 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Thursday, May 01, 2025
James is Home
 The box is lovely, made by a Pennsylvania Amish craftsperson. I fell in love with the beautiful knot and hoped the box I ordered had a similar knot. Instead, they gave me the sample box. We had a wonderful time on our Pennsylvania vacation in 2009, so it's sort of a memory inside a memory.  » Sunday, December 01, 2024
Reasons for Thanks and Reasons for Sorrow
 Tucker did have the ultrasound to make sure he had nothing nasty going on inside him on Monday. He passed with flying colors.Next day and on Wednesday James had doctors' appointments, podiatry on Tuesday and cardiologist on Wednesday. We had a dinner invitation for Thanksgiving Day, but it was across town and we would have to drive home in the dark. Instead we spent Thanksgiving on our own; we made extra turkey so we could have leftovers (and indeed, we ended up eating turkey for weeks). With carrots and stuffing it was a sufficient dinner, and we watched most of the Macy's parade and the National Dog Show. At night we got a treat: Lower Decks! Alas, the final season. We were able to go to Second Thanksgiving, as we call it, at Alice's house. Juanita made a killer turkey and Kayla brought an even more killer ham. The company was even better than the food, even if I've been suffering from a lack of sleep. All this was beside the point. We had gotten a call from James' sister some days ago. Her husband had been cleaning up some debris left over from Hurricane Helene and hurt himself. He was taken to the hospital to get checked out. The doctors found a virulent cancer throughout his body and gave him days to live. He died on November 27. They told my sister-in-law that the cancer was so aggressive that if they had taken the same tests in September, it would not have shown up. Today I put up the outdoor lights and the candoliers, but I hardly feel like Christmas this year. I'd prefer to crawl under a blanket and forget about it. Labels: Christmas, Christmas decorations, death, dogs, family, food, friends, pets, Thanksgiving » Thursday, August 01, 2024
Oliver
By this week, Oliver had turned into Beth March. He seemed sometimes to gain ground—once, for instance, we uncovered him and found him up on the high perch that both Snowy and Schuyler had favored—but despite the antibiotics and the anti-inflammatory, he never seemed to totally gain. I was losing him little by little as each day went by. I think he's been sick for so long that, like Beth, he just couldn't fight the tide going out any longer. He'll pretty much just sit in my hand and fluff up and sleep.
Tuesday I totally forgot the appointment with the vet wasn't until Thursday and took the poor guy all the way over to Vinings. Dr. Bostick wasn't even in the office, but the nurse tried to cheer me up. On the way home, as we were turning off South Cobb Drive, a big wedge of geese flew overhead, right over our heads, honking loudly. I told Oliver maybe someday he could fly with the geese. He was so droopy Wednesday morning, plus he had fallen off his perch at one point (I put some hand towels at the bottom of the cage so he had a soft place to land), but after eating some millet and being vaporized he seemed to perk up. And then I took a nap and when I got up to dress to pick up James, he was doing badly again. He bobbled when he sat on his perch, and otherwise he's asleep or sort of out of it. He was so bad by the time I had to leave I took him with me because I thought he was dying. Cuddled him for the rest of the night. Instead of letting him sleep in the cage, I put food and water in the carry box and covered him with facecloths and he slept on my night table Wednesday night. At six he fell off the perch and I had to cuddle him before putting him back in and going back to bed. Our appointment was today at eleven and I knew what I had to do. Oliver went flying with the geese at about 11:30 a.m. Dr. Bostick took one look at him—but she didn't have to, I already knew. They were all really sweet once they saw how bad he was. Fly, little one, second star to the right and straight on til morning.  My dad died on August 1 in 1985. God, I hate summer. » Sunday, January 28, 2024
When All Was at Its Calmest...
