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

Another day, this one is a Wednesday. As I hoped today would be alright, it was so far, so good this morning. I was in the office a half hour early. I knew Yancy was going to arrive, and I certainly did not want to arrive and see him sitting on the couch doing those Yancy-type things that only Yancy could do. I went to bed at around 10:30 last night and that was a deciding factor.

And it was decided by Morpheus that I should wake up a bit earlier than usual. I looked at the alarm clock, saw it was 5:10 AM, and said, ‘I’ll take it’ and fell back asleep for another 45 minutes. Then another 10 minutes, and then I decided that it was time to get out of bed.

Things were in such a fraught state for me yesterday at work and I had words of encouragement from Bill and Mike’s ear. I need to remember Mike’s employment situation and how I would feel when I was out of work and listened to various employed friends complain about their jobs. I just sent him a post about jobs out in the Meadowlands at the American Dream whatchamacallit.

He is going to have to find a job soon. I hope he knows this. It was not an easy time for Mike last time, last summer. And that is why I am hesitant to assist this time. As Bill (& Mike) will profess, the Gemini thing, you never know which twin you’re going to get. Most of the time lately it’s been the good twin, but man, that bad twin is just a pain in the tuchis to deal with and I would rather not.

Bill is on the road, from the Bronx to Pennsylvania. Right now, Cornershop is playing a song, ‘Good to be on the Road Back Home Again’. They played Maxwell’s back in the day. I missed it. Julio was working that night and let me know I would have enjoyed seeing Cornershop. C’est La Vie.

Done with coffee for the day. Trying to figure out what to have for lunch. Should I have anything? Should I have salad today? I tried yesterday and that didn’t work out too well. And there is more than one salad bar in the area, anyhow.

Salad it is. It is supposed to be ready in a little over an hour. If you want to eat healthy, you will pay for it, one way or another. This is the lesson that is learned. Like I wrote yesterday the deli at 11 Park Place, Elim Deli, was very good despite the clientele of my coworkers who were less than human. I had lunch from there 4 out of 5 days a week. I would more than likely be getting my lunch from them again today, then go out fo a cigar walk an hour or so later. Today it is too cold for that, foolish April 8, 2026. When the weather warms up, that is what my spring and summer lunches will look like.

Lodi Vinny, 40 years
I was thinking of Vinny, who lived on Church Street in Lodi. He was a good kid, a few years younger than me. I didn’t know him from Lodi. We met when we both worked for HBJ. He was an assistant some days when I was driving into Manhattan.

He had a great body and was strong enough to pick me up and throw me into the piles of bagged styrofoam peanuts. I loved it when he did that. We never hung out, but one particular time, after the HBJ holiday party, we all piled into my car and went to the Soap Factory Disco in Leonia.

I was in a new wave look, blazer, skinny tie, black trousers and with that look I was turned away at the door. I was all set to just go home and offered Vinny a ride but he decided to walk from Leonia to Lodi which was a bit of a hike for a few miles on Route 46.

I’m sure he made it home safely, though I don’t think I saw much of Vinny after that. I hope he’s doing well.