This week began with the Rose Parade and ended with party cleanup.

The Rose Parade was covered live on KTLA in Los Angeles and we watched that feed cast to the television instead of the commercial-ridden network broadcasts. Other than sorting medications for the week, did nothing on New Year's Day except eat junk food and watch Galaxy Quest. The day ended on a satisfactory note with the two-hour M*A*S*H retrospective: just the cast and the producers talking about the show and the changes of format, no dubious celebrities telling us how much they loved the show.

Tuesday I updated all the copyrights on my web page so I could do my monthly web site backup. Except when I went to do the backup, the backup drive was gone. It usually sits next to my computer desk and has been in that location for over a year. But, apparently, it, and the container it was in, at some point tipped over and fell in the wastebasket, and it was sometime previous to when I emptied the baskets for trash last Thursday. Annoyed that I now have to go waste money on a new one.

Kaiser still hasn't reupped James' referral to physiotherapy, so we went to MicroCenter on Wednesday instead; I got the cutest little two terabyte (it's about the size of a deck of cards) backup drive that can be hung up on the side of the tower instead of near the basket. It was a grey, bitterly cold day and it was good to get home after we went to Publix next door.

Thursday we did our monthly trip to Canton: strolling the aisles of Books-a-Million, then lunch at Uncle Maddio's Pizza, and finally a stop at BJ's for maple syrup and fruit cups.

On Friday James had his second iron infusion. I posted a short story on AO3 and cross-posted on Fanfiction.net. We ate supper out so as not to have to dirty dishes. Alas, it seems the Okinawa on Dallas Highway doesn't have beef bulgogi like the one on the East-West Connector. I had Mandarin beef instead, but it wasn't a fair trade.

And Saturday was our Twelfth Night party! We ran to Hair Day quickly to get James' hair cut, then came home to finish tidying up and then it was time for food and conversation. We had a couple of call-outs as the Spiveys and the Butlers both were under the weather, but it was a great time anyway. Clay and Maggi and Bill and Caran were here until midnight talking up a storm.

Sunday was cleanup day, and I went outside and took down the lights as well since there's a massive rainstorm coming on Tuesday.

Watched three good movies this week: Operation Mincemeat (now I can't wait to read the book!), Feast of the Seven Fishes (which kinda reminded me of Mystic Pizza but more low-key; I liked the Italian family dynamics more than the jerky Yuppie mother who was trying to force the rich boyfriend on the blond girlfriend), and Knives Out, which was so really convoluted (and I thought some of the families on Law & Order: Criminal Intent were bad).

Labels: books, computers, electronics, fanfiction, food, friends, movies, New Year, nostalgia, parties, shopping, television, weather

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

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Well, isn't that just like fall (and winter)? The days are just flying by now that it's gotten cool and beautiful (and while I have the time off), while stinky sweaty stultifying summer staggers through with the speed of a constipated sloth. It doesn't help that I've been busy. On Tuesday I took time to do some work as well as have some fun. Since I was going that way anyway, I stopped at the Walmart next to Sam's club for a new lamp for my desk, and a new rubber mat for in front of the stove. I was looking for sweatpants, but all the ones for women have open bottoms like pants. I already have two pair of those and they drag on the ground and get caught under my heels. I wanted regular sweatpants that gather at the bottom. Damn stupid fashions! Instead I treated myself to highlighters.

It was raining when I left Walmart just like when I left the house. Miserable, wet, and grey. To cheer myself I went to the antique mall. They are moving all the way to Canton in January and as a result there were not as many decorations this year. But there are compensations: I did find the second "Happy Hollisters" book, a reproduction of a Kresge's catalog from 1913 (the year my dad was born), a collection of short stories and a novel from a magazine called "Treasure Trails" from the 1950s (based on The Children's Hour; was that a TV show? a radio show?), and a Bennett Cerf book I didn't have, Shake Well Before Using! This seems to have longer than usual anecdotes in it as well.

Incidentally, being used as a bookmark in the last book was a list of coal prices for 1951 (which was the year the house I grew up in was built; my parents could have opted for a coal furnace but chose an oil burner instead), complete with postal code instead of ZIP code and letter exchanges on the phone numbers.

At least James was home teleworking to offer a warm welcome!

