Marching On!

Spaghetti on day 2 is so much better than spaghetti on day 1. But if you refuse to eat leftovers, you'll never know that.

Basketball can warm your heart one minute and break it the next. Only true fans can survive the dichotomy and live to cheer another day. Rutgers fans can really understand.

I don't even know what this job posting means and it is a position in communications – the field in which I spent my entire career!

"The primary focus will be to support the implementation of the Finance roadmap plans through successful minimum viable product (MVP) deployment cycles within CCER/A2R in order to maximize end user and partner engagement and minimize resistance. This individual will engage closely with key stakeholders within the workstream teams, such as Global Process Owners (GPOs) and workstream leads, to support stakeholder assessments and the development and execution of the change strategy to enable sustainment of new ways of working and behaving in Finance."

2023 marks 17 years of retirement for me and I am still loving every minute. If you add that to my 34 years of work, you will come to the conclusion that I am OLD!

If I put the garbage out the night before the pick-up or early on the pick-up day, the truck shows up after 2 to collect it. But if I don’t put it out early, the truck is there by 11 and I miss it. Today I went out with the trash at 11 just as the truck was picking up from the house before mine. That’s perfect timing!

I never display less confidence in myself than when I have to pull my car into the carwash and get the tires on those little tracks. Are my tires in the right place? What happens if they are not?

If there is nothing resembling corn in corned beef, then what’s reason for corn in the name?

I just cleaned my glasses. So that’s what I have been missing!

GS – General Soreness – is the new term used by the NBA to excuse players from playing who don’t have a specific injury, like a broken ankle. Who would have thought I had something in common with professional basketball players? I’m all full of GS, and I won’t be playing in an NBA game either!

That reminds me – does everyone make sounds when getting up from the couch or chair or is that just me? I’m not talking about knee joints with that snap, crackle and pop. It’s more like a big sigh, a major groan or a plaintive wail. Anyone? Anyone?

If you swap 2 letters, Venmo becomes VENOM. Just thought I’d mention that.

Shouldn’t a meteorologist be someone who studies meteors and not someone like Sam Champion, who tells you the weather report (which is often wrong anyway)?

You know you’re getting old when the doctors you have gone to for a long time start retiring. Or worse – your hair stylist. These people are essential to us and it is hard to replace them!

It took me this long to realize that I don’t dislike drinking water. I just dislike drinking water that is not COLD – the colder the better.

I was thinking to myself that it was Saturday but it felt like Sunday and then I thought, “What does Sunday feel like?” I’m not sure.

If there are PERFECT strangers, are there also IMPERFECT strangers? How would you tell them apart. Is that like saying something is VERY unique? Unique doesn’t have a sliding scale; something is either unique or it is not.

I brought my car in for service recently and was reading my Kindle while waiting for it. I couldn't keep my eyes open! I wonder if I can book an appointment there for 3 am so I can get some good sleep because my bed doesn't work as well as the loud waiting room at the Mercedes dealership.

Kudos to the staff at my second home, ShopRite, for somehow taking down the behemoth display of chips, soda and other snacks for the Super Bowl and quickly replacing it with a Valentine’s theme full of fresh cut flowers and heart-shaped candy boxes. The speed with which this was accomplished was surpassed only by the Super Bowl itself, where the playing field is converted into a massive concert venue for halftime and converted back into a playing field mere minutes later. I’d like to see a behind-the-scenes documentary on how that gets done!

The problem with magazine subscriptions is that the issues just keep coming. I have subscribed and unsubscribed to the paper copy of Vanity Fair at least 3 times. Then it is offered for a year for $8 and I can’t resist. I probably have issues squirreled away to read from 2007.

I signed up for a service to block unwanted calls from my home phone. It works great for the most part. But now I want to modify it to allow calls from a certain number and I can’t remember the name of the service or how to make that change. It is mighty quiet around here! 

I have never been to Staten Island. I have been THROUGH Staten Island on a few trips to Brooklyn, but I have never thought of Staten Island as being part of New York. To me, New York is Manhattan and Manhattan only. After all, there are tons of neighborhoods in Manhattan. Isn’t that enough? Do we really need Staten Island to be part of the City? No offense to Staten Islanders, but it is really more like a pass-through.

There is no better way to tell you the age demographic of the senior community where I live than to let you know that in our clubhouse we have a “CLOAK” room. Not a coat room, and no cloak and dagger, but an actual cloak room where, I suppose, you can store your cloak or other outerwear while you participate in the activities there. I remember a cloak room shared between two classrooms in elementary school, a place to hang your carcoat with those toggle, barrel-shaped “buttons” and your leggings – not the kind people wear to exercise, but thick, wool leggings girls had to wear under their skirts when there was snow because there were rarely snow days back then. But I thought Cloak rooms were long gone. Not here!

I thought that the price of orange juice was too expensive so instead of buying a carton, I spent $6 on 6 oranges and squeezed my own. Of course, that yielded 24 ounces for my $6 instead of 64 ounces that were in the carton, but it was freshly squeezed and hey, that’s way too much math!

Among the many things I don’t know or will never understand are:
•    How to play craps.
•    What hand beats what hand in poker? Full House? Straight? Huh?
•    Military ranks – where does a Colonel fall? And why do we pronounce it with an R instead of an L?
•    And for a sports fan, I know absolutely nothing about sports betting, the point spread and anything other than who won or lost. I barely can play the lottery without help.

It is always awkward when someone makes some food they consider their best work but you don’t care for that food, regardless of how their version turned out. Then you are forced to taste it, and if you say it was good, you are forced to eat more of it. You’re lucky if the person doesn’t make it specifically for you the next time. I feel that way about oatmeal raisin and gingerbread cookies. I don’t like either, so please don’t make me waste my calories on them. I know your intentions are good, but I don’t like them and don’t want to be forced to eat either. I don’t trust a cookie that appears to be a good, old-fashioned chocolate chip until you realize that what you think are chips are actually dried up grapes!

Three years ago this month we began scouring store shelves for toilet paper, avoiding public places and sanitizing our mail. We started baking and cooking in mass quantities because we needed food and there wasn’t much else to do as Covid took over our lives and an eventual quarantine was declared. I even tried baking challah; the outcome was acceptable but it looked and tasted nothing like the real thing. Then we were making masks out of old socks (in my case) or scrap material whipped up on the sewing machine (surely NOT in my case). People could not gather for funerals, to visit loved ones in the hospital or to see new grandbabies. There were no vaccines, no treatments and nothing but fear as reports showed hospitals with trucks full of dead bodies. You couldn’t go anywhere; even most doctor visits were virtual. I filled my gas tank four times in 2020, including once BEFORE the pandemic became official. Now, nearly everyone I know has had Covid. Some have died, some have been very sick and some still have the after effects, but many have survived and have ventured out again on planes, trains, ships and automobiles with confidence that it isn’t so bad. Looking at the millions of people who died or who were hospitalized, I can’t agree completely with that assessment. As someone with diabetes who is prone to bronchitis, I’m more susceptible, so I have taken the recommended precautions, most of which were good practices to begin with (such as washing my hands as soon as I come into the house). Yesterday I was treated for my macular degeneration and the retina place no longer requires patients and staff to wear masks. I wore mine anyway, as I do practically any place I need to be. I finally stopped wearing one to basketball games halfway through the season. I sincerely hope the worst is behind us. I know one thing for sure: No one will ever think of these times as “the good old days.”