On Monday evening at 11:30 p.m., I officially turned 68 years old. How the Dickens did that happen? In my head I'm still the six year old who fell in love with Lassie, the ten year old who learned to play the organ in the fifth grade classroom at Stadium School, the fifteen year old who adored Mr. Abosamra's English classes, the eighteen year old who missed almost the entire final quarter of twelfth grade due to surgery, the twenty-something who cried when the Paperback Books store in Providence closed...ten budgies, eight cars, two states, and James...so many years!

Monday we were off for a birthday dinner. Alas, we forgot Bay Breeze was closed on Mondays. We made a short stop at Ollie's Discount Store, then ate at Okinawa instead. Bulgogi beef, yum!

I spent the rest of my birthday replacing light bulbs on the bottom of the Christmas tree.

And when I did, that part of the bottom of the tree still didn't light up. I wanted to cry. Instead I just threw a spare string of lights at the bottom and replaced the lights in the middle of the tree where they had gone out last year. Those came back on.

I gave up and put the decorations and the tinsel the next day and it exhausted me fully. The best part of the night was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's annual Christmas concert. The guest was David Suchet, who told the story of Englishman Nicholas Winton and the Czech Kindertransport, so I spent time tinseling in tears.

By the way, I want you to see the smallest Christmas miracle. I bought this star at the Woolco at North DeKalb Mall, Market Square as it was then, and now demolished, in 1991 for our first Christmas tree together. Every year "Little Blaze" still lights...every year I know it might be the last, any day this year might be, too, but I always see her light anyway. Inspiration from a small Christmas star. She makes me cry.

I had a bunch of Hallmark coupons, so on Friday we went to Gretchen's at the Avenue at West Cobb. Unfortunately Mr. Lower GI decided to go spare at this point; James got a Battlestar Galactica ornament and I had to hotfoot it to Barnes & Noble to use the bathroom. The result was that I spent no coupons, but did buy four discount books, including two Christmas books.

It took us a long time to get over Snowy's death, then we had the whole summer with James falling or hurting himself in some way. In the last few months he's been asking me if we were going to get another bird. For a long time I couldn't think about it. Snowy's death itself had been so painful—I couldn't forget how his little body struggled as his legs stopped responding to his body, but he still attempted to crawl into a corner to die, and he didn't want me to hold him or comfort him in my hands—that I cried almost constantly about him at least once a week, most recently a week ago on his adoption day. James said I needed a bird; I was thinking more that he needed a bird; after all Snowy had been his working companion.

But this weekend he talked me into it. He'd found a bird store out in Norcross called Fancy Feathers.

But that's a story for another post. I did vacuum before we left. The last thing I wanted to do was frighten a baby bird with "the bizippy thing."

Sunday I got disgusted at my laziness and went downstairs to at least put up the airplane tree. It took me what seemed like forever because I dropped something like every fifth ornament. I broke the wing off one of the glass airplanes, and one ornament I dropped even knocked two more off the tree. I was fit to be tied by the time I was finished because I felt old and useless. There's nothing to decorating the airplane tree. You hang the ornaments, swag the garland, put on the star, and you're done. And it took so long. Sigh.

Labels: birthday, books, budgies, Christmas, Christmas decorations, food, illness, music, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:27:00 PM

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So the first morning of the first day of our weekend was spent shopping. Alas, it was stock-up time at Sam's Club, so it was an expensive trip. We needed toilet tissue, Swiffer floor wipes, mandarin orange cups, and about six other things. James also gassed up the truck there. By the time we got there it was almost eleven and things had begun to simmer: it was already up in the high eighties with the heat index several degrees higher. What saved the day from being an oven were an abundance of big fluffy clouds and a nice breeze (but there was change on the horizon).

We stuffed everything in the back of the truck and went to Publix for assorted twofers and things that can only be bought at Publix (like Toufeyan wraps, as it's burrito-making time for James again). As we arrived, just opposite us was an SUV with a handicapped tag. One of the store carts was parked next to the open car door, but the woman driving the vehicle didn't seem to be getting out. Anyway, we got James' chair off the lift and he went directly inside; as he did, I looked toward the woman and she called out "Can you help me?"

Well, it turned out some kind person had brought one of the store mobility carts to her, but had parked it too close to the door before moving on. Try as she might, there was no room for her feet between the SUV and the cart, so she couldn't maneuver to turn and sit down on it. She asked if I could move the cart forward a little and then back it up so there was some space for her to get out of the seat. Sure! Happy to do it, too.

Then we had to offload all the stuff at home and put up the perishables. We both had a sandwich, then decided to do something more fun: go out to Hobby Lobby and Barnes & Noble. Looked around a bit at the bookstore and picked up the newest Sister Lou mystery. When we came out of the store there were many more clouds than there had been earlier and we could both see where it was raining north of us. So we made tracks over to Hobby Lobby. Happily it has been invaded by autumn—two full aisles and two half aisles of fall decorations already (and some standing displays as well, along with a back wall), and Christmas being stocked in the corners and around the side. I bought some discount autumn leaf stickers for my journal, and James found chocolate rocks for the "moon brownies" we are making for Hair Day on Saturday along with a couple of small modeling items on sale.

I had heard a clap of thunder while we were in the store, and the clouds were boiling and grey all around us with a spit of rain in the air. So we covered the power chair and no sooner had we banged the doors to the cab of the truck than it started to rain. Whew. Apparently, however, it was raining only over the Akers Mill shopping center because the rest of the ride was relatively dry and we didn't have to run for cover getting the chair back in the garage.

Tonight James cooked the Italian sausage we bought at Patak's for supper, which we had with the leftover potatoes from supper last night. It was outstanding, not peppery at all, just savory enough, and not even overly salty. We'll have to go back and get more.

Spent the rest of the night watching the new Blu-Ray presentation of HBO's Emmy-winning From the Earth to the Moon, which came in the mail yesterday. It's been completely restored from the original prints, and they redid all the special effects, which were all in standard definition, because they would have looked crummy on an otherwise HD-quality presentation. We did the first three episodes, "Can We Do This?," "Apollo 1," and "We Have Cleared the Tower" last night, and then five tonight: "1968," our favorite episode "Spider," "Mare Tranquillitatis," our second favorite "That's All There Is," and finally "We Interrupt This Program."

My reaction to the new special effects is mixed. I knew they had to revise them, but some of it works and some of it doesn't. Some shots look extraordinary, like the rocket launch of Freedom 7, where you can see every rivet of the Mercury capsule and the Redstone rocket. In general the spacecraft look good, except for the lunar modules. They've done the two stages in a matte flat grey that looks...well, flat. They look CGI, where a lot of the other stuff doesn't. The moonscapes are outstanding, but I think they've oversaturated most of the views of the Earth; the blue looks almost too blue, the continents too defined. We have an atmosphere that makes the edges of things look a bit fuzzy in real life, so the hard edges of a CGI Earth are unnatural-looking.

The re-do also ruined one of my favorite scenes at the very end of "Can We Do This?" in which Buzz Aldrin is maneuvering outside the Gemini 12 capsule and docked Agena. As the two spacecraft come toward the camera in the original, Buzz lifts his right hand and the blue flickers of St. Elmo's Fire (static electricity) dance on his gloves and between his fingers, and there is a close-up of him staring at it in wonder and flexing his fingers. It's very magical. In the reshot version, we see the blue fire on his hands only from a distance and, while it is obvious that he is looking at the hand, it doesn't have the air of magic that the close-up did.

The sound is brilliant. I listen to "The Tech Guy" every weekend and usually on the Saturday edition audio guy Scott Wilkinson is raving about Dolby ATMOS. Now I know why. It really sounds that good, and in the restoration they actually put some sounds in, like the gantries creaking in "We Have Cleared the Tower." When the spacecraft dock, you hear a "boom!" not a click, and the music fidelity is to die for (alas, we still did not get an isolated score; there seems no way to get HBO to release a score album for this show).

One thing that is surprising: the opening music to "Spider" has always been Barry Gray's jaunty Fireball XL-5 theme song, as recorded for the television series. On this restored version, the song is still used, but it's a different arrangement and singer. All we can think of is that HBO retained the rights to use the song, but not to use the original version.

If there is anything bad about rewatching this series, it's when you get to "We Interrupt This Program," which deals with Apollo 13. It's not the least interesting episode—to me that's the Apollo 11 episode (yeah, strange how they managed that)—but possibly the most painful one. Having been made only three years after the hit film with Tom Hanks, From the Earth to the Moon chose to go in a different direction with the Apollo 13 story rather than rehash the movie.

