THE BIG DAY BECKONS

Christmas is but four days away. All has been going fairly well so far. Pretty soon, we shall all be swamped with company & food. This morning has been nice & quiet so far. Yesterday I ate chicken cutlets & French fries. They've always been very favorites of mine. I know they're fattening & not exactly on the list of things that are all that good for a guy's health. Coffee by the gallons doesn't exactly do me any favors either. I watched the old TV shows again, ever bemoaning the total lack of any good new stuff. Sometimes, though, while watching the ones about those controversial crimes, I get a little curious about what "Crossing Jordan" may be like. Occasionally I cheat & sit through about a minute or two of it at a time. The guy from "Sliders" is on it.

VERY SHORT SNOWSTORM YESTERDAY

It didn't amount to much of anything but trouble but there was a seriously annoying snowstorm yesterday. Last night Aunt Lauren came over, on her way home from work, for a while to get a head start on giving out presents. She, for whatever reason, isn't in the habit of showing up all that often, just every once in a while on her way home from work. I suppose Uncle Frankie must have shown up somewhere over the course of the day too. When I got home, there was candy on the table. I read quite a lot more of that Chaucer biography. I watched one of those cold case shows & a couple of old sitcoms. In other words it was a typical day. The librarian wont be back for a few days. He's in Chicago until the day after Christmas. The lady who covers for him during the week isn't as knowledgeable about things as he, so it should be very interesting to see how things work out around here for a while without him.

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR

It hasn't rained or snowed in a while but the snow & ice are all over. Uncle Frankie complained yesterday that he was inevitably going to trip on it sooner or later. Another pet peeve of mine is the incessant "Happy holidays" instead of the only one that's really appropriate: "Merry Christmas". It's splattered all over the media, in public places, & among friends & relatives. Of course, I should be used, by now, to the notion that that's to be fully expected in a world where all sorts of things have gone insanely wrong. A few times, lately, I've been in touch with my cousin Vinnie. It's cool, since we've always lived so far apart, that we can keep in touch by way of the internet. We've exchanged phone numbers too. Hey I've been noticing that I haven't gotten any headaches lately. That's a bit of a really nice kind of surprise for me since they always most certainly seem to sneak up on me sooner or later. Unfortunately next month I shall have to get my car inspected. That ought to be a regular hoot. I suppose I shall have to go to the Jack Williams right next to Jiffy Lube on Wyoming Ave. I finally got a few more hits from wheresgeorge. Thank you to Nirvana from the Wyoming Avenue Unimart. I don't quite understand how it could even be possible that I don't have a hell of a lot more hits considering how many bills I've most certainly put into circulation by now.

CHRISTMAS WITHIN A WEEK

Well, folks, the big day is getting oh so very much closer by now. It's one of those days each year that the ACLU, & other liberal special interest groups are always trying to ban from polite society. Things like that always clutter our e mail, snail mail, etc. Yesterday Michael & Terri's Christmas card came. They sent a really nice picture of their very first grandson. I think his name is Tyler Matthew. Grace, Daren's mother, also sent me a card. There's lots of tension around Christmas time. People send all sorts of e mails, legitimate, corny, activist, etc. Salesmen galore keep trying to capitalize on the whole thing. I still haven't gotten entirely used to Christmas around here. I keep in touch with the New Yorkers so I can easily find out what's going on over there. My cousin Vinnie, who now lives in N.Carolina, just sent me an e mail rambling on about days of yore. Change happens. Last night, I watched "I Love Lucy" again. That show was on back in the good old days when at least very many show business people knew better than to try to make controversial shows that forcibly crammed unacceptable agendas down people's throats.

BLIZZARDS

These days the snow & ice just keep right on constantly hounding us. I went to Saturday Mass & lectored there even though I was on the schedule for 10:00 a.m. yesterday. I knew I wouldn't be able to make it. Laura called on the phone yesterday & said she couldn't show up either. There were power failures. Three TV channels didn't come in. Cables were knocked down in the streets. I spent a large part of the day reading "War & Peace". This morning, it took quite a while to get the ice off my car. My driver's side door wouldn't open for a while & I ended up having to climb through the passenger side. On top of that, I couldn't help noticing that some complete lunatic of a guy, a pedestrian, tried walking down the street. He slipped every couple of inches & consistently punctuated each of his falls with an expletive. Last night, I watched "An American in Paris" with Leslie Caron, Gene Kelly & lots of other big names of that era. It's full of Gershwin music. I see Dan Fogelberg, the guy who sang that mammoth classic, "Longer" in 1981, has died. Yesterday I also watched Raymond Arroyo's interview with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has just published his autobiography.

CARMELITE MEETING

This morning I went back to Wilkes_Barre for our monthly Carmelite meeting. Sister Catherine gave each of us a Christmas present. Unfortunately we no longer have enough active members. Anne told us that Pope Benedict XVI is supposed to go to Yankee Stadium in April. I saw Pope John Paul II at Aqueduct Racetrack in the 1990's. All_I should say, technically, both_my Christmas cards have been sent out. My exhaustingly long list of snail mail connections took all of most probably five entire minutes to finish. E mail(internet in general, I should say) reigns supreme as my preferred means of communication. Don't even THINK of getting me started on my opinion of the phone. Today on my way home, some stark raging idiot ran a light on a turn when I (who had the right of way)was going straight on South Street. A for really & for truly moron was he. There's supposed to be a major blizzard starting tonight at around 8:00 p.m. The priest at Mass today said nobody knows exactly how it's going to turn out though. I have to lector at 10:00 a.m. Mass tomorrow but who knows if I'll even be able to make it. Uncle Frankie's been back up & around again lately. Usually he comes over for at least a little while most days. Last night I went to a Divine Mercy cenacle at St. Joseph's Church in Port Griffith.

