Handbill Handout

Mid 70's, cloudy, rainy and humid. One of the tough choices I have to make when I travel nowadays is do I experience a place more at night in the form of observing folks in local watering holes or do I do it by visiting more places and spending more time out in the daylight?  At my age I can't do both anymore.  Time was I could stay out until the early hours past midnight and bounce back the next morning in time for multiple daytime activities.  Not so much anymore.  So now a decision must be made, do I check out more museums and attractions or do I stay with the people of the night? On recent trips I've done a bit of both, but I suspect eventually it's going to be an either-or situation. What to do?

Mid 70s and partly sunny. My coffee cart guy is on vacation and it's weird. My work mornings have a certain pattern. Get up, feed the cats, shower, dress, get on the bus, hopefully get a nap in after checking work e-mail, get off the bus, go to the corner, try to initiate the small talk so it's about the weather and not about coffee cart guy's money problems because business is slow/his van broke down again/his wife or kids hit him up for something or other so then I feel like I have to give a 66% tip on a $3 order that I know he's already gouged me 50 cents a day for for the last five years because the guy a block away charges $2.50 for the same thing, take my coffee and bagel, go upstairs and start the work day. Disrupt that pattern and things are already on an unstable footing.  I live for routines in my work mornings so I don't have to think one minute earlier than I have to. On the other hand I only paid $2.50 for a coffee and bagel this morning so ther

Mid 60s and rainy. A big piece of my childhood is gone.  The acto r who portrayed Godzilla in the first dozen movies has passed on.  They don't make 'em like this anymore.

High 70s, partly cloudy and the humidity is building again. They say that "sitting is the new smoking", whoever they are (medical people I think) so I've been trying to be good about getting up and walking around several times during the office day including taking a couple of trips downstairs to walk around the building or if I have the time, the block.  In general I try to remember my mobile device but sometimes I don't and it when I'm downstairs and realize I don't have it I get a pang of anxiety.  I have a recurring vision of a bomb going off in the area or a plane flying into the building where I work and being completely cut off from being able to communicate with anyone.  It's not entirely an unfounded fear given that I work in a highly trafficked and touristy area of New York City but it also occurs to me that it's a fear I never would have had 20 years ago or even ten since I was a late adapter to the smartphone world.  Heck, I only got a ce

High 70's and cloudy The things you learn via the World Wide Web (accept no substitutes!)  When I was a younger person Dr. Who was the twelfth-rate cheesy science fiction series on PBS that you watched when there were no alternatives.  My house didn't get cable until the late 1980s so essentially the occasional Dr. Who viewing that I engaged in was on a day where there were no chores to do, the weather was lousy and the few friends that I had were absent.  I always referred to the guy as "creepy curly haired dude with a scarf" if I referred to him at all and any memory of the show was "it was that crappy British show with the phone booths". How little I knew! Here in the 21st century people actually watch a revival of the show!  I was completely unaware of this until the WWW manufactured some outrage at some folks who were allegedly outraged that the newest actor to play the title role in the series was a woman.  Now, I don't actually know anyone w

Low 90s and sunny.   Another picture. 8pm ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki.  July 12, 2017.

High 80s and sunny. I used to do pictures on this thing so why not do one again.

Mid 80's, cloudy and humid.  Storms are coming. Did you hear about the new corduroy pillow craze?  It's making headlines.

High 70s and cloudy. I've never seen Game of Thrones.

Mid 70's and partly sunny. Air conditioning exists in Europe.  Sort of.  It's more of a notion, an idea, a rumor.  In my recent travels  I was fortunate that the weather was mild, mid 60s to mid 70s most days and even dipping into the 50s at night on the cooler days.  See I'm a cold room kind of guy when it comes to sleep.  A room gets to be above say, 70 degrees and I have a hard time sleeping.  The good news here is that unlike some of my other habits and lifestyle choices I'm on the right side of science with this one . In the parts of Europe that I've been (a fair amount actually) the locals are mystified by the American need for things to be cold.  The air conditioning in a lot of places is barely a whisper of slightly cool air even when the fan level is cranked to the max.  Water in restaurants?  Room temperature unless you ask for ice and as soon as you do you'll be pegged as an American if your accent didn't give it away already.  The better ho

Mid 60s and cloudy. Back in the late-mid 20th century (well, what do you call the 1970s?  Is it the late 20th century or the middle?  Let's go with the late part of the middle) people used to get together after vacations, shut off the lights and watch slide shows of their adventures.  I'm not talking about Powerpoint here, I'm talking about  slide shows in their original meaning.  Slides were small translucent photographs that you dropped into a projector, in the case of my family a fancy carousel slide projector and that machine shined (shone?) a light through the translucent photograph and a magnifying glass creating a giant image of the photograph on a screen or wall. This was, I suppose, social media decades before social media and emphasis on the social because some folks would not only have their family gather round to watch the slide show but would have friends over as well.  There would be cigarettes and drinks, maybe some snacks and everyone reacting to pictur

68 and cloudy.  Rained earlier. In that hopeful post-travel phase right now.  You know the one.  It's the one where you come back from a couple weeks where you went somewhere else and did other things (it doesn't really matter where you went or what you did for the purposes of this phenomenon) and you think you're going to do things differently once you're home.  The travel has changed you, made you grow a little.  Taught you something.  Maybe even made you a new person if the trip was particularly eventful or memorable. Then you come home, sit in the same stupid traffic and go back to the same workplace grind and all your habits are there, waiting for you like expectant hungry children.   Reminding you that no, real life is not what you experience during travel, it;'s what goes on during the long grey grinding everyday unremembered nothing that makes up the overwhelming amount of time that we spend here.  You're still the same guy or gal you always were and

High 70s and sunny. Busy weekend getting ready to go places.

High 70s and sunny after a downpour earlier. I'm sure today's date is some kind of numerological whatsis or other but I don't really give a shit.

