I laugh every time I see this cartoon, not just because it’s mine, but because it’s true.
I was recently in New York and Boston and I saw it, and every winter/fall, there is some guy in shorts and t-shirt running or just standing in the city while everyone else is bundled up.
Is he showing off or does he not feel the cold?
He’s probably from a cold climate and 30 degrees is not cold to him. Maybe he’s from Alaska or Canada or some northern European city.
I know that when I’m home in Miami, when it gets to 70 degrees, I need to wear a hoodie or jacket or something, but when I’m in NY, I can go out in a t-shirt in 50 degree weather and when it’s been 39 degrees and sunny, I can walk with an open jacket and t-shirt in NY and not feel the cold. I think it may have something to do with the humidity in Miami and maybe lack of it up north. It just feels colder down south when the temp drops.
I remember one year, it was 19 degrees at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade in NY and I was fine out there. I was bundled up and dressed for the weather and I think only my nose was cold. But I was bundled up, I wasn’t in shorts and a t-shirt.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I wrote last week that the week between Christmas and New Years was one of my favorite weeks. But I think the days and probably the whole week after New Year’s Day is also my favorite. I like when everything goes back to normal.
Things start off slow and ease into the New Year, which is a big change from the chaotic period between October and December, which I also love. But when it’s time for the chaos to end, it’s nice that January comes just in time. Of course by the end of February, I’m ready for something to happen, I feel that the months between January and maybe April, are boring.
I never make resolutions for the new year, not sure why, I just don’t. Guess I’ll just start taking the Christmas tree down and boxing up Mariah Carey, Home Alone and the leg lamp (yes, I have one, it was a gift a few years back).
Happy New Year!
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I think this is my favorite week of the year. We don’t have a name for it, though. What could we call the week between Christmas and New Years?
For many years, I was a bit worried, related to business. Each year, business would come to a complete halt. Two weeks before Christmas, up to New Years, business would just cease and I would get worried. And each year, my mother would say, “You say that every year! Don’t you remember, it’s like that each year?” And she was right. Business picked up right after the new year.
Now I don’t care. I learned to just take things as they come, or don’t come. And now I enjoy the lull in everything. I honestly keep forgetting what day of the week it is!
It’s funny, because right before Christmas, it’s very hectic with all the preparations and then it just stops on December 26.
I’m enjoying see all the hecticness at the airports this week on tv, and knowing I’m not part of that mess. I last traveled at Thanksgiving time, but it was during the off-days, so it wasn’t hectic. While it’s a big tourist time in Miami, I don’t live in a tourist area, so it doesn’t affect me.
I have a friend who has always loved New Year’s Eve and the new year. I guess it was all a fresh start for him, and now I appreciate that. I think these days my favorite Holiday is Thanksgiving. For many years it was Christmas, as I am sure most kids enjoy the most, then it was Halloween. Now it is Thanksgiving.
My mother always loved July 4th. One year for her birthday, I bought her all sorts of July 4th things – it seems weird, but it was great. I got decorations and big serving platter, lots of U.S. Flags and things like that. She really loved it.
While I love this time of year, I also enjoy my time in New York in the summer. I already made my plane reservations. I have six months to go and I have already started the countdown. I would like to go somewhere in Europe in the Spring, too. Still thinking what to do about that.
So for now I’m going to enjoy New Years Eve and Day and the new year. Hope you do, too.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I guess I’m in a grumpy mood these days – airing all my gripes.
The other day I got a notice from Amazon that my package was delivered. Only I looked all over the building and I could not find the package.
This is a common thing. We have a sign out front that says leave all packages on the table by the elevator, but no one reads it or pays attention, so we’ve found deliveries back on the table by the pool, in unused emergency stairwells, on private balconies of neighbors and other places. So I looked all over and the package was nowhere.
I went on line to double check and it says it was delivered and signed for by “Fermin” who is one of the security guards at the building next door. So I traipsed over and he handed five packages – for five neighbors, including me. The Amazon guy just dumped all of our deliveries next door. But who is wrong? The guy did get a signature, and Fermin just accepted them without reading the labels.
