 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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» Sunday, March 31, 2024
Almost Easter
 Sort of an interesting Holy Week in making some old progress. Back in 2022, I stopped listening to the Colonial Williamsburg podcasts (I was busy writing, and I can't write and pay attention at the same time). I had caught up on all the Gretchen Rubin podcasts, and need to catch up on "A Way With Words," but wanted to get to the Williamsburg ones, too. This week I started listening to them again and hope to keep up with Rubin and catch up with both the others.
Most of the opening of the week was chores. James did have an MRI on his toe on Wednesday. His right baby toe, the one that showed up with a sore in January, is still not healed. It doesn't look infected, but skin isn't growing on top of it and healing it up, so the doctor wants to make sure the bone isn't infected. (Got the report later in the week; it's not.) Thursday James' Procrit shot was scheduled early, although we tried to change it. So we went by Lidl on the way home, and I got both chicken drumsticks on sale and some boneless pork ribs, so I made cacciatore for supper and also made gravy for later. And we had a nap, too! It was a quiet Good Friday: we had to run out to pick up meds, but I did listen to the BBC Lent Talks. On Saturday while our low-sodium ham was marinating in pineapple, we went to Barnes & Noble and to Hobby Lobby. In the evening I watched the spooky movie Stir of Echoes. Kathryn Erbe is in it, just before she did Criminal Intent. It was pretty creepy, but turned out to be a little of a murder mystery, too. And Easter was quiet. Unfortunately I had to wash towels since we were out of facecloths. I watched my two Easter favorites, Here Comes Peter Cottontail and The Easter Promise, and we had ham and potatoes for dinner, and then...dark chocolate Lindt bunnies! Yay! Labels: Easter, food, Good Friday, health, holidays, movies, podcasts, shopping, television  » Sunday, February 18, 2024
Hearts and...More Books, Of Course
This was a week of getting tiny things done (like mending), Valentine's Day, and of a short trip that ended in a rather blah manner.
The best news was that I finished the taxes, sent the state their $28, and anticipated the refund. James had them charge him the full tax rate when he cashed out his 401K, but we made so little this year he's getting it all back. We'll do what he did with the 401K money, put it toward his credit card, because those individual physiotherapy/Kaiser bills add up fast. We don't do much for Valentine's Day anymore. It was a nice day, so after physical therapy we stopped at Walmart. We bought yogurt and sugar-free candy, but most of what I wanted I just had to order. Walmart is nowhere near stocked the way it used to be. We also stopped at an Indian grocery store in the same shopping center (we thought it was the one Jerry recommended, but it wasn't). To my surprise, they had jars of lupini beans. Of course I grabbed some; nice to have them on this side of town. For supper we had the shrimp we got at Publix in a scampi sauce with spaghetti, with caramel-center dark chocolate hearts for dessert. His Valentine gift arrived in the mail that evening just in time: I got him a set of accessories for his air fryer. He bought me Ali Hazelwood's Bride. On Friday we did something we hadn't done for a while: went to the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead. It was a good bookstore trip, but we ended up eating at IHOP on the way home. I don't want to eat here anymore; any meal I'm interested in gives me heartburn, and I won't eat eggs, and I don't want total carbs (like pancakes or French toast) for dinner. Did more books on Sunday: 2nd and Charles trip, but didn't buy anything. James also went in Hobbytown while I stayed outside and read--I was in the midst of a rather absorbing story. Sunday was also the day we watched Oppenheimer. Interesting filming technique--but "Oppy" seemed like a weird duck. Glad I saw it, but don't ever see myself watching it again. Labels: books, chores, errands, food, movies, shopping, taxes » Sunday, January 21, 2024
De-Christmased At Last
"Doggedly I continued." And finally today, Sunday, January 21, it is all put away in the closet and I vacuumed downstairs to boot.It took a while, although there was a Monday rush: I had to get everything downstairs removed and stored because we were going to have a severe cold snap (lows in the teens) this week. I didn't want to freeze my feet off downstairs. So Monday, between chores, I took down everything in the library and the airplane tree in the hallway. Happily, the foyer stuff was already down. On Tuesday I took down all the dining room decorations and the Christmas village and the board it sits on over the mantel shelf. The latter killed my back, so I spent Tuesday evening watching Killers of the Flower Moon, which I was so interested in seeing after reading the book. I found it turgid and overlong, and wondered why Martin Scorsese chose to center the narrative around Molly's useless husband Ernest, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his larcenous uncle, played by Robert DiNiro. It was gross watching these two slimeballs plotting the deaths of Molly's family so they could take over their oil shares, while Ernest professed to love Molly! Oh, the cinematography was great: there's one haunting scene where Molly is dying because blockhead Ernest is slowly poisoning her via her insulin, and there's a fire outside, and her sickroom is lit with flames as she burns up with fever. It doesn't help that I'm not a DiCaprio fan at all; I would have liked to seen more of the Native Americans and also of the FBI search for the culprit instead of Leo as a lazy horse's ass. The cold came rushing in on Wednesday; I wore my "Rhode Island weight" winter coat to physiotherapy—finally, already, Kaiser!