The Luna Park Gazette

And so, the First Cousins Reunion is in the books. My sister and I are back home after a five-day get together with our father’s side of the family in Northern California. During that time, we got a tour of the Monterey Aquarium courtesy of my cousin Erin, explored San Francisco and Sausalito, met a ton of cool people (and a couple of twits) while reconnecting with the West Coast branch of our family. My cousin got us a bird’s eye view of the otter tank so we could watch the frisky little critters glide through the water with the greatest of ease. We hadn’t seen each other since my Uncle Joe’s memorial service Los Angeles, prompting my sister to suggest that we should get together for happier occasions. The fact was underscored in May when we lost our brother Peter. And, oh how I wish he could have been there with us. It still hurts to think I'll never see him again. We spent a couple of days at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove before heading over to our Cou...

So who are you siding with—Odin or Mercury? Wednesday got started as “day of Woden”, reflecting the religion practiced by the Anglo-Saxons, the English equivalent to the Norse god Odin. In many Romance languages, such as the French mercredi , Spanish miércoles or Italian mercoledì , the day's name is a calque of the Latin dies Mercurii “Day of Mercury." In Japanese, the word for Wednesday means “water day” and is associated with the planet Mercury, literally meaning “water star”. In the mid-1950s, people started calling Wednesday “Hump Day”, which views the middle of the workweek as a mound you've got to climb over to reach the weekend. !975, JJ Cale featured the term in his song “Friday” and in 2013 the phrase saw a monstrous surge in popularity after a Geico commercial with an obnoxious talking camel walking around an office and asking people "what day is this?". And, of course, there’s Wednesday from The Addams Family , who has her TV show now. ...

I guess this was bound to happen. I had this tacit agreement with my gym, where I routinely forget my water bottle and they give it to me the next time I come in. I’m not a fan of this routine; in fact, it scares the screaming bejesus out of me since I’m a senior citizen and extremely concerned about the old memory banks going on the fritz. I liked to joke that the gym staff should find a special shelf for the damn thing so I could leave it there and fill it up every time I work out. Well, my luck finally ran out. Last week I left that water bottle somewhere in the gym—perhaps by the Stairmaster?—and when I got home, I went through the routine of calling to ask them to set it aside for me. Only this time nobody turned it in. I’m so used to the receptionists reaching under the counter and coming up with the water bottle that I was surprised when they told me they hadn’t seen it. It’s was pretty nice, too, which makes me wonder why I wasn’t more careful with it. I ...