TOO FOGGY

I went over to Pittston for 7:30 a.m. Mass today at O.L. Mt. Carmel & the weather was so foggy I could barely even see an inch in front of me. The heat wave still goes on. It's very odd but I fully intend to enjoy it while it lasts. I've still been reading those books, each one a little at a time. Nothing much of any note has been going on lately. Autumn progresses in its typically droll sort of a way. People are all getting ready for everything from Halloween to Christmas. I get sick & tired, in quite a very big hurry, of seeing all the obscenely premature decorations, commercials. etc. Speaking of obscenity, the liberals have already started their disgustingly predictable scampaign to ban even so much as the very word, Christmas, from people's vocabulary. This, of course, is indicative of our secular culture's poisonous antipathy toward all things Christian, under the guise of a supposed respect for equal rights. I haven't bothered to go trick or treating, or to a Halloween party, in many years. I always used to enjoy things like that in my days as a young hepcat. By now my New York Knights of Columbus council & Holy Name Society must be selling all sorts of contest tickets. Out here, though, I don't see much of things like that.

LIBRARY BUSY

Happy casual Friday dance. We all have to do the official weekend cha_cha_cha when the time comes. All is well so far. Lately, I've been continuing my constant reading. I've been plowing through those books about St. Therese & the one about Charlotte Bronte. Of course, I only read a little at a time of each of them. They both lived in the nineteenth century. I've always had quite a flair for life in the past lane. I've always really liked literature & Catholic history so it works out quite well. Oddly, the heat wave goes on. It may yet portend very bad news in the opposite direction though. Last autumn & most of winter were very warm but the end of winter turned out to be very bitter with lots of snow & ice well into March. The library is absolutely packed right now. I've only been here for around fifty minutes & already every computer is spoken for. There are occasional days like this. I've been checking out, among other sites, Fuelmyblog lately. It has a very seriously eclectic variety of blogs & I made sure I submitted mine to it. Tonight is the big weekly football game. I suppose my father & Uncle Frankie will be determined to make sure they show up.

UNSEASONABLY WARM

Oddly, it's over eighty degrees lately. That's more than kind of on the strange side for a Pennsylvania October. Ever since I was a kid in New York I've always associated October with exceptionally cold weather & Pa., as a general rule, has always been substantially colder than New York. I haven't seen much TV lately, which is very good news. In my days as a young hep cat, I reall liked it a lot & kept up with the then_trendy pop culture. Except for old movies & old shows in general, I don't usually bother much with it these days. I really like "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" & "Jeopardy" but they ask lots of questions about current pop culture & I have no idea of what's going on these days. Every day things come up about all sorts of characters I suppose I most certainly should have heard of by now but I'm stumped. Sometimes I watch "The Simpsons" & "Seinfeld" but neither of them is exactly new stuff. It's fun being such a throwback.

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QUIET TIME

So far it's been a very quiet uneventful time since October got rolling. The weather is more summer or spring than autumn. I seem to have a fairly persistent, annoying cough lately. I'm still sneezing quite a lot too. My hay fever just doesn't like to give me the satisfaction of budging, fall or no fall. Flu shots are available these days. I really should think of getting one. Since the St. Therese novena, I got the idea to start reading a couple of the books I have about her. One is her "Last Conversations". The other one is "Maurice & Therese: The Story of A Love". They're both required reading for anyone who wants to be as knowledgeable as possible about St. Therese. Lately I have been pigging out on all sorts of junk food, including candy, cookies, etc. Fortunately I'm not such a naturally heavy guy anyway but I still have to watch my diet. Sometimes my weight goes up too much. Oreo has a cookie out, just in time for Halloween, that has Halloweenish orange in the middle with monster designs on the cookie part. All the cliche_riddled junk food, from now on, will be out in full force. It's boring but it can't be avoided.

