Out and About – Week of August 11th

Last Tuesday, we all had the opportunity to vote on some propositions and several political candidates. To those candidates who won the Primary, congratulations. Remember that in November, we have the privilege of voting on a split ticket. St. Joseph County is primarily a Conservative county, but you’ll never know how many “closet Liberals” there really are. Whether you are Conservative or Liberal, you have your work cut out for you. You still have time to try to convince the voters that you can be trusted to vote for them and not for those ready to line your pockets with cash and favors. Politics is a very dirty game with a lot of mudslinging from both sides. Why can’t we all be friends and stick to the issues at hand?

My advice to those of you who chose not to cast a vote is to sit back and keep quiet, because you have no right to complain. The soapbox has been put away.

I love sandwiches, and one of my favorites is made with peanut butter. Not just peanut butter, mind you, but peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter with a slice of sweet onion, and peanut butter with a couple of slices of dill pickle. Please don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Peanut butter is very good for you; here are some of the benefits:

• It is packed with protein and is rich in potassium.

• It aids in digestion and offers amino acids.

• It reduces cholesterol.

• It helps to prevent Type 2 Diabetes.

• It fights heart disease.

• It helps aid sleep.

One final thing about peanut butter is that dogs love it. Take a butter knife full of peanut butter and place it on the roof of your dog’s mouth. It’s interesting to watch how Fido tries to get to it.

I’ve been getting Out and About lately in my Gator. As long as the weather cooperates, it’s the only way to go. The oil barons hate me, because I’m not using very much gasoline. Anyway, just like riding a motorcycle, driving a Gator requires paying a lot of attention to other vehicles, because their drivers just don’t see me coming as easily as they would if I were driving a full-size vehicle. It sort of makes me a better driver, because I must constantly be looking all around me. This leads me to another problem that I’ll discuss in the next paragraph.

I’ve never figured out why so many of the newer cars have such small turn signals in the front. The back ones are pretty easy to see, but the front ones are usually difficult to notice. It is quite difficult to see if someone is turning left or right, or if they are turning at all. If you’re on a cell phone, sometimes you forget to use your turn signals. Failing to signal a turn or using a cell phone while driving can and has caused more than a few accidents. To solve part of this problem, when purchasing a new car, make sure your turn signals are large enough to be seen from more than twenty feet away. Don’t worry about using a cell phone while driving. It isn’t against the law yet.

Our recent trip to Toronto was our vacation for this year. Of course, when you’re retired, every day is a vacation day. We’d like to take another vacation this year, but our schedule prevents us from doing so. The feeling that goes along with taking a vacation is extremely gratifying. My wife and I were discussing this feeling and came up with a pretty good solution. We’ve decided that, to get that “Vacation Feeling”, we’ll just tip a dollar to everyone with whom we come into contact. We already tip when we dine out, so part of the problem is already solved. I’m not going to announce when we’ll take our stay-at-home vacation.

See you Out and About!

Submitted by Norm Stutesman