In many ways it was an ordinary week, so terribly ordinary that it would almost be otherwise forgettable. Monday and Tuesday were the usual chores. We had the usual shopping trips. James had physiotherapy and three doctors' appointments, one which wasn't needed (apparently his hemoglobin is finally in the normal range, so he didn't need this week's Procrit shot; he also had his A1C tested and it came out an amazing 5.9).There were a couple of blips: one was that I got very worried over the sore on James' toe and we ended up canceling his sleep study partially because I didn't want him walking that much on his right foot till we saw the podiatrist next week. The other reason we canceled was because our petsitter couldn't come to walk Tucker; her mom had been diagnosed with COVID. We would have had to leave at 6 p.m. and wouldn't be home until 8 a.m. or so, and I didn't think it was fair Tucker would have to go 13-14 hours without getting to pee. I was also worried about the person with COVID, because she was already in shock about something else. » Thursday, June 22, 2023
Returns and Farewell
And the big news is: Strange New Worlds is back! I think this is now tied with Lower Decks as my favorite new Star Trek iteration. (Although Picard season three was pretty wonderful, with Amanda Plummer killing it as a deranged villain.) Is it me, or does Anson Mount's hair get higher with every series? LOL. Labels: conventions, death, food, health, shopping, television » Sunday, February 26, 2023
Lost
Snowy died at 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, February 21.
He was very sad on Monday and was definitely having trouble moving. I'd rearranged his perches on Sunday night to make it easier for him.
I took an Amazon box and cut it down, then lined it with part of his flannel cage cover, and put Snowy in with his favorite toy. He is in the freezer until we can find someone to bury him, as neither James nor I have the strength to dig a hole. James can't even walk into the back yard because it's so uneven. We did not remain unscathed. At bedtime James had shoulder/chest pain and we basically spent the night at Urgent Care. There was nothing wrong with his heart, but his creatitine was in the 4's and he has another UTI. So we got to bed about five a.m. and cancelled out of physiotherapy. Thursday we had to go to James' infusion, where he mused about the results of the test. He's afraid that he's going to have to go back on dialysis soon. There were things to elevate the week, but they didn't quite register. Wednesday night Barnes & Noble had an online seminar with Rupert Holmes about his new book The McMasters Guide to Homicide: Murder Your Employer. This is the first in a series of mystery books about the McMaster's school which teaches you how to commit the perfect murder. Think of it as Hogwarts for adults who want to kill. It's delightfully twisty, following three characters, Cliff, Gemma, and Dulcie, who all want to kill three reprehensible and deserving characters for different reasons. We also went to Books-a-Million on Friday and had lunch at Uncle Maddio's, and on Saturday James went to his model contest. I couldn't stand the quiet house, so went to Sam's Club, and Walmart, and also to Book Nook. » Sunday, October 30, 2022
The Leash, and Other Annoyances
I know he needs it, but James' oxygen line is an absolute pain in the ass.It turns out the oxygen bottles, which we have to drag with us everywhere we go, are an absolute walk in the park compared with the home oxygen; we can just sling the carry bag with the oxy bottle in it on the back of the power chair and zoom on. But the oxygen concentrator for the house, the 40-pound behemoth that sits in the bedroom closet and sounds like a fishtank oxygenator—that's what we call it, "the fishtank"—means James has to wander around the main floor dragging a length of oxygen cord and he's already bloody fallen due to the damn thing. They pulled so much water off him he is weak and tired, and his hands shake. James had a bone scan on Sunday, believe it or not, and also had blood taken; Monday evening Kaiser called him about 10:45 with a frantic call about his BUN being 125! I was so upset I got onto chat with my friend Sherrye (the former nurse) and she had to talk me down. Luckily James was talking to his nephrologist the next day and Dr. Kongara says this probably stems from being on too much of a diuretic. He told him to not take any on Tuesday, then go down to two in the morning (from three) and two in the afternoon (from three) of the torsemide. In the meantime we toted those oxygen tanks to the supermarket and to Ron and Lin's house for Hair Day; Saturday James attended his club meeting via Zoom. Sunday we took Tucker to Petsmart on a birdseed expedition. And I uploaded a new fanfic. And that was our week. (Oh, such sad news...almost forgot. Sweet, funny Leslie Jordan was killed in a car crash. They think he had some kind of medical episode and passed out; his car smashed into something and they couldn't save him.)
