I take back every rotten thing I’ve ever said about the New York State Thruway.  Coming home from a quick Thanksgiving trip to Ohio on Friday, my wife and I missed a pretty bad storm on that stretch of I-90 that runs along the lake.  It deposited a lot of snow that had turned to slush by the time we got to it.  We couldn’t go any better than 40 mph all the way through Pennsylvania.  Road crews hadn’t touched it.  The minute we got our card at the state line Thuway toll booth, I noticed right away that the roads were crystal clear.  We were back up to 65, traveling on semi-dry, well groomed highway … and loving it.  Say what you want about the Thruway, but they take care of their road.

  My first set of wheels was a 1966 Chevy Impala similar to the one shown here.  Got it handed down to me from my folks after I got my license in ‘73.  What made it memorable was that it had a factory installed FM stereo radio!  What was your first car?  What (if anything) made it memorable?

   Anyone who has listened to me on a regular basis over the nineteen-plus years I’ve spent with WBEE knows that I don’t spend a lot of time away from the station.  I work six days a week and I don’t take vacations.  The one exception is a yearly trip to the family home in Medina, Ohio to see my Aunt Ruby.  I go down every Thanksgiving.  Aunt Ruby is in her 80’s now and in poor health, so each year I figure it may very well be the last time I’ll be seeing her.  As a kid, my folks and I would take trips to Ohio every summer and every Christmas to visit my Aunt Ruby, Uncle Bob, and my cousins (my dad was a teacher and had summer and Christmas breaks).  Aunt Ruby is very important to me, and  I’ve always believed that we should see the people we care about while they’re still alive, rather than wait to honor them after they die.  So, each Thanksgiving, I make the trip down on Thanksgiving morning and come back the next day.  With that said, I was wondering how important holiday travel is to people in rough economic times like these.  So, I did some internet research, and found that the majority of those planning to travel this holiday season say they think it’ll be worth the expense.  A recent Harris Interactive survey shows that 60 percent of travelers believe it’s important to be with loved ones for Thanksgiving and Christmas, despite the cost.  Over 54% of those asked say they see the holidays as a time to reconnect with family, and that the time and money invloved is a quote, “small price to pay for the benefits of being with loved ones.”  With that in mind, are you going to making trips away from Rochester to see loved ones this holiday season, despite these tough economic times?  Please feel free to leave a comment.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

My daughter got me to watch this show.  Starting with season 4 as it was happening, then seasons 1 through 3 on video-disc in between the new episodes.  Will I get back into it again after almost a year’s absence from the air?  Probably.  I’ll admit I have an addictive personality, and, remembering how easily I was drawn into “Dark Shadows” as a kid, I avoided the 80’s stuff (”Dallas” “Dynasty”, etc.) like the plague … although I somehow got sucked into “Falcon Crest”.  “Lost” may be a soap, but it’s a fairly good one.  It’s also well-produced television … and, seeing as there is so precious little of it these days, I’ll probably follow it through to the finish. 

 (season 5 promotional poster)

From Wikipedia, “the seventeen-episode fifth season will continue the stories of the survivors of the fictional crash of Oceanic Flight 815, after some of them are rescued and those still stranded seemingly disappear to an unknown location and time with the island that they inhabit. According to co-creator/executive producer/writer Damon Lindelof, the season ‘is about why the [people who have left the island] need to get back’. While the island stories of episodes of prior seasons were intercut with flashbacks or flashforwards of a featured character, the fifth season will be presented differently with part of each episode taking place off the island and the other part following characters on the island in a different time. Lost is scheduled to return on January 21st with a three-hour premiere consisting of a clip-show and two back-to-back new episodes. The remainder of the season will air on Wednesdays at 9:00 P.M.  Returning are leader Dr. Jack, fugitive Kate, mentally unstable millionaire Hugo, future assassin Sayid, grieving wife Sun, former leader of the island’s inhabitants Ben, and three-year islander Desmond, who have all left the island. Also returning are crash survivor Sawyer, former Other Dr. Juliet, and Miles, a member of the science team from a freighter offshore. John Locke leaves his fellow crash survivors to become the new leader of the Others and is last seen dead in a coffin (under the name Jeremy Bentham) in flashforwards to three years into the future. The writers have announced that Jin will return (it has been reported that Jin survives and remains a main character in the fifth season), and the producers have stated that Vincent, a dog who survived the crash and lives on the island will be alive and well through to the series’ conclusion.”

  While doing some internet research for a future blog, I somehow strayed and came across this hilarious article by Rob Pegoran, who writes for The Washington Post about people who talk on their cell phones while in the bathroom.  So, instead of my intended blog, I decided instead to write about one of the REALLY important things in everyone’s life.  Have you ever walked into a public restroom and heard someone chatting away on their cell phones?  Here’s part of Rob’s article.

“I don’t mean to be crude, but this is a serious problem, far worse than BlackBerrying at the dinner table. Too many guys have no problem flipping open their phones to chat when they’re standing at a urinal or sitting in a stall–at a bar, an airport, or a convention center. Even, I’m dismayed to admit; in the Post’s newsroom. And it’s not like any of these calls are remotely urgent. Nobody’s blurting out things like ‘SELL! You’ve gotta get me out of this stock,’ ‘Thank God you finally found a kidney donor!’ or ‘They just found all those e-mails I deleted?’ No, these are boring old calls that can and should wait until you’re out of the can.  (I don’t know if the same thing happens in women’s restrooms. Can somebody enlighten me on that?)  Anyway, this has to stop. Besides the obvious risk of dropping the phone–are you really going to want to hold that thing up to your mouth afterwards?–what do you think this sounds like to the people on the other end of the line? I don’t know about you, but if I hear flushing (much less any other… background noises), I’m hanging up.  Somebody, please, tell me I’m not the only one appalled by this.”