—and to Publix. The wind had a blade edge. Compounded with this, our internet service was dead all day. It's not like we didn't have stuff to watch, and we both ended up hotspotting on our phones and could get on the internet, but it was still frustrating. It was very localized, too, just in our neighborhood; I suspect that some idiot with a backhoe or a ditch witch severed the fiber line and that's why it took so long to restore. Thursday we had a big fat dose of reality. James goes to podiatry every six weeks to get his feet inspected due to the diabetes and get a proper nail trim. Pretty much every night I rub lotion on James' legs and feet and treat any injuries on his legs where the skin is fragile. Today the doctor found a sore on the right side of his right baby toe, about 5 millimeters in diameter, with evidence of penetration under the skin. I put the lotion on from the left side and usually check his feet and toes, but this got completely past me. James got an x-ray to see if there is infection down to the bone—there is no pus but the toe is faintly redder than the others—and I have to keep Mupirocin on it with a covering of Mepilex AG, and we have to come back in two weeks. James thinks it might be because he's wearing the Skechers instead of slippers and they are a little narrower, and the wound came from the shoe rubbing his toe. But he's been wearing them around the house since October and the raw spot was not there when he went to podiatry six weeks ago! I'm just appalled that I missed it in the first place and am kicking myself. The tests came back by yesterday and the infection is not in the bone, but he does have staph. I hope the Mupirocin works. I took the Christmas tree down on Friday, to the accompanying scream of my back, taking solace in Lassie episodes. There has been a "Lassie channel" on Xumo for a month or two, but they were mostly repeating the Jeff episodes and the transitional episodes over and over and not in order. Well, the same channel is now a Roku Live Channel, and they appear to now go through eighth season. So seventh season Lassie took my mind off my aches and pains on Friday, and when we got done at Lidl, Publix, and Kroger on Saturday, then had a nice trip to Barnes & Noble, I lucked out when we got home and "Lassie's Odyssey" was just starting! Solid gold Lassie, my favorite story from when I saw the original broadcast in February 1962. (Of course the asshole chimpanzee story "Casey" came next, but one can't have everything.) I wish I could say "now we can relax" but starting Wednesday we have a marathon three days of doctors' appointments (and of course it's going to freakin' rain) and then another spate of them starting Monday the 29th. ::groan:: And I still need to bathe the dog and change the bed. Sunday I got all the Christmas stuff back into the downstairs closet. Yay! Labels: Christmas, Christmas decorations, internet, Lassie, movies, sickness, television, weather » Sunday, January 14, 2024
"Undecorating," the Garbage Rustlers, and a Lift
Found myself struggling this week: first it was putting up the Christmas decorations, now it was taking them down.It didn't help that I was distracted by other tasks that needed doing. For instance, James has been having trouble turning left out of our street. There is some kind of waxy-leaved bushes that were planted out front when they built the neighborhood, which are now taller than they were eighteen years ago. He can't see the cars coming up on his left on the main road. So Monday morning after my dog walk I marched up to the front with my hedge clipper and took down about half of it. This should have been a quick and easy job, but evidently the battery is not charging properly and I had to keep unlatching it and plugging it in again. Very frustrating. I came home and ordered a new battery. Zounds! It's one third the price of the hedge clipper! Labels: chores, Christmas, Christmas decorations, events, food, health, movies, organizing, shopping, television » Sunday, January 07, 2024
New Year: Parade Dreams, Films, Friends, and Fun
This week began with the Rose Parade and ended with party cleanup.The Rose Parade was covered live on KTLA in Los Angeles and we watched that feed cast to the television instead of the commercial-ridden network broadcasts. Other than sorting medications for the week, did nothing on New Year's Day except eat junk food and watch Galaxy Quest. The day ended on a satisfactory note with the two-hour M*A*S*H retrospective: just the cast and the producers talking about the show and the changes of format, no dubious celebrities telling us how much they loved the show. Tuesday I updated all the copyrights on my web page so I could do my monthly web site backup. Except when I went to do the backup, the backup drive was gone. It usually sits next to my computer desk and has been in that location for over a year. But, apparently, it, and the container it was in, at some point tipped over and fell in the wastebasket, and it was sometime previous to when I emptied the baskets for trash last Thursday. Annoyed that I now have to go waste money on a new one. Kaiser still hasn't reupped James' referral to physiotherapy, so we went to MicroCenter on Wednesday instead; I got the cutest little two terabyte (it's about the size of a deck of cards) backup drive that can be hung up on the side of the tower instead of near the basket. It was a grey, bitterly cold day and it was good to get home after we went to Publix next door. Thursday we did our monthly trip to Canton: strolling the aisles of Books-a-Million, then lunch at Uncle Maddio's Pizza, and finally a stop at BJ's for maple syrup and fruit cups. On Friday James had his second iron infusion. I posted a short story on AO3 and cross-posted on Fanfiction.net. We ate supper out so as not to have to dirty dishes. Alas, it seems the Okinawa on Dallas Highway doesn't have beef bulgogi like the one on the East-West Connector. I had Mandarin beef instead, but it wasn't a fair trade. And Saturday was our Twelfth Night party! We ran to Hair Day quickly to get James' hair cut, then came home to finish tidying up and then it was time for food and conversation. We had a couple of call-outs as the Spiveys and the Butlers both were under the weather, but it was a great time anyway. Clay and Maggi and Bill and Caran were here until midnight talking up a storm. Sunday was cleanup day, and I went outside and took down the lights as well since there's a massive rainstorm coming on Tuesday. Watched three good movies this week: Operation Mincemeat (now I can't wait to read the book!), Feast of the Seven Fishes (which kinda reminded me of Mystic Pizza but more low-key; I liked the Italian family dynamics more than the jerky Yuppie mother who was trying to force the rich boyfriend on the blond girlfriend), and Knives Out, which was so really convoluted (and I thought some of the families on Law & Order: Criminal Intent were bad). Labels: books, computers, electronics, fanfiction, food, friends, movies, New Year, nostalgia, parties, shopping, television, weather » Sunday, May 28, 2023