THE CLOCK

LAST NIGHT OF NOVENA

Last night, the big St. Therese novena finally came to its inevitable close. 5:00 Mass went well. There was a big crowd. I sat too close to the air conditioning. Because I was wearing long sleeves but no sweater, I was too cold. The bishop was the principal celebrant. It was a very long night & I never got home until around 7:30. There was a little party after it in the church basement but it was getting dark so I just left. Thus ended my very first ever time in an Eastern Rite Catholic church. The parking was much less of an absolute nightmare than I could have expected. There was the inevitable road block, of course, on River Road, but I made it home easily anyway. By now, I must have seen more of Wilkes_Barre accidentally than most people have gotten to see on purpose. Mary Anne called this morning. Everyone has been doing well. She reminded me that she might have connections that could help me get a job in something like proofreading. Happy birthday to Brian in California. This will be quite a big birthday month for him & his family. Groovy word of the day: supervene. Ringo Starr & Paul McCartney intend to attend the unveiling of the Imagine Peace Tower. On top of that, Ringo's old EMI catalog albums are now available digitally. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Quote of the Day: "Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow."_That one's from Arthur Stringer. The Phillies beat the Mets so I don't reckon Jo Ann is all that happy.

OCTOBERFEST

Today is the very first day of October. I'll bet the folks over in Lindenhurst are all geared up for the Rotary Club's big Octoberfest next weekend. I miss the days when I could show up at those things. I knew everybody in town over there. Today, St. Therese's feast day, is the last day of the novena in Wilkes_Barre. Mass is at 5:00 p.m. & will by celebrated by a visiting bishop. The traffic & parking will be an absolute nightmare. Uncle Frankie & Fran showed up on Saturday & gave my father lots of popcorn for his birthday. Last night I saw an old classic movie, Gaslight. It starred Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten & Angela Lansbury. I can remember having seen it twenty years ago, but I don't remember anything about it. Soon, I shall have to get back to all those Hitchcock movies. Lately, the weather has been very cold in the morning & warm later on in the day. Saturday night, my lectoring at O.L.Sorrows went well. There was a visiting priest & all ran quite smoothly.

BAD WEATHER

Yesterday I made it to the Little Flower novena. It was very easy to get to it. On the way home, though, I ran into more than a little bit of trouble. Part of River Road was closed for repairs. I went onto Main Street but that didn't work out because I accidentally got into the left turn only lane. That knocked me entirely out of all sense of reality because I didn't have any idea where I was going from then on. Cruising through the area, I saw Carmelite Anne M. walking around. She didn't notice me. I ended up, after a while, on Wilkes_Barre Blvd. That's where I should go in the first place, from now on, under weird circumstances. It leads right over to Rte. 309. The weather was bad because there was a thunderstorm. I got gas by the mall. People who think New York City traffic is the least bit bad have never made the mistake of driving around that area. Tonight, unfortunately, I can't go to the novena because I have to lector at 5:00 p.m. Mass. In spite of the weather, Uncle Frankie & my father made it through the entire game they attended. Steve's band played at some game that was televised on ESPN. It was really hard to try to track it down, though, because there's more than one ESPN.

QUIET DAY SO FAR

Today has been, so far, quite an entirely uneventful day. My father & Uncle Frankie are all set to go to the big football game tonight. I should most certainly hope for their sake that the weather's at least a little better than it was last night. It started absolutely pouring out at around 9:00 p.m. The St. Therese novena went quite well, as usual. The traffic congestion is an absolute nightmare but it's cool. There's some extremely seriously annoying woman who comes over here every day & absolutely has to have computer five. That's usually the one I'm on. She's some otherwise entirely harmless quiet Hispanic woman but that seems to be quite a real obsession with her. Of course, it's time, once again, for the inevitable Friday dance. Believe it or not, it's the very last Friday dance of this September as October comes inexorably closer. I've never liked the cold part of the year but so far it seems to be holding back a bit. At least the birthdays most certainly seem to be pretty much over with for a while. There will soon be more though.

HEAT WAVE

Happy fortieth birthday to my much younger cousin Michael in New Jersey. I made sure I sent him my inevitable Beatle posty. Mary got the one I sent her a while ago. Yesterday I went to the St. Therese novena again. Surprisingly, on the way home, I managed to turn precisely onto the right street so there was no trouble getting home. The slightest mistake on that first turn inevitably leads to an absolute nightmare. One especially weird thing happened over there yesterday. Some complete lunatic in the parking lot parked his car so it would block the exit of the lot. It was five minutes before I could get out. For September it's been unusually hot lately. Autumn is already here but summer, fortunately, has yet to let go, although the sun, to my chagrin, goes down much earlier each night. I just found out that Marcel Marceau has died. He was a_as far as I know, the only_world-renowned French mime. He appeared in Mel Brooks' seventies' classic, Silent Movie. He was the only character who spoke, saying merely the word "No".