Hey, look at you, and look at me. It is totally exhausting, but we made it through another week. Then this morning I awoke to my house with no electricity. I only had 1% charge left on my phone, (because I was lazy and went to bed without plugging it in to the charger, which happens to be on my bedside table, but it takes so much time and energy). As I reached over to plug in the phone, I thought to myself, Lisa, don’t you just yearn for the days when you could touch the grocery basket, hug a friend, buy Clorox wipes at the store, drink faucet water, find toilet paper and have electricity when you wake up? Oh, my, 2020. I am so tired of you, but I know what I must do, and I am doing it, but I am still very tired. Now Neil deGrasse Tyson is warning us that an asteroid about the size of a refrigerator, is hurling towards us at more than 25,000 mph. He says, “It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov. 2, the day before the Presidential Election. But it’s not big enough to cause harm. So, if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe.” NASA says there is only a 1% chance it will hit somewhere in the U.S. but think about it. This year anything and everything is possible.
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. – John Quincy Adams
Dolly Parton has been making good use of quarantine time by recording a Christmas album, Holly Dolly Christmas. There is classic Christmas, a few original tunes and duets with friends, Michael Buble, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus, Jimmy Fallon, and Willie Nelson, plus a special song with her younger brother Randy. On top of that, the queen of country just released a Christmas kitchenware collection at Williams Sonoma with each item based on her own holiday traditions. You might not know it, but you really need a gingerbread cabin designed to look like Dolly’s two-room Tennessee mountain home.
“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne
Poor Phil Collins (Genesis). Collins is trying to evict and remove his ex-wife and her newest husband from his Miami home. Collins and Orianne Cevey (46) first divorced in 2008 after he paid her a $46.68 million divorce settlement. In 2016, after Cevey had divorced her investment banker husband, she and Collins decided to give their relationship another go. Then in August 2020, she left for Las Vegas and married a 31-year-old businessman and guitarist, in a $3000, 20-minute ceremony, officiated by an Elvis impersonator. Now, she and her new husband refuse to vacate the home that Collins owns, they have hired armed guards to patrol the property, and changed security codes. And I thought I had problems.
On the way to the office this morning, I decided to visit Chick-fil-A, and battle the line of approximately 26 cars that were wrapped all the way around to the gas station. First off, every single Chick-fil-A employee was wearing a mask properly…a big plus in my book. This bunch of hard-working guys and girls were taking orders in the middle of the street, plus the twin lines next to the building. The first server took my order and explained which line I should get into. The second server confirmed my order, stuck a credit card machine in my window asking me to insert my debit card (cash only) and not to touch the machine. Done. They were so competent. By the time I reached the opposite side of the building, I realized the normal pickup lane close to the building was barricaded, and 5 team members were using that as a safe walk space, taking turns picking up orders from the window, and delivering orders to each individual vehicle. I told them thanks for doing such a great job. I also thought to myself, why can’t these guys teach us how to be this efficient in other ways…like drive-thru voting. If we put Chick-fil-A in charge of voting, they would have us in and out in no time. Grocery pickup, dry cleaners, I vote for this. (The chicken tortilla soup I ordered was good, but not as delicious as the little bitty order of waffle fries.)
In case you don’t realize it, I am a little ticked about the mask thing. If everyone would just do it for two months, our numbers would be so much better. And before you say something about not liking the mask…none of us like the mask. NONE OF US. I just left Lowe’s and saw probably 20 people without masks. So, I went to the police department, and they told me to go to city hall, and they told me it is up to the store managers. So, I called Lowe’s store manager, Joe. He said that they offer everyone a mask at the door (which did not happen) and if customers refuse, they don’t push it. Hmmm. Isn’t there a city ordinance that says you must wear a mask inside a business? Yep, dated 06-26-2020 called COVID-19 Mask Order. Call your store managers and complain. Get on websites and tell them how your feel.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actor Dawn Wells is 82. Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island. Author Terry McMillan is 69. Olympic gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn is 36. Actor John Lithgow is 75. Winston Churchill in The Crown. Boxer Evander Holyfield is 58. Artist Peter Max is 83. Singer Jeannie C. Riley is 75. Harper Valley PTA. Rock singer musician Patrick Simmons is 72. The Doobie Brothers. Rapper Snoop Dogg is 49. Actor John Krasinski is 41. Rock musician Jim Sonefeld is 56. Hootie & The Blowfish. Actor Jeff Goldblum is 66.
News Anchor Connie Chung is 75. Senator Kamala Harris is 56. Actress Joyce Randolph is 94. Trixie Norton on The Honeymooners. Guitarist Steve Cropper is 77. Booker T and the MG’s. Singer Elvin Bishop is 76. Paul Butterfield Blues Band. TV Judge Judy Sheindlin is 76. Judge Judy. Trumpeter Lee Loughnane is 72. Chicago. Guitarist Charlotte Caffey is 65. The Go-Go’s. Guitarist Steve Lukather is 61. Toto. Actor Christopher Lloyd is 80. Back to the Future. Actress Catherine Deneuve is 75.
Hailey walked into my office this week and wanted to know what our holiday deadlines were going to be. WHAT?!? Holiday Deadlines?!? Thanksgiving. Christmas. Good grief. I just finished income tax.
