FLORIDA

This time I have a good excuse for the absence from my Blog Pages.  Marge and I recently spent a week visiting her sister and partner Carol at their home in Venice, Florida.  It was also my good fortune to also be able to visit my sister Patti and my brother in law, Paul who were spending time nearby in their time share.  Nearly all  of my previous visits to the fine state of Florida have met with some sort of disappointments…..at least for me.  Sick and nearly heat stroke on a Golf trip, miserable heat on another one, Uconn girls lost in final four in Tampa.  Also rained like hell and we stayed in a lousy Best Western with mold on the ceiling….and on and on it goes. 

Oh, in additon, we went on this trip in my brand new Buick Enclave which got rear ended in Tampa coming home from the Uconn loss.

I could probably continue, but this last trip appeared to be finally breaking the curse of Florida.  Unfortunately that was wishful thinking.  The day we left for home I felt like s—t, and still do for the last couple of weeks.  Congested, hacking, weak, you name it.  Even as stubborn as I am, Marge convinced me to go to the walk-in.  Results, a little pneumonia type lung congestion.  Giving some anti-biotic a chance to work some magic along with rest.

What else can I blame all this on, but the State of Florida!  Fortunately I had nearly a week of healthy time and we had a chance to spend some nice time with our sisters.  Ate plenty of seafood, drank my share of Yuengling.  We had the opportunity for a nice visit to the Ringing Museum, went on a sunset boat trip and overall had a very pleasant week.

I’ll try to forgive Florida and leave the door open for a future visit.

A SHORT LITTLE BLOG

 Deer ~ Turkey ~ Skunk ~ Turkey Buzzard ~ Possum ~ Mole

Red Fox ~ Mallard Ducks ~ Coyote ~ Snapping Turtle ~

Squirrel ~ Rabbit ~ Hawk ~ Woodchuck ~ Chipmunk ~ Bobcat

What do all these animals have in common?  

A few of the gang

An occasional visitor

At one time or another each of them has made an appearance in our backyard. The only local resident missing from this list is a bear, even though local sightings of them has been numerous.  Southington, by no stretch of the imagination is what can be called true “country” any longer.  Over 43,000 people now populate  its 36 square mile area.  

These creatures are now competing with us as residents of our fair town.  We personally have lived here for over thirty years and for many of those years, seeing a deer meant spotting one on the side of the road after being hit by a car.  This past year, on one occasion, fourteen of them walked right across our back yard. 

Expansion of our town, both industrial and residential have invaded the land that was once wildlife domain.  Amazingly they have been able to adapt and are now living among us.  It is we who now need to adjust to their presence.

---

I NEED A TYLENOL

Last night I made myself a great looking salad.  I loaded it with a variety of vegetables, olives, feta cheese, croutons, dried cranberries, and topped off with some chick peas.  It looked fabulous and only lacked the dressing.  Popped open the fridge and spotted a brand new bottle of creamy Caesar.  One of my greatest fear now faced me.  What evil or probably stupid thing has the design engineer done to with the bottle to make my life miserable?  He didn’t disappoint.  A paper label wrapped the top of the bottle.  The glue used for this could probably be used to hold an airplane together.  After laboriously removing it, I then easily unscrewed the plastic pour cap from the bottle.  Now even more challenges faced me.  A little piece of plastic now had to be removed by lifting it off using one of three or four tiny little tabs.  Just try and get a grip using a tab that’s 1/8” long.  After screwing them all up without removing, it was now necessary to pull out the heavy artillery, knife and scissors.  Mission finally accomplished, the dressing was now exposed after my usually cursing and blood pressure rise.

I know it shouldn’t bother me this much, but it’s only an example of modern packaging.  You can no longer open things without using some kind of tool.  Even a lousy jar of pickles has some plastic crap over the edge of the lid.  Is someone out there anxiously waiting to PMP (poison my pickles). Blister pack, bubble pack, you name it, every possible means to get us inside those packages.  Even liquids are in containers that need have its plastic top strap broken before the cap can be fully removed.  Happens with wine in screw tops where a ring of wire must be snapped.  Now that’s a real problem, now they’re even affecting my afternoon drinking habit.  I could go on and on with examples of problems with today’s packaging.  I realize that most of this situation is caused by them trying to secure our health and safety, but I do wish the people designing these packages would try opening them and see what we go through. 

Why all this security in packaging?  Blame Tylenol!  Back in 1982 there were a series of poisoning deaths resulting from drug tampering in the Chicago metropolitan area. Seven people died from ingesting Tylenol-brand acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide.  No suspect was ever charged or convicted of the poisonings.  Tylenol, followed by many other companies began dramatically changing their packaging to make product tampering extremely difficult without making evident any tampered materials.  Since then it’s become difficult to keep the bad guys out and not affect the rest of us.