Mid 70s and mostly sunny.  Rain is supposed to be on the way. A woman at my office was going on about how Alexa is a lifesaver for her.  She's a new mom and "you just can't understand how great it is to have a hands-free device when you have a kid".  I mentioned the fact that the device was probably recording reams of data (assuming you can record a ream since that's normally a measure of paper) for Amazon to sell but she was undeterred.  I guess I can relate, just look at how much free information we all give away on social media just to avoid talking to our friends and family or sending letters or cards for occasions?  So much easier to type "Happy birthday" on a timeline than it is to send a card or make a phone call.  Cheaper too. To be sure I'm not an old fuddy-duddy sorehead about this stuff.  I'm just as guilty as hundreds of millions of other people of hiding in plain sight on social media in exchange for avoiding the tiring interacti

Mid 80's and mostly sunny. I've had the same paper clip holder for a very long time.  Probably as long as I've been working in the building in which I currently work which is since about the turn of the century.  Turn of the century meant something different when I was younger of course which is something you don't think about when you experience it.  I wonder if Jefferson used the phrase on two different centuries or if Ty Cobb did or even the Babe.  Anyway, the paper clip holder is round, 6 centimeters high and also 6 centimeters across the top though the hole that the paper clips come out of is only about 2 1/2 centimeters in diameter.  There's a magnet surrounding the 2 1/2 centimeter hole that grabs the clips and holds them there for your ease of selection.  Clever!  The clips are loaded by removing a cap on the bottom of the holder that's 5 1/2 centimeters in diameter and black.  The top is also black but the middle of the holder is clear so you can

Just about 80 and humid following a brief downpour.  Supposed to get to the mid 80s later. I have no longstanding connection to this particular American holiday.  As an occasional student of world history I find patriotism inherently dangerous and divisive. "Hurrah for us we're #1" is the next door neighbor to "We are the master race let's round up the inferior people and eliminate them".  Any real student of American history (or someone of Native or African descent) knows that the latter has happened here though the first thought Americans are trained to have of that second statement is about 20th century Germany.  So it goes. I forget who said it but I believe the statement "a person can be kind and smart but people are dumb and dangerous" is absolutely true. So yeah, no flag waving here despite (or perhaps also because of) a lifelong family attachment to the military through parents, in-laws, siblings and nephews.  I suspect having viewed

Mid 80s at 11pm local time.   Yuck. My father in law found a bunch of old pictures while looking for something else and brought them to us today.   Some people really like looking at old pictures and if social media is any indicator some people would be happier just living in the past.   Neither of those apply to me.  Quite the opposite in fact.   After the first couple of pictures I started to feel overwhelmed with an oppressive sense of doom.   I saw so many dead loved ones captured in poses and also snared in moments of candor and all I wanted to do was warn them about what horrors were coming for them.   The pictures of my parents at ages younger than mine were especially difficult as I tried to imagine what they were thinking,  what they were hoping for the future at that point. Knowing how badly things would go for them made it incredibly painful to see them as their younger selves.  I wish I could say that I turned it into some kind of lesson or put a positive spin on it but t

Low 80s and sunny, supposed to get to the high 80s later.  I can't remember when I got the black metal Swingline stapler that sits on my desk but I'm very, very glad to have it.  Some folks have cheap mostly plastic staplers and they don't do the job quite as well or they opt to deal with the electric stapler on the copy machine that can be temperamental, stapling when and where it damn well pleases.   The stapler is black and exactly eighteen centimeters long and at its peak it stands five and a half centimeters high.  It feels like it weighs more than half a pound so it would be a solid weapon to use for a blow to the back of the head in an active shooter or insubordinate employee situation  I've stapled personal and business documents with the stapler though personal stapling is rare.   I fill the stapler with Allied Office Products brand staples that come in boxes of 5000 chisel point model staples.  The box is, seasonally enough, red,white and blue.

High 70s and sunny, might hit the mid 80s later. The R46 subway car is still often seen on what in olden times was known as the BMT and the IND lines as well as the SIR (formerly known as the SIRT).  They were manufactured in the 1970s and look like it.  The seats are orange and yellow and are arranged in a groups of three  that fact perpendicular to the movement of the car separated by groups of two at a 90 degree angle to the groups of three with back to back seats facing toward and away from the direction that the train is moving. The outside of the car is silver and there's a number on each.  There are three sets of double doors on each side of the car though sometimes only one of the two doors opens and in rare cases neither door opens.  The roof of the car is curved and rain sluices off both sides. I have spent a lot of time in R46's in my life.  I even de tailed the adventures of a plastic bottle on (in?) an R46 just over nine years ago.  They say that the R46'

Mid 70s and partly sunny. When I take the bus home from the office between early January and Thanksgiving week I typically wait on a bus stop located on an Eastbound midtown street.  The stop is located on the south side of the street in front of a storefront whose contents vary depending on the season.  Across the street is a pretty famous performing arts venue with a marquee that attracts tourists by the thousands.  People are forever taking photos and selfies and what have you. There's no shelter on this bus stop probably because of the high volume of pedestrian traffic moving through the area.  When it rains hard enough I go across the street and stand under the Famous Marquee, reducing its fame to simple utility as far as I'm concerned.  Kind of like asking a celebrity for directions without acknowledging their status which also happens frequently in this town.  I like standing under the Famous Marquee when it's really pouring because then there aren't so many

High 70s and sunny, thunderstorms coming in later they say. Nearly every morning that I go into the office for work I wait on a bus stop.  The bus stop is just off the intersection of the street that I live on and a main artery that runs the length of the island.  It's about 8-12 steps from the corner depending on how long your stride is.  There's a shelter that's mostly glass and it has an ad on the side furthest from the corner in the direction of the traffic flow on that side of the artery.  The top is frosted glass that's tilted on and angle to let rain roll off the back and there's a space between the walls and the roof that precipitation can blow through if the angle of the wind is just right but it rarely is.  On the side nearest corner of my street there's a blue strip that has the intersection spelled out l i k e t h i s except the letters are sideways as though the designer wanted everyone to read it with their head tilted 90 degrees to t

High 70s and mostly sunny. There are mundane things that you see every day that you take for granted and then they disappear and even though their disappearance might actually make your life easier you still feel vaguely bereft because of their absence.   In this case the inspiration for that though are the toll booths of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (or I guess the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel for those of you who live in modern times, God help you).   I was aware that the tunnel was moving toward cashless tolling but the booths seemed to disappear without warning.  One day I was on the bus and we went through the tall green (were they green, a dark green or am I mis-remembering?) booths with the yellow automatic arm and their "do not back up" signs and the next day on the way home we emerged from the tunnel and weaved around piles of rubble that were the only reminders that the booths had ever existed. Man, it felt weird. My entire morning commute is thrown off now.  Sure, we

Low 80s and sunny. Spent part of today traveling down the governmental rabbit hole because my driver's license needs to be renewed.  I want to get an enhanced license which means I need a social security card.  I don't have a social security card so  I need to get a replacement.  I'm going to have to show my driver's license to get a new social security card so I have to get that done before the license expires.  First world problems, I know. At least it's not as humid as it's been.

