You never know when highway construction will slow you down, especially at night. 

I got stuck in a very long line of cars around 10pm tonight due to highway paving.

The work needs to be done. It backs up traffic worse when done during daylight hours. 

Tomorrow is the last day of September and the end of the third quarter of the year. It's also the last day of the federal government's fiscal year.

Change is really on the way when it comes to temperature and daylight.

Autumn is a great time of the year before we transition to winter. 

I plan to leave around 4:30pm to drive into Boston to meet someone. I'm leaving extra early because of the potential traffic. 

Boston can be a nightmare at any time of day. You never know about the conditions. Traffic changes at any moment.

We shall see.  

Car insurance goes up every year. There is no way around paying more money.

My policy went up a bit. Apparently, I'm qualified for being over 65 for at least ten months of my policy. 

I need to contact my local agent to ensure that I get some type of small discount because of my age.

I switched to HOKA running shoes last year. I like them a great deal, but the outer-soles wear very poorly.

I contacted their customer service and was advised to send them back. A second pair also had the same problem.

It will be interesting to see how they treat this. I am wearing a third pair, but will probably switch to another brand. 

I bought a toaster today for $9 at Walmart, also known as the China Outlet. How do they make it so cheap and have a profit?

It turns out that the compay is owned by Walmart according to the owners manual.  

My previous Walmart toaster fell off the counter one too many times.

I paid $16 for that one. 

I finally finished a book I've been reading for the last week. I read the final 80 pages while having my car serviced at the local Toyota dealership.

I knew that I would be there for two hours. 

It should have taken less time than that, but I read so slow.

All of a sudden, we are suppose to embrace all that is pumpkin. I have never loved the taste of that gourd.

We are inundated with Pumpkin Lattes and so many other products I have no interest in.

This will last for another six weeks until after Halloween.

Today was the first day of autumn. It felt like it with the temperature.

We will certainly have warm days throughout October, but the list is growing short as well as the daylight.

It's hard to believe that the year has flown by, but it always feels like that for me. 

Communities often complain about the high cost of bus transportation for students. They should check with Boston and New York City. Both have some very shocking figures. 

Boston devotes $11.6 million which is almost 10% of their budget to transport 25,000 kids. That comes out to $2,000 per child.

The Big Apple takes the grand prize while spending $1.1 billion for 150,000 students or $7,300 for each of them.

Both cities spend way too much money with no end in sight.

The local City Council wants to raise the age to buy tobacco products locally to 21. 

As much as smoking is a major health problem, I don't think it's their role to change it at a local level.

There is too much grandstanding being done these days by local government groups. This needs to be addressed at the state level.

Kids could just travel to another town or city to buy what they wanted.

We keep moving towards a Nanny State with some of the political initiatives. 

The natural gas disaster in the Merrimack Valley has highlighted the dire condition of America's infrastructure.

There are many potential disasters waiting to happen. Nothing usually ever gets done until there is a tragedy.

Some of the gas lines in question were made of cast iron and over 100 years old. That is not uncommon. 

My neighborhood has a sink hole caused by sewer pipes from the 19th century.

There are functionally obsolete bridges around the country. Transportation tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers in New York City are from the early 1900's.

Politicians talk about rebuilding America, but it won't happen on any large scale soon. 

Colleges usually name buildings after people associated with the school or wealthy donors. 

UMass Amherst has a tradition of naming them after faculty members, school leaders or state politicians.

There is always controversy whenever a building needs a name. A few years ago, the school took the easy way out when they named seven new dorms after various types of trees.

Another set of four dorms had the creative names of North A, B, C & D. They certainly didn't offend any group or individuals with these choices.

 There is nothing worse than a road under construction that backs up traffic for miles. You never want to get to that point.

It's never good when you do. There are so many unexpected traffic problems when we least expect it. 

We are not hearing much about the man who was killed by the shark on Cape Cod. This is no longer "Jaws".

Where will the investigation lead to? This thing was waiting to happen.

The public and the media has been having fun the last few summers over the shark sightings at Cape Cod beaches.

It was all fun and games until a swimmer was attacked this summer and badly injured.

Today, there was a fatal attack on a man in his 20's. He was bitten on both legs and died shortly after.

