This Weekend

Hoping that recent history repeats itself ..... Introduced online to a vinyl record that I now want in my collection. Hoping now to walk into the record store or antique shop and have it be the third album in the first bin that I flip through. 

This is the record. If any locals see it out there somewhere, please let me know. 😄 It's the kind of thing that I'd rather find 'in the wild' than just purchase online and wait for it to arrive. The level of excitement is different.

Driving down the road yesterday listening to NBA sports chatter on the radio when suddenly it's interrupted by one of those public service announcements for an extreme weather situation ..... a 'tornado warning.' Not exactly a common occurrence around here. Turned out that it was for twenty-five miles north but if the conditions were ripe that nearby, then there must be potential in the air here. At the very least it gets you to pay closer attention to the clouds and sky.

Make Music Salem

"Make Music Salem' took place today. I look forward to this event each year. I walked around downtown for a couple hours taking in the music and atmosphere. Would have liked to have made even more of a day of it but eventually I was done in by the first-day-of-summer warmth. I took home a haul of buttons and stickers .... because in the last five years I've become an absolute nerd for those kinds of things. Oh, and a free official event kazoo too .... a musical instrument that even I can manage.

I'm such a geek, even more so at age seventy .... and despite my introvert nature, didn't need to be encouraged twice to take one of each. There were two or three others not included here. 

I didn't know the guy featured in a couple of these stickers but from what I've read about him, seems like I would have greatly appreciated his community spirit and involvement. He was highly instrumental in getting this worldwide event off the ground locally a decade ago. Thank you, Mark.

Summer Solstice Weekend Notes

• I've reached a point in life where seemingly any sort of scheduled human interaction involving being in a certain place at an appointed time causes anxiety. This apparently includes the delivery of a new refrigerator. I'd almost rather continue life with the old noisy one than have to open the door and face people.
• Still torn .... Half the time I heartily embrace and am proud to admit to being 70 years old. And half the time I struggle with accepting it. Truth be told, maybe it's more like a 30/70 attitude split. 
• Too many adjustments happening right now. I dove in too deep this season. With the NBA playoffs just concluded, I wasn't prepared this time around for life without live basketball on television. I keep defaulting to: "I'll just turn on a game."

Yankee Odds and Blues

The Yankees leading 1-0 in the 6th inning and the starting pitcher with a pitch count of 92 so he won't be in much longer. The live game tracker on yahoo gives them a 77.6% chance of winning (In the time I typed that sentence, they gave up a run and now have a 57% chance of winning.

Where I was initially going though with the 77.6 number was that apparently, they don't factor in late inning bullpen performance with one run leads and three innings remaining to get through because if they did it would seemingly be something like a 8.3% chance of holding the lead and eventually winning. So I am overly confident that my Yankees will lose today.

Fear Factor

• There's nothing quite like the sense of sudden fear (if that's what it is) that washes over you when you walk out to the downtown spot where you think that you parked your car, and it's not there .....and then the relief felt when you look to the right and there it is. And on a day where I forgot to take my blood pressure meds until 11:00pm, I didn't need that sort of surprise.
• Received a promotion at work and I kind of want to tell the world and friends on facebook ..... but don't do so in order to avoid the usual 'maybe it's time to retire' comments that come out anytime I mention the w-word.