Today is a holiday

Love how folks are so upset that July Fourth is on a weekend (and hence getting no extra day off) that they’ve taken it upon themselves to take today off instead. Like we need to get a jump on getting to wherever we’re not going out of town this weekend.

Wait a minute… this sounds like a great idea.

That’s it for today, folks. I’m takin’ the day off.

Say it ain’t so

Baseball trivia question…

What do the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, Fredericksburg Nationals, Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, and Loudoun County Boys League E Team 6 have in common?

Unfortunately they are going undefeated this year.

Mind blown

Nineties redux continues at the O’Connell household, no trouble for my wife and me (who lived through the era), but sometimes a challenge for my son. Who was born in 2014.

Video games have brought him to the last century. My son is a ’90s video game juggernaut, and yes, I’ll take most of the credit on that. Okay, Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES actually came out in ’88, but I started playing it in the ’90s. Actually played it through the ’90s and, well, still play it today, 30 years on.

Yesterday afternoon my son suggested I try to “jump down” at the beginning of World 3-1. Certain death, I assured him. No, no, Daddy, he said; just try it and see what happens.

Secret warp to World 5.

Mind blown.

My boy.

Nineties kid.

Rule #1 of life

AAA World, the bi-monthly publication of the American Automobile Association (that would be “Triple A”), has a section I gloss over in each issue called Public & Government Affairs. This month’s headline: “Traffic crashes and fatalities drop with stay-at-home orders.”

Yes! This is something I can work with!

The following is fantastic in more ways than one: With stay-at-home orders in effect in many regions of the country, cities and states across our club’s footprint were reporting that traffic volume had decreased by 50 to 70 percent, resulting in a reduction in car crashes in many areas.

Standard joke for many years: how to end car accidents… ban cars.

The piece continues: When traffic on roads lessened dramatically, however, some drivers took advantage of the situation to give “rush hour” a new–and dangerous–meaning. Law enforcement groups have reported that some of those still driving had begun to travel at higher speeds, sometimes well over posted speed limits.

This is rule #1 of life… people respond to incentives!

Marvelous. So marvelous.

MLB really starting now?

Anyone else think “the start of the baseball” season is beginning to feel a little like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown?

(If I could draw this is where I’d place a picture of Lucy bent down holding a baseball for Charlie Brown to grab. Cue Charlie’s AAAAAUGH!)

’90s time!

It started with The Last Dance. Then it was Fuller House. Yes, the time is now for a full-on ’90s revival.

Think about it. Society has only about 30 years worth of material. About one generation, right? In the ’80s we had a ’50s revival: Back to the Future, wayfarer sunglasses, heck we even had a washed-up ’50s movie star as President! In the ’90s we had a ’60s redux. Woodstock ’94, anyone?

The 2020s are going to be ’90s central. People who grew up in the ’90s (that would include yours truly) are now, for better or worse, the people creating mainstream content and driving the mass-marketing bus. (Sorry to burst your bubble, teenagers… it’s always been people in their late thirties and forties.)

I’ve got my Pogs and Magic cards ready.

Seasons come and seasons go (thank God)

Those who take time to measure such things tell me today is the last day of spring. I say good riddance. Spring 2020 was probably the worst season I’d ever experienced (through no fault of my own I might add), and who among us can say much different? Did you winter in Stalingrad in 1943? Spend autumn right here in Virginia… in 1864? Date and place of the last plague, right?

Yeah, I’m ready for something else.

Just not the same

Summer vacation feels a little bit different this year. Not as good, in a phrase, as the usual benefits of summer remain off limits ’round these parts. I’ll be honest, too, with the way the schoolyear was cut short I didn’t feel as though I earned summer vacation as in years past.

Makes sense, I guess, that the thing I feel as though I didn’t earn… just isn’t that good.

Small light amongst the darkness

My whole life (so far) I’ve read travelogues and vacation guidebooks in a sort of Walter Mitty fashion, having no intention of actually undertaking any of the journeys described. I’ve always felt kind of guilty about that.

Not anymore of course!

Thanks, coronavirus, for this unforeseen benefit.