In the opening episode, a fictional television news reporter named Emmett Seaborn, played by veteran character actor Lane Smith, is established as a character who spans the entire series. He's a seasoned reporter of the old school, rather a cross between Walter Cronkite and ABC's science reporter Jules Bergman. "We Interrupt This Program" chronicles how the Apollo 13 crisis was handled by the news media, who already seemed bored with covering spaceflight—until it seems like death might be involved. Watching this episode means watching once again how a shit-faced sensation-mongering asshole named Brent Hutchings, with the full support of the new network suit, undermined an educated, real newsman like Emmett Seaborn, and realizing once more what happened to news reporting in this country when it slowly became more about ratings and innuendo and "if it bleeds it leads" instead of real journalism that tried to inform and educate rather than titillate. I always finish the episode angry and wanting to wash my brain out with soap.

And with that, I think I'll go off and take a shower and see if I can't get some of the soap to seep in there. Ugh.

Labels: food, music, shopping, space, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:57:00 PM

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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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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:02:00 PM

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We finally did it; went on our trip to Chattanooga that was aborted on December 30 with the truck accident. We finally had a rain-free weekend, it wasn't hot (breezy, sunny, jacket weather with the jacket open over a sweatshirt later on, although it was in the high 30s this morning), and traffic was passable (a little more hairy coming home).

Up at 7:30, we had breakfast and I walked Tucker, then we made sure he and Snowy had breakfast and water, then we used the hand truck to walk the four boxes (there were originally three) out to the truck, put them in the back, tie the lids on (since I don't have work to get boxes from anymore), and then set out.

I drove up there and I have to say it was a treat. When we had the chair lift put on the old truck, it became a bit hard to drive; it would sway slightly from side to side. So we had the mechanic put on heavy-duty shocks in the back. That helped, but it was still a bit unbalanced. Either this truck was built more solidly or it's just because it's newer or the company that originally owned it had it upgraded, because it is nicely balanced and you can hardly tell the chair is back there at all. A very smooth and even drive.

We got to McKay's about eleven, unloaded our books, and then commenced to browsing. The place was quite crowded and there were no carts or baskets when we got there, so I had to get shopping bags out of the truck. When I went back to get our credit-or-cash when our number was posted on the board, my jaw dropped because they offered me so much in cash, so I took it, along with a little bit of credit. And we only got about half of one box of books back (will donate them to the library for their booksale), too. Plus we didn't bring much home: James got mostly CDs (the band Yes, some bagpipes and marches, and part 2 of the Carl Stalling project) and a couple of books. I got a brand-new book I can't mention because it's intended as a gift, two "Live It Again" books from "Good Old Days" magazine (1940 and 1948), Alistair Cooke's One Man's America (which I'd never seen  before), Bill Mauldin's autobiography The Brass Ring, a book of correspondence from pioneer women, This Victorian Life (written by a woman who dresses and lives in a Victorian fashion), and the Babylon 5 season-by-season handbook we were missing (season four), a "Dear Canada" book, and a "Dear America" book.

We got out of there about 1:30 and immediately headed for City Café for lunch. Even at almost two o'clock they were still crowded, and we had to wait while other folks who came in behind us got seated in booths because of the power chair. But finally we got to chow down: their wonderful savory (and not overly-salted) chicken noodle soup (with broken-up spaghetti in it instead of noodles like my mom and aunts made), a salad, and I had an open-faced turkey sandwich and James had open-faced meatloaf. We had to take half of it home, because their portions are so big, and I bought two more soups to take home as well.

Finally we went to the Hamilton Mall to check out their Barnes & Noble. Why is it everyone else's B&Ns are always better than the ones in Atlanta? This one has so many more books! I bought the second Lilly Long mystery (which no one near us carried), Walter Lord's book about Dunkirk, and a travel book about a man and his girlfriend who just drop everything and backpack around the world. Wouldn't that be a wonder?

Traffic was a little techier on the way home and James' ankle was bothering him, but we got back unscathed after having a wonderful day and spent the remainder of the evening watching The Incredible Dr. Pol. Why is it any time we watch lately they are gelding something? 😀

Labels: books, excursions, food, music

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:47:00 PM

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Cloudy, gloomy, raining...perfect day to stay in bed. So I did. But James couldn't sleep and ended up plunking the carcass of "Monty" the Thanksgiving turkey with carrots, celery, a bay leaf, and some spices into the stock pot to simmer. (It did all afternoon and so we had turkey soup for supper.)

But we still had to go to the store. We only had to get a few things, so we just went to Publix, but for meat we went to Nam Dae Mun. Why pay $5.99 (at least) a pound for beef when you can get it for $2.99? We found thin steaks, beef chopped into small bits for tacos, nice pork chops, and lamb steaks. Surprisingly, could not find any ghee. I'm sure they have some and we just couldn't find it, but no one knew where it might be. Maybe the other store on Spring Road has it; they do have different products.

Then we came home. The clouds and chill and grey are just making us sleepy and dull. I put some John Denver CDs on as the smell of turkey soup cooking wafted through the house. Finally James picked out the carcass a little after four, and we cleaned up and reloaded the dishwasher and put most of the soup in a container but left out some for ourselves. Completely forgot the Puppy Bowl was on, watched the repeat at six, then went on to America's Funniest Home Videos and Victoria. Found sad posts on Facebook of people who had to miss the latter for the Stupid Bowl. [shakes head] No accounting for taste!

Note to self: I don't have to wake up at 5:45 tomorrow! (Would you believe I was having nightmares about work last night? Apparently I couldn't retire before I did a big pile of closeout files—not the easier automatic closeouts, but the awful ones where you have to call the vendor to make sure they are not going to bill you again, and then have to do a modification deobligating remaining funds and do a whole bunch of paperwork involving dates that I never understood. Boy, did I wake myself up fast! [shudder])

Labels: music, shopping, television, weather, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:57:00 PM

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And, astonishingly, it's over.

I made it to work and back yesterday without the traffic accident I've been fearing for years. Traffic has changed so much since I began at CDC. In 1988, after I left work for the day, I used to go exploring. I would drive up to places as far as Haynes Bridge Road (I was living in Brookhaven, just north of downtown, at the time) to check out an interesting store—this is back in the days when Atlanta was dotted with needlework and non-chain craft shops (alas all gone) and new small restaurants—unmindful of the other traffic. Now you need a whip and a chair to get me out there some days. People drive quickly and they drive crazy, using the HOV lanes and turn lanes to pass, skittering across five lanes of traffic to get to the exit they forgot, caught at intersections with a cell phone attached to their ear. (I love my smartphone, but can't understand for the life of me why some folks must have the damn things seemingly surgically attached to them.) The accidents shown on the news are enough to make your hair turn white overnight: crushed engines, crumpled-in trunks, rolled-over SUVs, vehicles with their tops or sides peeled away with a nightmare can opener. And I discover that in the last few years that it is harder and harder for me to drive in the dark due to the glare of the headlights. Since most of my morning commute, except for about six weeks around the summer solstice, is taken in the dark, this is a problem more serious by the day.

On Wednesday morning I printed out and assembled in its little brown folder the Very Last Purchase Order I finished yesterday and left it on Puli's desk for signature. I distributed the thank you cards I wrote out Tuesday afternoon for the gift cards I received at my little party, and wrote a thank you note to Will who helped Puli set up the party. I copied off the party photos from Puli's e-mails and some other photos I'd forgotten, then I deleted all my e-mail folders, and, before I left, emptied out the deleted box. I used the bathroom several times, and had my breakfast and then washed the bowl and spoon for the last time and tucked it into the cart I'd brought with me, and drank my water. I had to go downstairs to ask Portia—I have to leave my laptop and cord with her—just what the heck I was supposed to do. Talked to Gary and Kris and several other people congratulating me.

Then I was down to nothing. I unplugged my fan, packed it into the cart with the spoon and the bowl and the box of Kleenex, all that remained in my cubicle of the seasonal photos and decorations, the Cup-a-Soups and the crackers, the magnets and the old calendars, that kept me company over the years. I tucked the laptop and the cord under my arm and took it to Portia (good thing I did it then, too, because she was going off to a class in a few minutes) and she signed off on my checklist, and then I went back upstairs and rolled the cart downstairs and put it in the car.

Without the laptop, nothing left. I asked Vivian to sign my request for a retiree badge (I needed a branch chief) and I took my bag, and as Juanita suggested, took a photo of the empty cubicle and then walked out without looking back, still smiling at Vivian saying that she always liked to get my purchase order folders; they were so nice and neat! (Thank you, I tried. I abhorred messy folders when I inherited them!) On the way to the car, I took a photo of myself reflected in the front of the building. I looked so small and it was all so big.