Food, Friends and Bookstores
A blissfully slow week except that James has been feeling a bit down. He had the second of two iron infusions this week and really feels it when they do that, because it doesn't make him feel better, and he's exhausted when he's off the Ferrex supplements.Tuesday his physiotherapy session was early, so afterward we went to Half-Price Books—I'd finally watched Mystic Pizza when I cleaned off the DVR, and wanted a copy. Found Book Lovers cheap, so got that, too. Almost bought the first Will Trent novel, but it looked too noir for me. The series is really sanitized. Did some cleaning during the week, and then there were two very nice lunches with friends as well! On Friday we went back to Tofu Village with Alice, Ken, Aubrey, Mel, and Phyllis. Had beef bulgogi again with all the nifty little sides. Had a nice discussion with Aubrey about the usefulness of AI in some situations. Been hearing and reading more about AI this week replacing creative writing and it boils my blood. I don't want to read books and see art done "by AI." Maybe you can do summaries in AI, but not books. Maybe you can use computers to render art, but they should be directed by a human, not automatically compiled out of other people's original art! On Saturday, our friend Shari, who lives in Birmingham, and her niece Jenny were in town, and we had a big, happy, noisy lunch at Longhorn. Shari just had a hip replacement and was walking stiffly, but she was walking! On the way home we stopped for ice cream, and then watched the National Memorial Day Concert. We have watched Gary Sinese and Joe Mantegna grow old on this special! As always, tears, and some fabulous performances. » Sunday, January 22, 2023
Health and Welfare
It's been kind of a frustrating week. By the 18th I had all the Christmas things put up, and the regular fall items back up. I did not put up all the winter things; it felt like there were too many of them and I need to trim them down. I won't be getting rid of the winter village, but I didn't put that up. What I had up suited how I felt.On Thursday I had an occurrence where my heart started to race (not palpitations, but in the 80s and 90s) for what I thought was no reason. I was feeling off for most of the end of the week, even though we did go out to lunch. I'm a little harassed because I don't think Snowy is feeling well. Since James retired and we changed our schedule, he's seemed a little quieter. James figures it's because he's not talking on the phone all day, giving Snowy some feedback. He says Snowy still sings when he gets up to make breakfast, and he's been doing something cool since the beginning of the year: he gets up and makes oatmeal for the two of us, real oatmeal. He says it doesn't take long, and he sits and has a cup of tea in the five minutes he has to stir it to keep it from sticking. I put real maple syrup on it, and it tastes so much better than the instant; I didn't realize how much until I had to have an instant the other day. Labels: birds, chores, Christmas decorations, food, health, movies, pets » Saturday, December 31, 2022
Books! New Year's Eve! Books! Lunch Again Finally! And Did We Mention Books?
Monday morning my lower GI rebelled against all the rich food from Christmas dinner. I did get some cleaning done, but most of the day I was in the bathroom. Fortunately this let up by Tuesday because I opened Facebook that morning–
–and discovered that on Monday and Tuesday Barnes & Noble had every single hardback in their stores half price. I started the laundry then we went out forthwith, first to the B&N at Akers Mill, and then to the B&N in Buckhead, and bought lots and lots of Christmas gifts for next year, nine gifts all told including two for James, and, yes, I bought books for myself, including the Crayola anniversary book, the anniversary coffee table book for A Visit from St. Nicholas, full of wonderful illustrations, a Norman Rockwell dog book, a gorgeous Frances Mayes photo book about Italy, Sarah Miller's Marmee (same author who did Caroline about Caroline Ingalls), Vesper Flights, and Christmas Past. By Friday we were able to go back to our weekly lunches, although O'Charley's cheated us out of our salads this time, and by Saturday I'd found the Susan Branch calendar I'd misplaced, I wrapped up a few last gifts for the gift exchange at the Lawsons on January 14, and put up the 2023 calendars. We watched The Poseidon Adventure and Ellery Queen: "The Adventure of Auld Lang Syne," and finally Rudolph's Shiny New Year and had dinner, and spent the evening at Alice and Ken's to end off the year, enjoying snacks and goodies, and watching some football. Happy 2023 everyone! Labels: books, friends, movies, New Year, television » Saturday, July 23, 2022
The Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
Sort of a blah week, mostly chores and nothing much worth writing about, except that James finally got his Medicare card, so that we could fill out his Kaiser papers for Medicare Advantage. Oh, and we ended up going to two different Walmarts to find various little things. So exciting, eh?Friday was a little more exciting because we went to "re-up" the post office box for the HOA and we also watched Encanto, which was colorful and fun, with entertaining characters. I love the aunt who always had the rain cloud following her around, and I felt bad for poor Bruno (who we really should have talked about 😔 ). The other Friday event was a little more exciting in a way I didn't want it to be. When I took Tucker out for his nightly walk, we were accosted almost immediately by a rather...I guess I could say excited...pit bull type dog. He was not vicious or threatening, but Tucker felt intimidated and started growling at him, and this dog wasn't huge, but he was big and could have hurt either of us if "Little Caesar" there started being aggressive back. So I kept shooing him off and we did get back inside. But Tucker did need to get out and pee! So I finally loaded him into the car and went to the front of the complex, figuring maybe the dog belonged to or was visiting someone in the back. While Tucker was sniffing and peeing out front, I saw an SUV slowly coming down the street, and someone calling. When the car came abreast us, the woman driving called to me "Have you seen a blue pittie?" and I said yes, that he was down our street. In fact the dog was just trotting up the street and was about two houses away. The lady drove her SUV up to him and I heard her say "You bad boy!" Soon he was whisked away and we got back in the car and drove the several feet home. That's the most adventure I want in my week, thanks, unless I win the lottery. » Saturday, July 09, 2022