The Houston Zoo has a new exhibit…the tropical wetlands of Brazil, home to South America’s greatest concentration of wildlife, and it is only an hour away. Giant river otters, chatty howler monkeys, capybaras, tapirs, and giant anteaters. In November, you can explore the renovated orangutan habitat with its new play structure. I could watch the orangutans forever. Grab a mask and go play outside.
When we were kids, the most dangerous thing that could happen to you on Halloween was poison in your unwrapped candy, so everything was individually wrapped unless you knew the family, then you could eat all the candied apples, cookies and popcorn balls you could stand. We watched for razor blades or staples in apples, but this never, ever happened to anyone we knew…they were just stories about what COULD happen on the scariest night of the year. Those silly stories did not bother us at all because we were all too worried about IMPORTANT stuff like rain, which would have been really terrible. Halloween does need to be different this year. One idea is to spread out your candy on a table, supervise from a safe distance, and have one child come up at a time. Have hand sanitizer available, and encourage use, put your child’s (or your own) candy away for 3-4 days before you bring it out again, and have fun in a new way, at least for this year.
A California woman, missing for nearly two weeks in the Zion National Park in Utah, was found safe. The experienced hiker had hit her head early in her hike and become disoriented but was lucky that she was close to a water source, but no food. President Trump says he may take drastic action and leave the country if he loses to Joe Biden. Biden saw this and said, “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message.” A 41-year-old Michigan man was arrested for throwing 40-pound sandbags off an overpass. One of the bags hit a woman’s car, seriously injuring her. He was charged with one count of “throwing objects at trains-cars causing serious impairment.” If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison. Johnson & Johnson and the FDA are still quiet on why the pharmaceutical giant paused its coronavirus vaccine trial last week. Jeff Bridges, The Big Lebowski actor, announced that he has been diagnosed with lymphoma, but he is in the hands of good doctors. The Commission on Presidential Debates says Trump and Biden will each be muted while the other person speaks for parts of the final debate on Thursday, to allow answers to the moderator’s questions without interruption. Hmmm. That sounds like progress. The Justice Department sued a former aide to Melania Trump who wrote a tell-all book, saying the author had violated a nondisclosure agreement. Longtime Rockets General Manager, Daryl Morey has stepped down and will be replaced by Rafael Stone. Jay Leno’s 136-car collection is valued at $50 million.
Commentator Jeffrey Toobin was suspended by the New Yorker and is stepping away as CNN’s senior legal analyst. He explained it as an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing he was off camera. He apologized to his wife, family, friends, and co-workers, as he should have. But what did he do?!? News reports that I read were not giving enough story…so, I Googled, “What did Jeffery Toobin actually do on Zoom in front of all his colleagues?” Well, it was more than I wanted to hear. It seems that he was not just showing his body part, he was having a very intimate relationship with it. “I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” he said, “I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.” Good grief. I am sure glad my grandparents are not still alive to see our world as it is today.
A California lawyer was sentenced to life without parole for strangling his ex-wife and throwing her body off a cruise ship in 2006. He was set to inherit more than $1 million from her death. He ‘almost’ got away with murder, except for the fact that he strangled her to death before he threw her body overboard. This meant that her lungs were full of air and not water, so she floated to a spot where her body was discovered. Hmmm. Write that down. Push first. Strangle second.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country is committed to keeping their border closed until the U.S. gets control of COVID-19. Trudeau said, “The U.S. is not in a place where we would feel comfortable reopening those borders.” Three Houston schools have temporarily closed due to COVID-19 cases. Each school will be cleaned, then families notified when it is safe for students to return. Harris County had 719,940 ballots cast by the end of Monday, which is about 51 percent of the 1.3 million county voters who cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election. Ireland will begin lockdown again for six weeks, following a spike in cases.
Thanks to Sophia for unlocking the gate at Lowe’s garden center so I could leave without walking back through the store, since the garden center entrance closes at 7:00 and I didn’t finish checking out until 7:01. She did not have to do that. To Wes, for the Molly Sweeney inspired Corned Beef Shepherd’s Pie Potato from the Fill Station. Oh my gosh, delicious. To Linda Matheson, for the sweet note in her beautiful calligraphy… for no good reason at all, other than she’s just nice, & talented. It is in a special place where I see it every day. When you get mail from Linda, you smile just opening the envelope.
A 25-year-old Nevada man who contracted the coronavirus twice, now has us wondering about reinfection. Those cases seem to be very rare, but he is the fifth person known in the world to be reinfected, after patients in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador were previously confirmed to have had COVID-19 twice. He first tested positive in April, suffering mild symptoms, then in June he tested positive again with severe symptoms, and was hospitalized. He has no known immune disorders or underlying conditions. So much for herd immunity strategy.
Princeton University has agreed to pay more than $1 million in back wages to female professors after a review found disparities in compensation. Carole Baskin (Tiger King) says she has always considered herself bisexual and feels she might have been born in the wrong body. Hmmm. Is that an excuse for feeding your husband to the tigers? Trump asked the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for his tax records, again.. More than 1,500 student alumni of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee have posted a letter on social media expressing their opposition to Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, because of her stance on abortion law and the LBGTQ community. Thanks for reading us this week. Remember we do not have any gimmicks, prizes or incentives, just low cost, affordable and effective advertising, that we offer to you each and every day. We want to help local businesses shine. Lisa
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