James teleworked again Wednesday because he had an appointment with the doctor at eleven. I left at ten because I wanted to go to Richard's Variety Store before they pulled all the Christmas decorations to go pink. I stopped at Barnes & Noble on the way to check out the magazines and if there were any books I could get with my coupons. I did find a couple. James called me when I was on the way to Richard's. He'd gotten his eleven o'clock appointment tomorrow mixed up with his 2:30 appointment today, so he was heading home to get in an hour or so more work. I made it home in time to go to the appointment with him, which was with the nephrologist. This is the second time Kaiser's internet has been down when I'm there. Is it something I said? Anyway, the doctor was pleased with James' kidney recovery, but a little worried that his blood pressure is slightly high. It's probably trying to juggle three doctors' appointments in one week!

Thursday I didn't stir a foot from the house. James went out to Town Center and was there for hours getting his iron infusion because they had trouble getting a vein to work. They finally had to call someone from the emergency room and she did it in a trice. I spent most of the day wrapping gifts—and discovering I hadn't finished one (but it was quick finish)—and was absolutely knackered when he got home, and annoyed because it's bloody raining again.

But there are the good parts: having him home teleworking, Snowy singing, Christmas music, and Christmas specials!

Labels: books, Christmas, gifts, health, nostalgia, pets, shopping, weather, work

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

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Friday reminded me of the lyrics from Annie's "Together at Last": "Yesterday was plain awful." "You can say that again." I started out with multiple bathroom visits, chills, and nausea. This being gone by afternoon, my headache kicked in instead, and I was having another, more odd problem: you know how when you eat something too hot and burn your tongue? The first day it feels terrible, the next day it's a little better, and after that it's gone? Well, my tongue has been feeling like the first day burn since Tuesday, but I hadn't eaten anything too hot to make my tongue get burned. Nor is the pain diminishing by day. The tip of my tongue burns and hurts when you touch it with anything (teeth, toothbrush, fingers). I can taste what I eat, but it burns, too, and makes my mouth all dry. I kept drinking all afternoon to cool it off.

When I was done with work (which ran late because I was receiving proposals; I got twenty three!), I just lay down until James got home; we went to Hibachi Grill for dinner. My tongue hurt and my tooth is still painful, so eating wasn't much fun. We still have Barnes & Noble coupons, so we stopped there for a little while, but I was too miserable to enjoy it, and we skipped going to Publix. The only other thing I did was take Tucker out. James came with us and we admired the mini-moon.

A good night's sleep does a lot, and while my tongue still hurts, I woke up feeling better. It was James who was feeling odd this morning. He'd already eaten breakfast, but it must have been low blood sugar, because as we got going, the odd feeling disappeared. We dropped off the old stereo speakers at Goodwill, then went on to Nam De Mun, because James needed ginger tea. Well, we found it, and we also found cherries, scallions, celery, lamb steaks, pork ribs, a really nice looking steak, and more low-sodium teriyaki sauce. Needless to say, we had to go home and put up the meat before heading out on our real errand of the day: looking for a new office chair for James.

On the way to Staples, we stopped at Freddy's for lunch, which is more than fast food, but not really a restaurant. They have "steakburgers," hot dogs, one lone chicken burger, and frozen custard. The steakburgers are neat; they have little crispy edges. And the fries are like the shoestring potatoes you get in cans. Nothing special, but not a bad place to have lunch.

After eating, we checked out the chairs at Staples, and had decided on one, but they didn't have it in stock. They would have ordered one for us and had it shipped at no charge, but I thought we would go to Office Max and see what they had first. Well, we found a nice Serta chair. It was a little more expensive than the chair at Staples, but James has been having so much trouble with his back and legs in the old chair that the additional support will be helpful. The old chair is probably seven or eight years old.

(I also finished up my Flair collection with a set of the "candy pop" colors. These are hard to find and hideously expensive. Office Max had them on sale.)

We had to "decant" the chair in parts out of the box to get it in, then just left it to sit while we had dinner at O'Charley's (we had a coupon). We both had 6-ounce sirloins and healthy sides.

And then on the way home we made up the missing Publix trip.

