COUSINS ACTING UP AGAIN

Congratulations to Cousins_by marriage_ Linda & Tilly for their having graduated college. Linda even got a free bubble head to show for it. I should suppose everyone's entitled to his mini_me. Liz, yet another Cousin_by_marriage, recently won a teacher of the year award. A woman I know of from another site has posted a blog explaining that in her family, some of the women have a way to help them fall asleep. I was wondering if it works for us men. Each one tells a story in her imagination. By spinning this entirely tall yarn, she can somehow put herself to sleep. Since my imagination's always been more than a smidge on the hyperactive side anyway maybe I should give it a try. Lately I've been practicing my Beatle songs. On Tuesday I even threw in a few by Eric Clapton & Bob Dylan. I listened to some old Talking Heads & U2 on Tuesday too. Yesterday I went to the Barnes & Noble right next door to the Wyoming Valley Mall for a while. As always I ended up completely mesmerized by the selection of reading material. A lot of it's garbage though. I spent lots of time plowing through every possible kind of left wing propaganda that's not even worth wasting half a syllable on. Uncle Frankie came over for a while on Tuesday & again yesterday. The weather more than kind of stinks today. I woke up to an annoying drizzle this morning but it's better than all the electrical storms.

OLD RECORDS

Yesterday I listened to yet even more old stuff. I broke out my copy of Pink Floyd's "The Wall". It's such an especially nice surprise that most of my old vinyl records sound even nicer now than they ever did back then. The sound quality of the majority of them drove me plum nuts back in those days. In my never_ending protest against the total obscenity of current pop culture & what passes for show business these days, I consistently go retro. That goes for my guitar practice too. I put in my usual time with all those Beatle songs yesterday. This morning I went back downstairs to do the laundry. A clean wardrobe is quite the only way to go. It's a nice droll way to kill both a few minutes & a few brain cells. Uncle Frankie came over for a while yesterday. Fran called too. Amazingly I haven't gotten any headaches in quite a while. Even with all the changing weather my head seems to be quite cooperative lately. Of course, I still can't sleep but that's something I can make a bit of an adjustment to since it doesn't impede my ability to function properly. Today's that dreaded day when, each year, the sun starts going down a minute earlier per night.

RAIN REGULARLY

Lately we've been getting very frequent very short rainstorms with thunder, lightning & wind. Fran & Uncle Frankie came over for a few hours late Saturday. We ate Sizzle Pie pizza & a nice cake for dessert. She left late yesterday morning to go back to work. I spent a while over the weekend practicing my guitar. It sounds pathetic because I haven't ever been able to figure out how to keep it in tune. I'm getting better at playing though. Yesterday I watched part of a tribute to Tim Russert. It's nice to see he was so good a person. This morning I just found out about the death of George Carlin. I took a public speaking class a while ago at S.U.N.Y Farmingdale where the teacher, Cornelius McAdory, said that he & Carlin were once classmates. Carlin was entirely too blunt for me. As a kid I'd always enjoyed his stuff but after a while I started noticing that he just wasn't even the least bit my kind of style. He was certainly much different than Russert. Both were famous Irish Catholics but one seemed to have been entirely on the right track, while the other was completely off_beat. Oddly gas has been getting a bit less expensive lately. It always seems to fluctuate. The Fourth of July is getting, slowly but surely, closer. That always makes for an extremely distinctive kind of time for one & all. Lately I've been listening more & more to my old vinyl albums. Yesterday I listened to my old Marshall Crenshaw album from 1982. I recently heard that he's still in circulation these days. That's most certainly quite a very nice surprise.