» Saturday, July 30, 2022
The Grim Reaper is On the Job: Farewell, Nichelle Nichols!
Well, I shouldn't have complained about a quiet last week. Within a week the Grim Reaper cut a swath through the entertainment (and sports, although I guess pro sports is technically entertainment) industry and we lost Paul Sorvino, David Warner, Tony Dow, Bernard Cribbins, Paul Coker Jr (with "Mad" magazine and Rankin-Bass), basketball great Bill Russell, Pat Carroll, and last because she was the crushing blow: the wonderful Nichelle Nichols. Every day was a one-two punch, especially Nichelle. I didn't think she was ageless, but she seemed timeless. Farewell, Bright Lady, now your trip to the stars has really begun.In the meantime James was in such torment from his back molars he called the oral surgeon back and they got him in on Thursday for a consultation. The result of this was that he will have five teeth (!!!) out on Thursday the 4th, the day after his spinal steroid shots, so he will only have to go off Plavix once for both procedures. In the meantime, he's back to salt rinses and more Ambesol. We also saw Dr. Friedman on Friday and he said the formerly infected toe looks great and the next time he sees podiatry should be for a trim. I had to call the insurance company this week: a tree from our neighbor's yard blew into our yard. It broke right over the fence, gave a minor tap to the deck rail, and is now sitting there like a rolled-over 18-wheeler. Positives: it's not a big tree, but of course that means it won't meet our deductible, whatever that is, so we'll have to pay for it. But someone will have to do it, since the whole honkin' thing is covered with poison ivy. I got itchy just looking it over. In the meantime, James is happy with the new food processor I picked up on Amazon Vine... » Tuesday, September 07, 2021
...And We Didn't Go to DragonCon
We did start prepping for it. I have the 100-calorie packs, the goldfish crackers, the Lance cracker packs, etc. all carefully stacked on a shelf in the laundry room. (Never did find juice boxes!) We talked about it. We had friends that intended to go, and these were the most sensible of our friends. They weren't the type that took unnecessary risks. Nevertheless, we were riding on the edge of that fence for most of the summer. James didn't even ask for Sunday and Monday off, I never reserved parking spaces. The news about the hospitals being overwhelmed by the Delta variant of COVID was daunting. But we were still considering it. When Betty passed away it was the last straw. She and John had just gone away for a weekend, and I know both of them were also sensible. They probably took precautions. And they were both vaccinated. And they both got sick. And Betty died. At this point James had already decided not to go, but oh, I was still thinking... We do have to get up early for DragonCon. I hate getting up early anymore (even though I'll have to do it for the Yellow Daisy Festival...and the Georgia Apple Festival). I don't feel any kind of refreshed unless I get up around 8:30. And you can't do that going to DragonCon. It has to be up early (at 6:30 on Friday because of registration and the traffic, and 7 a.m. other days if you have a panel at ten and you don't want to gulp your breakfast). But, as I admitted to someone, not going felt horrible. I felt like an superannuated firehorse who'd been put out to pasture, but still heard the ringing of the fire bell from the field, and oh, how I wanted to jump the fence and go to the fire, too! And I could still do it, if I wanted: get up at seven, grab some breakfast here to save money, take the car downtown (surely the garages weren't full). But I ended up not doing it because...well, as James and I were talking about: there are always alternate futures, and there was a future in which we both went to DragonCon and nothing happened. But there was also a future where we went and he got sick despite the mask and the lowered crowds, because of his co-morbidities. Or one future where I got sick, and then who would take care of his leg? Or a future where we both got sick...and who would be there for Tucker and Snowy? I could cry all I wanted all weekend about DragonCon (and I did, in odd corners), but nothing would be worse than how I would feel if something happened to James if I encouraged him to go or if the fids got neglected if we came down with the hellish thing. My wish about this past weekend is that in two or three weeks we can look at the posts on Facebook and realize no one we love got sick...not Alice and Ken, nor Aubrey, not all my friends at Brittrack, and that we were too cautious. Because that's so much better than the alternative. The Brittrack folks did do some virtual panels, including one on Agatha Christie and one on early Doctor Who, which were fun, and they did have the DragonCon parade on YouTube. Meanwhile, to make up for