Finally home, James put the chair together and I put on an old favorite, Star Blazers. The other night we had found a link to a completely new version of this series, which was a cleaned up and English-dubbed version of the Japanese anime Space Battleship Yamato. It looks super, but the DVDs are hideously expensive. I'd love to see it: they have pretty much done the original story over, but with computer animation and HD, and there are now more women "in on the action" including a fighter pilot, a ship's psychologist, and even a disc jockey. (The original series showed women on the ship, but the only woman ever involved in the action was Yuki—known in the Star Blazers universe as Nova.) My best friend Sherrye turned me on to the original series when it ran on good old WSBK-TV38 in Boston in the late 1970s.

Space Battleship Yamato 2199

(I still like Mark Venture best! 😁 )

Labels: food, nostalgia, shopping, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:56:00 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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Spending most of the day at the doctor and getting labs and medicine yesterday, and not being able to get out of a test I don't want to take, was not conducive to getting a good night's rest. (At least I finally got my shingles shot, which now itches more than it did yesterday. Bleah.)  It didn't help that the Chinese food we ended up getting for dinner (because everything else was overcrowded by the time we got through massive traffic jams) didn't sit well, and both James and I kept waking up all night.

So we took our time eating breakfast, next I walked Tucker, and then we got some things out of the way. James had a stack of books he'd already read piled up under his bedroom window, blocking it, and I wanted to open it, too. So we boxed them up to take downstairs and also pulled out the new airplane bookends Mom and Candy had given him for Christmas. We put these on the top of the bookcase to hold some of his emergency survival books. Then I vacuumed it all out and put his fan in the window.

Most of the books went downstairs to be shelved, but about four of them ended up in the box we will take up to McKay's when it's full. Last time McKay's didn't give us anything for computer books, so we boxed those up along with the books McKay's didn't take last time to take to the library for donation to the book sale. We also put some of the holiday decoration boxes back into the closet, but I'm still hoping to strengthen the shelves before we put the remainder of the boxes up.

Finally, way after three, we headed out, under a canopy of mackerel clouds striping the blue sky, went past Publix to drop plastic bags off for recycling, then hit the library to drop two boxes of books off, and finally headed out to get something to eat. I wasn't hungry while I was cleaning and loading, but by the time we finished I sure was! We'd received a gift card that was good at a number of restaurants, so we went to Longhorn and had a late lunch/early supper, small Renegade steaks and an appetizer. After that we just headed home, since we'd finished the shopping on Friday night and there were no coupons we needed to deal with.

Been watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on the Decades channel all night. Presently they're showing the black-and-white first season episodes. One episode featured Barbara Feldon the year before she did Get Smart.

Labels: books, cleaning, food, nostalgia, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:40:00 PM

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Woke up three times last night; totally annoying. At least I was of some use the last time, which was 6:45 a.m.—James was still asleep! He should have been up for work a half hour earlier!

Since I was awake anyway, I pulled on my dog-walking duds and helped him load up the power chair, which saved him a few minutes, and he made it in the office with two minutes to spare. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I checked out something I'd recorded last night—except it didn't record properly. Bit pissed about it. So I did something happier and took Tucker out for a walk. Now that it's cooler I don't mind going. Will be happiest when it's cool enough that I don't have to change to go outside.

It was what the Irish call "a soft day" outside, a wet one that ranged from mizzle to drizzle to a light steady rain, but it never turned into the heavy, driving torrents we get during the summer, and it was never oppressively dark. Tucker didn't like it much, but we got round, and then I had breakfast.

Since Barnes & Noble is offering 20 percent off for members this weekend, I thought it would be a good day to go into Buckhead, as it's the only place I can find "This England." As always, the Buckhead store was warm with the scent of Starbuck's, except it always smells a little burnt to me. I did find the autumn issue of "This England," plus (finally) the autumn "Landlove," and "Blue Ridge Country" with leaf tours, and I bought an issue of "Outdoor Photographer" which talks about taking good photographs of autumn landscapes. "Country Sampler's" Christmas issue was out, so I got that as well, and just for the heck of it I bought Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow.

I hadn't been to Richard's in a while, so worked my way down to Peachtree Battle Shopping Center (still wistfully thinking about Oxford Books and Oxford Too). Richard's Variety Store is about as close as you can get to a five and ten anymore. They carry some hardware and cooking items, but mostly toys and cards and gag gifts, plus a smattering of books. I picked up some odd things: a new sponge saddle, reflector lights for James' power chair, some bumper stickers as gifts, and also the cutest card for our anniversary.