Then I went to the Williams Building and swapped out an active badge for a rather homely retiree badge, and Twi and I came home. Poor car needs retirement himself. And all the way I home I sang my mantra:

"I know where I need to be ‘cause I know where I've been--
Found a better road to walk and I'm ready to begin.
Time, it takes you into change, and time, it teaches you;
Gotta another chance this time and I know just what I'll do:
Gonna take my life, give it to me, gonna become what I came here to be,
Gonna change my life, gonna be strong, now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong.
See the sun climb up the sky to light another day--
Gonna let it shine on me, let it take me on my way.
I know where I need to be ‘cause I know where I've been;
Found another road to walk and I'm ready to begin.
Gonna take my life, give it to me, gonna become what I came here to be.
Gonna change my life, gonna be strong, now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong."

You know, I don't think I imagined how I would feel on my last day. The guy in the badge office said that a lot of people just tossed their badge at him and stalked out. I almost sort of imagined I'd go out grinning like mad or skipping. I almost didn't feel anything, even though I was singing going home. It was almost like it wasn't real yet.

Today it was real. But then today ended up being a little odd, too.

I've been planning a lot of things for retirement. People have sort of jokingly ribbed me about doing nothing about living it up, but one of the things I know about myself is that I can be abominably lazy when I let myself. So while I'm not completely discarding being spontaneous or taking it easy once in a while, I know I have to be on some type of schedule. Just because I'm free of "work" doesn't mean I'm free of work. Clothes still have to be washed weekly, the trash done, the kitchen tidied, the carpet vacuumed, the floors swept, the bathrooms cleaned. And there are things I have been dying to do—and, conversely, things I don't have to do anymore. I have tantalized myself for months with my list of "the things I don't have to buy after I retire": Those Damn Bananas, Kroger buns, lunchmeat, chicken spread, Reeboks, granola bars (oh, how sick I am of those granola bars!), Chex Mix, Reeboks, cookie trays, tuna, an extra calendar, a desk pad. Or things I don't have to do anymore: get up before six a.m., drive on the freeway with crazy people during rush hour, sit in that awful uncomfortable ergonomic chair all day.

I've also been making lists of things I wanted to do around the house. My motto is "Declutter! Declutter! Declutter!" I am tired to death of dodging, stepping around, and pickup up. One of the projects has been to repurpose locations which had been formerly "work only." For instance, since we've been in this house, I've hung up my work clothes on hooks behind the bathroom door, and gotten dressed in the bathroom because I have always gotten up either at the same time as or before James. Once I got home Wednesday I cleared off those hooks and they will now be used for "knocking around" clothes.

Someone asked me what I was going to do on my first day of retirement, and I flippantly said "Sleep late and eat at Tin Drum." Frankly, what I was aiming for was simply eight hours of sleep, and I was happy when I went right back to sleep when James got up. Alas, Nature screamed about 7:10. Since this is about the time my phone tweedles to tell me James has left for work, I was wondering if I missed it when I looked toward the bedroom door and saw a bright light. Yes, the living room light was on, and James' laptop was set up in the living room. Wait...what?

Quick rewind: you remember the car accident, the truck being totalled, and the chair lift being damaged beyond repair. The chair, which was tossed into a ditch at the side of the street, seemed to have faired best. Covered in scratches and with a bent shock absorber and a cracked plastic cowling, it still worked, although we found out it still needed some adjusting. We used it minimally over the weekend because it rained, but James took it back and forth to work Monday and Tuesday with no problem.

Wednesday he got it off the ramp and it locked up flat. He finally had to put it into neutral and struggle to roll it on the lift and limp into work. He got an appointment at the chair place a few hours later, but the chair started normally at the mobility place and the technician could find nothing wrong. He tightened a bunch of things and ordered the new shock. James came home and finished up the day teleworking.

This morning he got it as far as the driveway and it stopped dead, and the little LED screen is showing a blinking maintenance symbol. He had to put it back into neutral to get it back into the garage and it was a bear to heave it over the lip. Then he had to call up his boss and tell him he was once again transportationless. The chair place only called back at lunchtime. Since the chair won't turn on at all now, James told them there was no way he could get it uphill on the driveway and on the lift. They can't come our way to fetch it until Wednesday. So either we struggle to try to get it there tomorrow and James loses another afternoon of work, or he can telework and wait for the chair place to mosey over our way. His boss told him to telework.

Anyway, I got several things checked off my list, although I neither slept late or ate well. I've been keeping my work bag in our bedroom on a little teak table James inherited. In the interim all the books I've been hoarding from coupons, library book sales, bookstore closings (::sob!:: Borders!) and the like have been piling up around this table. Since the bag doesn't need to be there anymore, I unstacked the books and dusted them off, removed the table (it's now under a window in the living room with the CD player on it), and then restacked them in a more orderly fashion. I also had to do an intervention on a double stack of fiction books near the bed, which were threatening to tip over, and almost did when I started fiddling with them. It worked out, I vacuumed, and that was that. I also re-positioned another table, James now has the lunchbox shelf in the kitchen to himself, and my work shoes are now my everyday shoes, and not a minute too soon: my weekend shoes have little tread left and list alarmingly to the outside edge of each of my feet. I will box them up for dirty work in the yard. I also uninstalled Citrix from my computer and erased any work files off my computer.

It was a busy morning's work, but I was satisfied and rewarded myself this afternoon by listening to my John Denver "Complete RCA Albums" set. I'd been thinking of running to Stein Mart this morning to look at bed quilts, but since I had to wait for TruGreen (I couldn't risk that James would be on the phone when they showed up), I did this work instead and am glad I did. Also collected the trash early.

We had to go to Kaiser to pick up James' prescriptions, so we stopped at Zaxby's for supper. Again, probably bad idea. Too many calories and it made me queasy. Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon on the box, and then a goofy Puppy Bowl special that quickly became tiresome. Yeah, we get it, they're building a new "stadium" in the shape of a bone. As Addie Mills would say, "That's corny."

Just a funny feeling today; I had to keep catching myself thinking "Well, I'll have to get back to work tomorrow," just as if I were on vacation that's just ending. It was very strange to think I could actually continue a project tomorrow without having to worry about going back to purchase orders.

Oh, and another thing I'll never have to do again: an 8(a) contract. Thanks so very much!

Labels: accidents, chores, music, retirement, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:55:00 PM

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So what do you do when Christmas is over?

Start getting ready for next Christmas!

After breakfast and dog walking, I went off to Town Center. Started at Barnes & Noble due to a traffic diversion; bought two years' worth of Christmas cards, both with a wildlife theme. There's a Hallmark store on the other side of the shopping center, so I went there next. Of course people were crowded in there buying ornaments at half price. One woman had one whole shopping cart full of ornaments. I'd be willing to wager she was buying up all the fannish ones (Batman, football players, Avengers, Baby Groot, etc.) and will hold them for a while and then sell them on E-Bay as collector's items. I just picked up the new Marjolein Bastin's Garden ornament which I had not gotten originally: it's a snow-capped wreath with apples on it, with two tiny chickadees coming to feast on the apples. It was half off, and I had rewards points!

Next to JoAnn; you guessed it, more Command hooks. I said I was going to reorganize in the new year and I mean it! Plus two clearance items. Next door to Michael's, where I picked up a 70 percent off garland (I put it on the porch later on) and dessert chocolate. I crossed to 2nd and Charles because they had neat, cheap cards last year. None this year, but I found a lovely roll of holly wrapping paper for a grand total of 37 cents. Stopped at Hobby Lobby and bought bows and tinsel cord. Finally stopped at Publix, didn't find their crusty white baguette again and in very bad temper bought a Chicago roll (which was not a good substitute), and some black-eyed peas for James.

Spent the rest of the afternoon at home listening to Christmas music and reading Christmas magazines.

Had beef bits and Rice-a-Roni for supper and watched bits of Happy New Year, Charlie Brown. Really dreadful. The first few specials were the best, all charm and gentle humor, then they gradually lost their magic. Charlie Brown spends a good part of this one shouting. And what teacher gives a little kid War and Peace to read over Christmas vacation? Better was the first episode/preview of the new season of Better Late Than Never, which William Shatner talked about at DragonCon. The four crazies (Shatner, Terry Bradshaw, Henry Winkler, and George Foreman) and "the sidekick" Jeff are doing Europe this time, and discover beergardens and take a Sound of Music tour.

Labels: Christmas, Christmas decorations, food, music, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:01:00 PM

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Hark, hark, the dog must bark! After the lights go out. At three a.m. For God's sake, shut up!

Needless to say, not a lot of sleep last night, and had to get up at 7:30. But we did look after the fids and get packed up and on the road in time to make breakfast at nine, so we could make a panel at ten.