things, James took us up to Canton on Friday so we could have some decent pizza at Uncle Maddio's—that poor guy up there is still running the whole place alone since February—and go to Books-a-Million (bought Untamed, about a woman who is protecting the wildlife on Cumberland Island, and The Women's Hour, about the suffrage movement, the latter from the bargain books). It's sad when Books-a-Million has more books than most of the local Barnes & Nobles! We sacked out when we got home and watched Law & Order reruns. Saturday we took our clothes to the cleaner to prep for Jessie and John's wedding, and had dinner for James' birthday at Longhorn. I found a beaut of a gift for him from Hamilton Books: all about British aviation films. Sunday I put up more fall decor and Monday got to see the Sunday morning Christopher Eccleston interview from DragonCon that someone posted on YouTube. (If I'd gotten to see him, it would have meant I would have seen all the available Doctors live...Hartnell having passed on and Jodie Whittaker being unavailable.) Otherwise I've been mainlining Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes in the afternoon from Peacock (and reading fanfic as well), starting from the beginning. Not sure I can stand the eps where they start playing with Goren's head, though. God, how I hated all those Hawaii Five-0 episodes where a member of the cast got tortured! But, gawd, it's fun watching Vincent D'Onofrio play "Detective Twitchy," as James calls him. It's an art form. Labels: books, conventions, death, DragonCon, excursions, friends, health, illness, television » Sunday, August 29, 2021
Black Sunday
I lost a friend today. Even though she and her husband were both vaccinated, they caught COVID-19 a few weeks back. He has recovered, but she was medically fragile and was sent to the hospital. Her health wavered up and down, but finally her lungs became too stressed. This morning I got a message from a mutual friend that she was failing, and she passed on just before noon. We were not just friends but for several years she was also my supervisor at work. I couldn't have worked for a better person, strict but fair, and I learned many things under her tutelage.  My favorite memory of her comes from one of our Twelfth Night parties. I was going from room to room talking with people, and when I got down to the den I had to burst out laughing. She and her husband have always been big dog lovers, and there they were, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, spreading crackers with cheese spread. And then feeding them to our dog Leia, who had stationed herself between them, gratefully accepting all their offerings! So, somewhere out there at Rainbow Bridge, I imagine Leia has found Betty, who is still feeding her cheese and crackers.
» Sunday, November 08, 2020
Triple Strike
Reached an autumn milestone for this year: it was the final lawn mow for 2020. Won't have to pay for it again until April, but sure as little green apples something will come to eat that money. I thought I would have some spare money this month to get ahead on bills, but wham, Medicare charged me for three months instead of just one. Always something else.We spent our three-day weekend getting quotes on glasses frames now that James has a new prescription, plus doing the usual grocery shopping. It was yet another Hallmark Ornament weekend, and we went to the Dallas Highway store with coupons and came home with a needed gift. While we were at Target pricing glasses I noticed they had a DVD sale, three for the price of two, which netted me Greta Gerwig's new version of Little Women, 1917, and the first season of the new British series of His Dark Materials, which surprisingly was only $18. On Friday we had lunch at West Cobb Diner with Alice and Ken and Mel and Phyllis. So those were the nice things. One must have balance. Late in January James saw his primary care doctor and was due for a followup late in March or early in April. Except when he called they told him our doctor (I have him as primary, too) was on leave. This was about when everything started shutting down for COVID-19, so James just talked to some else. During the summer he had a couple of video appointments with other doctors, as they told us out doctor was still on "extended leave." I had a horrible suspicion and rather fretted about it all summer. Any time I had to call Kaiser I asked after him. They would tell me he was still "out of the office." So when James saw him on Wednesday all I feared was true. He did have COVID-19 and was hospitalized at the end of March. He was in the hospital 28 days and spent seventeen of those on a ventilator. When he was finally released he could stand up but had no strength to walk. He spent the next two months in rehab and only started taking patients again at the end of last month. He also had been a rather large man, and it looked like he'd lost