FROZEN BRAIN

I recently finished reading an interesting mystery novel that took place in Ireland and Germany around the time of Hitler’s rise in power in the early nineteen thirties.  It was a very deep read of nearly 500 pages…..tired my brain out.  Thought I’d give it a rest and moved on to a rather silly one about witches, vampires, and werewolves in a mysterious town in North Carolina.  Weird, hah!  It once again amazed me how authors are able to come up with these story lines and plots, while this humble writer can’t come up with a decent Blog for over a month.  Well, this morning I found the answer.  When I got downstairs to my cellar office I glanced at the temperature.

Holy crap, it was thirty six degrees.  Who the hell can anyone come up with anything decent sporting a frozen brain?  I decided to give it a try anyway and began clacking away at this masterpiece.  Think warm Bill, think warm.  Food, that’s what to think about.  What better time to think food than on Fat Tuesday in New Orleans.  A day to get rid of all the good stuff before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday.  Our church Men’s Club decided to stage a Fat Tuesday event featuring a New Orleans style menu.  Unfortunately the Church facility was not available on Tuesday so we created a “Fat Sunday”. Just reminiscing about our nice warm menu of: Cheesy Creole Grits, Chicken Gumbo, Andouille Sausage Creole, Red Beans and Rice, Mac and Cheese, and Corn Bread was able to thaw my brain and even loosened the fingers a little.

Ok Bill, now what are you going to come up with to entertain and interest your thousands (really only about a dozen) of followers?  Had a birthday a week ago. 84 long years on earth, another milestone.  I call it that every day that I’m able to open my eyes in the morning and see daylight.  The only problem with these so-called milestones is that the only part of me that gives me little evidence of advancing age is my brain, the rest of it is going to hell.  New aches and pains on an almost daily basis. I now get excited when I have a semi-painless rise from a chair and only need a few seconds to regain balance….oh those fabulous retirement promises we were promised.  Where are they?

Sorry, instead of some decent bitches, I ventured back to the same old age complaints. Speaking of age complaints, I’ve an appointment with my internal medicine guy this morning.  I say complaint because with increased age, I am collecting so many doctors I’m running out of room on an 8 x 11 sheet. I have a foot doctor, a heart doctor, an ass doctor, a hearing aid doctor, an arthritis doctor, a skin doctor, an eye doctor, a surgeon, and even a dental doctor.  I think I should just stay home and not look for any trouble that adds another one.   

A Bitch and a Little More

I think most of my Blog readers are old enough to remember the movie, Dr. Zhivago.  If you recall there were scenes in the movie where Zhivago was shacked up with Julie Christy in a frozen home out in no man’s land.  I felt a little like Zhivago as a result of this baby ice storm we experienced this past week. My snow plowing guy cleaned my driveway a little prematurely.  Mother Nature still had some stuff she wanted to coat the area with, including my driveway.  I should let you know that my driveway has quite a slope, to the extent that during the average winter there are many occasions where I have to put on those spring things on my shoes to bring my barrels down the hill for collection day.  I’ve even driven my car down the driveway to get our mail.

This “little storm turned the driveway into a thick sheet of ice making it almost impossible to get out and drive the car.  Getting down would be easy, just a long slide, but getting back up would be a nightmare.  So we’re stuck in our frozen home like Zhivago until some sort of thaw occurs or we run out of food and I chance an escape out of desperation.

When it comes to food, I enjoy almost daily shopping (get my exercise that way walking the aisles) and therefore keep only a small inventory of the fresh stuff.  Well, let me tell you, by mid week the fridge was bare:  no lunch meat, no cheese, American or cheddar, no milk, no bread, no rolls no making for salad.  Last salad Marge and I had consisted of mostly onion, celery, radishes and a few strips of pepper.  It started to get funny.

Finally was able to chance it and hit the super market.  Full larder now, lettuce in my salad.

Now that I used the word supermarket, I’m reminded of one of my bitches.  Have you noticed the sneaky quantity change in products these days? Take a look at a five pound, whoops, it’s now a four pound bag.  But lo and behold, the price is still the same as it used to be.  How about that kielbasa ring?  Hey, now it’s 12 or 14 ounces and who ever thought that a pound of bacon is now a twelve ounce package.  Have you noticed how much smaller a bakery loaf of bread is?  Juices used to come in two quart containers….take a look now, fifty two ounces.  Starting to be difficult to keep up with weapons they use to screw us.

Till the next time, thanks for reading.