James went to the RetroTV panel just to ask when the heck they were going to be back in Atlanta. They're in Gainesville now, which definitely cannot be said to be in the Atlanta area (nor can it be viewed here). It's like saying Westerly, RI, is in Providence. I went to the Disney/Pixar panel where we talked about the animated features: which were good, which were bad enough to go straight to DVD (Mulan II got a lot of hate, and for heaven's sake why was the sequel to Hunchback geared at small children), as well as if they have to do sequels, what would you like to see (other characters in an already established world, like Moana's). Also the merits of 2D animation versus CGI. Of course I had to mention Piper before it was over, because Piper is brilliant. 😊

Next went to "Chicks Write Time Lords," about women writers on Doctor Who. This included writers for Big Finish and for the books that kept the show alive during "the wilderness years," like Kate Orman. We even had time for a little fanfiction.

After that, a sit-down at "American Young Adult Literature," where we discussed...well, you know. Talked about age-appropriateness being determined by how an individual child reads, not just by the ratings put upon them by the booksellers (except for 13 Reasons Why, which should not be given to teens struggling with depression, per someone who's read it). Parents should read questionable books first (me: not protest them). Dystopian fiction seems to be waning, but sadly also the short spate of science fiction. Since all the panel was older adults except for Aubrey Spivey, they talked about how to get themselves back in a teen mindset (they ask people that age to vet their writing.)

Remained in the same room for "Research: You Gotta Do It." I'm a research junkie; I could research forever. But the time comes where you have to end the research and write the story. So the authors on the panel talked about doing research while you're writing (pretty much a no-no because research is the world's worse timesink) or do you just put a note in your text to look something up and research later? Scrivener was recommended again. Hmmn. A fun question was "what was the worst mistake you ever made in a story because you didn't research enough?" For example, Jana Oliver said that in one of her time travel stories, taking place in 1888, she looked up everything, even tide tables for the Thames, then wrote that there was a crossword puzzle in a newspaper. (Crosswords are from the 1920s; there were word puzzles in newspapers then, but not crosswords.) Ooops. Lee Martindale was very funny talking about having to ask a question about male anatomy of a guy.

Then, of course, had to make a trip to main programming to see Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant do their panel. They are good friends and have been since they played the Doctor ("Sixie" as Colin calls him) and Peri so long ago, and it showed. They laughed and bantered together as they talked about their earliest Doctor Who memories (the original premiere for Colin and a Patrick Troughton episode for Nicola), and then Nicola talking about how she got the role of Peri and realized she was going to be in a regeneration episode (jackpot!), and how Peter Davison pranked her by telling he Colin Baker was difficult to work with. Also some memories from "The Two Doctors" as poor Nicola and Patrick Troughton were outdone by Fraser Hines and Colin corpsing around all the time. It was a great but very short hour!

I thought of staying for the "Things We Learned from Doctor Who" panel next, but opted to check out the dealer's room. There are a lot of cute little things, but not anything I really want, if you know what I mean. However, there's an artist outside the dealer's room with some smashing prints of Doctor Who subjects. I also did a pit stop and briefly went up to the con suite for a cracker with cheese spread, a handful of M&Ms, and five or six tortilla chips. I ate my perfectly healthy lunch during the research panel (chicken cacciatore in a cibatta roll, mandarin oranges, and a juice box) and still feel ravenous.

Back in Panel Mode, I attended the panel about science fiction/fantasy films at thirty: Princess Bride, Spaceballs, Predator, Robocop, and more. Bumped into James there; he'd talked with Lee Martindale for a while, went to a Next Gen and a Star Wars panel. On tap: memories, favorite lines, how in the hell did Mel Brooks get away with that, things these films predicted that came true (ravaged Detroit, anyone?), what else was hot that year (Three Men and a Baby, directed by Leonard Nimoy, and Dirty Dancing), etc.

And finally, the Victoria panel, because I've quite enjoyed the series and that's my period anyway. We chatted about how some historical accuracy was sacrificed for drama, other British royalty and their bearing on Queen Victoria, how she married her children to all the other (mostly Germanic) nations in Europe, how Prince Albert was underrated, and commiseration for Rufus Sewell, loser at love in British historical drama. And, of course, what we might expect in the next season.

Would have liked to have stayed for The Crown panel, but it was suppertime! We had the dinner buffet, which turned out to be roast chicken (made as a cacciatore, of all things) and meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and baby greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and baby corn for salad. It was much cheaper than breakfast, which totaled at $41! Maggi and Clay turned up and we all had dinner together. Clay tried some whiskey that turned out to be $15 for about two or three ounces! It had a nice potent scent all the way where I was sitting. Interesting: Clay told us the hotel doesn't want to hold science fiction conventions anymore: they hate the people in costume, the registration in the lobby, and the con suite. So even WHOlanta will have to find a new home next year. (Please,  please, please pick a pet friendly hotel!)

Sadly, this companionable hour ended too quickly and we had to get seats for the cabaret, but it started late anyway. I noticed it was rather sparsely attended this year. Not sure if people were gearing up for the mass viewing of tonight's new Doctor Who or were getting dressed for the 30's themed dance tonight. (See why we want a pet-friendly hotel...) But it began just after James showed up after his "pit stop." Lieutenant Moxie Magnus was again the host(ess?) and did a ukelele duet with Angela Pritchett, who has done a Who cookbook, then Melinda Botterbusch sang a filksong about Martha Jones, Courtland Lewis dueted with Moxie on "I'm a Little Bit Country, You're a Little Bit Rock'n'Roll" and another piece, Florida musician Ken Spivey and his new wife Audrey (sorry Ken Spivey fanclub, he's taken now) did a short number, Louis Robinson sang a sweet love song about an older couple and then the theme song to Sharpe, and finally Moxie finished off on ukelele with 21 songs done in seven minutes. Half the time we were singing along: "Supercalifragilistic" and other Disney tunes blending into old rock and emerging as old folk tunes.

In the middle of the cabaret they took a break for a masquerade. Only four entries this year: a woman in Gallifreyan battle armor, a little boy as a white Dalek, a ninth Doctor wearing his TARDIS, and a woman in a gorgeous hand-made TARDIS kimono. They all won and we all applauded, especially for the little boy and the kimono lady (it was really lovely).

And then, alas, it was over, and since this is not a pet-friendly hotel, we had to forego the pleasures of watching "Knock Knock" and then the dance (or going to Sacha's memorial service) in favor of going home and "relieving" Tucker (literally). He was so glad to see us and kept jumping up on me and staring.

I found my BBC-copy of this week's Doctor Who episode waiting in e-mail, downloaded it while perambulating the pooch, and we just finished watching it a little while ago.  Really creepy "haunted house" story with David Suchet (who plays Hercule Poirot so well) as the guest star. I do wish they hadn't removed the reference to the young guy Harry being Harry Sullivan's grandson. Apparently they were told "no one" would understand a 40-year old reference. Seriously. Do you suits really not understand fans at all? (Don't answer that!) And what's going on in that vault? Whomever's in it, the Doctor brought them Mexican food...

Labels: conventions, fandom, friends, history, music, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:46:00 PM

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James worked today--albeit he got to telework—so this is not the blog entry for riotous festive Fourth of July tales. My biggest activity today was trying to get Tucker to go outside. The pops, bangs and booms from around the neighborhood have Mister Sure-I'll-Take-on-That-German-Shepherd! petrified. This morning wasn't so bad, and I managed to get him to pee during the late afternoon, but by dark he curled up in a tight ball either at my feet, or James' feet or in James' recliner and stayed there. If you tried to coax him out he sat, shivering, with his left paw up, looking like those old big-eyed dog paintings from the 1960s. I tried taking him out before bed, after the neighbors had finished burning ground fireworks, but no dice.

I could have gone to Michael's with a coupon or JoAnn with same, but I find I am so tired of driving I didn't want to. There's an old joke about Rhode Islanders: that if they have to drive any longer than an hour they get a motel, but my Dad wasn't like that. He loved to go places, and I used to, too. But after 28 years of Atlanta traffic I am flat burned out.

So I did minimal tidying up (I would have vacuumed, but that would have interrupted James, although he only had two calls, one in the morning and an interminable one in the afternoon). Mostly I watched television or read my magazines and my book about Betsy Ross. Had Alistair Cooke's America on in the morning: "Making a Revolution" and "Inventing a Nation" for the obvious reasons, and then "Gone West" just because I like it. I switched on John Williams albums after that—"By Request" and "Music of America" and one other—but we didn't watch 1776 until after James had cooked supper. We had some, unfortunately tough, steak I got on sale and excellent corn on the cob, with pumpkin bread (how can you get more American than pumpkin?) from the Farmer's Market with whipped cream on top.

