Sniglisms: Part 3

I haven't done any ranting in a while. I've been busy, and I guess a little oblivious to what is going on around me. But this past week a few things caught my eye and I thought I should talk about it. See if you agree.

Yesterday I went food shopping for the weekend. Since there was no chicken on the menu this past week, there was no doubt it would make an appearance this week. Looking at the selection, which was marked as being on a 40% off sale, I saw this variety family pack. You know the one that has 6 drumsticks, 6 thighs, and 6 wings. I wasn't really interested in that particular assortment, but the price caught my eye. $17.55...huh?

A  very young worker from the meat department was putting out more chicken and when he heard my WTF is the price of this chicken remark, he said something to the effect that I should buy it because it was ON SALE. I wanted to smack him upside the head.

While we're on the subject of food, I thought of this last week when the two popes were being made saints. Be glad you don't live in my brain. Hasn't it been a while since someone found Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich or potato chip, and put it up on ebay? And here I am saving some cash for this very reason.

This is for the women, primarily the more mature (as in older, not more grown up) ones. WTF is with the size of calcium pills? Take a Vitamin E and no matter what the dosage, it's a little tiny pill. They give race horses smaller pills than the average size calcium supplement.

And lastly, earbuds. Do they make earbuds that actually stay in your ears? I have not had a pair yet that do. Usually one bud will fit fairly well, but the other... not so much. Are my ears out of whack? I'm not sure but I have heard from others that they have this problem as well. So why can these technological geniuses not create earbuds where you don't spend 95% of the time adjusting them?


There were a few other things that bothered me this week, but perhaps it's time to do some more constructive work. So that's my list, what's bugging you?

In case you missed them: Sniglisms Part 1 and Sniglisms Part 2. And where it all began...And On a Thursday, She Created Sniglisms
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Getting Down and Dirty on Earth Day

I have an attitude problem, some of you may have noticed. I also have a short fuse, some of you may have noticed that too. Throw in a long weekend of travel and partying, and well, things can get ugly real fast.

Seeing as I've been out of town for the above mentioned long weekend, and the fridge looked like the Three Bears had taken up residence, I went out on a noontime run to the store for some food. I try to avoid as many traffic lights as possible, so I was taking a side road. My best friend from high school used to live on this side street, so I am well acquainted with the fact that there are stop signs on each block of its entire length.

As I approached the end of the block, slowing with my foot on the brake, a woman driving through the intersection, blows her horn at me and screams at me that I was going through the stop sign. She shouldn't have done that.

Being tired, cranky and in no mood for this bitch to wrongly accuse me, instead of going straight and on my way, I made a quick right and pulled up along side of her... which put me on the wrong side of the road. I proceeded to ask her what the fuck was her problem, and she told me I wasn't stopping. SHE was telling ME what I was doing. Way wrong thing to say.  The Jersey came out fast and I tell you, it was true poetry. In a well constructed few paragraphs, I do believe I utilized my entire catalog of expletives. She tried in vain to compete, even saying something about the town she was from, which was a rich bitch community, not the down and dirty town I live in. At that point I told her where to go, and it wasn't the rich bitch town she was from.

Road rage... I think not. Just a little taste of "I don't take that shit from nobody." I pulled away, she looked terrified, my work was done.

Maybe being down south for a few days, where everyone is polite and shit, caused some serious attitude repercussions for me. Or maybe it's just me getting back in the Jersey groove. Whatever.

It is what it is.

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I Pity the Fool Who Wasted this Day

I did a lot more walking when Hershey was still around.

No matter what the weather, twice a day, at least, I was strolling with the mutt. On the weekends, up at the lake, I was motivated to hike around one of the lakes at least one day of the weekend. Then came the winter of 2013-14. And yes we all agree it sucks. Makes no difference what part of the country you are in, with very few exceptions, all we have done for the past 2 1/2 months is complain about the weather.

And why the hell not? It's been brutal. Last year I think I missed one weekend of walking at the lake, this year I think I walked once. But today was different. Today is a blue sky, breezy, temperature in the high 40s kind of day, and after the past month, it felt good to soak in the sun for an hour.

