Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Pin On My Address

Rich Galen

Friday November 12, 2004

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Dear Mr. Mullings:

What now? I haven't even written anything yet!
Much of what you have been writing since the run-up to the election has been pretty heavy stuff. Frankly, if we want heavy, we'll read Camus or Sartre. We read Mullings, we expect to snort some coffee at least once a week. Get with it, little mister.
Signed,
Blue State Activists for Existential Humor

Ok. Actually, I was tired of trying to be smart and right all the time. As luck would have it, Thanksgiving is coming up. I had to make some reservations to spend the holiday near the Mullings Family Manse in Western Massachusetts an adventure which proved - yet again - I am neither smart nor right all the time.

I'm thinking I'd drive the Mullmobile up on the Monday before, and then wend my way back to Your Nation's Capital on the Saturday following. Five days in the Berkshire Mountains. Who, I ask you, deserves it more?

I went to the Internet and poked around on Hotels.com looking for a really good deal in the Berkshires. I found a new motel which is near the family manor and boasts high-speed internet access in the rooms.

Excellent. I checked the prices then went directly to the website of the property to see what the room rates looked like there. They were identical with the AAA discount, so I right-clicked and I left-clicked and I scrolled down and I submitted and it all worked perfectly.

Within a few seconds I had received a confirmation via e-mail and I was extremely proud of myself for having remembered to do this well in advance of usual which is generally when I have pulled into the driveway of the motel having convinced myself that the NO VACANCY sign is only to fool the tourists not local property owners.

One eensy, teensy thing. For my whole entire life I have believed that Thanksgiving falls on the third Thursday in November. Each and every November for each and every of my fifty mumble years.

So, I booked the room to arrive on Monday the 15th, and leave on Saturday the 20th.

Two minor points: (1) I will be in Wichita, Kansas and Albuquerque, New Mexico for speeches on the 18th and 19th and, (2) Thanksgiving is not until November 25th, the last Thursday in the month.

Is this another one of those Hailey/Halley comet deals as we've discussed before? Why am I always the last one to know these things?

Happily the young woman at the motel was perfectly understanding when I explained that I needed to change the reservation from the week I had booked online to the following week. She may have mistakenly heard me say that I had to change the dates because, as a member of a super-secret unit of the United Nations, I had been ordered to Africa to help solve the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire.

Second thing. I have had the same style of eyeglasses for about 20 years and I decided I needed a new look. The new look includes frames which, in the proper light, look like dark tortoise shell. The light necessary to make them look like that is similar to the intensity of the light shining in a chest cavity during open-heart surgery.

In all other cases they look black. The Lad insists they are my Harry Potter look, which never crossed my mind. Because he inherited his father's keen sense of irony, he has often asked me when I am going to have a "Z" tattooed on my forehead to emulate Harry's lightening bolt scar.

These kids today, haih?

I bought a new helmet to wear when zipping around on my 50cc Skippy-Scooter. It is a full-face, aerodynamic, cool-in-the-summer-warm-in-the-winter, drive-fast, turn-sharp, stop-on-a-dime-give-you-nine-cents-change, state-of-the-art, helmet.

Wait'll you see the logo on the front of it.

These are but two more examples of why I am only about two weeks away from the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices pinning our home address to my lapel when I leave the house in the morning.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: How the date for Easter is determined, Harry Potter's scar, the Skippy-Scooter helmet and an amusing Catchy Caption of the Day.

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