It was over just before the Boston Pops concert, which was, once again after a few years' absence, being broadcast on CBS, who managed to turn the whole event into rubbish. Instead of broadcasting the entire concert, they aired two comedy show reruns (including the loathsome 2 Broke Girls) and joined the "1812 Overture" in progress, which means we heard the last few notes and the howitzers being shot off. CBS doesn't think that's all there is to the piece, do they? Otherwise we heard the Boston Pops perform only twice, once during the sing-a-long and the other during "Stars and Stripes Forever." The rest of the time they played second fiddle to some pop stars, Nick Jonas, Demi Lovato, and a supposed "country" group called Big Little Town. Jonas and Lovato wailed their way through "America the Beautiful"; otherwise they did a medley of their hits. If they weren't wailing so loud, I would have fallen asleep before the fireworks, which were brilliant—literally, as there was much use of a bright chrome yellow this year mixed with red fireworks, producing extraordinarily orange smoke—with a dreadful soundtrack: all loud songs, only one patriotic one ("God Bless America" yelled as loudly as the singer could manage), no soft ballads, no movie music, no John Williams pieces. Complained bitterly on CBS's Facebook page as well as the Pops' page. Some folks blaming Keith Lockhart when it's totally not his fault; probably CBS agreed to broadcast if they could pimp their pop tarts. All CBS needs now is a pimp suit and a pimpmobile. What tripe!

Labels: dogs, food, holidays, Independence Day, music, pets, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:08:00 PM

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Hadn't been to the Farmer's Market in months, and Tucker needed bedtime cookies, so we struggled out of bed this morning at eight. Tucker was immensely puzzled at not being taken for a walk until he realized he was going for a ride in the truck, and then he wouldn't even take the time to pee. He wanted in the cab now! And he spent the time there standing on my leg intently peering out the window.

It was already hot as we trudged into Marietta Square. The market had just opened and was already crowded. Lots of dogs today: corgis, clipped poodles, a Bernese-cross, a big Doberman, and more, including a shy dachshund who sorely puzzled Tucker, who wanted to play. We bought scones, cucumbers, two ears of corn, a loaf of pumpkin bread, and the dog biscuits, talked to the ex-chicken salad guy, and bought some home-made limeade to drink. Yum!

After putting our purchases up at home, we were going to get gasoline at Costco and then have lunch. But it turned out our membership had expired and we had to leave without filling up (wish they'd let you re-up at the pump!). So we were at the door of Longhorn at eleven when they opened, gratefully enjoying the air conditioning because it was already broiling hot; by the time we'd finished at the Farmer's Market I was soaked at the back from neck to ankles. We both had 6-ounce steak with salad sides, and a "Texas tonion" for an appetizer. (I like this adaptation of onion rings much better than Outback's "bloomin' onion," which was disappointing the one time we had it.)

James really needed the gas and I was going to need to fill up, too, so after eating we went back to Costco, where, miracles of miracles, a handicapped parking space was open. We bought milk (reveling in the chill of the dairy case), Jamaican meat patties, mandarin oranges, Skinny Pop, Breathe Right strips, more omeprazole, and season two of Shaun the Sheep. The place was massively crowded with people stocking up for the Fourth, but the lines were running pretty efficiently. At checkout we re-upped our membership and then we could finally buy gas and come  home.

For the afternoon I put on The Right Stuff, and we enjoyed that until it was time to get dressed to go to the Hungry Ear Coffee House to see Louis Robinson, Bruce Gilbert, and Bob Bakert perform. Stopped for a couple of burgers on the way, and by the bookstore to spend the 15 percent off coupons we forgot last night. Were almost late to the performance because I had to wait ten minutes for the customer service person to dig the book I wanted out of the stockroom. For heaven's sake, don't say "the book is available" at a certain store unless you have it out.

(I feel bad for the employees at the Akers Mill store—I noticed it was terribly hot in there yesterday and when I inquired about it while checking out tonight the cashier told me they will have no air conditioning until Tuesday, when they install a new unit. Good grief! Give those employees some fans! And time and a half! No A/C! In 95°F heat!)

Had a good time at Hungry Ear except that I was still warm and the heat had just hit poor James all at once; he spent half the concert with his eyes closed trying to relax. They played some great stuff, including a James Taylor piece and a rock'n'roll singalong at the end. Louis did a couple of his standards plus a song he hadn't played in eight years, and Bruce had a nice song about jazz plus one that he did the music for and Louis did the lyrics and it was sweet and very wistful.

And then it was home to drag Tucker outside again. Things were really popping and banging tonight and I had to keep at him just to get him to pee. I don't want him to be frightened, but honestly, he needs to relieve himself outside. Otherwise it's not healthy for any of us. We're going to have to spend another $400 at least to get the carpet cleaned again.

Labels: books, dogs, events, holidays, music, pets, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:28:00 PM

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Woke up with a backache and itchy, runny eyes about nine, so took some ibuprofin and went back to bed until a bit after ten. Things had eased and we dressed. No breakfast; it was too late. We had to get to the grocery stores before it got too warm.

Took the car, forgot the handicapped sticker and—guess what, today there were handicapped spaces. Figures. Got through Kroger. Got through Publix. Got home and put the cold things away and turned on the computer and my jaw dropped the moment I logged on Facebook. Some nutcase homophobe who apparently supports ISIS (or ISIL, whatever the degenerates are calling themselves now) shot up a gay club in Orlando and killed fifty people and injured fifty plus more. What in the FUCK, people? Sorry for the language, but who are these .... these ... God, there are no words for anyone who does this.

James put up the new shower head we bought and I scrubbed out the bottom of the shower stall, and I treated his sink drain with baking soda and vinegar to help it drain better. Then read the paper, cut out coupons, watched more Lassie to make the afternoon go as slowly as possible. The only excitement (thankfully) was having to rush outside after a clap of thunder to give Tucker his walk. Soon after, we got dressed and got to go to a much happier occasion: the party Mel and Phyllis Boros were throwing for their fiftieth anniversary. This was being held at Pasta Bella; we took over the patio, which was liberally strewn with fans to keep us cool. We still had to move out of the sun twice as it shifted down in the sky. It was so hot even Alice was hot, and Alice never gets hot!

It was a grand, grand time. We had a green salad, a buffet supper, and several delicious desserts, but the best part was seeing everyone. Shari had come in from Birmingham and Robb Boros and his family from Iowa, Alex was home from the Bronx (he had been forced to work in place of the striking Verizon workers, even though he is an accountant, climbing telephone poles!), and Claudia was even there. We haven't seen Claudia in years, since she moved to South Carolina to take over her mother's house. She sold it awhile back and now is back at her old house in Douglasville where we used to go out and fly rockets in the pasture. She said maybe we can do it again, but I think perhaps in the fall when it's cooler (and that might not even be October—I remember the Hallowe'en launch where we lost the "Ghostbuster" rocket and it was high 80s that day); I don't think we could stand the heat anymore. The last time I remember going, it was almost 100 degrees and the minute James and I got home, we were so heatsick we fell asleep for a couple of hours.

Left about 7:30 and got home to find the Tony Awards on, so that's how we finished out the night.

Labels: friends, music, news, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:47:00 PM

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Seriously. It's like the seven plagues around here.

My original blogging plan, after having covered the wonderful "swollen hands" and "aching feet" episodes, was to go back and talk about Anachrocon. However, the weekend tossed another big, wonderful spanner in the works.

Saturday wasn't so bad. I took the last of the steroids with breakfast, and then we headed out on errands: took James' kilt and shirt to the cleaner so he could have it for Leigh and Robbie's wedding, then went to the Container Store so he could pick up some new lunch containers. We also found compression socks that didn't cost a fortune, so have tried out a pair. Stopped in the Barnes & Noble two doors down for a while, then shopped at Trader Joe's on Roswell Road as well.

Later we grabbed a burger and went to "the Hungry Ear" coffeehouse at the Unitarian Church on Northside Drive. Louis Robinson was singing there along with Pat Walsh and Jimmy Galloway. Louis sang two of his own songs as well as a couple of "covers," including a funny song we'd never heard, "Sister Josephine." Pat Walsh played ukelele; his songs are sort of stream-of-consciousness memories. One he sang about "Blackberry Picking" conjured up visions of Jeff and Porky and Lassie. Jimmy Galloway did some bluegrassy type stuff, what James called "pickin,'" and good pickin' it was, too. He sang one song that had lyrics about "when we were kids we didn't know how good we had it," and it made me cry.

When we got home the final Mythbusters was on, so James sat down to watch that, and the reunion show, which I dozed off during, and finally woke up to find it was almost 2 a.m.! Despite not going to bed until three, I simply could not sleep Sunday morning, and crawled out of bed about nine, was at Kroger at 9:30 and Publix at 10:30, came home, put up the groceries, walked the dog, and then fell asleep on the futon until about one o'clock.

As I was waking up on the futon I noticed my upper right arm was itchy. I scratched it absently. Then had to scratch it again. When I checked it out in the bathroom mirror, I had a big rash all over the back part of my arm exactly where I had had the shingles vaccine shot. Huh.