Finally I cut through the vintage Peachtree Hills neighborhood with its tiny homes and abundant gardens back to Piedmont Road via Lindbergh. This area has changed so much since I first started work at CDC. We used to come down to the KMart shopping center at Lindbergh and Sidney Marcus for Myriad lunch, either to the Shoney's or the Piccadilly Cafeteria, or the Chinese restaurant, a couple of times to the Russian restaurant. Binders, the art store, used to be there, too, and the KMart was two stories. When I first moved to Atlanta, James and I ate Thanksgiving dinner at that old Piccadilly and then went to see Oliver and Company. That's all gone: now it's swanky apartments for rich swells and a few stores and restaurants. Ironically, the old Shoney's building is still there, all boarded up, very surprising considering land values there now.

So, I drive to the Container Store on the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree, except it's not there. Yay, Waze to the rescue! North on Peachtree Road? Past Lenox Mall? On the right? It couldn't be...

Yes, actually it could. The Container Store is now in the old Borders Store. Thank God. It would have been horrible if it had been turned into a shoe store.

I picked up more carabinars, as they have proved to be useful, and also items to keep cords straight, and other little gadgets. Damn, they add up quickly. But I did find something I've been looking for for months, except I didn't know what they are called. Apparently now that I found them, I discovered they go by different names. I bought them under the name "Go Straps." It is a small strip that fastens to the back of your phone (or tablet). Attached to the strip is an elastic, so you can put a couple of fingers in it and hold the phone securely. I've been looking for them since I saw them at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation last year.

I was going to take the back way home, through the pretty streets of Brookhaven, past my favorite house, and through Chastain Park and Mount Paran Road. ("Mr. Inflatable" may even have his Hallowe'en decorations out by now!) Then my low gasoline light came on, and I figured the freeway might be the more direct route. Nope. Peachtree Dunwoody and the Glenwood Connector were all backed up because there was a horrendous mess on GA400: a Publix 18-wheeler delivery truck and a tanker truck both fell off the overpass of I-285 Westbound onto GA400. I went right by it caught in the detour traffic shunting everyone eastbound: the Publix truck was upside down in the middle of the road with cardboard boxes scattered around it, the tanker turned sideways on the slope down from the overpass. It looked like every police officer in DeKalb County was there. Absolutely frightening. Thankfully, no one was killed, not even the truck drivers.

Came home feeling the effects of little sleep. Put down my bags, checked to see if Tucker and Snowy were okay, and then lay down on the bed almost until James came home.

We went to Hibachi Grill for supper, but I was so sleepy I don't think I tasted anything. We also went to Best Buy to pick up a new charger for James. We found some inexpensive ones there on Saturday, and it turned out that by today they had moved them and we searched for a half hour before finding them in a far corner of the store. Came home, chilled out reading "Autumn Bliss" (from "Bliss Victoria" magazine) and listening to the instrumental Christmas music I bought at the Yellow Daisy Festival, Celtic harp with violin, viola, hammered dulcimer and pennywhistle. Some Celtic music in with the sweet standards.

When I took Tucker out for his final walk of the night it was still lightly. lightly mizzling. The streetlights turned the grass into diamond-strewn lawns, and our "firecracker" bushes on either side of the front steps had what looked like sparkling bits of stars dotted on the leaves.

Finally, parts two and three of "The Mind of Evil" on Doctor Who. The Master over Daleks any day, thank you.

Labels: autumn, birds, books, dogs, gadgets, health, magazines, nostalgia, pets

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:34:00 PM

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I was up late last night updating my Doctor Simon Locke web page and James just remained up and surfed along, so we were abed late. With no alarm clock to wake us, we slumbered peacefully until 10:30. Figuring Tucker was crossing his legs by now, I took him out and was joyously surprised to find cool air, blue sky, and a lovely breeze. After all that mucky 70s and 80s we had this week, it was wonderful. I almost wanted to dance.