Fireworks Large and Small
The week opened with fireworks! Nothing major, just Independence Day: James had to work as always, but nobody called, so we did our annual watch of 1776, and I put on the first five episodes of Alistair Cooke's America (from the Native Americans to the first westward movement). Used one of the pork loins in the fridge to make barbecue pork in the Instant Pot (pressure cooker settings) and it was quite yummy with sweet corn, plus watermelon chunks for dessert.James went to the podiatrist on Tuesday. The antibiotic was already helping with the infection; the podiatrist cut away the left side of the toenail and then put acid on it to keep it from growing back. He has to soak his foot ten minutes in Epsom salts for a week and then I am to drown it in Betadyne and wrap it up each night. Business as usual, sadly. Labels: books, cars, chores, decorating, food, Independence Day, movies, television » Saturday, June 04, 2022
And Yet More Books...
Well, summer has officially arrived. Yeah, I know, it's not the solstice yet. Actually, meteorological summer started June 1, and on Thursday, June 2, it was 93℉. That, folks, is summer.We braved it anyway after doing a morning of grocery shopping; we ate a sandwich each and then went to Barnes & Noble. I gave in and renewed my discount card; I mean, someone has to keep them in business. I ended up buying five books (including a birthday gift for James), four of them at "buy one, get the second for half price," including the one about forensics in Agatha Christie novels, plus both of the Jurassic World magazines that have just come out. The "Hollywood Spotlight" version has a killer pic of Sam Neill. Yum. Something else was put in motion on Thursday, but...let it simmer for now. Hoping things will be happier when...it's done. The rest of the week was quiet as we really didn't have anywhere else to go. On Friday we just decided to get takeout from Dragon168. This gave me a chance to duck into Publix and pick up the ramen noodles we forgot, and they also had unsalted vegetable broth; neither of the Publix we shop at carry it any longer. I spent Friday afternoon blogging, finished my latest L&O: CI story, and, in the best news, The Orville is back! The first episode dealt with the aftermath of Isaac's treachery, and introduced a new character, Charly Burke, the Orville's navigator. She's very good, and the score of the episode was spectacular. James went off to his club meeting on Saturday afternoon, and I was going to watch Emerald City, but my lower GI decided to rebel. Instead I washed the winter jackets and did the weekly vacuuming and watched Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Peacock instead. Labels: books, events, food, magazines, movies, shopping, television, weather, writing » Sunday, April 17, 2022
Books, Bunnies, and More D'Onofrio
This was about an average week. Earlier I got the dog brushed out and trimmed the nandina bushes out front (the firecracker bushes are still partially dormant, which is odd). And the grass was cut this week, but at least I wasn't woken up by the mower!Alas, it was another Thursday we had to go by Kaiser. James is on his third UTI in a row. He'll stop taking the antibiotics on Monday and by Wednesday things get cloudy again. Happily, James sent a note to his new urologist and they ordered him up a test right away on Monday; Thursday being the first day we could go. And then we had to go shopping, the usual nonsense. I was incensed when I picked up some cans of no-salt mushrooms for James: the price on these little suckers has doubled since the pandemic. Labels: books, Christmas, Easter, food, Good Friday, health, movies, shopping, television » Saturday, April 09, 2022
A Split Weekend
It was a good week for television: "Benjamin Franklin," a two-part documentary by Ken Burns, aired on PBS. I also watched once again an old favorite, The Andromeda Strain, which I hadn't run in a few years. The best thing they ever did was recast Dr. Peter Leavitt as Dr. Ruth Leavitt—and not a busty youthful babe with long
dark hair and come-hither eyes, but a middle-aged crusty woman
scientist. Kate Reid is magnificent in this film.We also had a temporary change in schedule for this week. James got a call from his supervisor on Monday: there was a coverage problem on Thursday, could he work Thursday? In return he could have Tuesday or Wednesday off. So Wednesday was when we did our grocery shopping. Did the Publix shopping in Smyrna, because we can never find the Jennie-0 pre-made turkey burgers (quickie lunches) at Mableton, then went to Mableton to hit Lidl and Kroger (because the milk at Mableton is cheaper at their Kroger than at the Smyrna Kroger). (I don't understand it, I just shop it.) I also drove by Sprouts on the way home because we were out of Lighthouse "salad dressings" (these are finely chopped up herbs, onion, chives, etc. in a little jar; we like to put them on chicken and turkey as a garnish). This swapped laundry day to Thursday, but it worked out. On Friday the first thing we did was mail our check to the IRS. We owe them money, but it's better than getting a refund and having given them a loan interest free. I've been saving money each month for this payment, so it wasn't a hardship. Then we went on to Otter's Chicken in Kennesaw and had lunch with Alice and Ken. The pollen has been so bad even Alice is complaining. Afterwards we took a turn around Hobby Lobby (more stickers for my journal!), and then went to Kaiser for our second COVID booster shot. Afterward James made a short stop at Hobbytown—I amused myself meantime by reading fanfic on my phone—and we stopped at Baskin-Robbins on the way home for ice cream. Later we watched the next part of Picard and the corresponding Ready Room with Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner. Saturday we had to make a quick stop at Nam Dae Mun because when I had breakfast I noticed that I was nearly out of almonds for my oatmeal, and these are sold in bulk packages there. Then we headed out to check out The Crazy Book Lady, a little bookstore off the main street in Acworth, GA. The were just expanding into the little store next door, and the place was a mess, but the couple running the store were so nice! We had big conversations about other used book stores and how there were fewer of them, and ditto needlework stores! It was a pretty successful trip: found a CSI book I didn't have, a book about the history of the alphabet, and Mario Pei's What's in a Word?, which I first read at Hugh B. Bain. James got a book about Flying Fortresses and another about Old Ironsides. He ran into a young dad with two little boys who are into air shows and modeling and was in hog heaven talking to them. We had lunch at a place called the 1885 House, which served Southern food and some seafood. I had shrimp (it was good, but not enough!). On the way home we had ice cream again. (I know!) Once we got home, it was time to vacuum so we could prep for the work week again. Labels: books, errands, food, friends, health, movies, shopping, television, work » Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Coasting in January
