Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

 So yeah, let's start here:  With some frequency, my mother would ask, did you see my email?  And I would say, nope, I did not.  And my mother would look down her nose and roll her eyes. Oh you young people with all your texting who don't know how the email works. She was so impatient.  For my part, idk, being not actually a young person but a Gen X'er extremely familiar with how the email works, I have managed to collect probably five email addresses over the years. So I just assumed the missing email went to one of my defunct yahoo accounts or something. Besides, Tom always was cc:ed so if it was anything important, he had the deets. If you're quick like this, you might be able to see where this is heading, but let me give you a couple other clues.  My father sent out in quick succession, the following two emails: This email came through without any explanation from my father. Just a big photo. That's my parents heads btw. Pop's into the photographic arts...

No one wanted it.         Two half used bottles of hair gloss. Went in a hot minute. Very old but maybe never used make up brushes. Added some half used hair chalk from Etsy and bam. Picked up within hours. Ten people wanted these authentic vintage 1980s sunglasses No one wanted this cute moose. Are you kidding me? It's adorable!   Super hot item alert. 6 giant very old candles. Gone in ten minutes.       No one wanted these brown paint samples. Look, originally I wouldn't have been surprised, but then someone else gave away paint samples so now I'm annoyed that no one wanted mine!   Oooh, these 1950s high heels were a quick hit! Also a hit! Gone in a matter of hours. Someone said they only wanted to Kermit and none of the other knock off beanie babies, or the weird stuffed hotdog. All of a sudden I decided I want to keep the Kermit. So. Stalemate.

We were up in the small town of Hudson for the weekend with Matt and Helen and there was a suggestion to go to a parade. I am always up for a parade.  This parade was, I'm going to say, sparsely spectated. It was like the four of us and ten locals standing on a corner just ahead of the appointed hour. We could hear a little music, but the parade still appeared to be a long ways off. Then someone sees this: it's a bear casually using the crosswalk   We all thought this was really funny. Just some rando bear strolling down main street mid-afternoon. "What?" An old guy we didn't know chuckles, "A BEAR on the street? Whoever heard of such a thing!" Me and my crew all kinda looked at each other because. Yeah. We'd all seen many many bear s on the street. In the other world known as downtown New York City, a bear is a furry, usually not slender gent of a certain orientation. You can always tell it's Bear Week when there's lots of them in leather to...

  NYC sidewalks : Not like suburban side walks. I was on a work Zoom the other day with a woman from somewhere in the woods in Washington state and this other woman from suburban Virginia.  One of them started talking, I can't remember why, about some study she had seen about how women usually make way for men and step aside when encountering them on the sidewalk. Then the other one said something about another study showing that if one group is headed toward another group, the smaller group will always make way for the larger. I was thinking, oh, I am very qualified to weigh in here. Like, excessively qualified. This is most every day of my life, playing the sidewalk game.  Not to brag or anything, but I'm extremely skilled at this game. Some days I play harder than others, but yeah. Like, if I'm in a mood and a finance bro in a puffy vest is headed directly down the middle of the sidewalk staring at his phone and mowing down old ladies... you bet your ass he's gonna g...

 We were at a restaurant the other day. When we sat down at the table, our silverware was wrapped in a nice cloth napkin, so I put the napkin on my lap.  Silverware wrapped up in a napkin. After the salad, they cleared away all the dishes and also the silverware. Because our waiter was good like this, he brought over some more silverware, also wrapped in a napkin. I tossed the second napkin on my lap, forgetting I already had a napkin on my lap. Fast forward and when we get up to leave, I put my napkin on the table, stand up, and a napkin falls on the floor.  !!!!!!!! WHAT just happened? I check the table, yup. There's my napkin. I look on the floor, there's my napkin. It would have been hella confusing even without the martini.

 I was texting with Cora and told her Tom had been working on some stuff all morning. She asked what he was doing, because you know. Everyone is curious how a retired guy spends his days. Tom trying to take a photo of a mirror without being in the mirror. Tom had seen a sub-reddit of #Fails to this end, and thought he'd give it a go himself.  I'm not sure if he's going to continue to plug away at this, or if he's thrown in the towel.