80 degrees and disgustingly humid, supposed to hit the mid 80s later today. This morning at the coffee cart. Me:  "Hey, so are you here Monday?   Eid   is in a couple of days, right? " Cart Owner:  "Yeah, well its either Sunday or Monday depending on when they see the moon, if it winds up on Sunday I'll be here and if it's Monday I won't". "Pretty good party right?  Lotta good food? " "Yeah man, you know we have a barbecue" "Lamb?" "Yeah, lamb, all kind of things, good time!  Eat a lot more food, maybe get laid a little more often too!" My cart guy isn't a particularly young man but he does love the ladies.  In the warm weather he's always asking if I just saw this one or that one that just walked by.  He's not a catcaller by any means, he just appreciates the fairer sex.   Guess you gotta do something when you're stuck in a coffee cart from 3-10am every weekday.

High 70s and sunny, supposed to get to the mid 80s. Busy day!

HIgh 70s and sunny, supposed to hit the low to mid 80s and maybe a shower later. "What kind of music do you like?" is a very, very awkward question for me because the right answer in my case is seen as deliberately confusing or worse, completely obnoxious.  The right answer is "I'm completely indifferent to or dislike the overwhelming majority of music that's ever been produced".  However people seem to be shooting for a genre based answer when they ask that question which again is problematic because the right answer would be "A little bit of a bunch of different kinds of stuff" which sounds like I'm trying to be too cool or sophisticated.  My own reaction when anyone give me that answer is usually to ask them what pieces from various different types of jazz they like or (especially if they're an older white person) who their favorite hip hop artist is. Again, obnoxious.  Why can't we avoid this discussion altogether? Music to me

Low 80s and sunny.  Much less humid. When I was a kid people told me the future would be amazing and it really is!  We all walk around with computers in our pockets that include technology that ensures we'll never have to learn to orient ourselves by the sun or the stars or read a map ever again!  Well, not until the electrical grid goes out or the aliens take out our satellites, ha ha ha. Now I see those crazy kids in northern California came up with an a mazing new transportation concept .  Who would have ever imagined in a day when we could share rides along a fixed route on a regular schedule for a reasonable price?  Screw flying cars!  The hell with jet packs!  What I always dreamt of is riding with other people in a vehicle that I have to wait for instead of summoning at will.  Thank you, people of tomorrow.  You have made my dreams come true.

High 80s and sunny but thunderstorms are coming. It's getting back to "It's so hot" territory which naturally brings the reflexive answer "How hot is it?" It's so hot people aren't just frying eggs on the sidewalk, they're frying (blank)! It's so hot instead of three coins in the fountain I saw three (blanks) in the fountain! It's so hot that instead of catcalling attractive women construction workers are catcalling (blanks)!

Low 80s, sunny and humid.  Hiding in the air conditioning weather. Father's Day.  Thought about going to the cemetery but remembered my dad said "come see me while I'm alive, I won't care when I'm dead" among other things so since it's so damn hot I'm staying home and thinking of him a bit.   The thing that nobody tells you about burying loved ones is how two different and distinct feelings will emerge from time to time, one is "I wish you were here to ask about this (insert very mundane but useful thing that the person could have helped you with)" and the other is "Now I know what it is like to be (insert an age), I understand better why you were the way you were and how dumb I was".  Then again maybe everybody's grief is different and this experience is peculiar to my own. In less deep-thought-type news I really don't like the dopey blue uniforms worn by major league baseball clubs for father's day any more than I

High 60s and cloudy.  One of my favorite weather conditions. Today I was going to write (or rather, pay Bob to write) about my experiences as an overnight worker.  Fortunately I thought to see if I had told that story before and what do you know, I had .  So there goes today's homily for the most part.  The only thing to add is with almost a decade of additional perspective I can say that I peaked at 17.  I was the best assistant baker at that Dunkin Donuts for a few shining months and as I careen down the hill towards age 50 I realize I've never even been close to being the best at anything else I ever attempted. I still love the overnights and I wish I could be awake for them, unfortunately my current career situation and aging renders that impossible.  If I'm awake at 4am these days it's either because I have to pee or a one of the cats decided they wanted an early breakfast. Which is too bad because the middle of the night is the most peaceful time.  The older

Low 70s and partly cloudy. That's more like it. One of the positives of social media is you can use it as a kind of diary and then every year on the anniversary of a particular thing it reminds you that said particular thing happened.  Today it reminded me that four years ago I attended a Mets-Cubs game a Citi Field and was scammed by the bar attached to the stadium that does business as McFadden's, which I believe is the same name as a popular bar in Manhattan. As we entered the game that day we were handed cards that said "$1 beer at McFadden's after the 7th inning".  The end of the 7th inning is when beer sales stop inside the ballpark so this strategy was solid to attract folks who had their fill of baseball but not of suds.  We decided to hang around in the stadium until the 9th inning anyway as it was a clo se game until the Cubs put up a 3 spot i n the 8th.  Arriving at McFadden's to cash in on this deal I noticed a lot of folks drinking something t

High 70's and cloudy after passing showers in the morning. Part of the exercise here is to try to force something out every day.  It's harder now that I'm older; I read old entries and wonder how I had time to think of that stuff in my early 40's or deem it worthwhile to put someplace where there was even a very slim chance of someone ever seeing it (Note to self, "Very Slim Chance" is maybe a good next title for this thing). John Cleese (I think, I'm not going to search for it) said that one laughs less as one gets older because one has already heard nearly all of the jokes.   Yeah, probably.  People aren't all that creative on the whole, myself included. Speaking of having heard all the jokes, I just reread that first paragraph and realized it sounds like a description of constipation which was unintentional.  Also inaccurate.  You can die if you stay constipated long enough but you can go your whole life without ever excreting your thoughts on

Mid 90s, sunny and disgusting. Too hot to be whatever it is Bob and I have been being here today.  Try again later.

