First, the car is a two-door model. Which meant that every time I parked the car, someone parked about 3 inches from my door. Getting in the car became an adventure. Then there’s the “convertible” part.

There’s a little button inside the car that looks like it puts the top up and down. I pushed the button. Nothing. Stepped on the brake. Nothing. In park. Nothing. You get the picture. I had a convertible, but the top didn’t go down. (Insert funny joke here.)

Finally on Tuesday I was going to get that dang top down. I noticed a set of 7 pictures in the top of the trunk that showed how to put the top down. Simple. Steps 1 and 2 required a reconfiguration of the trunk. Check. Then I got to Step 3. It looked like I had to pull down a panel from the top of the trunk. Small detail — that wasn’t quite right. The panel was attached to the top of the trunk. I yanked down on the panel and the trunk lid smacked me on the bridge of the nose.

I stood there like a stooge with blood pooling on the bridge of my nose from the cut. Ugh…foiled by a convertible. You can imagine that I didn’t use my best language as I rubbed my nose. Ugh.

Well…it turns out that there’s a simple solution. THE TRUNK HAS TO BE CLOSED, EVEN THOUGH THE PICTURES OF HOW TO DO IT ARE IN THE TRUNK. Bhavesh figured that out for me after we finished eating at Barnaby’s. Great, man. I gassed up, put on my sunglasses, and drove around town with the top down. Nose throbbing, of course.

Look at that little girl. Today is Snickers the Wonder Dog’s sixth birthday. I still remember when Sheryl brought that happy little ball of fur home 6 years ago. We’re so lucky to have the best dog in the world.

Matthew is 17 years old today. Wow, what it must be like to be that age and have the world by the horns. Happy birthday, Matt. Treasure these days.

We’re at the NJ Shore this week. In Philly they say, “down-a-shore” or any one of 20 variations on that. Saying “at the Shore” is a sure-fire way to ID yourself as an outsider. Another one: locals don’t eat at Pat’s or Geno’s, there’s no cheesesteak controversy going on there. If you want the real deal, go to Jim’s and get a “steak.”

Anyways, I’ve been taking pictures. Ate at an exquisite restaurant last night called Chef Vola’s. Going to play in a poker tournament at the Borgata this morning that has a $20K minimum prize for first place. And then I’m going to sit on the beach and get a sunburn. How’s that for a week?

We were goofing around one day and said we should have awards for the best Tweets posted on Twitter. Voila! The Twitties.

For those of you who Tweet, come on over and nominate your favorite Tweets. There will be valuable prizes. (”Value” being a relative term.)

I’m going to do 100 consecutive pushups 6 weeks from now. (No, that’s not my profile in the picture.)

So imagine what happens when Sheryl and I go to Ridley Creek State Park, start out on the multi-use path, and everyone is walking on the left. “What is this, England?” I say as people come toward me. One of the rules I do like is the “walk the right” rule in the United States. “Jerk,” they say. I can live with it.

Sheryl, on the other hand, is much more cooperative. Adaptable. And she soon picked up the pattern and started walking on the left. (Ahead of me by a good distance, too, because she was embarrassed of me.) She kept telling me that it was protocol to walk on the left. I refused to believe it. Then this sign.

It’s too bad I was born without that Embarrassment Gene. I just moved over to the other side. “Exercising my right to march to the beat of a different drum” I said. I told Sheryl I was channeling my inner Howard (my late father-in-law), who would have been with me on the right. Yep, I’m old enough and I earned it.

After I got an attitude adjustment, we saw some of the sights.

Pennsylvania State Champion Black Oak

Sheryl Shows How Big the Champion Is

That’s a Big Tree

This Old House — Like from 1736

Tangled Roots

Ugh…I hated Willard. Wanted to run the Rat King through in The Nutcracker. And especially don’t like to look out my living room window at the bird feeder and see a Norway rat the size of a Chihuahua chewing on birdseed. I freaked.

This is our annus horribilis rodentia. We spent over $1,000 eradicating squirrels from our attic. (They’ve returned.) Now we’re the only people in the suburbs with rats in their yard. What we found out — after spending $652 to have traps and poison set around the yard — is that rats like the same things that birds do: shelter, water and birdseed. We’ve been putting out 20lbs of birdseed a week. Now I find out that some of that is going to the skeeziest animals on the planet.

I’m creeped out. What’s next? Porcupines? Capybara? There are 2,277 species of rodents. The way it’s going, we’re going to spend our retirement money keeping them out of our yard and attic.