Has this happened to you, PT resident? I’m betting yes.

Let’s call it the “Too Not Live” crew effect. 

We’d driven 100 miles from the Methow through the gorgeous North Cascades National Park on Highway 20 on our way to Coupeville to catch the ferry. We’d just crossed I-5 near Mt. Vernon about 3 p.m. Oh, oh. Text message.

All the ferries for the rest of the day have been cancelled because of shortage of crew. Use the Edmonds ferry as an alternative, it advised. Some alternative. 

So off we went, headed south on I-5 at 70 m.p.h., just avoiding a massive traffic jam thanks to a timely Google Maps accident alert.

We got to Edmonds with 10 minutes to spare. But the waiting line was, ugh, long. But (phew) what luck … we were the second-to-last car on the sailing.

Then came another belated text:  They’d just located crew and Coupeville sailings had resumed (groan).

Crewing on the ferries is an ongoing problem. This was a practical demonstration of that. It’s just part of living on a semi-isolated peninsula. 

— One of the candidates in last night’s Vice-Presidential debate has an apt nickname, Methro Dull. Guess which one.

— They’ve  already begun stringing lights for the huge, well-worth-seeing holiday light display over at the Sequim casino. Yes, this far from Christmas. Hundreds of thousands of lights. If you want to see a light show, check out the parade of cruise ships that goes by Point Wilson each Friday night. 

— I like comedian Larry “Bubbles” Brown’s striking comment: “Boeing mechanics are on strike. That means more metal falling from the sky.”

— The  50th season (egad) of “Saturday Night Live” will  begin on NBC next week, and a new movie will commemorate it.  I take belated credit for getting the comedy show on the air — in Hawaii, of all places.

Explanation: I was the television critic for the morning daily, the Honolulu Advertiser (pretty good gig, watching TV for a living in Hawaii). I’d heard about the new show when it first began.

I happened to be in the office of the general manager of KHON-TV, Honolulu’s NBC affiliate. I happened to spot two large,  three-quarter inch broadcast tapes on his desk marked “SNL.” In those days, there was no satellite transmission of TV shows. All of Hawaii’s shows were flown in. 

I asked the disinterested TV exec to screen the show for me; I’d heard good things about it. 

We watched the “SNL” premiere together.  I was surprised by its freewheeling originality. Afterwards, the exec asked me if I liked it. I told him “You’d be crazy not to air it.” And he did. Mahalo. 

(My other contribution to Hawaiian TV comedy: getting the PBS Honolulu affiliate to air “Monty Python’s Circus.”) You’re welcome. 

— It was a sad scene recently to see the last game played in the legendary Oakland Coliseum before the A’s decamped for Oy Vegas. I once pitched there … in the annual media charity softball game. (I was then a columnist at the Oakland Tribune.)  It was weird to see myself in replays on the big Jumbotron. The historic stadium, alas,  now sits empty. 

— I think of that great old gag about the definition of macho: jogging home after your vasectomy every time I hear the ubiquitous phrase “low T” on radio ads. But I love hearing the Texas drawl of actor Sam Elliott (of “Big Lebowski” fame) in those Kamala Harris TV ads. He intones, “Be a Man. Vote for a Woman,” Great ad. 

— Disappearing political signs of the times: I’ve been volunteering down at the bustling Democratic HQ handing out fast-disappearing Kamala yard signs. For various reasons, we no longer have any of the ubiquitous Harris signs. The other day I got a surprise when a couple from Whidbey Island looking for one spotted my name on my name tag and recognized me from a daily I wrote for in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sorry, but I couldn’t get them Harris signs either.

Jefferson is the second-bluest county in the state, and PT has almost as many Kamala yard signs as there are cars in front of homes. 

One yard sign I’d like to get my hands on: Two insects, labeled deer tick and dog tick next to a Trump picture reading … “luna tick.”  

Local humorist Bill Mann is also known as Newsmann9@gmail.com