Mid 80s and sunny, supposed to break the record (93) before the day is out. The Pittsburgh hockey club beat the Nashville hockey club for the Stanley Cup and that makes me sad.  After years (20 this coming Friday) of being an industry professional and having my emotional attachment to individual teams slowly wilt I became a Nashville fan this year after my nephew got a job with the team.  I honestly didn't expect them to have their most successful season ever, in fact I characterized them as "an extremely likable but fatally flawed team" when I saw a regular season game in November.  The playoffs started around Easter and I was in town again visiting my nephew when after several beers I said "If they make the finals we're coming back for a game".  Which, much to my surprise, actually happened.  A whirlwind 40 hours of already-favorite places and playing with my nephew's dog and finally the game itself which the home team won.  As it turns out not only

Low 90s and sunny.  Ugh. A couple of cats visited our yard on Saturday. There was a grey one with a white chest patch that settled under our bird feeder and relaxed for a bit presumably waiting for prey.  When none came it wandered off.  Then there was a black cat relaxing on the front walk when we came home from an errand who slowly walked away when we got out of the car and headed into a neighbor's back yard.  Since the human mind tends to look for patterns and linkages where none actually exist we're wondering what it "means", whatever that "means".  My suspicion is that it means nothing, though I'd like to help those creatures if they need it.  They seemed well-fed and the black one appeared to have a clipped ear which is the signal that a cat is a member of a managed, neutered colony.  If they need help and we see that we'll give it to them, in the meantime I'm grateful that they stopped by and made our weekend more interesting.

Mid 80s and sunny. Hey, it's DC, the guy who owns this blog.  Yeah, it's really me this time.  You think I've been posting all this stuff since this thing made a comeback a few months ago?  No, no,  I hired a guy to do it.  He's managing this blog.  Yeah, really!  Nah, none of this has been me!  It's been this guy Bob who calls himself an Personal Internet Brand Consultant and he also puts in flooring.  Yeah, he won me over when he told me this joke about the flooring industry: 1st guy:  "Hey, are you free to go to the ballgame this weekend?" 2nd guy:  "I can't, I'm laying linoleum." 1st guy:  "Does she have a sister?" Now that I've told you that joke there is NO WAY that I'm going to tell you any more of Bob's information because you'll all want to hire him and then he won't have time to blog for me on a daily basis.  I mean look at this, talking about the weather EVERY TIME?  Genius!  Bob thinks the

High 70's, very sunny. It's the 17th anniversary of my mother's death.  I went back through the archive of this blog and it seems I only addressed it once in the form of a short and not good poem that wasn't particularly explicit though it was an accurate recollection of how I received the news.  My social media memories make only oblique indications of this as well usually in the form of song selections posted as links to you tube videos which is how I often talk about things I want to talk about without anyone but a savvy few knowing what I'm talking about or making a connection (though I think more than a few people figured out my live-reacting to the inauguration of our current Entertainer in Chief back in January).  Once a college radio DJ always a college radio DJ I suppose. So let us simply be direct and factual here, just for the record in case anyone interested in my family history ever finds this.  In early January 2000 my mother came down with a cold

High 60s and mostly sunny. I usually bring lunch to work. This used to be called "brown bagging", but on account of the fact that I use supermarket shopping bags most of them aren't brown, in fact they're almost all white or yellow (Shop Rite) but "white bagging" sounds racist and "yellow bagging" sounds like a sex act involving urine and/or the current President of the United States.   I didn't bring lunch today because we were away last weekend so I headed downstairs to the overpriced locavore/organic sandwich and salad place only to find that they were closed due to what looked like a burst pipe or in any event it was some kind of flood.  Thanks to the never ending development of the neighborhood in which I work all of my favored alternatives are now gone, boarded up and waiting for the wrecking ball followed by the luxury hotel or condo.  This leaves what I call the salad bar of inevitable disappointment which is a place that's a ty

Partly Sunday and low 60s. So, Nashville.  I don't need to go on about how great the game was or how much fun the fans are, you've got Google for that.  The thing I took away that doesn't get talked about is the turnover of young people in that town.  Young people that arrived to try to make their way not only as musicians but people who moved there to work in a variety of industries be it restaurants or tourism or for one of the sports teams or even for the museums (which I guess is an offshoot of tourism but I'd like to think that locals visit museums too).  The stories I heard reminded me of this new Mountain Goats song which is a fictional story about a real guy who was in a band called Sisters Of Mercy.  The story talks about him going back to his hometown after years of trying to live the dream.  The lines that leapt to mind as I was hearing about these folks were: "See the children bound for London You'll all be back too Everybody tests the membr

High 50s and rainy after a couple of mid 80s and humid/stormy days in Nashville. Still processing my whirlwind trip (40 hours from landing to departure) to see family and a Stanley Cup Finals game in Nashville.  If I manage to form an even semi-interesting anecdote it'll wind up here.  Meantime know it was fun though my aging back and knees are not giving me positive feedback on two coach airline trips in less that two days combined with humid weather in both cities.

Mid 70s and sunny. Quick trip to Nashville tomorrow to see Game 4 of the Finals on Monday, back home early Tuesday morning.  Given that the Predators are down 2-0 in the series I sincerely hope I do not see the Stanley Cup on the ice on this trip.

Mid 70s and mostly sunny. I wish they would bring back regular cherry flavored Tic Tacs.  The cherry-cola combo ones they have now just aren't as good.  Mind you, I'm not going to go on a crusade about it.  Though I do know someone who once did go so far as to petition a snack food company when they discontinued his favorite flavor of tortilla chip.  He didn't make a film about it but in today's age of everything-is-a-documentary I'm betting there's some filmmaker somewhere doing a documentary about a particular niche type of discontinued snack food or candy.  Don't google it.  I don't intend to.

High 70's and sunny.  Was foggy this morning. Listening to the "deluxe" version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on Spotify.  Man, are they scraping the walls of the vault to make some dough.  Years ago when I had a bit more free time I downloaded the "complete" Let It Be sessions off a torrent site and holy hell was that tedious listening.  You have to listen to about ten false starts to get to one interesting variant of a song or telling piece of banter.  The people who put out the deluxe Sgt. Pepper presumably went through the tapes and found the cream of the crop of the creative process and either they did a lousy job or Pepper came together in the least interesting fashion possible.  There are a few interesting moments (Strawberry Fields Forever Take 26 comes to mind) but the rest just sounds like rehearsal.   Not essential by any means unless you're an obsessed collector.

