Jeremy Herndon

I sure hope you voted yesterday, because if not, it’s too late now!  I voted, I had to stand in line for an hour behind an elderly woman who had put on about a gallon of cologne - boy did she stink to high heaven!  I don’t know what it is with old people and their sense of smell going bad, but I sure wish they’d lay off the cologne!  Some of these scents are really overpowering and give me a headache, and that is what happened with me yesterday; by the time I got to vote I had a migraine headache and I ended up having to go home and take the day off of work.  I’m feeling better today thank goodness.

Tonight a group of my friends got together to eat dinner at our local Applebee’s restaurant.  That’s one of our favorite places to eat, the food is always good and it is always reasonably priced.  The only thing that we don’t like about it is that it has a “smoking” section.  We always ask for a seat in the “non-smoking” section but we still smell the cigarette smoke, which is just plain and simple nauseating to smell.  Never mind the health consequences of smoking and second-hand smoke, it just plain and simply smells nasty!  We were surprised that last night they allowed smoking; there are times when I’ve gone there and it was all non-smoking.  Maybe that’s only on Sundays.  Next time we think we want to go there, I’m going to call them and ask them when they have smoke-free dining.

I’ve always held a little bit of a mixed-emotions feeling about Ted Kennedy through the years. I think that the scandal around his female friend drowning years ago in the car accident at Chappaquiddick just always left a sour taste in my mouth.

But, ever since then he has been trying hard to champion the rights of the “common folk” and trying hard to improve our lives as best we can. Since I am ONE of those “common folk” I have to say that I am glad that he has been trying to further our cause. So, I guess I have what one might call a “begrudging” admiration towards him, for his good deeds that he has done SINCE the scandal of the car accident so many years ago.

I was sorry to hear that he has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I understand that this type of cancer is very difficult to treat and does not have a very high success rate for long-term survival. I do hope that he can beat the odds and recover from this.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems to me that every few months I hear about another case of large numbers of people being killed in a fire in a public place like a restaurant or a nightclub.  And most of the cases I hear about this kind of thing happening the following investigations discover that one of the biggest reasons that so many people died was because the emergency exit doors were padlocked shut.

I understand why the owners of the night clubs would want to lock the doors, to keep out people who are trying to sneak in without going through proper channels.  Seems to me that the better thing to do would be to hire security to stand by the doors and keep the unauthorized people out!

This most recent case was in the news, a night club caught on fire from a pyrotechnics stunt that was not authorized to be done, and that caused a fire, the fire spread and people could not get out fast enough because the emergency exit doors were locked.  I think that’s not only a shame, it’s a crime.

The shark experts claim that the chances of being bitten by a shark (and killed) are slim.  They claim that you are more likely to be struck by lightening than attacked by a shark.  Yet, every year I hear news stories of shark attacks happening!  The most recent news story going around about a shark attack is from Australia; a sixteen year old boy was attacked and killed by a shark off the coast of Ballina, Australia.  He was bodyboarding with a friend at the time.  Experts think the shark was a bull shark.  

The news story goes on to say that Australia ranks 4th in the world for shark attacks, that the USA ranks higher than Australia.

I know lots of people are fascinated by sharks; I think I’ll just stay out of the water thank you very much!