LATE BREAKING NEWS: Marriage Equality comes to New York State! The same-sex marriage bill was approved on a 33-to-29 vote.

It’s a Friday and everyone seems to be in a good, if not decent mood. And it was fairly busy at the cigar shack. Two special guest stars came in one was Casey Chasm who I hadn’t seen in a year or so. Good to see him, he was with a friend named Parik.

Casey looked good, clean shaven since the army frowns upon beards and whatnot. He’s probably going off to Afghanistan in a few months to do his Judge Advocate General routine. Luckily that doesn’t require being in the front, but still I worry.

And if I worry I can only imagine how Mrs. Chasm is feeling. And she now has 2 babies to look after, 2 girls named Annie and Clara. Casey wasn’t able to stay long, I was just one stop on his visit to Manhattan, he had a few other people to reconnect with. I was able to purchase a cigar for him as well as giving him a free cigar which was part of the promotion going on today.

And that promotion was what made the store extra busy. Quite a number of regulars and guys that hadn’t been seen in a while hanging out in the man cave smoking up a storm. The other special guest was Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam. He was in the other day and today he came back to buy some more items for his manager.

I don’t think Eddie Vedder is a cigar smoker but his manager seems to be, enough so to warrant a second visit. He was nice and trying to be incognito which explains the lack of photographs. I would be more impressed but I can’t say that I am much of a fan of Pearl Jam.

I spent my lunch hour once again on a bench near Central Park, smoking a cigar and reading Michael Azzerad’s entry on Mission of Burma. I totally missed out on seeing them, but did have Academy Fight Song which could be their most famous song.

Another story about a band too far ahead of their time. I did see a spin off band of Mission of Burma called Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Almost as noisy and dissonant as Burma and I am pretty sure I saw them at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC with Jet during one of my sojourns down to the nation’s capital.

Bill is driving to Atlantic City tonight as well as tomorrow night so chances are I won’t be seeing him until Sunday which happens to be my next day off. He’s been busy at work lately so my occasional phone call with him has been a bit intense.

It’s all good, but today he was talking so fast that I could barely understand him and even though I asked him to repeat himself twice I wound up missing the gist of what he was saying. I told him so later which got a laugh. Just treading water now, it’s killing time. And now I am home and happy to be here.