60-ish, cloudy, drizzle, supposed to get up to the low 70s later today. Remember that new computer I was talking about yesterday?  Of course you do.  Well anyway, one of the security protocols here at the office is that every computer has a PIN that you have to type in before you even get to the legal screen that basically says "surrender all privacy right ye who enter here" followed by the network login screen.  On my prior machine I was able to choose my own PIN but on this one the PIN is an abbreviation for the company (not one used publicly) followed by your employee ID number that you were assigned upon hiring followed again by the company abbreviation.  I took exactly one psychology course in college so I'm far from an expert but boy howdy, the message that they own my ass comes through loud and clear, doesn't it?

Around 60 with mixed sun and clouds. I got a new computer at work three weeks ago.  They made the switch a little after 11am on Tuesday.  How do I know this?  Well, there's a radio show on WFMU called Garbage Time that airs from 9am-12noon on Tuesdays and every week at 11am the DJ plays "Heavy Metal" by Don Felder and that's what was playing when the IT guy came to make the switch.  He happened to like the song so he waited until it was over to shut down my old machine and install the new one.  The FM reception for WFMU is pretty much non-existent in the building where I work so I listen via the Internet even though I can see Jersey City which is where the station is located from some windows on the floor where I spend my days.  So now every week when I hear "Heavy Metal" I'm reminded that another week of my career has come and gone, I'm that much closer to retiring and everything else that comes with getting older.

Just under 60 degrees and raining on Memorial Day. I made an admittedly tasteless joke on social media yesterday and in return was reminded how old I was.  Under "R.I.P. Gregg Allman" I posted this photo thinking people would get the joke. Naturally the first comment was "Isn't that Sonny Bono"?  Well, yeah, it is and the joke is that Cher left Sonny and married Gregg and made a record that's not even as well regarded as Sonny and Cher records.  Sometimes I overestimate the pop culture literacy of the few people who haven't unfollowed me on social media but then again I don't know who the hell most of the "stars" that young folks worship are so let's call it a push.

Low 70s and mostly sunny but still unpleasantly humid. When I was in college I remember reading a story somewhere about a human cannonball.  I forget the guy's name but at the time he was approaching retirement age (whatever age that is for human cannonballs, there was no number given) but he wondered if he could give it up.  See, he was really good at his job of being a human cannonball and the crowds loved him and he loved the adulation of the crowds.  When he wasn't being a human cannonball nobody knew who he was or particularly cared about him.  Even his coworkers at the circus didn't really care about him.  They didn't dislike him or treat him poorly exactly but they didn't go out of their way to socialize with him or even check on how he was feeling every night after he did his act.  However when he was human cannonball all eyes were on him and for a few moments he was the center of and the most beloved thing in his universe. Being a human cannonball catch

Low 70s and treading that line between damp and humid. Greenmarket shopping and some food prep today.   The lack of sun is relaxing.   No bright light insisting that I do something.   In the absence of pressure I get more done.  Funny how that works.

Mid 70s and variable.  Already had a rain shower, bright sunshine and now we have clouds. More signs of aging in my small group of city-working friends.   Everyone who I would have had a few drinks (or more) with on this holiday weekend Friday opted to just bolt the city early.  So I opted to not go into the office and instead am working from my dining room table.  Win?  Maybe.  Certainly a healthier choice at my age though it's rare that a good story comes out of working from home.  The pre-holiday pub crawls on the other hand, well, that's something else, something that I'll save for a day when there's nothing else to talk about.  Meanwhile the wind is picking up and the traffic on my block is increasing, the escape is on, millions moving from one place to another in the hope of finding whatever's missing somewhere else.  Try checking that last place you left it maybe.

High 50s with frequent heavy rains, fog when it isn't raining. I see today is the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars.  The days do run away like horses over the hills as the saying goes.  I'd love to be able to write something about how that movie was life-changing blah blah blah but the reality is I was a 10 year old kid who was already predisposed to like space operas by being raised on a diet of Star Trek, cheesy Japanese monster movies (sorry, "kaiju" as the kids say today) and my dad's handed-down sci-fi pulp novels that he read until he died.  So while Star Wars may have been the entry point for millions into the world of the space opera it was just another well-loved entry in the genre for me.  Don't get me wrong, I loved it and saw each of the first three movies multiple times in the theater.  I even did something rare for me for Return of the Jedi which was to cut out of high school and head over to the theater for an afternoon showing.  I

High 60s and mostly cloudy. What kind of person thinks it's OK to grab a wad of paper towels in a bathroom dispenser with a wet hand and then leave some of the still-wet towels hanging from the dispenser?  Nobody wants your hand backwash, pal.  Thank heaven for wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispensers.  It's just another symptom of our self-absorbed society.  Yesterday I had not one but two people walk into my back while I was waiting for the light to change as they were absorbed in their screens and ear buds while walking up sixth avenue.  They both said "excuse me" though what they should have said is "thank you" because presumably had they not had me for a safety rail they would've gone straight into traffic and been killed. Hmm.  Been killed. Note to self:  next time remember to just get out of the way.

Mid 60's and mostly sunny. Entertainment television is bereft of ideas.  Scripted shows are mostly ripoffs and reboots (there are a few quality exceptions, yes, yes I know) and competition shows have spawned the creepiest, ugliest, chill-inducing versions of themselves:  the kiddie versions.  What the hell though right?  Nobody is forcing the parents of America (and around the world) to shove their progeny in front of the camera for a buck.  So I'm predicting that it's only a matter of time before we cross that final Rubicon of bad taste:  Ladies, gentlemen and people across the gender spectrum I give you The Bachelor:  Kids Edition! Now before you get the Internet cops after me and think I'm suggesting some sort of depraved act I will say to you I am certainly not.  However I am aware that in certain cultures arranged marriages are still a thing.  So how long before that thing becomes a competition show?  Think that's too tasteless?  Oh come on, all it takes is

High 50's, rain on and off all day. When people say "I missed you at..." whatever I tend to respond with "Well aim better next time".  It almost never fails to confuse and also is handy as it stops the conversation from going in any sort of uncomfortable direction.  Nobody actually "misses me" at anything.  There's one of two reasons they're saying that:  they're either trying to make me feel guilty about some obligation that I no longer feel or they're filling conversational space with genial blather.  If people continue that line of inquiry after that little joke of mine I just crank up the awkward factor by following their line of though with "Oh, how would I have made (event) better?"  or "Can you be specific about what exactly you missed about me?"  I don't feel bad at all about this because those are two questions I can answer if I ever do say that I "missed someone" at something and those answe

Sunny and mid 60s today. Fun family weekend.   No deep thoughts or observations to share, just a few days that made me feel graceful and a little wistful.   None of us are getting any younger.   Hell, the guy who wrote the song that is the title of this post just turned 73.  Enjoy it all while you can.  

