The Curse of the Thong

It was quite a night. The original plan was a trip to the grocery after work to pick up a barbequed chicken on sale, and home for dinner with our younger daughter before she had to go to work.

The plans began to unravel as we started. While going into the grocery our daughter texted that she had to go to work early so she would eat later. While my wife was in buying a chicken, my daughter called to say her sister’s concert tickets we had been waiting for had arrived and she needed them immediately as she would be leaving for Montréal, for the concert, on Friday. She was at work in Toronto.

I got to my daughter and explained the situation as my wife re-entered the car and she talked to my daughter to firm up plans.

By the time we reached home, the plan had changed, and we would put the chicken away, keep the potato salad in the frig, and meet my older daughter in Burlington at the train station with the tickets, and we would all have dinner before she got back on a train to get back to Toronto.

To add to the situation, it was pouring! We started the trip at 7:00 p.m. by going to my younger daughter’s work, to get my older daughter’s umbrella from my wife’s car which was on the work parking lot.

Rushing off in the rain to the train station, we chose a closer station (to Toronto) so my daughter would have a shorter trip. She got off in the wrong direction and we spent 15 minutes driving around Burlington looking for the secret hidden parking lot entrance so we could find her as she did not come out the front door! This was all of course blamed on me!!

Finally, in the car with my wife and older daughter, we hand her the tickets and went off to find a place to eat.

We found an Italian restaurant we had seen before and it was great. The restaurant experience is the point of this story.

Sitting nearby last night was a couple, an older guy with thinning gray hair, and a very sophisticated woman, having dinner. They were in my peripheral vision and I was not staring, but for our usual dining out in Hamilton, they were better dressed. This was Burlington, and as an upscale place and neighbourhood, it made sense. They were clearly “after work” people, not in jeans as we were.

They finished before we did and paid the bill and were leaving. As the very sophisticated young woman got up, as she thought no one was looking, and as an almost automatic response, she picked the underwear out of her butt where it was surly stuck!

This all may be the "curse of the thong" in todays world but the event made me smile! No matter how wealthy we are or how sophisticated we get, underwear still sticks in our butt!

 

From an email to my sons I sent in 2001; Fooling with the old style TV's...

 

The TV in the basement playroom had seen better days. It was purchased in 1984, and had a convoluted electronic tuning system made for pre-cable type watching. The tuner has been drifting and requiring too much care to get it to work, and since the kids use it mainly, it wasn’t worth keeping or fixing. So, yesterday I bought a 32” TV for the family room, and the exchanges had to be made.

 

The problem started with the fact that the new TV weighed 121 pounds in the box, and even out of the box the weight was 112 lbs. So, the guy at Costco helped me get it on to a cart, and another guy helped me get it in my car. My wife and I moved it to the garage, and then very slowly we made our way into the house and into the family room. Since I don’t have a stereo VCR, the only plugs I needed to do were a VCR regular plug and the electrical plug. Still, we had to stop, almost in mid-air to get the plugs plugged. This was a scream.

 

After that deal was done, I had to move the TV from the family room downstairs to replace the old one. Since this was a few lbs.lighter, I slowly moved it to the stairs and this morning got it downstairs. Next (later) I will move the old one upstairs and to the garage where my wife has assured me that we’ll sell this marvelous piece of equipment in our soon-to-be garage sale. Everything is hooked up and working again.

 

As I finished this morning with the second TV, the moving truck arrived with our inherited stuff from my wife’s cousin’s estate. This was a delivery of 6 items. It was sent as “shipped” rather then “moved”, as we found out yesterday at customs as we had to prove that it was an inheritance so that there would be no duty or taxes. “Shipped” as you can figure means no moving men, just a big truck (18-wheeler) with a driver. No ramps,no lowering bed. Just a guy looking for a loading dock. Thankfully the driver was a nice guy who helped me with the load. As “shipped”’ everything was boxed, labeled, put on a palate and strapped. We had to undo all this and carefully lower each box to the ground and put them in the garage to be dealt with over the weekend.

 

So after moving TV’s and furniture, I was bruised and immediately returned to work.

A good story from the 60's as told by me in April, 2009

The Citizens Arrest!

From September, 1963 until June, 1970 I was the art teacher at Waterloo Junior Hugh School in Howard County, Maryland. Somewhere in that time we became Waterloo Middle School, and sometime later, when I was long gone, the school was torn down to make way for a new road.

Many of the experiences, and the stories I was to use for the rest of my life, stemmed from my time there. It was a great place to experience life and to enjoy teaching. I owe most of the rest of my life to those times.

I was on a free period one spring day, probably in 1965, when I wandered into the front office to say hello to the school secretary and see what was going on.

I heard a commotion coming down the hall, and I want to the office door to see what was happening. Running toward me at full speed was Mike, an 8th grader with a great sense of humor and a wiseass for sure. I liked him and was able to easily deal with him in class. He saw me and started screaming, “Help! Mr. Greenblatt, help me!” I was startled,. “What’s wrong?”