There's a lot of snow up here. A lot. even with the wide open spaces, you still run out of places to put it. Driveways, our included, are half the width they are normally. Homes with garages have front stairs covered with snow, as people take the easy route of entering their homes through the garage instead of front door. No one has the energy to clean it all, there's just too much.

The community is usually filled with wildlife. On the walk, I saw one herd of deer, all huddled together, a few squirrels and that was it. There is no food for these creatures, and it will be a long time before there is. It's a hard winter for them too.

The plan was to walk around the smaller lake being it's been a while, but I got caught up in the day and blew right past the street where I should have turned. Taking my time, the trek around the big lake wasn't too bad. A light breeze, sun on my face, and music in my ears.

I ended up the walk with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes singing "I Played The Fool." Maybe Johnny, but not me though. The walk was joyous. Can't wait for spring to do it more often.

Snow? NO.

It's snowing. Again.

Yes, we're all bitching about the weather. We are sick of it. After the the first snowfall, everyone goes out to shovel and there is a great camaraderie between the neighbors. Everyone smiles and talks as we take short breaks between moving another few shovelfuls of snow. You know, those breaks that you hope will keep your rapidly aging heart from exploding.

After a few storms, neighbors get a lot less neighborly. We're tired. We are not happy to be outside lifting another six, eight, ten inches of snow. And while the first couple of storms had nice light, fluffy snow, the last two have been wet, heavy snow. You know the kind... the snow that puts even more strain on your rapidly aging heart.

Now the neighbors barely grunt at each other as we push, plow and pile the snow higher and higher. If we were in the middle of a summer's heat wave, and the temperatures were in the 90's this much, people would be freaking out and beating the crap out of each other. We are at a breaking point, and if we weren't so damn exhausted, I'm sure there would be violence. But, who has the time or energy for that?

So now we wait for the lull in the storm to start cleaning up, because this one is a two-parter. Oh yeah, it's gonna come down all day, stop for a while, then start again sometime tonight, which means there has to be a plan. When do we start cleaning? Do we wait for it to be entirely done? Well, it might turn to rain for a brief period before turning back to snow, so that makes it even heavier. But, if it turns to ice after you clear the snow, well that's another can of worms. It always ends up to be an audible on the field. You go with your gut, there is an inner voice which yells out "hey, time to get your ass outside."

That's when you see all the neighbors digging out of their houses, all about to take on the same task as you. At this point, I doubt there will even be eye contact.

I Love LA... Wait, What?

So I spent this past weekend in LA attending the Grammy Awards and pretty much having a shitload of fun. It was wonderful to get away from the Jersey cold and see the Pacific again. Had some great food, met some interesting people and yeah, went to the Grammy Awards.

LA is a totally different planet. It's winter and it's green. It also has a lot of cars. A lot of cars. And it takes forever to get from point A to point B. Staying downtown, close to the Nokia Theatre and Staples Center, we must have driven through Koreatown 657 times.. at least. During all this time in the car, I began to notice a few things.

The first thing that stuck out... literally, was there are too many women in too tight pants or too short skirts. And then there are the too tight and too short skirts. We were waiting for our table for dinner Saturday night when this couple walked in. The woman, mid-twenties, had hair longer than her skirt. She spent a good deal of time pulling the skirt down. She should have spent a little time looking in the mirror before she left home. She might have noticed the nasty runs she had in both legs of her pantyhose. Classy.

Then there is the sex shop district. Very interesting. There were fashions I had not ever seen before, nor could have imagined. And let's not forget the cars. Except for one car parked across the street from the Record Plant recording studio, I don't think I have ever seen as many pristine, new and expensive cars in my life. It was so nice to watch as a high maintenance middle-aged man picked his nose in his very expensive convertible. Again, classy.

What I really liked was all the art. Walls of buildings, covered in art. Banners hanging off the street lamps. Posters. Colors everywhere. From the stark winter colors of the northeast, the vibrancy of the streets of Los Angeles are a delight to the eyes.

All in all, I enjoyed my time in LA, could I live there... don't think so. But for Grammy weekend, it suited me just fine.