So, what have we been doing since James' return from the hospital? Not much of anything, which suits me just fine, although James is growing more restless by the day. I did, after seven days of sporadic work, manage to get all the Christmas stuff down. I really didn't feel like doing it, so it came in fits and starts over a span of a week and a half; I started with the small stuff and of course then finished up with the big tree, and everything was down by the 22nd. I was restless and unhappy over James' foot and how he was feeling, and I just wanted to disappear into whatever story I was writing or editing and not be here. Living in my head was much more preferable. Did get the bed changed finally, and the usual housework. Amazingly, James thought he would just get out of the hospital on Wednesday and be able to go shopping on Friday! I said nope and have done the shopping two weeks in a row; I prefer doing it by myself anyway, as it goes so much faster—James likes to browse; I take pride in being able to do three grocery stores in less than ninety minutes (that's driving time included, BTW). We had snow on Sunday the 16th, but no accumulation. It just looked like a snowglobe outside. James had two followup appointments last week, and will have another one Friday. The Wednesday one was just with his GP and most of what Dr. Mobley did was update his prescriptions and check his heart and breathing. Dr. Friedman in Podiatry did unwrap his foot, so I was able to see the surgical area for the first time since the surgery. The swelling had gone down markedly from the hospital, and from now on until it is healed I have to clean it every two to three days, apply betadyne, and then re-wrap it. Monday was kind of a medical day. James has had a bad sore throat since they intubated him to close up the surgical wound, and it has been bothering him. He skipped work on Monday and got an early appointment with Dr. Ellenoff to get that checked; threw off my entire day and discovered I can no longer eat quickie breakfasts like Belvita breakfast bars like I used to. Boy, was I sick! I also got to tend the wound on Monday. It got messy; I don't have the same bandages and gauze as the doctor did and the betadyne I put on the gauze that went over the surgical wound got on the spread, the rug, the sheets, the blankets...sigh. The wound itself looks great; the swelling on the foot right now seems to be completely gone. James does have two blisters/rough spots where the surgical boot is rubbing on his big toe and the toe next to it, so I had to treat those, and he barked the middle of his lower right leg on something, so I was wielding the betadyne with impunity that night. We will be glad when he gets done with the antibiotic because it has completely screwed up his blood sugar—not making it go up, but making it go down! He has had crashes almost every afternoon for the past few days. Today I fed him pudding, two slices of American cheese and three slices of low-sodium ham, and applesauce, and still had to make him two slices of wheat toast with blackberry spread liberally on it to get his score up from 46! (At least we think it's from the antibiotic; we don't know. It could be the new blood pressure medications the hospital put him on, including a medication they took him off years ago because it didn't work! All we know is that with him taking the antibiotic, he hasn't needed Metamucil for a week.) It was cold enough today that we could open the curtains and let the sun in; can't do it any other time but in the winter because it makes it too hot in the house and the air conditioner will immediately snap on and labor away wasting energy. Better to keep the shades down and the curtains closed and save the energy; the LED bulbs can't use anywhere near the power the AC does. Labels: chores, health, movies, shopping, sickness, television, weather » Saturday, October 30, 2021
Doctors and Dinosaurs
How amazing! It seems like we wait years for October to arrive and then the whole month goes by like the wind.Still looking for some real fall weather, but the temperature is dropping to better levels, and next week looks heavenly: nothing over 68℉! (Fifties would be better, but beggars can't be choosers, as they say.) Plus I had a first this week: cooked my first "stir-fry." It was actually pork bits in a sesame-seed sweet sauce, and it came out pretty well, especially when I did a reduction on the leftover sauce. Labels: books, food, health, movies, seasons, shopping, sickness, weather, writing » Saturday, October 23, 2021
Saturday on the Sofa With Vincent
It was a quiet week, thankfully. » Saturday, June 19, 2021
Almost Quiet
It was a quiet weekend. The only down spot was going to the podiatrist on Friday and being told that James needs to go back to the wound clinic. He said we should have called them when the larger blister first appeared last Sunday. (He also took the bandage off the smaller blister without precautions and made another raw spot on his skin. I wish doctors would stay away from James' skin! They don't know how to handle it.) Thursday did the shopping, and watched the film Sunrise at Campobello for the first time. As many things that I've read and watched about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, I'd never seen this classic film. It starts when FDR gets his "chill" after his day on the sea at Campobello Island in 1921 and ends when he stands to nominate Al Smith for president at the Democratic National Convention in 1924. Hume Cronyn did a great job as Louis Howe. Got a lot of little chores done this week, for which I was happy, and also having Tin Drum for lunch out this week.