Anyway, they had something called the Atlanta Comics Expo Show or something like that out at North DeKalb Mall this weekend. We figured we'd go Sunday afternoon, just to have something to do. I'm almost sorry now that we did; talk about "You can't go home again." This was one of our haunts back when it was called Market Square. The Aviarium used to be there; they had the budgie breeding boxes in the windows and you could just watch them live their little birdie lives. We adopted Merlin there, and Bandit, and they were so tame from the first, I think from the fact that they heard human voices from the other side of the display window from when they were hatched, so they weren't afraid. There was a Woolco there as well; that's where our Christmas tree star came from, I believe. And there was a Cole's books. I couldn't even identify where they used to be although the shape of the mall has stayed basically the same. I remember when they built PharMor on one of the ends—still have some Christmas ornaments from PharMor (the little glass bells and glass French horns in different colors)—and when PharMor closed they put a Lechmere there. I still have the typewriter I bought from Lechmere in the closet. Don't know if they even make ribbons for it anymore!

Anyway, the whole place was very sad and gloomy, and the poor people roasting from being set up under the skylights. The "Expo" was chiefly comic artists and small press people publicizing their work--a little too much totalitarian dystopia and supernatural for my taste—plus people selling comics and Pokemon items. We were impressed by a couple of artists working on a project called "Tuskegee Heirs." James said he wished they'd had something published rather than just concept art. They had a gorgeous drawing of an African-American young woman in a military uniform that someone had sent to them as concept art. Real love for the character in the whole picture, although just in black and white. I would have loved to have read something about her!

We came home by the way of Buckhead and the Barnes & Noble there, where I picked up The Eterna Files (a gaslamp fantasy) and a book about a family touring the world by bike for a year.

Anyway, was perturbed to arrive home and discover that the rash on my arm was now spread to the right side of my back and that my feet, which were hurting again when I woke up, were also itchy and swollen, and my wristbones were itchy and painful again. This meant, exasperatingly, that I had to stay home yet again Monday (God bless telework) and call Kaiser and get yet another appointment, with a strange doctor since my own was on vacation. The rash was spread even more by the time I got there, and the doctor was simply flummoxed. I guess I got too used to Dr. Simone, who never met a rash he didn't know, immediately proclaiming "Linda's got the squeezles!" (He was trying to make me laugh; I was seven and it was summer vacation—what a time to get the measles) or Dr. Sarni, who was always just as certain: "Yes, she has the chicken pox."

So I am back on steroids again, plus have a specially mixed cream for the rash—now pretty much spread over my whole body except on my head and neck and hands (but my hands still itch like the dickens)—and a Benadryl clone to take at night since the itching keeps me awake. Today I had two showers during the day just to take away the itch (I also got some oatmeal soap) and am already burning with itch again.

What do I have? "A reaction to something." Seriously. That's what the doctor said. "A reaction to something." They took four vials of blood and the only test that's come back so far is one that says I have an inflammation somewhere. Not where it is or why I have it, just that I do have it.

When the locusts start showing up I'm getting the hell out of here...

Labels: books, music, nostalgia, shopping, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:14:00 PM

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It wasn't bad enough that my sinuses started draining again. And that I had nightmares all night. I'd settled back in, James was off to the living room to work since it was going to be pouring again. Please, could I sleep now?

Crash! went the thunder! Squeal! went my cellphone, followed by a flood warning! Scream! went the weather radio!

Urgh. And this happened twice.

James was working industriously when I got up. Went to take Tucker outside and he wanted no part of the rain, but I tugged him downstairs and clicked the clicker, and he got the message. He pee'd, then headed back inside. I'll settle for that. (Later we found a hole in the clouds and got him a better walk.)

I had breakfast, then went to Kroger. I wanted to do 99 percent of the shopping today so that all we have to do tomorrow is pick up the bread to go with the beef and mushrooms, and then stop briefly to get me sandwich bread for the week on Sunday. It was Wednesday, so I got my five percent old phart discount, picked up some meat for dinner next week, bought lots of milk, and spent entirely too much money, but not as much as the lady in front of me, who spent $334.00. Ouch!

Then I came home and did different things: worked a little on each of the crafts, scrubbed a particularly grubby spot on the carpet, read more Christmas magazines, and played the two CDs Rodney gave me for Christmas, Percy Faith Christmas music and Jackie Gleason's band (people forget Gleason was also a bandleader). The Faith had some of my favorites that WLKW, once Providence's "beautiful music" station, used to play during their "36 Hours of Christmas" each year, including "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear." Gleason's arrangements of the Christmas songs were in dance band tempo. It was so soothing I listened to it twice.

When James finished for the day, we got dressed and went to Kaiser; he had a prescription he'd forgotten to refill. This actually didn't take long; it was just getting there and then going home. Cheered up the ride a little by going a different way home and checking out more Christmas lights. Gosh, it seems as if everything has gone by so swiftly since October started; stinky, smelly, smothery, sweaty, sucky summer takes ages to go by and then the rest goes by in a flash. It seems like just yesterday we were on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard or checking out the beautiful leaves at Strawbery Banke, and December has just flown by. Wish I could rewind to Thanksgiving and do it all over again (as a friend said on my Facebook page, with proper temperatures!).

We had the potstickers from Buford tonight for supper while I watched Call the Midwife, this year's Christmas special, and cried and cried at the end. I'm glad Patsy has had a merry Christmas and hope things don't get ugly for her.

Following that we watched most of this week's "clip show" from Alaska: the Last Frontier, and then the season finale—yes, season, as the Librarians return next year—of The Librarians. I quite enjoyed how the treatment of Prospero was built upon things the Librarians had learned during the season, and the twist in Prospero's past.

Labels: chores, food, music, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:00:00 PM

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A naked Christmas tree was calling me. I had the alarm set for 9:30, but just before nine one of those tree branches was figuratively poking me. "I'm out here. Decorate me." Then the phone rang—stupid robocall.

So I answered Hope [the tree] rather than Morpheus, despite his being a very persuasive guy. But first I had to answer the call of nature and the call of the canis familiaris. (It's entirely too early for all these calls...)

Anyway, after breakfast James dug in his model stash for something to take to the model club gift exchange, and I wrapped both that and the duplicate Hallmark ornament he'd bought for the occasion for him, and sent him off for his monthly luncheon with the guys and the annual "Dirty Santa" game. The temperature was already in the mid-60s and headed up to the 70s, so I put on the lightest thing I had, a sleeveless duster, and commenced to decoration: get all the boxes of ornaments out of the big box, put the older ornaments up on the back of the tree, including my lovely little horns and bells that came from McCrory at Macon Mall and the frosted red balls that look like the ones on the druggist's tree in The House Without a Christmas Tree, some others at the back or the bottom to fill in the glitter, even though the back won't be seen, then on the front and the visible side the large glass ornaments, the large Hallmark ornaments, and finally the smaller ones fit in the gaps of the larger ones.

This is the perfect time to watch most of the Christmas specials that James isn't as fond of, so it was a wonderful orgy: Christmas Is, The City That Forgot About Christmas, the two For Better or For Worse Christmas cartoons ("The Bestest Present" and "The Christmas Angel"), It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas (the inside jokes are still hysterical; I love "William Shatner" narrating "Little Drummer Boy"), Raggedy Ann and Andy: The Great Santa Claus Caper (which has the same closing credit music as A Very Merry Cricket, The Simpsons Christmas Special, and finally the original A Christmas Memory with Geraldine Page, which reduced me to a blubbering mess. I finished tinseling before I was halfway through The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and I hadn't really been paying attention to it, besides rolling my eyes at Alice Wendlekin.

Then I had to vacuum quickly before I could run downstairs to get the manger set and place the figures piece by piece into the stable. Every chipped figure is as familiar to me as my name; some of the pieces are as old as I am. Mary still has the 15¢ grease pencil mark on the unpainted chalkware surface under her kneeling body.

Then I vacuumed again and by the time I was done with that James was home. I took a quick shower because I was drenched in perspiration. When I was putting the tinsel on, I had to put a glove on my left hand, which was holding the tinsel because my hand was so soppy from sweat that it was making the tinsel stick to my hand. Then I got dressed, because I had assumed we were going to see ARTC tonight, but James' back was particularly hurting him and mine was feeling none-too-well at this point.

So we just reloaded the power chair and went to West Cobb Diner for dinner. I was ravenous; in my obsession with the Christmas tree I'd had only my gingerbread boy and a glass of milk since breakfast. I ate that turkey and dressing up tooth and toenail, and the cucumber and tomato salad, too. Afterwards we went to Barnes & Noble, where I got the final book in the Apothecary trilogy, the January "Country Sampler" (::sob:: already!) and the new "Small Room Decorating." (You need decorating porn once in a while.) I was looking for a December "Period Living," but they still have November, and where is the Christmas "Landscape"? I must go into Buckhead!

