calls.

And since few people in my place of work are in this day, it is very, very quiet.

So while you guys are having barbecues and enjoying a three-day weekend, I am laboring on Labor Day.

Sure, I get to pick another day to take off, but I usually pick one of the upcoming Jewish holidays to take off, so it is like exchanging a guillotine for a firing squad.

One day is to work and to substitute that day for one where you are supposed to suffer really isn't that great a trade off, is it?

So I labor on Labor Day, what can I say?

What I can say is that I am dead tired, and I can't wait for this process to end, the book is out, and we get back to normal.

I have also worked the past five Saturdays, very early in the morning (4 a.m.) so I can work and have the rest of the day to do what I need to do on Saturday, like shopping and doing other things normal people do on one of their days off.

Work, work, work, work, work, work ...

Idle hands are the devil's playground ...

Work, work, work, work, work, work ...

I need to rest.

You have a nice day, y'hear?

Rant #2,387: Let's Do It Again

I welcome myself back to the Ranting and Raving Blog.

Friday, and actually into Saturday, was an absolutely crazy day for me, and that is why I had to take the day off from writing the blog.

And as I said, I have some pretty good news to report, and also some not so good news to report.

I guess you have to take the good with the bad, because the good is very good, the bad is bad but could be worse.

My father had some vision problems recently that had to be addressed as quickly as possible. He was seeing lines up and down one of his eyes. Think of it as looking through a window with vertical blinds open, and that is the only way I can describe it.

It had been going on for a few days, so he went to his eye doctor and they sent him to a specialist.Evidently, there was a problem with his retina, and as is becoming more common today, laser surgery was prescribed to fix the problem so he could see the right way again.

I took off mainly because I had to drive my son back and forth to work, in my father's absence, but what eventually happened made me glad that I took off and relieved him of his duties for that day.

After the specialist looked at the problem, they decided that my father had a tear in his retina, and that laser surgery was not an option. I don't know if it was the severity of the tear, my father's age (87) or some other reason, but he would have to have eye surgery right then and there to alleviate the problem, so he went under the knife on Friday afternoon.

The surgery was successful, thank goodness, and believe it or not, my father was able to drive home after it was done. That's right, with my mother in tow, he drove all the way home himself, which I cannot believe, but he did it. Once a cab driver, always a cab driver, I guess.

His eye is swollen, and he has to go back a few times to the specialist to make sure everything is fine, but he is otherwise OK, thank goodness.

Now that we supposedly have gotten through with that medical escapade, we discovered that we had another one to hurdle, but we only found out about it late Friday night.

Coincidentally on that day I had planned to meet up with friends from my old neighborhood later that day in Manhattan, and with everything OK on the homefront, I was able to do that on Friday evening.

I took the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan, met up with my friends, and had a good meal. I came home sometime around 11 p.m., and my son was watching television in the living room, which he often does to stretch out a bit from his room, where he also has a TV.

Anyway, as I was getting settled, he tells me that the back of his mouth is bothering him, that he either cracked a tooth or lost a filling all the way in the back of his mouth.

I told him that I would call his dentist on Saturday morning and try to make an emergency appointment with him for that morning, right before his last day of his bowling league for the current season.

So I did just that, but was dismayed to find out that his dentist was not open on Saturdays during the warmer months.

I had to call the emergency number that was on the message, and it was the dentist's number at home, where he directed me to another dentist, an oral surgeon who was his backup dentist for situations like this.

I called the oral surgeon, they said they would look at him, and my wife and I went with our son there, and proceeded to wait a few hours to be seen.

Near noon, they told us that he had a broken tooth, they could do nothing for him, and he would have to go to a specialist. I do not understand why an oral surgeon could not at least put a temporary crown on the tooth, but it probably has to do with the fact that my son cannot open up his mouth very widely to have any dental work done. We have had this problem in the past--it has to do with some malady both he and I have that we inherited from my maternal grandmother that affects the facial muscles--but how an oral surgeon could not do anything for him is beyond me. They did take X-rays, but that was that.

We rushed home, made the appointment with the specialist for late Tuesday afternoon, when my wife can take him, and we are biding our time until this takes place. The tooth still bothers him, but he will have to live with it until it can be worked on.

We rushed home, downed a quick lunch, went to the bowling alley, my son and his team got their trophies for a solid fifth place finish--out of 12 teams--and we came home.

That was that, and so right now, we are in a holding pattern with both my father and my son.

My father appears to be OK, and hopefully the swelling will continue to ebb and the healing process will begin. The lines he was seeing in the eye will eventually go away, too, or so the surgeon said, so let's hope that is, in fact, what happens.

My son is biding his time until his dental work can be done, and he is managing, although he is in discomfort. I can see how much he has grown up, because when he was younger, such an episode would have made him unbearable, but he is handling it now pretty well.

I guess it is just another day in my household. Everything is fine, but is just waiting to be un-fine.

What can I tell you--back to work today for more lunacy.

That is the way of the world for me, so why should today be anything different?

Classic Rant #1,032 (August 30, 2017): Knocking Cancer For a Loop

Beloved TV star Valerie Harper may have done something incredible: she may have beaten the odds and whipped cancer.

According to news reports, her doctors have said that she is "nearly in remission," whatever that means, with the cancer that she was diagnosed with in January.

The reason that I say "whatever that means" is that the cancer that she has--which affects the brain and the spinal cord--is incurable. Yes, I am not a doctor, but if the cancer is incurable, how can she be in remission with it.

But to move on ...

If you remember, the star of :"The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Rhoda," and several other shows was diagnosed with what was then termed "terminal cancer" right after the New Year, and given roughly six months to live by her doctors.

As is the norm today, she went on every talk show known to man to spread the word about her disease and its eventual sad outcome.

Perhaps that was part of her therapy, but because of her therapy, now, seven months later, she is close to beating the odds, say her doctors.

This is really a remarkable story, but it probably happens every day.

Cancer doesn't pick and choose those that get it. You can be a famous actress, or a stay-at-home mom, and and can get you.

I applaud Harper and everyone else who beats cancer. They are true warriors.

Harper is guest starring on an episode of TV Land's "Hot in Cleveland" next week with several of her co-stars from the Mary Tyler Moore days, including Cloris Leachman and the lady herself, Mary Tyler Moore. Moore is a survivor in her own right, being diagnosed with a tumor on her brain a few years back.

My aunt had something very similar, and these ladies are warriors too.

Another TV actress, Fran Drescher, has had her own battles with cancer, and she has also won them. She refers to cancer as "Cancer Smancer," and that offends a lot of people.

But what she is simply trying to say that cancer can often be beat--and ladies like her and Harper prove that that can be done.

My mother is a survivor too. She has had cancer, and beat it, so she belongs in that group too. While her cancer was very mild by some standards, any cancer can be a killer if not properly diagnosed and taken care of under a doctor's care.

Yesterday, I had a small growth removed from behind my ear. Prior to having this mild procedure done, I was a little worried, I have to say, to have the doctor check this thing out that was growing on me.

A few weeks ago, I went to he doctor, pointed it out, and he said there was nothing to worry about and that it was not cancerous, just something to remove if I wanted it removed.

I breathed a sigh of relief, I really did.

So here is to Harper and all the other cancer survivors. Reports are that Harper is not totally out of the woods yet, and she has battled a cancer that has to be closely monitored for the rest of her life.

But at least right now, it appears that she has won.

And with that, I say congratulations. She has outlived her original diagnosis, and the 74-year-old actress, it appears, will be around for many more cast reunions.

And that is a good thing.

As an aside, yes, I have to labor on Labor Day, so I will be here with Ranting and Raving on Monday. Speak to you then.