Just about 90 degrees and mostly sunny. A few new (to me) records that have caught my ear: Goths by the Mountain Goats (no surprise, he/they are one of my favorite bands).   DAMN by Kendrick Lamar which I'm still processing but the textures and storytelling are amazing. Coco Hames (eponymous), catchy as hell (whatever that means but you know what I mean) I n The Darkness of my Night by Sunshine and the Rain, more pure pop goodness. It's Friday when the new records come out nowawadys (used to be Tuesday)!  No deep thinking today.

Low 90s and sunny.  Officially time for me to cower in air conditioned rooms until the heat subsides. Got a second monitor at work today which officially makes me this guy ..  Though the real reason I got it is to stream a few channels that I don't have access to via my limited office cable.  Other than that I found it too distracting and have the second screen shut down right now.  Fortunately there are very few people in the office today owing to the upfront week so nobody will discover my dishonesty. Jean Shepherd had it right, we're all just faking it and waiting for the indescribable relief when we finally get that hand on the shoulder and the "OK pal, come on, we gotcha, we figured it out.  You can stop pretending".

High 80s and sunny.  Not my kind of weather. Got the new Mountain Goats CD in the mail yesterday.  Brought it to work figuring I'd listen on my computer....except I just got a new one and they don't have built-in CD drives anymore.  Progress!  So now I'll just wait for it to arrive on Spotify.  Which is fine because I don't mind giving the band the (very tiny but greater than zero) extra money.  I thought that was a metaphor for something but I can't figure out what it is. Saw a kid trying to skateboard up 6th avenue until the traffic and confusion became overwhelming and she decided to pick up her board and walk on the sidewalk.  I'm sure that's a metaphor for something but I'm not coming up with what it is. I was trying to think of something that I saw in the last few days that may have been a metaphor for something but I couldn't come up with anything.  I bet that's a metaphor for something but I can't imagine what. The reason I wa

High 70's and sunny.  From heat to air conditioning in two days. I just got an e-mail from an old friend who reaches out from time to time usually about topics we shared an interest in two or three decades ago.  I don't see this friend that much nowadays but when I do it's always strange.  Some people just seem to freeze themselves in time and act the same way and have exactly the same interests as they did when they were a very young adult.   This friend was a few years younger than me and he still talks to me as though I am say, 25 and he is 21.  On the odd chance that he was just staying on comfortable ground because we only run into each other a few times a year on public transit I have tried to bring up more recent events or talk about contemporary things but he always brings it back to the stuff we had in common in 19__ .  The e-mails are the same, talking about sports or the Howard Stern show like no time has passed and for the record I don't have satellite rad

Mid 60s and mostly sunny.  Supposed to get hot by Wednesday.  There goes spring, This week is a week where people at work come to NY from all over the country (well, mainly Southern California).  Lot's of how you doings and other small talk.  I'm able to keep that to a minimum at this point in my life because I learned a very valuable lesson:  if there's anything quirky or interesting about you don't let casual acquaintances (which is what 99% of co-workers are at this point in my life - at my age and rank you don't make many new real-life friends, you just have those that you made in your 20's and early 30s before you had to manage a lot of people) know about it.  If you do let them know you're giving them what I call the "conversational hook" which is what happens when the person trying to make small talk with you begins interviewing you about said thing or quirk and you wind up answering so many damn questions about it you never learn anything

Sunny,  mid 60s. It's mother's day so my thoughts wander to where the remains that housed her are interred, that is Moravian Cemetery.  Is it odd to want to take a tour of the place where you stored your parents physical remains?   This June 4 tour sounds pretty neat to me .  I often mention that my parents are buried in the same general location as a pencil magnate which generally induces people to suddenly remember an appointment that they're late for or at least change the subject. People are so weird sometimes.

Mid 50s, raining heavily with coastal flooding. I wrote this seven years ago and it doesn't seem likely I can do better so there's a rerun for you all.

Just about 60 degrees,  cloudy. Unfocused today.   It's my late mother's birthday tomorrow,  found something I put here several years ago that's better than anything I'll come up with today.  Will probably repost tomorrow.  

Hovering around 60, was sunny this morning, cloudier now. The middle of a month is from the 10th to the 20th, right?  I have never seen the early, middle and late segments of a month defined anywhere (mainly because I never looked, I suspect) but I'm figuring "early" = 1-10, "middle" = 10-20 and "late" = 20th on.  Some will point out that in some months that makes "late' the longest segment and I'm fine with that.  It's always later than you think. So it's mid-May, not particularly warm and I already got the first good whiff of midtown police horse excrement.  Normally you don't catch that until it gets well above 70 degrees for a few days so I'm wondering what's causing it.  Did the horse eat something particularly ripe?  Did it get into a trash can outside a Taco Bell, or even a co mbination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ? I always have more questions than answers but such is life, no?

Low 60s, mixture of sun and clouds. Pretty busy workday which I don't really feel like documenting here.  That's not what this is for.  After all these years I still don't know what this in fact IS for but I know what it's not for.  So sooner or later I'll eliminate all the things it isn't for and then I'll know and it will be a glorious day because then I can start working on whatever it is.  Truly that will be grand, or maybe whatever it is isn't grand, maybe it's small but still important.  Is small but still important still grand? I have questions.  Many, many questions.

High 50's, mostly sunny. Another weird thing about sports is the notion of congratulating a fan because their team performed well.  It irks and confuses me and I'm though of as a bad sports the way in which I typically react to this which is to say "Thanks, but I had nothing to do with it".  This in turn confuses the person who has just congratulated me.  I assure them that I am pleased with the result but had nothing to do with the outcome.  At this point the other person usually just stares at me like I'm some sort of weirdo and walks away or alternately throws their hands up and says something like "there's no making you happy!" It is a strange thing that has no analogue in the consumption of other forms of entertainment.  I'll wager that almost nobody has been involved in one of the following exchanges: "Hey, you saw Springsteen on Friday right?" "Yeah, he was great" "Well I know you're a big fan so congra

Unseasonably cool (50s) but sunny. Guy in the office next to mine is ranting about how all the underlying stats of the Rangers-Senators playoff series indicate that the Rangers should have won already.  This is an example of something I've observed among under-40 sports fans over the last few years:  the use of the extraordinary amount of data we now have available as fans to obscure the simple truth of who won or lost a big game or a championship or a playoff series. When Leicester City won the English Premier League soccer title last year it was very fashionable among a certain (young, male) type of soccer fan to deride their remarkable accomplishment by pointing out that Tottenham  had better "underlying statistics" and therefore was the "better team".  This, my friends, is another manifestation of the tendency of 21st century humanity to deny facts and instead craft their own version of reality cobbled together out of cherry picked bits of information.  

