Since last Sunday it’s been an interesting week. On the 24th it was Ellen and my official 29th wedding anniversary. How did she put up with me for all of those years??? One reason might be because even though my basketball team had a game that evening, I left work promptly to get home so that I could watch Eileen while Ellen went to the Special Education PTA at Islip High School. Several important issues were discussed and she felt that they could not be missed. In the meantime I am nursing a cold and hopefully with a four day weekend I can feel better by Sunday evening. I actually started to feel badly on Monday evening so I knew that a cold was coming on. The air in my office was blowing on me and that meant that so were somebody’s germs. The last day of work before the holiday was on Wednesday and I decided to tie up as many loose ends as I could, especially since Monday the 1st is the last day of the accounting cycle. I figured that if I work hard on Wednesday, there will be less to do on Monday, especially after a 4 day weekend. As for the holiday itself, we only had 3 guests: my brother in law, my cousin in law, and a friend of the family. My mom & dad were supposed to come out too, but my dad started to feel under the weather and did not want to travel the 40+ miles by Long Island Railroad. Later we called him to see how he was doing (feeling better) and to wish him a happy birthday (his 89th). On Thursday I watched some of the football, basketball and hockey games on TV. The Titans/Lions game was no contest, and Tennessee won by 37 points. In basketball, Georgetown beat Wichita State 58-50 to advance, but lost today to Tennessee 90-78. The NHL featured the New Jersey Devils against the Florida Panthers and the Devils won 3-2. Today I just relaxed around the house and will try and shake my cold off. However, I saw on the various newspapers’ websites that today is “Black Friday” and stores have huge sales, and open their doors earlier than normal. That led to tragedy here on Long Island at the Green Acres Mall’s Wal-Mart. It turns out that as soon as the doors opened, the crazed shoppers literally trampled a store worker to death and caused a pregnant shopper to miscarry. This is insanity!!!! Saving a small amount of money now seems more important than human lives. Personally I think that we should try to keep Christmas as a holy day first and a holiday second. Gift giving has become out of hand. I am glad that our gift list is small to begin with, and that Ellen and I shop online or in town in our local stores. In that way we give our money to people who we know.

Since my November 9 entry it’s been an interesting ride. Over the past weekend we went to visit my mom & dad again, this time for Ellen’s birthday. With my birthday, we all went out to a Chinese restaurant. This time Eileen wanted to eat in with her grandparents, so Ellen and I went out on our own to our favorite Thai restaurant, the Green Papaya. I had reviewed it a few years ago on Yahoo and it’s still as good as ever.

St. John’s University had an alumni get together at Brooks Brothers’ flagship store that is at 346 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Among the guests was the School’s Hall of Fame basketball coach Lou Carnesecca, as well as some former St. John’s players. A portion of the proceeds from any purchase would go as a donation to the University. However, since I had spent some money a few weeks earlier at Brooks Brothers purchasing some rugby shirts, my finances were a bit strained. Before leaving, I did get to have my picture taken with Coach Louie, as well as with St. John’s basketball star and former New York Knick Mel Davis (see below).

While I never played basketball for St. John’s, I still enjoy the game and on November 19 played my first team game since at least high school days on my company’s team. We are part of the Lawyers Basketball League, and will be playing in several gymnasiums around Manhattan. On Wednesday we had a scrimmage (so it was just for fun) against Kaye Scholler at the Dalton School’s gym, located at 3rd and 87th. I took part ion the practice shooting, as well as the lay up drill, and even played for several minutes in the game. However, since I have not played on an organized team for so long, I forgot what to do in a lay up drill (one line takes a shot, the other gets the rebound and passes it to the other line). I will have to work on this to get the hang of it. Anyway, since it was a scrimmage game and no official scorer was present, we really don’t know for certain who won (but I think that we did). I had fun and got some exercise. The best part was that even after running up and down the court with my teammates, I was not too out of breath. Our first league game is this Monday against Dewey Ballantine at the Trinity School’s gym on West 91st Street. I will keep everyone posted as to how that turns out.

A few days ago we made history by electing a man to the presidency who is of half African American. Barack Hussein Obama won over John McCain by a large margin in both the popular and electoral vote totals. Apparently people saw that the last 8 years have been a disaster unless you are a corporate executive. The majority of us did not want a vice president and possibly the 45th president who did not know that Africa is a continent and not a country and did not know which countries signed the North American Free Trade Agreements – or NAFTA. By the way, those countries are Canada, Mexico and the US. We did not want a vice-president who considers some Americans to not be real Americans. What is a REAL American? A resident on an Indian reservation would be the only proper answer. The rest of us had ancestors who came here by boat or plane across one of the major oceans.

Now that we have a new president, let us get behind him and help get our country back onto its feet. The rest of the world is pulling for us, let’s not let them down.

By the way, besides our president elect has something in common with another leader in our midst, who is in baseball. The captain of the New York Yankees, Derek Sanderson Jeter, is also half African American. The only difference is that one has a more American sounding name. Since most baseball fans (even those who are not Yankee fans) admire Derek for his ability and personality, we should do the same for the president elect.