Came home to read and listen to Christmas music on Dish's Traditional Holidays channel.

Labels: books, Christmas, decorating, magazines, music, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:05:00 PM

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Our plan for Friday morning: get up at seven, pack up the car and mount the bike carrier for the rollator, since there's no way to get in Bobby and Sherii's house with the power chair, load the fids, and get on the road. Then we'd make a quick stop at Best Buy where I'd run inside to pick up season eight of Big Bang Theory (since they were open yesterday evening, I expected it to be like last year, totally dead on Black Friday morning itself), maybe a stop at Office Depot and I'd run in for a wireless mouse, and then a quickie stop at Barnes & Noble because all magazines were 30 percent off (a big help with those British cross-stitch magazines—but we could also stop at the one in Spartanburg if we arrived early).

Well, so much for that. Neither of us got more than a few winks of sleep. James' leg twitch has suddenly become intensely painful, like a muscle cramp, and he had been feeling terrible after we arrived home last night, just wiped out and tired, and I just kept waking up, and waking up, and waking up, getting progressively more frustrated that I was so tired but could not sleep. I shut the alarm off after the fourth visit to the bathroom. We finally got up after nine, after having managed two more hours of sleep on top of four, made a decision to carry one, tossed everything in the car, leashed Tucker in the back and sat Snowy in the front with his carry box, picked up lunch (since it was after eleven by the time we left the house), and marched on. Now, Gaffney, SC, where James' sister and brother-in-law live, is pretty much a cinch, straight up I-85, a little bit over three hours. But James was not only still in pain, but evidently something he ate didn't agree with him. He started driving, but we had to swap off at Commerce because his leg was cramping so badly. We decided we'd stop in Anderson, SC, just over the line, to make a final decision whether to go or stay.

James had a long restroom visit in Anderson, but his leg had un-kinked a bit and we went on, and he eventually was able to drive the last hour into Gaffney. We stopped once for gas (25 cents a gallon cheaper in SC!) and I walked Tucker both there and at Anderson, and Snowy sang for four solid hours to the mirror in his carry box, and we listed to an episode of "A Way With Words" and half of "The Tech Guy," and then Gaelic Storm during James' last leg. We were staying at the Quality Inn just off an exit north of the Gaffney Tanger outlet mall. It was a plain old motel room, clean and basic, with some handicap options. We did not need the little tray I'd put into the trunk and instead put Snowy's cage on the desk/table in the room and tilted the television so he could watch, but I half-covered him in hopes he would chill out a little. Once we were settled inside I took Tucker for another walk.

We found out Sherii's place was just down the road about twelve miles from our motel; we just went out the back of the parking lot and turned left. We asked them if we could bring Tucker along; this was his first motel and we were unsure if he would bark. They said sure; they have a boxer named Bristol who is very mellow.

They live way out in the country; we've been out here at least once, years ago, but we didn't remember the way. The GPS did the trick this time, and took us past homes with sprawling yards against an absolutely stunning orange-red-and-purple sunset, and then past big open farm fields, one full of unharvested cotton, one where the farmer was just driving his cultivator off the field and back home, and soon we had arrived.

One of the reasons we wanted to visit is that James' mom and sister had gone up there for Thanksgiving, and Nicki (his sister's daughter) and her husband Vinny and their new baby Maxon had driven down from New Jersey for the holiday. Sherii's daughter was also there with her new baby, Cathy. So we had a big dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, and we got to meet Max, who's a real smiler. He stared with big eyes at Tucker. I was very amused to listen to Nicki, who is the quintessential southern girl, now talking with a New Jersey accent! She has become a sweet mother. Tucker also had a good time, although he and Bristol mainly seemed to indulge in those doggy mutual sniffing activities that seem to be essential in canine society. He tried to get her to play, but she was tired out from company, and he was all energized from having been cooped up in the car all afternoon.

Finally started to zone out about nine o'clock and went back to the motel. Walked Tucker again and spent the rest of the evening surfing Barnes & Noble's and Amazon's sites to use up their Black Friday coupons. Got the new Revels CD and a mystery book from Amazon and the history book Death by Petticoat from B&N. Sorry we didn't get to the Spartanburg store, but it was twenty miles back and we were wiped. I like to go to bookstores and look in their local interest section for books about the area.

Amazingly, we both actually slept, which most times is odd in strange beds, although after Thursday night's debacle I would have expected to pass out as soon as I hit the (really teeny) pillows. I woke up a few times, at first cold and turned up the A/C and then too hot and turned it back down, and once used the bathroom, and once someone thumped on the ceiling and another time there was a thump in the next room. Urgh. Unfortunately James woke up with a lot of pain and cramping from his leg. Sherii had invited us back over this morning, and we almost passed on it, but God knows when we'll see Nicki and Vinny again, so we availed ourselves of the free breakfast (not bad: toast, eggs, bacon, waffles, three kinds of cereal, instant oatmeal and grits, two kinds of juice, and, oh goodness, milk in gallons instead of those puny little pints), packed up the car, loaded up the fids, checked out, and then drove back out to their place. It turned out all the young folks save one (Nicki, Vinny, Jessicca, etc) had some kind of stomach complaint and were all abed, so it was just Mom, Sherii, Bobby, Candy (taking care of Max), James and I talking (Jessicca did emerge with baby Cathy eventually, but then she went back to lie down before she had to drive home). Tucker had better luck in enticing Bristol to play this morning, and they romped about; Tucker would come trotting back to me with this big doggy grin every so often. When he wasn't playing, he was leaping up on the back of the sofa—Sherii said it was okay—to look out the front window, as if he were some crazy cat. I had Snowy on my knee for a while, then put his carry box on a tray next to James. He sang his little heart out and Bristol sat in front of his box, cocking her head trying to figure out what was making that funny chirping noise.

We left about noon. The one thing I wanted to do before getting on the road was to stop at the Gaffney outlet and run quickly into the Hanes store and get some new socks; mine have been getting picked off one by one with little holes in the sole or the anklet part. James wanted some new briefs as well. But by the time we got to Tanger his leg was hurting badly again. The place was packed, but by using the "Points Inside" app, I found the exact building the store was in and found a parking space about halfway down the row down from it. James got out and stretched out the leg while I ran in and bought the socks and underwear; they were all 25 percent off.

It was a rotten drive home (except for the weather; it was sunny and warm yesterday, but slightly overcast today, at least until we drove into Georgia). When I first saw the mileage sign outside of Gaffney that said "Atlanta 169 miles" I wanted to cry because I didn't think we could make it. James was in so much pain he couldn't keep his leg still. We finally had to put Snowy's carry box between us. (This was very funny sometimes because we had part of the box covered with a flannel shirt. I would look down when it was safe to do so and I would see Snowy's cute little face and those black button eyes staring back up at me. Yes, he sang the whole way home again, accompanying another episode of "A Way With Words," the rest of "The Tech Guy" with his favorite radio host Leo Laporte, and more Gaelic Storm, except after it got dark.) James' intestinal problem was still acting up, so we stopped several times to use the rest room, once when we stopped for gas, once back at Anderson where James picked up some sugarless candy and enough peppermint bark for occasional desserts to last until next Christmas. By that time I'd done a turn driving, he'd gotten the leg calmed down enough to take an hour's turn. Our last stop was just before Commerce, where the big Georgia outlet mall is (a huge place, set on both sides of the road, unlike the Tanger in Jonesboro and the North Georgia Premium Outlets in Cumming). From there it should have been 74 easy miles back to Atlanta.

Like bloody hell. Traffic jammed up just before and after Commerce, and before and after every stupid shopping mall (Sugarloaf Mills and Mall of Georgia) because of the marching morons doing their Black Friday shopping. Plus it was sunset. Apparently half the drivers in Georgia have no idea what to do with a sun visor. Ten to twenty miles per hour every single time the freeway faced into the sun. The only mall that didn't block traffic was Gwinnett (which I suspect is a sad commentary on the state of that mall). By the time we got home it was after six. Six hours to do a trip that should have been four hours with stops. Damn.

We got Snowy set up back in his cage on the bookcase, and Tucker back in the dining room, and brought in just what we needed for tonight (the suitcase and the dirty clothes and Tucker's bedding and food dishes), and we took the rollator and the bike rack off the car. James ordered Chinese for us and we watched the news and then switched to our usual "Christmas Starters": the "Merry Gentleman" episode of All Creatures Great and Small, and the holiday episodes of To the Manor Born and The Good Life. This was the only reason we stayed up as late as we did (11:30). For Saturday night, that's practically in bed with the chickens for us.