» Sunday, March 21, 2021
Well, the Morning Was Okay... (Atomicon, Day 4)
All good things must come to an end. But surprisingly, we had had another good night’s sleep, and were reasonably awake when we schlepped out of the room in slippers and hang-around clothing to get our breakfast, after starting to toss stuff into the suitcases and James packing up his C-PAP. We ate in the common room with a small crowd, and then people started wandering in after breakfast at Kami’s Place, and while James held the fort, I ran back in the room, packed up most of everything, portaged it into the common room, and checked out of the room promptly at eleven, after which we sat and gabbed a little longer. We were in no rush because we couldn’t pick up Tucker and Snowy until after 4 p.m. Finally we loaded up the truck and followed the group (Damien, Kristine, Aubrey, Ken, Alice, and Chris) that was going to Kami’s Place for lunch. The decor hasn’t changed and the food is still yummy: James had an omelet and I had a grilled cheese sandwich with cheddar cheese.And then we were on our way home. When we got to Dawsonville we stopped at the North Georgia Premium outlets for a bathroom break as well as to stop at the Hanes store to buy underwear and socks for me and underwear and shirts for James. [Later: This turned out to be a bust for James–none the underwear he bought, even though it was his size, did not fit; they were labeled as briefs but were really low-rise briefs. We couldn’t even donate the unused ones because he had taken them all out of the packages. We had to throw them away.] Popped in the Yankee Candle outlet store but they don’t have the coffee-scented candles anymore. This took long enough that we arrived at the vet after four, but had to wait forever for the other people picking up their pets so they could let us inside (they weren’t letting anyone else in, and they didn’t want to have to explain why they were letting either of us in to use the restroom and for me to put Snowy back in his carry box and empty all the water and seed out of his cage and get it wrapped up). Snowy came out singing his head off as I made a mess out of one of the exam rooms by spilling his seed everywhere, and soundly bit me when I put him into the carry cage. And then the vet tech came out and said none of Tucker’s exam/bloodwork had been done! Dr. Mike examined Snowy and gave him his polyoma shot, but Tucker didn’t get his checkup or his labs or even his bath! She kept apologizing and said they owed him a free bath! And now we have to drag over to the other side of town again to get him a checkup! So we dragged in home wayyyyyyy after five, whereupon I stuffed a load of laundry in the washer, then we had barbecue leftovers for supper and watched M*A*S*H and Star Trek, and later on an old film about a boy and his horse, The Red Stallion. It had the little dog “Daisy” in it who used to be in the “Blondie” films and who also played Jacob in National Velvet. » Saturday, November 14, 2020
Little Successes and Little Women
Started our weekend with things already accomplished: I'd brushed out the dog, finally got my safe-deposit box re-established and renewed a CD (only for six months because interest rates were so loathesome), made an eye exam appointment, and wrote out Thanksgiving cards. (Also, alas, the shrimp we had for our anniversary made me sick. Dammit.) Thursday, after doing most of the shopping and mailing the cards, we also got the lift for the power chair checked out. The crossbar was definitely not holding the chair as tightly as it could, so I'm glad that's been fixed. We also went to Barnes & Noble. I found an interesting bargain book about the history of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Unfortunately it was not the end of our grocery shopping, as we needed no-salt-added mushrooms and one Kroger didn't have them, so we had to go to another. Two Krogers on Friday are two too many. However, this was balanced out by a nice lunch at The BBQ Place with the Spiveys, Aubrey Spivey, and the Boulers (we hadn't seen the latter in a while). We did have a nice time on Saturday morning when we attended the Marietta Farmer's Market. We brought Tucker with us and he had a great time greeting the many other canines wandering about: we kept bumping into the same spaniel who wanted to play, a supercilious poodle who was having none of it, a very shy puppy who was going to grow up to outweigh Tucker probably five to one, and a tiny Yorkshire Terrier who came on very strong despite probably weighing five pounds dripping wet. Tucker wasn't sure what to make of him, or of a huge black mastiff-like dog (a Cane Corso, perhaps, or a Presa Canario) who was very chill (big dogs, of course, have nothing to prove!). He was lying down when we encountered him, and Tucker circled him warily, keeping his distance. I think he thought it was a bear! The rest of Saturday was more routine; James had his club meeting, so I did some chores and then sat down to watch the newest reiteration of Little Women by Greta Gerwig. In general I liked it. The idea of doing it as a series of flashbacks was interesting, and especially where there were parallels, as when Beth was sick initially and then later sickened again, it worked well. Saoirse Ronan was a great Jo (but does Jo never comb her hair? the real Jo would have worn it in a snood or in braids, as she has it at the beginning of the book, to keep it out of her face while doing chores), and for once Laurie looked like I imagined him (although Timothee Chalomet still looked like a kid at the end, which was disconcerting; no effort was made to make him look more adult, which, as a result, made Florence Pugh, as Amy, look older than he was and Amy was four years younger than Laurie). I must be the only person in the world who did not adore Christian Bale as Laurie (in the 1994 version). For once Beth actually looked as sick as she was, but Beth herself, even though they do the incident with Beth catching scarlet fever from the Hummels and with