Far be it for me to tout the wonders of Upstate NY, but here’s a story that I just don’t think you’d find in your highfalutin big city-type areas. Last night, the cops (sheriffs, actually) caught some guy trying to break in to a vending machine (not exactly bank robbery or anything). When the cops tried to apprehend the perp, he (and his “moll”) stole a dump truck and led the cops on a “high speed” chase (no doubt this was a “souped up” dump truck, capable of speeds exceeding 40 mph on the highway) across railroad tracks and through neighborhoods, trailed by twenty or thirty sheriffs cars and “Air One” – the sheriff’s helicopter. Eventually the cops boxed the dump truck in, and which point the accused vending machine burglar rammed one of the sheriffs’ cars. I guess this is when things stopped being fun for the cops, so they shot the idiot (apparently Andy let Barney put the bullet in his gun).

As for the perps, Clyde went to the hospital with a flesh wound, but Bonnie appears to have made it through the episode unscathed, and I’m sure the sheriffs managed to put together a bevy of evidence, including plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one detailing the crime, plus pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the southwest corner, the vending machine, and the aerial photography from the helicopter.

In other exciting news, it’s a big day at the State Fair today, where untold throngs are expected to attend, as Justin Bieber (who is some little kid that’s apparently a big deal with all the teenybopper girls out there; I guess he gives them “Bieber Fever”) comes to the Grandstand, and country singer “Lady Antebellum” appears as tonight’s free entertainment. Lady Antebellum? Do these people actually understand what that means? Antebellum, as in “before the war,” or, more specifically in American history, the good old days of slavery and Southern Gentility prior to that mean old Mr. Lincoln and the Civil War (aka, the second American War for Independence). Yee-ha!

But wait, there’s more. Syracuse will be the feature on tonight’s episode of “Man vs Food” at 9:00 on the Travel Channel. I have no idea what this show is, but it’s apparently a rather popular program about a guy who goes around the country eating food. Not sure I get the appeal, here, but since the Travel Channel is in HD, I’m recording it. I may also pitch a show of my own to them: “Man vs. Beer.” I think it’ll be a big hit.

In personal news, I had my $610 home inspection yesterday, and I really liked the guy that did it. He seemed to know what he was doing, and it turned out that my sister knew him from the olden days (she was friends with his sister, and had even stayed at their house), and my brother-in-law knew his sister from his olden days, too. The house, well, it needs a lot of work. I knew that already, of course, and he found a few more things I hadn’t seen (including some roof structure issues that I’ll need to address before the snow flies (and piles up). But I reckon we’ll forge ahead anyway, and I’ll make an effort to kind of put everything out of mind and just go with the flow.

Fortunately, one of the skills I’ve developed over the years is to not think about shit ahead of time, lest I obsess over it and get my gut all twisted up into knots for days on end. Mostly, I just say “OK” a lot, and it’s gotten me through a lot of things. For instance, I’m counting on it getting me through my dental appointment this morning. I’m rather cowardly when it comes to the dentist (it all stems from bad experiences I had with my childhood dentist, whose dental techniques bore a strong resemblance to those of Dr. Christian Szell – aka ‘Der weisse Engel’ – played by Laurence Olivier in “Marathon Man”), and am actually somewhat terrified at the prospect of going.

I had a lot of work done years back, and promised myself I’d never let things get bad again. But then the dentist I had started whining that the insurance wasn’t paying him enough to make it worth his while to work on me and I got tired of him. Then I went back to school and had no insurance for a couple of years, and then, well, I kinda didn’t think about it when a filling or two fell out (admittedly a drawback in my “ignore it” survival strategy). But now I guess I’ve gotta bite the bullet (so to speak) and go.

I’m just gonna try not to think about it.