By the time the dressing and the walking was finished, it was nearly lunchtime, so we didn't bother eating breakfast and simply drove out to the Perimeter Mall Barnes & Noble with our coupons, as we had a coupon for $2 off a sandwich if we bought a drink (which means we basically got the drink for free). It was hard to sit and eat first without looking at the books; if I don't go to a bookstore once a week I get twitchy. :-) I had a chicken and cheese something-or-other on a ciabatta roll and James had a chicken chipotle, then we shared a little round chocolate cheesecake for dessert. After this nice meal, we happily wandered around the store for an hour or so before we made our selections. I was very tempted by a geological guide to Georgia! I ended up with the next Kate Shackleton mystery, Murder in the Afternoon, and an interesting travel book, America and WWI. Of course, most of the locations to visit in the book are in France, but there are a surprising number in the United States, and along with being a travelogue, is actually a history of the U.S. participation in the war. Pretty neat. (I still want to find a book about the homefront in the first World War; hasn't anyone written one? Meatless Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, liberty cabbage instead of sauerkraut, Sedition Acts, etc.) I also picked up two books from the remainder table, the sequel to the Scotland Yard mystery The Yard, The Black Country, and a Doctor Who novel featuring the second Doctor with Jamie and Zoe, The Wheel of Ice.

James got a Firefly Yahtzee game and a nifty book called The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites. It begins with maize and talks about history as well as food.

We were "in the neighborhood," so to speak, so we backtracked to Dunwoody and went to Sprouts. Got James some chicken tortilla soup for supper, and I picked potato, with nice big chunks of potato with skin in it. We also picked up some beef bits, a couple of bulk things, Yukon Gold potatoes and corn on the cob to go with Easter dinner tomorrow, and two big chocolate cupcakes for Easter dinner dessert.

However, we still needed milk, so James parked at the Kroger across the street and I ran in for two gallons—and some burritos for James, and got a jackpot in the meat department: very pretty boneless pork chops on sale, some aging steak, and, amazingly, six nice chicken drumsticks for Tuesday for only $2.10! Oh, yes, and when I checked out the ice cream bars for dessert, I couldn't find any Eskimo Pie ones, but I did find some "Thin Mint" ice cream sandwiches. Can't wait to try that. Stuffed all the frozens and the "refrigerables" into the cab of the truck, put the air conditioner on full blast, and booked it home.

By the time we got home it was suppertime. The potato soup was delicious. James enjoyed the chicken tortilla soup, but said it wasn't any better than Kroger's.

When Tucker needed to go out, I enjoyed the weather once more. Really, if we didn't have to worry about the pine pollen, which has laid a fine spray of yellow all over James' truck, I would throw open all the windows. You don't want that junk in the house; I did it once and had to mop up windowsills and anything under them.

We had an interesting night at the television. First we watched the next two episodes of This Old House while we ate dinner. Oh, I drooled over those hardwood floors! Then I thought Rick Steves in The Holy Land would be appropriate for Holy Saturday. Next was another disk of Dave Allen at Large, and now we are watching Our World.

Labels: books, food, nostalgia, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:54:00 PM

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Since 2011, I have been taking Good Friday off to observe some spiritual time. (I tried just taking the afternoon off in 2010, but I barely made it home in time after working for four hours.) As a Catholic we're supposed to observe silence between noon and three, which is the time Jesus spent on the Cross. Sadly, these days, if I'm silent, I'm asleep. {wry grin} So I observe in other ways.

Meanwhile, the morning is made for mundanity: getting eight hours sleep, having breakfast, taking Tucker on his walk, and doing chores: sweeping the kitchen floor, vacuuming the upper story, cleaning the hall bath. Right before noon, I had something to eat, and then sat down to do some reading and listening. I began with yesterday's and today's Mass readings on Laudate, and then eagerly turned on the BBC Lent Talks I have been hoarding since Ash Wednesday. Each year they do a series of six talks with a theme, this year's which was "Performance." I especially enjoyed the first two, the first by James Runcie, who wrote the Grantchester mysteries, in which he equated the Mysteries of the Passion with a real mystery story, and the second by Kate Saunders, who talked about being an Anglo-Catholic.

The very last Talk was by musical conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, discussing Bach's St. John and St. Matthew Passions, so I put that on after the talks were completed, from a performance on YouTube, and read The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything. I'm enjoying this book, especially talking about how you can feel the love of God when close to nature, or with your family; you don't need to be in church.

It's like this afternoon. It was a blessing of quiet and serenity.