Mr. Lawrence giving Beth the piano and her giving him the slippers and Jo taking Beth to the seashore to improve her health—well, even though Jo is there I never get this real sense of a close bond between Jo and Beth the way it is in the book. The home interiors looked very realistic, as did the candlelit dim rooms. I even enjoyed the ambiguity of the ending. It plays with the fact that Louisa Alcott never intended for Jo to marry anyone and only "made her a funny match" to please her publisher. She got her wish with her pseudo-Jo in Jo's Boys, as Nan Harding becomes a doctor and remains single. Everyone has commented about Florence Pugh's performance, and I thought she did well as older Amy, but she looked ridiculous as young Amy. I have to say that in any of the versions where they use the scene where Amy burns Jo's book, this is probably the most hateful Amy I've ever seen, and that includes Ann Dusenberry's dreadful Amy in the TV miniseries version in the 1970s. In this version, as in the TV version, Jo should have let her drown. She was always whining. I know the Marches were poor, but I do not see Mrs. March allowing Meg to show up at the Moffats looking like she was about to do housework. What on earth was that awful burlap-looking thing she was wearing when she got out of the carriage? James Norton was stiff as a board as John Brooke. The only good thing you can say about him is that he was a better looking John than Eric Stoltz. Once again it's Marmee's miracle arrival that saves Beth, although not so blatantly as in the 1994 version. After a bout of scarlet fever that severe, Beth was not going to be downstairs sipping soup the day after her fever broke. And once again the March family has a Christmas tree, although historically they were not common in people's homes until the 1890s. Alcott doesn't indicate that the house is decorated for Christmas during either of the book's two Christmas scenes. The only ornamentation mentioned are Beth's roses and "Amy's pet geranium." The only Christmas decoration I recall Alcott mentioning at all was when Jo momentarily remembered Christmases when she was small and the Marches had money: "No stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was crammed so full of goodies." I have to say I felt this new version dragged, even with the altered narrative. I kept looking at the clock. Never a good thing. My favorite of the film adaptations is still the 1994 one. Especially for the score. Oh, that wonderful score! My favorite version of Little Women is still the book.  Labels: books, chores, dogs, errands, excursions, movies, pets, shopping » Monday, August 17, 2020
The Long Road Back to Region 2
(or Region B, whatever the hell they're calling it these days.)
It all started with VCRs and the movie studios. You remember videotape, right? Initially VCRs were marketed as being used for "time-shifting." You wouldn't be home to watch Charlie's Angels or Laverne & Shirley? Back then it was over the air, no DVRs. If you missed an episode, it might be rerun in the summer. It might not. But VCRs solved the problem: program the unit, and when you got home, or the next day, you could rewind your tape and watch Bosley and the ladies or 1950s days at the Shotz Brewery. Then came places like Blockbuster Video. Were you a Get Smart fan who missed The Nude Bomb when it was aired in a mere 40 movie houses back in 1980? You could rent the VHS tape and realize that you really hadn't missed anything at all. (Trust me.) But some people thought, "Wow, wouldn't this be a great thing to have so we could buy and watch our favorite movie over and over?" And they did finally start selling movies, at $80 a pop at first. But the movie studios were apoplectic. What if...what if, mind you?...people bought a movie and another VCR (yeah, a second one at $750 each back then—sure; let me tell you about this bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale..) and then started making copies of it to give to their friends! The movie studios would lose sales. And what if these same people started selling these copies? Well, you could arrest them, of course. But that wasn't enough. So something called copyguarding was put on professional videotapes. If you did indeed try to copy one, the picture faded in and out and rolled. When DVDs got popular in the late 90s, copy encoding was put on them as well. Alas, this didn't satisfy the MPAA. Once DVDs came along, movie studios had another concern: their overseas profits. Usually when a movie hits a cinema in the United States, it's another year before it's shipped overseas. So Galaxy Quest, for instance, which was released December of 1999, wouldn't reach cinema audiences in France, Great Britain, Australia, etc. until November or December 2000. But people in those countries who heard about this funny film...gasp!...might just buy the American DVD when it came out in May of 2000 and not go to see it at the cinema. The movie studio would lose their revenues from foreign countries. Quelle horreur! So Region Codes were devised. The US and Canada were Region 1, Great Britain was Region 2, Australia was Region 4, etc. (I just learned recently it's now Region A, Region B, etc. I'm still numerical. Sue me.) This is just fine if everything that's released in Region 1 is also released in Region 2, etc. and vice versa. The problem is, that's not the case. I've been an Anglophile since I read Lassie Come-Home in fourth grade and watched The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene in glorious black and white on TV. I love most of British television. I especially adore all their documentaries on mainstream television, the stuff that used to be on American television (remember the National Geographic Specials???) but are now usually relegated to PBS, Smithsonian, and other cable channels. And I have gobbled up any programming that was available: Britcoms on PBS, Masterpiece Mystery, Flambards (also on PBS), the British kids' book adaptations that showed up on Once Upon a Classic and Family