High 50's and Biblical rains here in NYC. It's so bad that I walked a half an avenue to get lunch and by the time I got back I was very, very grateful for the spare pants and socks I keep at the office.  I can only imagine how much wetter I would have been if I hadn't been smart enough to duck down the subway across the street from the building where I work and cut through the station into the underground entrance.  The water was cascading down the stairs like a dam had burst somewhere, that's not something you normally see in midtown Manhattan. The reason for the half-avenue walk was because due to Progress or Economics or whatever all the good delis within a few doors of my office have closed as the Disneyfication of Times Square continues and spreads like a gentrifying rash.  Why In My Day, etc. The reason I keep saying "half avenue" instead of "half a block" is because it was a West to East and East to West return trip as opposed to North-S

Low 60s and sunny.  Rain is supposed to be on the way though. Nothing particularly eventful happened to me so far today.  I'll take it.

Low 60s and sunny. For the record the Stallone-Canelo Tecate commercial where Stallone punches a beehive and then has a weird exchange with Canelo over a steak that winds up getting thrown on a grill is very, very odd.  Then again maybe it's supposed to sell beer to millennial Hispanics and I don't fall into either category.  Still it's nice to live in a time where when you want to make an inane observation about an inconsequential piece of advertising you can find the link to it in a matter of seconds, no?  Excelsior, fellow humans of the 21st century!

Mid 70s and sunny.  The rain that was predicted for today over the weekend didn't materialize. Not a lot of inspiration filtering through the window these last few days unless you count petty workaday annoyances and isn't that what social media is for?  Let's all vent by airing vaguely worded grievances about people who will never read them or who have no idea what you're talking about. I will be clear on one matter:  it's asparagus season baby!  So don't stand next to me at the urinal!

70 and sunny after an overcast morning. It's May Day, Vappu and Loyalty Day today.  That last one was an invention of the United States government during the Red Scares of the 20th century.  Fortunately we Americans have evolved beyond being uneducated paranoid xenophobes who worship the trappings of freedom and not the ideal itself.  Wait, sorry what year is this again?  Never mind.

About 60 but overcast and blustery. Better weather to eat those short ribs.

Mid 80s, muggy but also windy. Not quite the right weather to make braised short ribs (Tex-Mex nacho style) but fortunately we aren't eating them until tomorrow when it's supposed to be 20 degrees cooler.

Low 80s (!) and sunny.  It's too early in the year for this crap.  A year ago I was in New Orleans on this day and it wasn't quite that warm (though it was raining quite a bit). What would you say if I told you that a guy got put into rehab for huffing highlighters?  You know, those brightly colored magic-marker-type things that people used when they used to read stuff on paper and couldn't just do this on a screen.  Amusing premise for a story or pathetic real-life happening?  Huh, maybe that's a game I could start playing, writing down stuff that may or may not have happened and having people guess "Amusing story premise" or "Pathetic real-live happening".   What would the prize be though?  Highlighters?  Maybe.  But why would I have those?   Not everything written here is true.  Except the weather.

High 60s, cloudy early, then sunny, then a bit overcast again. Worked from home today, went to the corner to get some dumplings for lunch from the Chinese take out place.  A guy came in there, ordered one of the lunch specials and insisted that the chicken should be sliced but not shredded.  He emphasized this point numerous times.  Did he imagine himself to be the James Bond of ordering Chinese takeout?  Shaken but not stirred?  I didn't ask.   He got his food and sat down to eat before mine was ready and he seemed satisfied so mission accomplished, Chinese restaurant staff.

Almost 60 degrees again, cloudy, rain earlier.  Clearing now. Off to see a musical performance this evening. these folks with this band opening.  Standing venue.  I'm old, it's Wednesday, what's wrong with me?  Well there ain't much else I do for fun so might as well keep doing it while I can, even as it approaches the "I can't" due to my aging frame.  I guess there's always handicapped access, or should be.  Reminded of a bumper sticker I saw in a New Orleans bar:  Old punk rockers never die, they just stand in the back.

53 degrees, cloudy with on and off rain. A guy got on my bus this morning arguing with his female companion.  She looked somewhat younger than he but I couldn't decide if she was a wife or a sibling or a daughter or a lover or a friend or niece.  The only thing that would have surprised me is if she was his granddaughter because they didn't look far enough apart in age for that.  Near as I could tell they were arguing over whether or not this bus was the "right" bus, or rather was it the right time for the bus because apparently they had used the MTA app and decided to let the first bus on the same route pass seven minutes earlier figuring they had a better chance of sitting together (true) and that the seven minute delay wouldn't morning-traffic-multiply out into something greater (always unclear but risky).  I'm not terribly interested in the voices of my fellow morning commuters so I put headphones on and dozed. They got off the bus at the same stop I d

High 50's, maybe a degree short of 60 and partly cloudy or partly sunny depending on your point of view. I heard a story (unverified) that the term always used to be "partly cloudy" until 50 years ago when the New York World's Fair committee asked local news outlets to start using the term "partly sunny" because they felt it encouraged more people to come out to the fair.  To them "partly cloudy" sounded like "oh no, it might rain" while "partly sunny" abolished any precipitation from one's thoughts.  It's a story too good for me to want to debunk so I'll just retell it because it makes the world more interesting. In completely unrelated news I think Doritos has either changed the formula for the powder that they put on cool ranch Doritos or that my palate has changed and I no longer like it.  Either way I'll have to start taking a different bag of complimentary chips when the guys at the ferry offer me one

Mid 60s and sunny today Washington and Toronto just went to overtime setting a record for the NHL with 18 first round games going to OT.  That's entertainment.

Mid 50s, drizzle on and off. First local asparagus at the market today.  Some pea shoots too.  It's coming.

Cloudy and low 50s. Making summer plans .  Let's see how much of them actually become real.  Been a while since we batted a thousand.