at least a hundred pounds. You can see all the figures on television, and listen to the interviews with survivors. But the glass screen is still one last barrier; it doesn't quite hit a hundred percent of "understand" until you've talked to someone who made it through the ordeal. Anyway, we asked him honestly if it would be safe for us to go to South Carolina to visit James' mom, and he said he couldn't recommend it with all James' co-morbidities. They are truly expecting a second surge of the virus for the winter. James is pretty bummed. Friday we learned that actor Geoffrey Palmer had died. As Time Goes By is probably my favorite British comedy series after The Good Life; I always have loved it because it's a show about adults, and ordinary misunderstandings that happen between people who live together. Palmer lived a long and busy life—he was 93!—but it was still melancholic. And now it's Sunday morning and we've learned the sad news about Alex Trebek. I'm a Jeopardy fan from way back, when it was a daytime game show hosted by Art Fleming. If I wasn't in school, I was watching Jeopardy; it was one of my favorite things to view if I was home sick. I used to tell my mom I was going to New York (where the show was filmed at that time) when I was eighteen to try out (no Teen Tournaments back then). Alas, it was cancelled the year I was eighteen. So when Jeopardy came back in 1984 I was delighted. I'd already seen Alex Trebek on other game shows like High Rollers and Wild Cards, and enjoyed him as a host. He fit Jeopardy like a well-tailored suit, and visiting with him daily was always a treat. We will miss him. Labels: autumn, chores, death, DVDs, events, health, shopping, sickness, television » Saturday, September 26, 2020
Let There Be Light...and Danish...
This weekend ended with an announcement: we have finally watched all 261 episodes of the original Perry Mason. I guess it's time to go hunt up The Mandalorian on Disney+ and see what all the fuss is about.In better news, my sister-in-law (so far) is better and should be going back to rehab soon. I hope after this they take better care of her! The two highlights of our weekend were going out to lunch at Olive Garden with a portion of "the lunch bunch" on Friday (Alice, Ken, Aubrey, and Ken's sister Debbie) (James had gotten two restaurant gift cards for his birthday and we used one today, including buying Olive Garden's take-home $5 entree—we got spaghetti and meat sauce) and having Hair Day on Saturday. The latter was funny because Publix had their Danish on sale buy-one-get-one-free, and of course what happened: several people showed up with Danish! However, what was funnier is that we all picked a different kind: we brought maple, Lin got apple cinnamon, and someone else brought raspberry. So we had an assortment after all. Alex made breakfast sliders that were so good even I ate one (after giving James the eggs, of course—cooked eggs, ugh!). On the way home from Olive Garden we saw a memorial billboard to Gale Sayers, who died this week. I don't know anything about football, but Brian's Song will remain in my memory forever. Saturday we also had a trip to Lidl and I vacuumed—much fun, eh? It was at least more fun than Friday's visit to Kaiser for prescriptions and to Walmart to replace one of the burned-out floodlights in front of the garage. (Get LED lights, they said. They last forever, they said.) James replaced it immediately when we got home and I was quite upset that after it lit the first time, it didn't seem to go on again. However, when I went out at night, the photosensor did catch my movement and turn the light on. So the only thing I can think of is that Walmart (they are Walmart-brand floods, which have the motion sensor built into them, for the same price as the brand-name floodlights) has adjusted them so they only go on in the dark and not during the daytime, which I agree is much better. The original other bulb goes on any time day or night. Anyway, the autumn decorations are now all up...just waiting for the temps to go down permanently instead of jacking up and down like they always do in the fall. At least it's not 90°F like it was last year, well into October. Labels: autumn, chores, death, family, food, friends, shopping, television » Saturday, September 19, 2020
Judgments and a Judge Passed On