Classics, British mystery and adventure series that used to turn up in the summer in the 1960s and 1970s (like Strange Report), the series that popped up after the FCC forced network television to give up a half hour of programming every night like Doctor in the House and Dave Allen At Large, shows that were brought to me by science fiction fandom (Doctor Who on PBS and grainy camera copies of Blake's 7 seen at conventions). And lots of them were eventually released on American DVDs: Doctor Who, The Good Life (a.k.a. Good Neighbors), All Creatures Great and Small, Pie in the Sky... Alas, a lot of them weren't. This includes the aforementioned Blake's 7, The Goodies, Doctor in the House, Dave Allen of any persuasion, and, the unkindest cut of all, one of my favorite series of all time, Alistair Cooke's brilliant America which aired on NBC in 1972 and after that was only available to libraries until it was released on DVD—only in Region 2, of course—about a decade ago. Now let's time-travel back to halcyon days...cue the flashback music, here come the calendar pages flipping backwards...those days around the years 2002-2004 when marvelous Media Play was still open and we used to play trivia on Saturday nights at Rockford's Bar & Grill (goodness, I still miss their Asian salad!). I think it might have been Jake and Nancy who came wandering in one evening saying they had found an inexpensive DVD player that could be region-hacked by entering a certain combination of numbers into the unit while it had no disc in it. Plus, at a time when DVD players were almost $100, this unit, a Cyberhome, was only $40. We eventually ended up with three of them, all region-hacked, and they worked really well, until they started, one by one, to give up the ghost (we still have one somewhere; not sure if it still works). Now we have to take a slight digression (I'll try to miss the left turn at Albuquerque). Ten, twelve years ago we were watching This Old House on PBS regularly as well as a series I really loved, History Detectives. (You can still find History Detectives episodes on PBS Passport.—highly recommended!) Unfortunately both Georgia Public Broadcasting (Georgia's PBS station) and WPBA (Atlanta's PBS station, two different entities) pretty much run fundraising every two months, weeks and weeks of This Old House and all the regular programming pre-empted for Joel Osteen preaching, Suzi Ormand talking money, some doctor advising you on your diet, old rock and roll specials, endless repetitions of the Presidents episodes of American Experience, etc. When the regular programming did return, we had missed two or three episodes. Now we can just go on PBS Passport and pull 'em up; back then you had to go to PBS' web page and watch it, of course, only on your computer. So what I used to do was attach my laptop to the television with a serial cable, change the Windows settings so it had two screens instead of one, move the browser screen from screen one (the computer) to the television (screen two), and then play History Detectives full screen on the television. Yeah, it was going around Robin Hood's barn for the result, but it worked. Around 2010, around the time the Cyberhomes started to go belly-up, we found this small, Windows 7-based computer at Microcenter, a Lenovo IdeaCentre. That's all it was, a computer: 6"x7 1/2"x1.25", but it did come with a DVD player. So after that we could watch History Detectives on this little computer via a Firefox browser, and since the DVD player on a computer is region-free, we could use that to play the Region 2 DVDs. And every so often I'd wander on to Amazon and check the prices on Region Free players. Amazon Vine came to the rescue two weeks ago: they had a free-for-an-honest review Region Free DVD player on one of their lists! The listing was confusing; it said it only came with RCA cables (composite video) but the pictures showed it coming with HDMI, and so did the visual literature. So it arrived last week and sure enough, it was only coaxial or composite video (white, yellow, and red plugs), and when I hitched it up, it was not Region Free. (For a $20 DVD player, otherwise it was fine: played older fullscreen DVDs (Flambards) and newer widescreen video (Airport) well, the sound through the sound bar was good.) So I posted just that, that it was a good inexpensive player, but was not as advertised. I also found the manufacturer's e-mail on the manual and contacted them. They apologized, fixed the Amazon page, and sent me the hack for Region Free; like the Cyberhome, it was a matter of entering a certain code on the machine while it was empty. So basically I'm back to Cyberhome territory again, except the Cyberhome video was a little better (component video, the red-blue-and-green plugs). There is an HDMI version of the unit that also has component video. To be perfectly honest, since only one of my Region 2 DVDs is HD, I'm not broken up about it not being HDMI. When we replaced (under extreme duress; the on-off switch on the previous set died) our television in 2014, we paid extra for a model with four HDMI ports. Every single one is in use and we have a splitter on one of them. So having this go from HDMI to composite is a ::shrug:: moment. I'm not one of these videophiles that has to have videos in pristine condition. To me the story on the DVD is the thing: I watched fourth generation, mostly blue camera copies of Blake's 7 for years, not to mention snowy episodes of Ask the Manager before my dad bought a signal booster and an antenna rotor for our outdoor antenna. The pictures were terrible, but I still got to visit with Vila and Avon, or Joe and Dana. That was the important thing. If using composite video means I can't see the pores in Dave Allen's skin while he's telling a falling-down funny joke, well...so be it. HDMI would be nice; maybe some day... And that's, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. Labels: DVDs, electronics, movies, television, videos |
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