VERY SNOWY DAY YESTERDAY

I couldn't get out through the blizzard much of yesterday. My father, Uncle Frankie, Big Gino & I all went to work plowing the snow. It was quite an annoying time but it all worked out. Last winter's weather stunk & I'm most certainly not looking forward to yet another trouncing. When I went to the post office to mail one of my Christmas cards, there was a bit of a line. The pregnant woman right behind me reminded us of the big Valentine's Day blizzard from last winter. Reruns of "The Twilight Zone" were on for a few hours yesterday. I couldn't help noticing that a lot of the faces are very familiar from those days, but I hardly recognize any of the names. Ann Jillian(from "It's A Living", James Best(from "The Dukes of Hazzard" & Sandy Kenyon are fairly well known names though. "I Love Lucy" was another show I watched last night. I've just read Charles Krauthammer's column, in the Washington Post, about how Romney, Obama, & Huckabee have made what he purports are entirely unacceptable references to religion in the public square. He's right about there always having been an awfully lot of confusion among people, throughout this country's history, about establishment & free exercise. He cited a quote from each of them. Each of the lines he noted, though, struck me as quite commendable. The only problem is that we're dealing with a country where all sorts of people have all sorts of points of view.

NEVER ENDING WEATHER TROUBLES

It's miserable outside all day, every day. Carole, my old supervisor, & her husband Bob, sent me my very first Christmas card of 2007. I got it yesterday. Grace, Daren's mother, inevitably sends one too. I'll most probably get hers soon. Those are the only cards I get from snail mail connections each year. Everybody else's comes by way of cybermail. The Beatles' old hairdresser, Betty Glasow, sold a lock of John Lennon's hair for $48,000. Merriam_Webster has picked the word "W00t", which was used in the Julia Roberts movie, "Pretty Woman", as its official Word of the Year. It's a combination of both letters & numbers. It appears that Gael, one of my California connections, is turning out to be quite the popular poet. I've let my sidekicks on Myspace & Newblog check out a few of her poems & they're all quite favorably impressed by The Bard of the Pacific. Hey, a guy never knows what an old long_ago friend will be up to. Lately, I've been watching "I Love Lucy" quite consistently at least twice a day. Current TV shows just don't have what it takes. With the old stuff, reruns or no reruns, it's always really interesting. Even the first time around though, most shows just don't impress me.

NICER TODAY THAN YESTERDAY

Today's still cold but much nicer than yesterday. Rocco told me this morning that he's only available on Tuesdays & Wednesdays so he wants me to lector on the other days. I'm quite happy with that. Because it was a reasonably nice morning, the newspaper machine was working. Last night I ate a couple of hamburgers from Burger King. As much as I enjoy occasionally getting stuff from places like that, it's very bad for the health. Another problem with it is that I have a tendency to wolf down, compulsively, whenever they happen to be around, things I wouldn't even so much as think of going out of my way to get. One good thing I've been noticing lately is that the price of gas has been dropping quite a bit. At most stations around here these days, it's dropped by at least a dime a gallon. Lately I've been listening to a CD I have of the seventies soft rock band Poco. Of all the very many songs on it, the only ones I remember are "In the Heart of the Night", "Crazy Love" & "Call It Love". They originally wanted to be named Pogo but Walt Kelly, who drew the Pogo cartoon, put the knish on that. By rambling on about these things constantly, do I ever show my age or what? >

1968

Last night I watched, on the History Channel, a really interesting special about 1968 with Tom Brokaw. Unfortunately, since it started at 9:00 I only ended up seeing the first hour of it up until the Martin Luther King assassination in April. I most certainly have all the rest of the year quite well memorized by now though. It started out with the Viet Nam War, specifically the Tet Offensive on January 30 & 31. There were all sorts of things on the show that appealed to my long_standing sixties obsession. I've always been especially fond of the music from that era. Because of that, I've become, over the course of my lifetime, quite interested in the entire era in general. Quite a lot of the trouble we're in these days comes very largely from that era. Liberalism, excessive obsession with youth, & a general degradation of our entire culture & way of life came out of that era. At 7:30 I went to the Holy Name Society's monthly meeting. Unfortunately, Fr. Walsh couldn't make it but most of the regulars showed up. At the end, we ate ziti,(thank you, Jerry) & drank port wine & beer. I told everybody about my N.Y. cousin whose wife's family makes really good Italian wine. The weather's been an absolute nightmare lately with bitter icy cold, fog & rain. My Blog friend, Cindi, is having a nice time with 71 degree weather over in Va. Because of icy road conditions south of Rte 80 yesterday, in an area that included Jim Thorpe, the Latin Mass was cancelled. They couldn't tell us, though, because nobody had a list of names & phone numbers. Today I ended up having to get a new tire & headlight. My mother & Aunt Lauren went shopping for a while on Saturday afternoon. Uncle Frankie & Fran came over for quite a while on Saturday night. >