The good parts about this week, and weekend—including the joyous news that on Wednesday it was 100 days until Christmas, having Tin Drum for dinner on Thursday, James' appointment with his cardiologist going well, and, best of all, that it was cool enough to open the windows and doors, with a great breeze (and there were ordinary things, too, like the exterminator coming to head off the cooler-weather insect invasions and buying new frying pans at Bed, Bath & Beyond)—were completely overwhelmed by the sad news about Chief Justice Ginsberg, and also my sister-in-law ending back up in the hospital. Will you tell me how in the name of God's green earth that a woman in rehabilitation for an amputation, who should have been watched day and night, ended up with a UTI so bad it caused sepsis? And this is the second time it's happened while she has been hospitalized/covered by rehab. The Veteran's Administration medical care in this country is a farce. It really hasn't changed in one hundred years, when the Coolidge administration had it investigated for gross abuse of the system (people earning an annual salary for only working four days in the year—not in a week or a month, but four days only in one year—and orderlies selling the gold intended for fillings for veterans' teeth). Last time I was in a VA hospital it stunk of urine and feces.It was bad enough inattention from the VA caused her to lose her foot in the first place! As for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, what changes have taken place during her time in the court! These are freedoms we need to cherish and keep. God bless, Your Honor. » Sunday, May 19, 2019
Time Moves Forward (And Does Not Tarry With Yesterday)
We all travel in time, the saying goes. We just travel forward and can't go back.
I'd had the time after WHOlanta pegged as quiet time, but it's been anything but—nothing really bad for us personally, thank God, but one unexpected and tragic event has happened and some interesting events have occurred. On May 6, we heard that we lost our friend Claudia Barbour. James and I last saw Claudia at the Apple Annie craft show at the beginning of December. She was with a friend and we learned she was being treated for cancer. She told us things were going well, and we invited her to the Twelfth Night party, but she didn't come and we assumed it was because she was not feeling well due to the treatments. Evidently things did not "go well" after that December day. We remember her friendship and the fun we had launching model rockets in her horse pasture, her smile and the twinkle in her eyes. I am continuing to try to walk more, not just for exercise, but to help my vitamin D, which is in the tank. I'm at an age where I need to worry about bone density. Tramping the same mile and a half route out of the development and back in does become monotonous, but I have been listening to podcasts ("Happier" with Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft at present, until I catch up) while I do, and trying to observe what nature can be observed on a suburban street, which included having a good look and sniff at Chinese privet and honeysuckle blossoms. (I wish they made perfume that smelled like the privet! I would buy it!) Most of the time I am amused by the birds. One morning Tucker and I were buzzed by a swallow at least four times. Since we just walked up and down the street a couple of times that day since I was keeping an eye out for the A/C guy and we were nowhere near someplace that could be a nesting site, I'm assuming this is a dashing young swallow enjoying his wings and his ability to turn on a dime. A avian Eddie Rickenbacker, as it were. One morning as we approached the daycare center down on the main road, which has a big lawn to the left of the structure, we saw a funny bird territorial dispute. There was a robin hunting worms there and apparently a male cardinal had the temerity to try and hunt a meal there, too. The robin kept chasing him off—they did that fluttering circling around each other and hissing birds do when they fight--and still the cardinal kept coming back! He only flew off a few yards when Tucker and I finally reached the driveway. The following morning a male bluebird was perched on one of the mailboxes and I don't think I was more than two yards away from him. To my surprise instead of flying away, he flew to the sidewalk directly in front of me and pecked at something for a minute, so I could admire his lovely blue wings. I even had a close encounter with a silver spotted skipper (a type of small butterfly) who was perched on a mailbox post one morning. I stopped to admire the dark wings with the orange spots on the top and the broad white stripe under the wings, and, on a whim, held out my forefinger to it as you might to a pet bird. To my surprise it stepped up on my finger and actually let me carry it a few driveways before it fluttered off on its way. What a magical experience. And once in a while something cute happens: one morning as we meandered toward the stop sign on Sandtown Road, walking toward us was a man with a tiny little girl. I think she was only about twice Tucker's height, and you could hear her chattering for quite a distance. As we grew closer, she saw Tucker and started repeating "Doggie! Doggie!" and the dad (I guess) asked if she could pet Tucker because "She has a cat, but wants a dog." I said "Sure, if he can quit sniffing at whatever he's sniffing at!" Would you believe Tucker was so absorbed in whatever he was trailing he had hardly noticed they were there and looked surprised when she tried to pet him? He loses track of everything when he's trailing a scent. 