Labels: birds, books, dogs, family, health, music, pets, shopping, traffic, travel

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:25:00 PM

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Another restless night, even though we went to bed a little later. I usually sleep best if I go to bed between midnight and one and get up the corresponding eight hours later. James wandered off to work at 7:30 and I tried to stay in bed for the entire eight hours and simply didn't make it. So it was time to perambulate the pooch and then, since I had nothing for lunch anyway, I went to Publix. I wanted a baguette and they had Brawny on sale.

The next thing I knew I had spent $73. How does that happen? Of course I got something for work lunches, and some crackers for DragonCon (all we need now are the buns and the meat for the sandwiches; we have sweets and juice boxes)—oh, and two fall magazines, the fall "Country Sampler" and the "Just Cross-Stitch" book of Hallowe'en designs. I actually saw a fall magazine last week ("Cottage Journal"), but it didn't have much "fall" to it, but all expensive home interiors. Now that it's August, we should start seeing the fall magazines come in. Civilization is out there somewhere!

When I got home, I finally checked e-mail, and found a whopper of a Michael's coupon, 40 percent off your entire purchase! I was all for running out again, then realized if I was going to have a coupon that good I wanted to go to a better Michaels than the one at Heritage Pointe or the one up at Town Center. Now, there's a nice big one at Hiram, but...

So I wandered through lunch, then spent the afternoon doing different chores along to instrumental Christmas music and David Huntsinger's "Autumn" album. Didn't get through with that until nearly 4:30. By this time it was Tucker's time out again, and I also read a little in the "Country Sampler Home Tours" magazine I've had hanging about for a while. (They aren't as good as they used to be, I think, which is why I haven't read through it at the gallop.) At six I got dressed, printed out the Michael's coupon, and waited for James to get home. Needless to say, he didn't offload the power chair, and we drove to Hiram for supper at Folks.

Then it was time to get down to work! Walked in and out of the aisles at Michaels, bought three Christmas gifts (two unassembled, but easily put together), a base for my Advent wreath, some floral foam, some artificial marigolds on clearance, and a few other bits and bobs, plus the caramel-filled chocolate bar I bought for dessert. All were covered by the coupon except for the clearance flowers.

Unfortunately, due to the late hour James got out, time taken by dinner, and time taken by Michael's, there was no time to go into Five Below. Pity. I like seeing what unique items they have.

Spent the evening mostly listening to music, reading Facebook, chatting to Emma, working on last night's blog entry, and playing fetch with the dog. About ten o'clock James came down with chills, we're not sure why. Despite the fact that the only time he was out in the sun was getting the power chair in the office, then out of the office, then driving to Hiram, he looked sunburned around the face and neck. The littlest bit of sun does this to him.

So we relaxed watching Four Days at Dragoncon and the followup Cosplay special until it was time for bed.

Labels: autumn, chores, Christmas, food, music, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:52:00 PM

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It was a good thing that what happened on Monday happened this week, but all my plans for this weekend also flew out the window. You see, because Independence Day is a Federal holiday and falls on a Saturday, I had Friday as a holiday. But Friday was my compressed day off. Ergo, I got Thursday off, too. I had pie-in-the-sky plans: changing the bed, maybe driving into Buckhead on Friday to go to their Barnes & Noble. Something different. Thankfully, I had two days to decompress.

Since I couldn't do laundry on the usual day (Tuesday), I had to do it all on Thursday. It ended up being five loads. Urgh. When I got up the internet was down, so I spent two hours just figuring out what was wrong. I called up Earthlink tech support, which is always a bad idea, and had already done everything tier 1 support suggested I do: (1) turn modem off and on, and (2) unplug modem. Neither had worked, so they turned me over to tier 2, who had me reset it. That didn't work, either; finally he asked if I could plug the phone line (we have DSL) into a different jack. I did, it worked, and he told me to keep it like that for a day. Oh, sure, leave a phone cord stretched across the highest traffic path in the house. I changed it back ten minutes later and the DSL was again working on the proper phone jack. They refuse sometimes to believe it's their problem.

I did get to work on one of my web pages (so long, in fact, that I forgot to start dinner until twenty minutes before James got home) and my story, so, minor yay. Plus this Thursday night Turner Classic Movies was running "Treasures from the Disney Vault," so we watched Johnny Tremain (nice shorthand version of the book, but the book is oh-so-much-better). I recorded "The Liberty Story" for later so we could watch Doctor Who, skipped Living Desert since I have all the True-Life Adventures on the DVD sets, and recorded Treasure of Matecumbe and Rascal to watch later.

Friday it was dark and gloomy, and I got a few things done, but not enough to satisfy me. During lunchtime I watched Rascal (another movie that is not so good as the book, but which is good-natured and suitably nostalgic). James got home early, so we used the opportunity to go out early as well and have supper at the West Cobb Diner. Took half my dinner home, as did James. We also went up to Barnes & Noble at West Cobb, where I picked up Laurien Berenson's newest mystery (in paperback). James had coupons and was going to pick up the new "1632" book as well as an S.M. Sterling anthology, but he decided to put it off until tomorrow when he could use his Barnes & Noble credit card and get five percent back. They were having Doctor Who trivia, but James was so tired we didn't stay. Later on we watched "The Liberty Story," the Disneyland episode that was a promo for Johnny Tremain, and included the cartoon "Ben and Me." The "Ben and Me" story was different at the beginning from the cartoon that was released to the public as a short; instead of the "tourguide" sequence the short begins with, there is a longer narrative where Amos Mouse talks about his ancestors and the great things they did.

In any case, Tucker needed us. Around us fireworks have been popping all day, and Tucker has been completely upset. He went out that afternoon with his tail down and looking woebegone; by the time I took him out at nine o'clock I practically had to carry him down the stairs. The "pops!" were in the distance, but it made no difference to him.

Saturday morning was even worse. Usually we open the gate at the top of the stairs and he bounds down four steps at the time. Independence Day morning he had to be coaxed down the stairs, and I barely got him to do his business. He was all alert for firecrackers and didn't even care to sniff one of the electrical connector boxes on the street that is a magnet for all the dogs in the neighborhood. Later when I took him out he was so nervous that he completely missed the rabbit sitting in the middle of the next-door neighbor's lawn.

Just to get out and get some moving around, we went back to Barnes & Noble after breakfast; I had another coupon and got the newest Manor House mystery, and James picked up the two books he left behind last night. I also found a cool-looking book called Oregon Trail, which I ended up ordering with a digital-only coupon I had. Since we were across the street from the West Cobb Kroger, we just went in and finished the shopping. At last, a store which does not over-bake its sandwich buns!

After we got home, we put the new Blu-Ray copy of 1776 on. It really does look as if you are sitting in the theatre, watching it on stage, the picture is so vivid. We watched the extended version, with the longer versions of "Piddle-Twiddle" and "Lees of Old Virginia" (and a few lines that I don't even remember). If we want to watch the new commentary, however, we have to watch the director's cut. We got the receiver to work, finally, so the music sounded great.

For supper James grilled the ribs we bought at Publix on Friday; they were buy one, get one free. I rubbed them with salt, granulated garlic and onion, and ginger, and he basted them with a mixture of "Smack Yo Mama" barbecue sauce, mostly Big Kahuna (sweet) with a bit of Georgia Gold and the other molasses-based type. We had them with a cucumber and tomato salad, watching the rest of 1776, the news, and finally the Boston Pops streaming online. The latter was a little rough at first, partially, I think, because they were piggybacking a Twitter feed on the live stream. I finally quit using my browser, but even that didn't help; when I finally turned the wireless off on the laptop it finally settled down. Great concert, and good fireworks, except they were lost a bit in all the smoke! They ended up looking like a Monet painting.

Following the Pops I put on A Capitol Fourth and we watched that until bedtime.

Pretty much the entire evening one of us was holding Tucker in our lap. He stayed with me for a while, trembling, then wandered around, then slept on James' leg for over an hour. I can't say I blame him: they passed a law that you could have fireworks in Georgia (folks have been buying them illegally from surrounding states for years) and our neighbors down in the cul-de-sac apparently bought out an entire store. It was like a freakin' Civil War skirmish out there.

Today was quiet. Tucker just stepped outside like nothing had happened, but he had to catch up on a bunch of his pee mail. We had breakfast at IHOP off the senior menu, then went to BJ's for mushrooms. Well, initially for mushrooms, anyway. LOL. Bought more omeprazole and various other things, and James gassed up the truck, then we dropped the things off at home and got gasoline for my car. James took a nap when we got home, I sat blogging while listening to Christmas music, and we had our leftovers for dinner while watching PBS.

And now some numbskull is shooting off firecrackers again. I haven't been able to get the dog to go out since five o'clock. ::growl::

Labels: books, computers, dogs, events, food, holidays, music, pets, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:24:00 PM

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