Either way, Amazon is always screwing up. I know it’s the start of a busy delivery season, but he did manage to the packages next door. He just neglected to read the addresses.
We have a great UPS guy. He has my cell phone number and often calls about deliveries and other things. When I was in Greenport last week, he called, it was about a neighbor’s delivery. I told him I was just thinking about him because as we drove to Greenport, we drove through a lot of farmland and there right in the middle of it all was a UPS truck delivering a package to a house.
One day, recently, our UPS guy called to tell me he had a delivery I needed to sign for. I went downstairs and there he was at the pool (dressed) talking to one of my neighbors (dressed), both lying on lounge chairs feet from the bay, chatting away. I joined them and we all ended up talking for about 45 minutes. Sorry for the neighbors expecting deliveries!
Village life.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
We did our usual pumpkin and apple picking this past weekend at one of our favorite places Dubois Farms in Highland, NY, in the Hudson Valley.
The leaves didn’t turn yet but it was still beautiful and fun. The temperature finally dropped into the 50s, so it felt like fall. We had apple cider doughnuts, hot apple cider and pumpkin pie. We left with a bunch of large mum plants, too.
Driving through the winding roads in Upstate New York is really wonderful. I keep thinking that it might be a great place to live. The views of the valleys and Hudson River and beautiful, too.
On our way back to the city, we stopped at Tarrytown and Sleep Hollow, what a treat that was. I’ll post the photos here in a day or so.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I’m headed to NY for a couple of weeks, don’t worry, I’ll take you along.
I’ll be doing my usual things – NY Comic Con, pumpkin and apple picking upstate, maybe the Oyster Festival and some other thing in the Hamptons, etc.
I was trying on a couple of jackets to see which one I’ll take. For a guy who lives in Miami, I have a ton of jackets, coats and hoodies. Not sure why.
As I tried various jackets on, there was one common denominator with each of them – medical masks in the pockets – backups I guess for when needed during the pandemic. I think I used them this summer when I traveled, but not sure. But I knew they were there, I just forgot until I put my hands in the pockets. I still have a bunch in my car, too. I don’t know why, but I guess I want to be prepared for whatever. But even when I’ve gone to the doctor’s or visited someone in the hospital lately, I haven’t needed to wear a mask, so I guess I’m just packratting. I come up on some in the house once in awhile, too. In draws, behind things, in couch cushions. And my luggage, I have some masks in pockets in my luggage. Just in case.
They may come in handy on the subway when I’m in NYC with so many people crowding the trains, but in the last year or so I’ve noticed only a handful of people wear masks on the subway.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I wrote in a previous blog post about getting back into village life, but this past weekend, I really extended myself. it felt like old times.
On Saturday night I went to a family birthday party, it was a lot of fun. As I was leaving, one of the guys in our condo texted me about the elevator – it was stuck. I know how to unstick it, so for the next hour or so, someone else and I worked on it.
Yes, we called the elevator company, but they ended up coming hours later, so we fixed it and I headed out to the family party.
Got home late, but then woke up early Sunday morning to go to a triathlon, my sister-in-law was participating.
I drove out to Key Biscayne where it was, met up with some of my family members and we cheered Laura on. That was a lot of fun, too. It was at a beach I’ve been going to for most of my life, I must have been there 1000 times.
It was beautiful out. I live near there, so it was a quick drive over. Thousands of people were there. It was exciting. Most of the activity was out of sight since they swam, ran and rode a bicycle for 12 miles. But were there there at the finishing line for the bicycle and running parts.
Laura came in third in her category!
My breakfast, avocado toast with egg.
From there we all went to breakfast (in the village) which was nice. I had avocado toast with an egg on top.
After I parted with everyone, I spent a lot of time at the mall looking for jeans – I wanted Levi’s 513s, supposedly the fit is the best, from what I read.
I went all over the place from department store to department store and finally went to the Levi’s store where I was told the 513s are discontinued – I should try the 511 or 514 instead.