😊 More prosaically, the aforementioned HVAC guy did arrive to do his semiannual check. We didn't need a filter replacement at the time, so the filter I ordered is back in the garage until autumn. I was happy to finally receive George Winston's a new album this month, as he has been undergoing cancer treatment and not done one for quite a while. I've had it on pre-order since I heard it was being released. I have to be honest; his new albums are not as good as his old—not his piano playing itself, that is as lovely as ever, but in what music he is playing. This may be due to his health, or just his own changing tastes. I'm not really into The Doors, and while I love his Vince Guaraldi tributes, I prefer his own compositions. To temper the sad news about Claudia, we also were able to celebrate Lin Butler's retirement at Longhorn on the 10th. Good food, good friends, good chat, and a cake; you can't ask for anything better. In routine news, I've done some spring cleaning of the master bedroom (oh, that ceiling fan! not to mention the one in the living room) and did the saddest spring task, washing and drying and putting away all the jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves. Once again we barely had a spring, but went almost directly from chill at night and nice days to 80s and, starting next week, 90s! Of course it was open window weather when the pine pollen was at its worst, so we lost over two weeks of fresh air for not wanting yellow dust all over the house. The best television news so far: The Orville has been renewed by Fox. This has been the best season! It's still a weird show sometimes, but it gets more and more thought-provoking each week. And, in what could have been sad news, this month we also bid farewell to The Big Bang Theory after twelve seasons. James and I didn't watch this series at first; it sounded dumb. But at one of the conventions we were going back and forth to the con suite, and one time we had an hour or two between panels, and it was playing constantly on the television. After the convention we started watching the reruns on two different channels and the first run episodes on the network, and we eventually started collecting the DVDs. So this will be our final year of the tradition of buying the DVD set at Best Buy on Black Friday! It was a fun, fuzzy ending: Sheldon finally realized what he had, Leonard got to tell him off, we finally saw the Wolowitz kids, Amy got a new look and enjoyed it, and Sheldon and Amy did indeed get a Nobel Prize. They also tied it in with the end of the season finale of Young Sheldon, where ten-year-old Sheldon is listening to a shortwave broadcast of the Nobel Prize awards all alone, not knowing his future friends (shown as kids) are "somewhere out there." Later they did a wrap-up special. All very satisfactory. I will miss Big Bang, but I'm not absolutely heartbroken over its end. It's a good place to leave it. Better it goes now before someone does a Castle to it. The big news in the last week has been James' new work schedule. Several people have left and there was not enough coverage on weekends. Alas, after so many years of being free of it, James is relegated to working one weekend day again. He chose Sunday since this will leave Saturday free for his club meeting and also for Hair Day. He also is working four 10-hour days, so his schedule is now Sunday through Wednesday. We have just begun the second week and hope to provide a little more routine to the new schedule, as last week was rather unsettled. The big event last week was James' second MOHS surgery on Thursday. He had another small basal cell cancer mole removed from near his left ear. The procedure took only two hours and then we were home with him having to ice the site every two hours. We followed all the instructions—although I almost went spare when we couldn't find the polysporin (we aren't allowed to use Neosporin), but finally remembered it was in the suitcase because we had to take it with us when we went to Atomicon—and it looks as if it is healing nicely, at least as far as "Nurse Linda" can see. The only problem with the new schedule is that we are not eating until 7:30-8:00. This is going to play hob with both our weights. It's already bugging my digestion. One afternoon when he teleworked we did eat dinner rather than supper and that "went down" (literally) better, but that's not going to work when he's in the office. My best hope is to either have something cooked right when he gets home at about 7:40 p.m. or if it's something he needs to cook have everything prepped when he walks in the door. I can always walk two miles, but he can't walk at all. Guess I'd better get that exercise