Thirty-three years. I started to just put the numbers on the page, but no matter whether you spell it out or use the numbers, it is a long time. Or, we could be more specific, a long time to be married. Fortunately, I happen to have a guide that shows me how to make those years fly by and makes me happy to count them. That’s how long my bride and I happen to be married.
We celebrated that occasion this weekend by taking a trip over to where they don’t have enough water to build affordable housing but plenty of water to wash the cars of the hundred-thousand visitors they host once or twice a year. I won’t deny that they spend a lot of money on charity, but that doesn’t matter if the workers putting all those vegetables on their plates have no place to call home. I’ll bet if they were to give up one of their golf courses, they could probably put in a subdivision that would sure help with the housing crisis.
I will not deny that we too had a good time, but I think it will probably be another 33 years before we can afford to do that again. We stayed in a cute little motel, or Bed and Breakfast if you are a stranger. I did discover a couple of things about the cute little city they call Carmel. They don’t have air conditioners in most of the hotels. I should have remembered that from the evening of debauchery my new wife and I shared on the night we were married. One of our close friends paid for the room at Spanish Bay on the hottest night of October anyone could remember. I’ll never forget it as we just stood in the shower for about an hour just to get cool enough to go down to the bar for a drink.
And another thing: Their vodka tastes exactly like the vodka we buy at Costco. It is just A LOT more expensive. Everyone was nice to us and the food we ate was great. I bought a T-shirt that was on sale, so I have my memory of another night with my bride who makes any sacrifice worthwhile.
I know I have told you about how I don’t want to be a political writer. I don’t want to play with those guys and get the doo-doo they seem to love to spread all over my shoes. However, there comes a time when things are so obvious that I have to mention the skullduggery that appears to be endemic with the Washington Bureaucrats.
I had heard about this interview some time ago, but lately with what we are seeing with our president not being allowed near a debate or argument about what he is doing to our nation, I thought perhaps you lucky readers may have missed it and want to stay informed. So here is what was said. I’ll let you decide whether there is anything shady about his actions.
More than four years since his time in the White House, former President Barack Obama said there are aspects of the job he misses. He sat down for another set of interviews for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his new memoir, “A Promised Land.” The book, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies, takes readers on a deep dive into the President’s rise in politics and his eight years in office.
“I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front-man or front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating,” Obama quipped. So, what do you think? Is Obama pulling the strings and paying back America for his contrived presidential slights?
I can remember paying under $4 per gallon for gas, but as I cruised down Fifth Street the advertised price for regular gas was over $5 per gallon. The last time OPEC had us in their grasp the oil was stopped for a while so we could see how much we depended on OPEC for our gas supplies. I was a deputy sheriff at the time having chosen that job as soon as I got out of the Army. I had bought a house in San Jose and would fill up about twice a week if I had the right numbers in my license plate.
Odd numbers could buy gas on certain days of the week and even numbers on my license plate could fill up on the other days of the week. It was not fun, and at times there would be long lines at all the service stations where you could only buy a set amount of gas. During the last gas crunch, brought on by OPEC furnishing our gas, it was terrible. It will continue to go up as President Biden has canceled our drilling for oil. It’s kind of strange that he cut our local oil and went back to OPEC. We were self sufficient on our oil availability. It may have been the first time in many, many years.
Like you, I will just continue to be proud on my country, if not its leaders. I hope there is a breakthrough so we can get our Americans and those who risked their lives to help us in Afghanistan. It’s been about 64 days as I write this. I can remember being captured on an escape and evasion drill over in Germany. My buddy and I were captured. Sure, it was a game to determine your ability to evade the other Army (made up of our own soldiers dressed for the occasion in Russian uniforms). Even though it was a game with serious circumstances, I can still remember being locked up in a dirty old trailer while the opposition gave us raw potatoes to eat when we expressed hunger. It was a pretty oppressive atmosphere.
Here is hoping that we will pull out of this problem we have very soon. It’s bad enough having Covid-19 chasing us everywhere we go, now we must help our local school officials in getting our children educated. I don’t think we are getting there soon enough. I have to go now. I’m going to get my booster shot. Like a lot of folks I was a little wary of the snake oil pitch we kept getting about the booster shots. I have seen enough people die of this virus, so I’ll take whatever precaution is ordered.
God Bless.
