I wrote much of this over a couple of years, and I’m late posting it this year. Typically, it would go up on New Year’s Day, although it does take time for many of these conditions to settle in. We’re looking at the holidays in the rear-view mirror, as the cold, snowy “bleak mid-winter” has really set in. It started snowing yesterday, continued all night, and is still going today. They – the folks paid to do this – haven’t come to shovel out yet, but that’s ok. I don’t really have anywhere to go. The giddy joy of New Year’s Resolutions has dropped off because, well, it’s the end of January and it’s not that I have tapered off. The truth is, I never started. Added to the winter doldrums, there may be a number of “flying-under-the-radar” psychological issues that have gone undetected, as we hope they’ll go away too, like the resolutions and grand intentions. Primary among these psychological disorders is what I call After-Holiday Anxiety, or AHA. Advice columnists will advise seeking therapeutical assistance as, to my knowledge, the pharmaceutical people are still a few years away from a medical cure – tablets, a vaccine, scented candles, a special lightbulb perhaps. If something were available, I’d surely have seen it advertised by someone turned annoyingly perky on the nightly news.
Continue reading “After-Holiday Anxiety – A Belated Update”Month: January 2024
Heading Into the Primaries, Again
Once again, the election process kicks in. This is not an endorsement for any candidate, as I feel that would seriously jeopardize my credentials as an impartial, independent blogger / influencer. For those of you that don’t understand the primary system, it’s a convoluted, messy, scrappy way that we pick delegates, and sometimes really good delegates – they’re called superdelegates, state-by-state that will eventually elect the party’s nominees. We have dozens of candidates blowing through gazillions of gallons of jet fuel crisscrossing the country in attractive geometric patterns, and its ultimate purpose is to take all of the mystery and surprise out of the conventions. That’s it in a nutshell. Right now, there’s a lot of fun going on here in New Hampshire surrounding our primary because it’s the first officially scheduled one, except for Iowa, which is a caucus and not really a primary. The difference is that, people go to polling stations and, well, I’m not really sure what, but somehow, they indicate their preferences. We use a paper ballot, which is much better. Then we have foreign nationals to count the ballots and tell us who won.
Continue reading “Heading Into the Primaries, Again”Keeping a Sunny Outlook
Yes, I know. We’re into the “bleak mid-winter”. I step out the door, and my nose and hands immediately yell at me, “Quick – get back inside”. The weather is alternating a few hours of sun, followed by clouds, then periods of snow or freezing rain. The wind comes up and rattles the windows. The Super Bowl is coming up, and our beloved Patriots didn’t even make the playoffs. Nothing new really in Red Sox nation either, although it will pick up and we just know that they’ll be a contender next year. My gardens are covered in snow, but I know that underneath all that dormancy, there is beauty just waiting patiently for the warm weather to come back. The election cycle and the primaries are heating up, but I just know that the country will come to its senses and elect someone I like. Or at least one that I don’t think will be in jail by November.
Continue reading “Keeping a Sunny Outlook”The Day the World Stood Still
That long-dreaded day has come at last. It has sent shockwaves around New England, across the nation, and around the world. No, not another war some part of the world. Not the death of a beloved world leader. Not an earthquake somewhere in the Pacific. Not a medical breakthrough that will change the course of history. Much more important than any of those. Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots, has stepped down. What we had hoped wouldn’t come to pass in our lifetime has arrived. “(Insert name here) has been named the new Head Coach of the Patriots.” Oh, wait . . . this from Gillette Stadium – Jerod Mayo has been named the new coach. Gone, but never forgotten will be the much-loved hoodie with chopped off sleeves, the clipped and terse statements at press conferences, and the squinting look of disapproval even as the football passes between the uprights by a Patriot kicker. And in a very important cultural change for New Englanders here and away, we’ll have to get used to saying, “In Jerod We Trust”. Perhaps the National Mint could slip that on the dollar bill to reinforce the message.
Continue reading “The Day the World Stood Still”Lottery Objectives At Odds . . . . . .
As I have written several times in the past, I’m a faithful and regular customer of the lottery. With every ticket purchased, I’m poised on the balcony of wealth. Sometimes it’s unimaginable wealth, sometimes just a few million. It’s always with a degree of torment to hear about someone in Ohio or Wisconsin, or most recently in Michigan, that bought the winning ticket, be it a ticket for Powerball or Mega-Millions, or just a scratch ticket. They’re quoted on the news, saying “I don’t usually buy tickets. I was just walking by the 7Eleven, and it was a spontaneous thing.” Are you kidding me? They shouldn’t tell me that, at least out loud. There was the story in the news years back of the lady that bought a lottery ticket – yes, a single ticket, mind you, in Florida while on vacation. It won, of course, and the reporter mentioned the irony of – get this – her driving her Rolls Royce back to Florida to collect her winnings. Did she need that? I’m thinking . . . . Then there are the repeat winners. The people that had a million-dollar scratch ticket two years ago and, how delightful, just got another one. Bought at the same store somewhere out in rural Oklahoma or Arkansas, although now they live in Palm Springs. Now that’s just God laughing at me.
Continue reading “Lottery Objectives At Odds . . . . . .”
I'm Thinking...No! 