He told me that a substitute teacher, a retired Army Colonel (I think) was after him. No sooner than I had gotten him into the front office to calm him down than the retired Army officer came running, at full speed yelling, “I’m making a citizen’s arrest!”, and he lunged for the student.

The student lunged for me to protect him; I fell backwards trying not to be killed by both of them and backed into the principals’ door.

The three of us crashed through the Principals door; first there was me, falling backwards, the student hugging me and the substitute, clinging onto the student.
We were a human sandwich, and the Principal was on the phone with the superintendent of schools!

I scrambled to my feet, smiled and mouthed quietly that it was not my issue and got out of there as quickly as possible.

You can blow up a peep!

You can blow up a peep! Really, when they get hard, blowing them up softens them and makes them grow!

20 seconds in the microwave at full power causes peeps to expand, and be delicious.

It is difficult to photograph due to the cold air that comes in when you open the microwave door; the colder air begins to deflate the peep. However, I can’t photograph with the door closed so I had to stop, photograph, and start again.

I can’t really show the full effect but the last photo shows you a cooked peep next to an uncooked one.

These have been sitting around since Easter, so they are not real old.

Seriously, it’s great fun and tastes delicious!

I woke up in the morning with a small itch on my right hand....

I woke up in the morning with a small itch on my right hand. When I looked at it I noticed it was swollen and red and hot. None of those things are correct for your hand. After further study I took it to be a spider bite, although I saw no spider.

As it grew over the next few hours, I realized my watch could not fit comfortably, and my daughter suggested that I remove my wedding ring before I had to remove my finger.

I got some antihistamine pills to see what they would do which wasn’t much except they made me very tired.

I called the doctor’s office for an appointment and was brought in immediately.

My doctor had a young substitute who was pleasant but not at all familiar with my malady, so we learned together. I believe she was way off base with a diagnosis, however, she moved me on to Urgent Care. This facility is great and they were delighted to see me and took me quickly.

I first spoke with an admission person and went to wait. I was then seen by a triage nurse and had to wait a bit, and was then seen by a doctor.

It had grown to look like a large lobster diseased hand, and I had little use of my now very hot fingers. It was a disaster and the redness was growing up my arm! I was alarmed as it began to look like my version of flesh eating disease. On top of everything else, my wife and daughter were away for a few days and I had the responsibility for walking Max, our dog, several times a day, not with my left hand! Thank God it was the left hand because as a right handed person, my left gets less use however, for texting and computing I soon realized how important it can be.

I was given antibiotics and an antibiotic drip as well, and we did the drip for three days and the meds for 10. Every day a different set of nurses would see me and a different doctor, but everyone, including me, seemed pleased. By the end of the whole experience, I was able to put my ring and my watch back on.

I was very relaxed and a friend said she saw me but didn’t want to disturb me as I was in the Urgent Care facility, asleep!

A Ghost in my House

I have written about Max, our dog, staring at the wall for hours, looking at the air intake for the heating system and figured it could be a ghost. It could be he hears voices or noises through the system and just likes it.

My daughters, when they have visited the local psychic, have both been told that an older spirit hangs around them, and both feel it’s their grandfather.

Last week as I walked by the upstairs bookshelves which holds my Royalty Tin Collection, I was way past the tins at the time, a large cookie tin fell off of the top and rolled across the floor. It has never done this before.

On Sunday, our coffee pot leaked out 10 cups of water, which it has never done, all over the kitchen counter while we waited to make coffee.

OK, no big deal here, just a simple bunch of stuff. It could be anything.

But now, after checking with my daughters, who swear they have not touched any of my guitars over the years, my guitar is out of tune. OK, I know, that’s normal, guitar strings tune down over time but, it is not possible for guitar strings to tune up!

My guitar was out of tune in such a way that several of the strings were higher than they would normally be, not possible without someone attempting to tune it up.

Ghosts tune guitars? I’m just saying……

Friday night at the fights....

One of the strongest memories I have is about an activity which has haunted me all these many years, for its true insanity. We had a friend, or as it would be my girlfriend had a friend for many years (they are still friends today) and we would often spend time at her house as a group. My memory of the event is a bit foggy, but clears enough.

The friend lived with her mother in a large, luxury apartment on Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore in the sixty’s. It was a low rise, perhaps mid-century structure that probably still stands today. We would often sit in her living room talking.

Several times we witnessed an event unlike anything I had seen (or actually heard before).

A low noise, undistinguishable, a grumbling noise started, and the excited regulars became aroused by it. The knowledgeable ones (friend and her mother) as I remember rushed to the center ofr the room and put their heads on the floor, ears to the ground and made hushing sounds so we all could listen.

Clearly, this was a regular event, an evening with the neighbors!

The screaming commenced, and it grew in level. There was name calling, crashing of things, and as it reached the crescendo, smashing fists into doors, a woman locked into her room or the bathroom, and death threats being hurled in several directions.

“I’m going to kill you!” was the battle cry as I remember. All this delighted the residents as it was Friday night at the fights!

I witnessed this at least twice, no more was needed and once would have been enough. When asked about it at the time, it was explained to me that this was normal behavior for the neighbors. It was just the psychiatrist and his wife who live downstairs!