bicycle I bought a couple of days ago assembled and see if he can ride it. Then there was the phone saga. Last week while he was teleworking, James dropped his phone as he has dozens of times before. Unfortunately this time it hit one of the legs of the laptop desk rather than the carpet. When he picked it up it was "bruised" with tiny flecks of purple at the bottom of the screen. As the day proceeded, so did the "bruise." By next morning the screen was almost totally purple-black and unusable except for answering phone calls, since James could just swipe up in the usual place to answer it. So that evening we found ourselves at Best Buy. He was particularly interested in the new, less expensive Pixel 3a, which has the headphone jack restored to it, and he needs the headphone jack since his home headphones have Bluetooth, but they don't stay on between calls, so he uses the wire instead for reliability. But despite all the publicity about the damn things on the review sites and on television, Best Buy didn't have any in stock and James needed one for Wednesday at work. He ended up with a Motorola G7, which has twice the storage memory, and the ability to load a microSD card. The camera apparently isn't as good as the Pixel, but, you know, if we want good pictures we do have real cameras. I was quite envious, as I've made no secret that I've never been happy with the original Pixel we got back on Black Friday of 2016. It was too small (they were out of the XL size), it didn't do a lot of the things my old Droid Turbo did (I'd wanted the Droid Turbo 2, but the ads made the Pixel sound like the greatest thing since HD-TV), and I missed the Moto Voice feature. (I eventually named the phone "U.P." for "Useless Phone.") Plus right before WHOlanta it started eating battery out of nowhere; one night I barely got to the car to plug it in before it died. I'd take it off the charger, read Facebook (no video watching) for ten minutes, and it would go down fifteen percent. So Saturday while we were out I went and picked up another G7. Alas, the one feature of Moto Voice that I loved most, the fact that you could give it a passphrase rather than using "Okay, Google" to ask it a question, Motorola (actually Lenovo) has gotten rid of. Otherwise, it's quite nice. I did have a bobble loading my old podcast app. It was a free app, but limited in how many feeds you could download and had ads. So for $3 I bought the full version (unlimited feeds and no ads), which was a separate unlock app. Usually when you buy a new Android phone, if you have been backing up religiously to Google, all your apps will re-download onto the new phone if you give it permission to do so. When they all downloaded, the unlock app was not there. When I checked the Google store, it wasn't there either, and as I checked the app itself, I realized it hadn't been updated since 2015. So, orphan app. I looked around for the best substitute and found Podbean. I'd downloaded it, added some feeds, made some playlists, but it was dreadfully awkward; you had to add to a playlist and then download as a separate function; MyPOD did this in one action if you set it up that way. And if you used the shortcut widget, whatever podcast you were in last automatically started to play. Very provoking, and I couldn't find anything in the settings to stop it. So on a whim I loaded up MyPOD on the phone anyway to see what would happen and it mostly still works, with no ads, and I can add all the feeds I had before (I just stuck the backup feed file on the phone and told it to import and everything was there). You can't sort by title properly anymore, and every time you open it it asks that you load the unlock app, but the feeds still download and the podcasts still play. So I'll use it until it doesn't work anymore and then go back and wrestle with Podbean again. (I should be able to go into the file folder on the old phone and actually find the .apk file for the unlock app, but I haven't been able to manage that. I did it previously on an older Android phone. Not sure if they've taken away that ability or they've just hidden the files too well.) [Update, May 20: I decided there must be a solution to this problem, and I found it: an app called APK Extractor (yeah, go figure). I extracted the .apk folder from my old phone and saved it to Google Drive, then went to Google Drive and extracted it to my new phone. Viola, as Snagglepuss used to say. I can see my mother giving me that look, cupping her right hand with the thumb and first three fingers joined and bobbing it at me, and calling me "Calabrese!" Makes me laugh and cry at the same time.] And, as Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is." Labels: birds, chores, death, dogs, exercise, flowers, food, friends, health, music, pets, podcasts, retirement, smartphones, television, work |
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