Mid 60s and sunny after a cool and rainy morning. So today is sort of like St. Patrick's Day for people who like marijuana it seems. It's also the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs incident, the Columbine massacre, the Deepwater Horizon explosion and Adolf Hitler's birthday. That's a lot of baggage for one day.  No wonder people want to get high.

Cool today, low 50s.  Partly cloudy. One of our cab drivers in Nashville asked us about what New York was like.  Nashville is a town with pretty limited public transit and despite the fact that everyone drives or uses cabs or car services traffic is pretty light.  When I told him that in over a quarter century of working in Manhattan I had never driven myself to work he was incredulous.  He said "So what, ya'll ride the bus?  Everyone ride the bus?  I don't even know HOW to ride the bus!".  I said no, a lot of people take the subway which I'm sure induced some Death Wish/Warriors horrible fantasy.

Sunny and low 60s today. One of the many good things about travel is that it breaks you out of your daily routine.  I can only speak for myself but in a typical week one gets into a series of habits and gets through each day executing one behavior after the other without much thought or being fully present.  Get in a car or on a train or on a plane and get yourself somewhere else and all those supporting habits are pulled away and you're forced to mentally show up each day and do things differently. It's so much harder to do if you never go anywhere.   So keep moving while you still can.

Low 80s today.  Might rain. The central time zone is my favorite time zone.  It's good for sports; the games are over by 11pm or earlier generally speaking.   Gives one extra breathing room between the end of an event and bedtime.   Likewise prime time TV.  Chicago,  New Orleans and Nashville are all Central time cities and all fun places . And that's what passes for a hot take around here.

High 80s,  hot but not humid.   Bit of a breeze. Had hot chicken and played with dogs.  Life is good today.

Mid 80s and mostly sunny here today.

Cooler today, mid 60s . Hitting the road for a few days.  Much needed break.  Hopefully all my teeth (original and replacement) stay in my head through the trip and for another month before further work is done on a replacement. Updates, cryptic or otherwise may follow.

Low 70's and sunny in the late afternoon.  Rained earlier but that seems to have passed. Quiet commutes due to the semi-holiday week, unremarkable workdays.  The bulk of life is made up of so-what? and that's not a bad thing.  Take everything you remember and sort it into the good and the bad.  See which list is longer.  Memorable is overrated.  So-what? drifts into the ether and is forgotten and that's just fine by me.

Warmest day of the year so far.  High 70s.  Hope I don't have to turn on the AC to sleep. Got good family medical news today which with so many of us getting older makes it a good day.  Long holiday weekend coming up which is a cherry on the sundae. Kurt Vonnegut said to make sure you notice when things go well, so I am.  Well exactly what he said was ""I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."  So here's a written murmur.

It was a cool morning.  Mid 70's and sunny right now. A lot of us are watching the Yankees home opener in our offices.  Was exciting for a while, Pineda had a no hitter into the 7th.  I could hear people in other offices cheering with every pitch, middle aged men getting as excited as children.  I envy them a little bit.  After all the years of watching sports as a fan and also working in the industry I can't work up that level of excitement any more.  The thing about sports is that in the end you wind up disappointed  an overwhelming amount of the time.  While that makes the few times you aren't all the more memorable to me that's like saying you should keep beating your head against the wall because it feels so good when you stop. Seems to work for millions of people though,

Warmer and sunny,  mid 60s. I got nuthin else ,  gonna watch Match Game.

42 years ago yesterday I got hit by a car.  No big deal, got a concussion and a torn thigh muscle and spent a weekend in the hospital.   I celebrated the date by getting a root canal today,  good times. Sunny and mid 50s today, warmer tomorrow they say.  We'll see.

Chilly and grey this morning, so warmer than gray but certainly not spring like yet.  That's supposed to happen next week. I saw an item that someone is making a movie about Hugh Hefner and I thought, wow, Hugh Hefner is still alive right?  Googled it and he is, assuming the Wikipedia and my math are right he's 91. Man, who woulda thought he'd outlive Prince?

Chilly today, though interestingly the day also features summer-style thunderstorms with high winds and lightning. Don Rickles died today.  We all have an expiration date.   So long Don. Lincoln in the Bardo.  George Saunders is a clever writer, technically proficient and yet I just don't connect emotionally with what he puts out.  He writes nice stories that are quick reads and pass the time enjoyably but there's no emotional connection or "I want to read it again" reaction like I get from the reading I enjoy the most. So there's today's Invisible Book Review.   Maybe that's the next title for this thing, the Invisible Review of Books.  If you review a book and nobody reads it did you really review it?  Better go on Goodreads otherwise it's Schrodinger's Book Review.

Low 60s and sunny today.  The morning was foggy. The room was spinning today, a hive of activity and yet none of it changed the shape or the content of the room, it was at the end the same as it had been . I was about to type the word "maybe" but uncertainty doesn't really have a place in the room, it's the one place where you know two things:  the weather outside the room and the utter implacable existence of everything in the room. Tomorrow could be different.  

It rained a lot last night but now the sun's fighting to get through. It's not too cold.  Fiftyish. Angry birds really aren't that angry.  It's all marketing. Turn off notifications for this post, it ain't gonna get any better.  The room is blank today, the number of exits remains the same but the stuff on the walls has been taken out and I'm not sure who did it.  Maybe the mystery will resolve itself tomorrow.

It's supposed to rain.  That happens in April from what I remember. This is supposed to be the part where I note that some professional baseball teams started their regular season yesterday and a bunch more are doing it today and gee whiz isn't it great when it's all ahead of you and hope and blah blah whatever that's been done a hundred thousand times and mostly badly.  It's entertainment, not a metaphor for life.  It is enough to sit outside on warm days and watch men mostly fail and be entertained by it. Gonna rain tonight though.  Rain staves off the failing for a while.

Windy yesterday.   Warmer and sunny today.  Mid 50s.  Might have even hit 60, I'm not going to look it up. Yesterday was April Fool's Day which was a lot funnier before businesses felt compelled to put out zany press releases.  Everything becomes a money making scam sooner or later in America. Filed my taxes today.  Had to pay some on a net basis between Federal and State.  Living where I live I know I'm supposed to be outraged at somebody or other but instead I thought hey thanks for the roads and stuff,  I'm lucky to be in this club called the First World and I'll pay my share.   This makes me  a Bad American in the eyes of many.  Oh well. It's comfortable in the room today which is good, there are fewer exits then there used to be.