Not much can be done about this. There is a huge seal population at Cape beaches. The sharks feed on them. It's a natural cycle.

Humans are now in the way. How do they all coexist?

It's terrible to watch the damage being done by Hurricane Florence. The wind and rain is causing havoc along the coast of the Carolinas.  

It's bad enough that people live right on the beach, but why build a resort hotel that takes the first hit during extreme weather?

The buildings I saw on the television coverage had no protection from the storm surge.

It might happen every 10-20 years, but when it does, damage is extreme. 

What a horrible situation tonight in the Merrimack Vally with the random natural gas explosions that caused over 70 fires.  

How did this happen to so many customers? There is tremendous devastation. Many will be homeless.

This was so random. 

The media is having the time of their life with the coverage of Hurricane Florence. It now seems to be a Category 2 storm with a huge rainfall. 

News coverage is crazy. Some networks will keep their people at the worst spots until the last moment.

Nobody knows how this will play out. 

Today was the 17 year anniversary of 9/11. You would need to be at least 23 to have any recollection of this event.  

This day will become like Pearl Harbor. You would need to be at least 82 to remember December 7th.

We can't forget JFK's assassination in 1963. Only those 60 and above were around that day.  

Hurricane season is so random. They can happen at any time and effect any place.  

It really looks like North and South Carolina are going to get slammed by a Category 4 Hurricane. Hopefully, the storm weakens. All we can do is watch. 

Making any type of travel plans is always a roll of the dice when it comes to the weather. 

We have two weeks left to summer and it's it's starting to feel like autumn with these temperatures. 

I had to cancel some golf plans tomorrow because of the pending cold rain.

The rest of the week should be quite warm according to the weather experts.

You never know with the weather.  My golf plans will be rescheduled, but here is no guaranteed that it will be a nice day. 

Yesterday was a bad day for people on cruise ships.

One bound for Bermuda, was diverted to Nova Scotia because of a potential hurricane in the area. They ended up being sent north to cooler weather in Nova Scotia. I'm sure most passengers were not prepared.

The other involved a smaller vessel that lost power in the Cape Cod Canal on its way to Manhattan. It caused passengers to be delayed and impacted the trip.

You never know with cruises. Weather is such a factor. It can change everything. 

A local bar which has been around since 1959 was recently sold. The new owners plan to change the name as a marketing strategy.

Some people have been grumbling about it. They don't like the idea of the name change and feel the bar should carry on its tradition.

This is total nonsense. The new owners can do whatever they want with the name. They are running a business with the goal of making a profit. 

Americans waste so much food. We see it at restaurants, special events and food markets. 

It's now happening with cranberry growers in Massachusetts who want to destroy 25% of their production in order to stabilize prices.

It seems outrageous to destroy any type of edible food. The growers say that some will go to food banks, but most will be composted. 

While people in parts of the world go hungry tonight, we throw out tons of food. It never ends. 

You can always count on people to interfere with nature and have dire implications.

We saw that in the news the other day with a story of a moose in Vermont.

After swimming across Lake Champlain, he was spooked by humans after leaving the water. People got too close to him and wanted to take pictures.

He ended up back in the water where he apparently had a medical issue and died.

If people didn't get in the way, the moose would still be alive. 

I finally bought a popcorn popper at Walmart. It's a hot air one, so it doesn't make a mess with oil and butter. 

I used a cooking pot in the past which never worked well. 

Popcorn is very healthy, but I always have a problem with it getting caught in my teeth. Tonight was no different. 

I have said this before. This website could look a lot better if I knew what  was doing.

This was never easy from the start. It took too many hours to launch this site.

I had corn on the cob tonight for the first time in almost a year. It's hard to get good stuff that isn't "cow corn".

All three ears tasted great. I'm glad I bought them. It will get more challenging in the future because of the calendar.

Corn on the cob seems to take a lot of effort to eat.

It has been several years since I was on the MBTA. I rode the Green Line from Riverside to Chestnut Hill to go to the BC/UMass football game. 

The ride was nice. The trains don't arrive that often. I though they would have scheduled more trains, but they were not very full. 

It's easy to see why the MBTA has such a huge deficit. They have a problem with ridership. They need more passengers.