Driving around on garbage pickup day in my neighborhood, I noticed a tremendous amout of cardboard stacked up alongside the recycling bins.

Hmmmm. What’s going on? Then I realized how much cardboard I had put out myself because of the many orders my wife had made via Amazon and other online retailers.

Obviously, COVID-19 has had a tremendous effect on in-person shopping. For the past couple of years, the numbers of home deliveries have skyrocketed. For many of us, that is a big relief because we’ve been avoiding contact with others, especially mask-less people who do not take COVID-19 restrictions seriously.

But as restrictions have been rolled back, I often find myself as the only masked person in a big room, whether it be on the dance floor at the Old Edison on Sunday nights or at karaoke down the street at the Longhorn Bar and Grill.

One very inebriated man started yelling at me at the Longhorn last week because I was the only person there wearing a mask. I get that you can’t have a mask on when you are eating and drinking, but if you’re just sitting there, waiting for your turn to sing a song, I always err on the side of caution.

The number of deaths in our state have risen steadily from January of 2021 until July of 2022 with numbers in the thousands. I get that we are all tired of hearing this news, but another way to react is to be more careful and if you don’t care about yourself, please care about others.

The good news is that the heat wave that is engulfing our country makes Washington state the place to be. A chart on CNN the other night showed Washington to be one of the only states that was not in red with temperatures skyrocketing elsewhere.

My buddy William Shatner asked me to find a place for him to buy up here so that his kids and grandkids could breathe in the years to come. Bill is 90 years old and just came back from a trip to outer space. He is taking the threat of global warming very seriously. I suggest you all listen to Captain Kirk when it comes to the best examples we can set for our children and grandchildren.