AD's Journal 2024

  I had to catch up with all the stuff I’ve been putting off, such as updating my ezpass (they are going to crack    down on toll cheaters) as well as make appointments with my various doctors. It scares me that I have so many doctors I have to make appointments with, including my primary who is holding my prescriptions hostage in order to get me to come in and see him. The blood doctor for my leukemia already had an appointment scheduled, I just forgot what the date was. As terrifying as the word leukemia sounds, I apparently have contracted a curable kind, four shots that make the whole matter go away. Unfortunately, I have to show symptoms before he’ll treat it, and some people do not show symptoms for decades – which at my age means I’ll likely be dead of something incurable before I have to worry about this. Non the less, he has me coming in for regular blood tests to gauge my progress. My urologist is the biggest pain in the ass (figuratively and literally) ...

      It is gray outside, but not raining, something of a change after four days of steady drizzle. It’s even warm enough to stroll in the rain, as I did during my odyssey two days ago, though it didn’t quite feel the same way as when I did so when younger. Too much hyperbola when it comes to everything, a massive amount of noise being generated by people who talk more than they think, but think they know what they are talking about. It’s pointless to argue with braindead zombies, people who ache to be important, to have something important to say, when they aren’t and don’t. Went to the Wick in East Rutherford last night for dinner. This was never my hang out, but many people I later associated with hung out there, including Susan, the woman I dated in college, and John Telson, who had had worked with at the cosmetic company and the wine imports company. I had lunch with him at the Wick back in 2002, a year or so before he passed away, one of those amazing ...

   Made the trek to our Hoboken office, a short walk from the light rail station. I missed one of my co-workers but found the other diligently typing away after the boss had instructed him and others to show up there at least three days a week. I stopped off on my way to several meetings, trying to work out the logistics of getting places primarily using the light rail. Getting to Journal Square from where I live is always an issue since most of the buses only go to 30th street coming from and going to New York City. There are buses that go all the way up to where I am, but they are infrequent. So, I have been walking from where I live to catch the buses at 30 h Street for the long ride south. The office is located in a part of Hoboken not far from a slanted road up the hill – behind Christ Hospital and ending behind Dickinson High, a bit of a trek, and yet not much different from the trip to 30th Street. I misread the weather and overdressed. As a result, I wa...

    I still can’t believe we’re 24 years into a new century. Growing up, I always believed the year 2000 spelled the absolute end of life, or at least, we would wake up in a world completely different from the one we lived in at the time. In some cases, this came to pass – although in an ugly Orwellian way – as we still struggle to get off the face of the planet, and yet carry around in our pockets the fundamental tool for brainwashing – the cell phone. Rarely in my travels, do I encounter anyone without one. On the train, people stare down into their small screens to get their share of propaganda – almost all main stream media doing its best to make Orwell’s 1984 a reality. No wonder Facebook and other social media censor those who would provide an alternative vision of the world. We are being fed what they want us to believe, and they take offense when we refuse to be indoctrinated, calling people with alternative views evil or cultist or worse. It is no wond...

  Technically, it’s been four years to the day that Paulie passed away, even though at the time, we didn’t learn about it until a few days later. I suppose over that time I should have gotten over his passing, and yet, he was such a huge part of my life, especially my youth, I can’t quite believe he is gone. I had hoped to find his burial site or where his ashes had been scattered in order to visit the location in time for his anniversary, but alas, I have received no news of it, and may have to wait for his fifth anniversary instead. His immorality, however, is not where he is buried, but how we remember him. Since he has no kids (that he was aware of), he must rely on the memory of nephews and their descendants, although I doubt they will see him as anything more than eccentric, rather than how he influenced many of us, who might not have pursued arts and music had we not met him. We went up to the old cottage on Lake Hopatcong a few weeks ago, but it was the old libr...

  The snow came long enough to deposit its mess on the streets and sidewalks before fading away to rain, rain then turning to ice as night came. I had to drive up to the school to drop off and pick up my wife because the landscape was too treacherous to tackle even for the short five block walk there and back. She falls on dry surfaces and much more often when the ground is slick. In these towns, the streets are so narrow traveling them – especially after inclement weather – is like perpetually reliving the trench scene from Star Wars, parked cars filling both sides of even the one-way streets, leaving this narrow gap between them to travel by. The cold tends to bring silence to our part of the world as people hunker down in warm apartments rather than taking to the streets. So, this makes the trip even for these few blocks somewhat eerie, as if humanity has ceased to exist, but all that we have built and all that operates to bring us comfort remain, lighted stores, flash...

      We got our first legitimate snow storm after nearly two years. This is not the first time we went through several years with rain instead of snow, but whackos are painting it as significant because they need to keep harping on the illusion of climate change. As we speak, the weather people (apparently not satisfied with the two to four inches we got) are selling us on another snow storm we can expect to hit on Thursday. When it rains it pours, as the old cliché goes. For some reason, I don’t quite feel the usual pang of delight at the first snow storm, perhaps because so many people are using this to sell agendas I don’t agree with. I look out the front window at the street and the people spreading salt on their walks because the accumulation is too little to shovel. The city’s salt spreaders have come down our street several times already, even though the salt from its earlier passings hasn’t vanished and the snow has not accumulated on the asphalt, o...