Thursday. Day of 8:30 meetings Not so bad, I usually say what I need to say after Marcus speaks his piece. I try to put a humorous slant on my take; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have found jokes about men in vans with candy near school yards are not as funny in the morning as they could be at night.

It’s what they call Friday eve, which is nice enough though not quite there. Bill was on the road, and Mike was incommunicado, which takes him off the favored nations list and relegates him to ordinary. After a year, there are still some aspects which are a bit off-putting.

Yesterday he spoke of his idea, to rent a car which Bill would drive, and a road trip to Atlantic City. A visit to a casino, a $10.00 limit on slot machine gambling, and all that. I do not want to go to Atlantic City and tried to get that point across. Mike insisted, but I know that all I have to do is tell Bill that I do not want to go to Atlantic City and we will not.

Plus, after Mike’s behavior on my birthday trip to Long Branch, on my birthday could sway Bill in the direction of not wanting to do anything beach-related with Mike. Mike was a fucking sourpuss and made no effort to be fun or wish me a happy birthday, so there’s that whole ‘Fuck you, Mike’.

I mentioned Sandy Hook, Asbury Park, and Ocean Grove, which flew right over Mike’s head. It’s his idea, but it’s our wheels, and you can’t have one without the other. Bill and I have been discussing Ocean Grove this summer, which we did not do last year. Neither one of us has heard anything from Ocean View Inn, so perhaps we need to take the initiative.

I just sent off a short email saying hello and a rather clumsy inquiry. We shall see how it works out.

And Annemarie is coming for 10 days at the end of June until July 3. I have to accumulate the time to take off since the agency does not give personal time off, but rather that personal time off needs to be earned. The next holiday is Memorial Day at the end of May which seems far off but as one goes through life, it sometimes feels sped up.

I just read a short article about 2 young ISIS-inspired wannabe terrorists who were going to attempt to injure or kill dozens during a protest by Gracie Mansion. Let’s face it, these young people are deadly and foolish, and this is just the beginning. We are probably going to see more of this behavior as life goes on. Foolish young people, mainly men, are plotting to do things to injure or kill people.

Not all of them will be caught and their nefarious actions will occur. People will be injured or killed because of a foolish ideology, much like the young and foolish ideology that I once had for the IRA. A different time, a different world, but with the same ignorance.

The awfulness of TD Bank and their antisocial tellers. TD Bank has a new campaign about real talk. The teller I dealt with was barely communicating. Chit chat was not her thing. I had just gotten a $20.00 bill from the ATM and wanted to get a ten, a five and five singles.

I gave the masked teller the $20 and my debit card which was handed back to me with the instructions to put it in the keypad and enter my PIN. As this was going on I asked the masked teller how things were going in Toronto.

She was confused as I explained TD stands for Toronto Dominion and I was just trying some chit chat, like humans that used to bank in the 20th century used to do.

Overall it was an unpleasant experience and a reminder of why I rarely visit the TD Bank tellers or whatever they call themselves nowadays.

Afrika Bambaatta, 67