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

I had my COVID booster vaxx on my birthday. Right square in the middle of my birthday, I go to CVS and get the shot. Then there was the whole "you have to wait 15 minutes before you leave in case of side effects" thing. I mention this last part because if you add up the time of the whole endeavor... yes, I spent a sad quantity of the afternoon getting vaxxed on my birthday. Anyway, that was the first strangely timed vaccination. Then on Sunday, Tom decides it's high time we both got our shingles vaccine. For one, our friend got shingles recently and it was scary and painful. Also,  Justin Bieber with his Ramsay Hunt diagnosis, with Ramsay Hunt being a form of shingles and all. It might need to be mentioned right about now that Sunday was the NYC Pride Parade. Also, we live in Chelsea, which is dead center Pride. Anyway, it took a really long time to walk to the CVS due to revelers and barricades and other assorted merriment related distractions. photo credit: NYT Nonethe

  Picking peaches is an itchy job. My pop got fired from at least two jobs. That I know of. One of them was the infamous Shangri-La firing when he was in college which I will talk about another day. But then there's also the time he lasted two days picking peaches. I have no idea where a kid from the Bronx gets a job picking peaches. Or why. But he had a job picking peaches and it didn't go well. Peach fuzz is itchy, apparently. Pop was sitting on top of a ladder eating a peach when the foreman walked by. The foreman said, "Hey, you can't eat a peach and pick peaches at the same time!!!" Pop replies, "I wasn't picking peaches." And that was his last day picking peaches.

  Rocks out back the 'rents new condo The tradition began when my grandmother picked up a stone in the Taj Mahal and brought it home in her suitcase. When I say "picked up a stone in the Taj Mahal" I kind of mean she took home an actual piece of the Taj Mahal.  This is obviously highly frowned upon at best, but most likely illegal. We studiously avoided mentioning this blatant truth because my grandmother was a full-on church-goer who wore pearls and twinsets in her real life. At some point, my grandfather got his hands on the Taj Mahal stone and wrote on it with a Sharpie - "Taj Mahal 1982." I guess the two of them were confident they could flush it down the toilet or throw it out back in the woods in the event of a raid by law enforcement. Not sure if it was the mystical allure of the Taj Mahal, the rock, the Sharpie or the peerless combination of all three, but my pop was all in.  Henceforth, he began to bring home rocks in his suitcase. He meticulously label