For all of the Chicken Littles who think that the sky is going to fall in, or who think that their Second Amendment rights will be trampled, or think that we will be forced to learn Swahili, please be advised that in 1960 people predicted that if John Kennedy won the election, the Pope would take over the US. Guess what, that never happened!!! The Vatican is still in Rome and we still have religious freedom, and separation of Church & State.

Since so few members of my fire company showed up on the 26^th for the hose test, the officers opted to only do one engine and we’d test the hoses on the other one on November 1.  The real tedious work is re-packing the hose beds after the hoses had been stretched and water pumped through them.  We have to disconnect the hose sections, bleed them and then put them back into the beds after re-coupling them.  If we had most of our members, it would not take that long.  Needless to say, not many members showed up on November 1, either.

On Thursday Ellen had gotten an e/mail from an Hungarian pianist congratulating her for winning two free tickets to his recital at Carnegie Hall on November 2.  All I had to do was walk over to the hall and pick them up at the box office.  I had another commitment during Friday’s lunch hour, but I was able to cut that one short and take the subway over to 57^th Street and pick them up.  So yesterday we drove to my parents place in Flushing, and left Eileen with them.  Then we took the Flushing subway (line #7) towards Manhattan and past Shea Stadium.  Yes, they are definitely dismantling the venerable park, since the seats are gone from the stands, the outfield fences are gone, as is the scoreboard.  RIP Shea Stadium.  Once we got to Manhattan we walked to Carnegie Hall and got our seats.  On the stage on each side were national flags – the American on the viewers’ left, and the Hungarian on the right.  Before the pianist came out to perform, two priests spoke about the importance of musicians in each generation interpreting and preserving the works of the composers.  The pianist who was about to come out to perform, Adam Gyorgy, is one of the greatest interpreters of the works of Franz Liszt.  Adam soon sat himself at the keyboard and played a total of 7 works.  The two most familiar to us are Felix Mendelssohn’s Bridal Procession, which anybody who has ever been to a wedding has heard as soon as the bride & groom leave the altar.  The other was Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, which Warner Brothers put in to many of its Bugs Bunny cartoons’ soundtracks in the 1940’s.  After it was over Ellen and I walked to 8^th & 51^st to the House of Brews for some pub grub and a chance to sample some excellent microbrews or imports.  There were so many selections that they actually had a separate beer menu.  They did have the “macro brews” like Budweiser and Coors (why would you even come into a place like this and order that horse piss) but Ellen opted for Brooklyn/Red Hook brewed Six Point Brownstone Ale while I chose a Chelsea Brewing Checker Blond Ale.  Our food was also good and we watched some football games – the Giants-Dallas and the Eagles-Sea Hawks.  We then walked to Times Square to get the subway back to Flushing.

The other meeting that I had to curtail on Friday during lunch was a meeting of my employer’s basketball team.  Yes, I do plan to play, or at least warm the bench.  Please wish me luck.  Once we start to play I will keep you posted on how we do.

Since the 19th and my last entry it’s been a bit out of the usual. On the 20th I attended the firematic service for our member who had passed away a few days prior. The ceremony is always impressive. All of the members come into the funeral home and line up, and the chief calls to a captain to ask if all members are present. The officer responds that the rolls have been called and one member is absent (the decedent). Then various eulogies are given, as well as prayers. The officers and members then go in groups (usually in 2’s or 4’s) and salute the casket. When all of the viewings are done the casket is taken to the church if there is also a church service, and then to the cemetery or crematorium in a fire truck instead of a hearse. When my time comes, I would definitely want to go in this manner.

On to happier things: The Tampa Bay Rays are in the World Series! It took them 10 years, and made it in their first winning season (just like the Mets did in 1969, their 8th season). Unfortunately, as of this evening the Rays are behind the Phillies 3 games to 1. Game 5 was suspended last night since it started to really rain and the game was tied. While most baseball fans are bashing the Commissioner for his choice, what options did he have? Unfortunately the Rays had already checked out of their hotel since if they won, the series would continue in St. Petersburg. If they lost, it’s all over. Now they had to stay in Philadelphia, and their hotel was now booked solid, forcing them to spend the night in Wilmington DE, 30 miles away. As for who wins, I do want Tampa Bay to win since they have been losers for their first 10 years. However, the Phillies have been around since 1883 and have only won the World Series once, in 1980. We shall see.

On Sunday the 26th I was with my fire company to participate in a hose test. All of the hoses on the engine are removed from the bed and water is pumped through them. If they leak or burst they are taken out of service. That’s the easy part. The fun part is packing it back onto the hose bed. We only had about 12 members show up (out of 35) so it took a while to finish. The captain and the lieutenants were not too pleased. It also took us longer since we got a fire call just before we were to go out to the track and start the test. In an apartment in a house on the main drag, a skillet began to smolder and trip off the smoke detectors. Apparently grease was left in it. Nobody was home so we had to force our way in (an ax and a lever tool work wonders). We got the dry chemical extinguisher to put it out, and then the stove itself caught fire in the over. The dry chemical extinguisher got another workout and once the fire was out we had some of the younger members disconnect it and move it to the driveway.

After the fire exercises and being that the 26th was my birthday, we all went to Queens to visit my mom & dad and go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby. I enjoyed a seafood basket. It was not as exotic as Peking duck or some other dishes that I have tried, but I still could not make it at home.