I found a pair of 511s at J.C. Penney, and waited for this cashier to ring me up, but he took so long with the previous customer, I just dropped the jeans I chose and left. I wasn’t really crazy about them anyway. And I had time to think while waiting on line.
I made a pit stop at Whole Foods and headed home.
At home I checked the jeans I was trying to replace because I didn’t like the fit and lo and behold, they were Levi’s 513! I spent all that time at the mall looking for a discontinued pair of jeans, which I own, which look like new. I just didn’t like the fit.
So it was a busy weekend. I’m glad to be back in the game.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
There is this TikTok video which started this conversation. A girl asks her boyfriend how often he thinks of it, and oddly enough, he thinks of the Roma Empire quite often. Now others are asking their boyfriends/husbands and these guys say they think of it a lot.
Do you?
I think I do, but honestly, I think of ancient Egypt almost daily.
Seriously.
I’m obsessed with ancient Egypt and I think I probably would be an Egyptologist if I did my life over. I have been thinking of the Roman Empire lately because I keep trying to think of a cartoon that is Coliseum-related.
I have done quite a few cartoons related to Egypt over the years and maybe that’s why I think of it a lot – to get cartoon ideas. But I do watch a lot of tv shows based on Egypt, but also ancient Italy, including Rome.
I know that the Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 during a war. A soldier found it in a fort. It had hieroglyphics at the top portion and an ancient Egypt translation on the bottom portion. People were able to decipher the hieroglyphics from that. It was the first time they were deciphered.
The first word they deciphered was Ptolemy – which was Cleopatra’s family/dynasty. And who was Cleopatra? The last pharaoh of Egypt, which was then taken over by the Ancient Romans – when Augustus invaded and that ended the Ptolemy dynasty and all of the centuries of pharaohs and Egyptian rule, which became the Roman Empire.
I learned some of the alphabet from the Ptolemy hieroglyphic – a P is a square, a T is a half circle, an L is a lion and so on.
I’ve been a hermit lately, ever since the start of the pandemic. I mean I do go out and I do travel, but I’m not doing what I used to do. I’m sort of stuck in that staying in mode. I used to be out all day and night. Now I’m not. I used to participate in the community, in a big way. Now I don’t.
Yesterday I went to a memorial in our village. It was for someone who was big in the town, who was almost the godfather of our town.
The memorial was in one of the parks in the village and there was a large turnout. There was a proclamation from the city in his name and a few beautiful trees were planted in his name. We have quite a few parks in the village, but this was his favorite, so it all centered around this park and him.
My point is that there were so many people there and I know 90% of them. I hadn’t seen many in quite awhile, ever since I stopped publishing the daily news here. When I covered the news I was everywhere every day, gathering up news, covering events. It’s a small village so it was easy to see most people most days.
The funny thing is that as I looked through the crowd, it seemed as if my news gathering caused a quarrel between many of the people present and me at one time or another, they weren’t too keen on things I wrote. I literally had issues over the years with half the people who where there yesterday.
Half of them yelled at me , or threw me out of their offices or called me names over the years. Yet in the end they gave me many awards and accolades. We were/are a dysfunctional family.
I remember the deceased telling me at a meeting once, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And at another point he says, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And a third time, he said, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And I held up my pad and said, “I have not written a sentence. You haven’t said anything worth repeating.” And the whole room laughed. I guess we did have good times through it all.
At one point, we thought it would all make a good reality show of the craziness we lived through daily. One of my friends worked for Endemol, a producer of reality tv, and she would always tell me to come in and pitch the idea, which I never did.
I caught up with so many people yesterday. The thing is, we all still live here and while the village is quickly turning into a city, the people are all the same.
I think I need to get out there again – go to things, participate again. Go to bingo at the women’s club, go to a meeting this week where our town’s yearly parade is planned, go to an arts festival meeting, attend a village council meeting. The good part is that I won’t be covering any news and it won’t be a job. I’ll just be one of the village people like everyone else.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