James stayed quite late at work last night, so he was home about 3:30. I had already walked Tucker again—he was really good between noon and three, except for a couple of barks—and was dressed to go out. Since he was early, we decided to have dinner at Golden Corral. Going to have to keep away from this place until I turn 60; dinner here is much too expensive anymore. Did get a nice variety of meat: steak, pork pot roast, dark meat turkey, chicken, popcorn shrimp, and seafood salad.

James wasn't feeling well, so after a short stop at Publix, we just came home, and he ended up lying down for a while. I watched Doctor Who (the second two part of "The Keeper of Traken") and read a little while until Doctor Simon Locke came on. RetroTV announced way back at the end of last year that they were going to start showing Police Surgeon in the second quarter of 2015, and I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover on Monday that they were showing the series predecessor, Doctor Simon Locke, as well. Locke's gone down in TV annals as one of the first original programming results of the Prime Time Access Rule as well as a mediocre show in which what was going on behind the scenes was more interesting than the series itself. It was originally conceived as a series about a young doctor (Sam Groom) joining the country practice of an older doctor (Jack Albertson) and their clashing medical methods. Instead Groom's antagonist became the town sheriff (Len Birman) and Albertson was reduced to playing the crusty old doctor figure. The show was also shot on the cheap, not just on videotape, but providing no dressing facilities for the actors. We're not talking about plush dressing rooms here; they didn't even provide trailers for them, so that the actors were changing costumes out behind trees and bushes, sometimes in frigid weather. Scenes that were not quite correct were not being re-shot. Albertson, an Oscar and Tony winner, was very conscious of the show not being up to snuff and finally walked out on his contract.

At that point, since the show had low ratings, the producers just moved Locke back to the city to become...go figure...a police surgeon. Television in 1971 had just swept away all its Westerns and cornball comedies and pretty much was doctors/lawyers/police all the time. I watched Police Surgeon for about a year, until Len Birman left, and dismissed it as a bore and quit watching.

So after all this time...I'm still enjoying Doctor Simon Locke. The filming is mainly abysmal, there are many clunky lines and/or clunky performances, Jack Albertson is definitely not happy and it shows. But...put Locke up against any sort of reality television or totalitarian dystopia or endless zombies from a asshat cable channel who will remain nameless, and I will take Locke, warts and all, any day.

Just wish it was on a channel I could record!

At least I can update my Locke web page!

Labels: chores, Easter, food, nostalgia, radio, reading, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:17:00 PM

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Because, after all, there is no such thing as too much of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, whose 50th anniversary was last year.

D23.com | From the Jaws of Hell: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh | From the Archives

"Funny Book Fanatic" commentary

"Movies Unlimited" story

Review of the DVD Release

"Greeenbriar Picture Shows": Rarest of Disney Treasures

Bill Cotter talks about the Scarecrow

"Disney History Institute": The Scarecrow's Mask

Labels: movies, nostalgia, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 6:47:00 PM

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...when you're at work?

Slept fifteen minutes through the alarm on Friday, then didn't stop going all day. I had to stay home anyway because TruGreen was supposed to be here today, and they never give you a specific time. So there was a dog walk, and breakfast, and I spent the rest of the day doing a bit of dusting, putting up the Thanksgiving decorations, clearing off the dining room table, tidying, sweeping the stairs and the foyer and the downstairs hall, and writing out Thanksgiving cards (I tried to mail them, too, but for once the mailman came early). I finished reading Carola Dunn's The Bloody Tower, had another walk with Tucker, and was happy that James came home early (he worked overtime earlier in the week).

Oh, and TruGreen never showed up. Thanks a lot for nothing, guys.

We mounted James' new purchase, the strap-on bike rack, on the back of my car with a minimum of cussing (mostly me because the sun was, as always, in my eyes) before going out to dinner. It worked really well with the Rollator, although we will have to use independent straps instead of the built-in ones because they are built to fit a bike, not a walker. We decided to have supper at the West Cobb Diner and grinned when we realized the Spiveys were just arriving ahead of us. We all had dinner together along with Ken's mom and Mrs. Medina (the mother of Jesse who is married to Ken's sister Deb). Following that we went to Barnes & Noble with our coupons. James got the new 1632 book and I bought Dallas 1963.

Since I was imprisoned by TruGreen on my day off, I decided to go out a little when James worked yesterday. I went to the Farmer's Market to get James some chicken salad and Tucker some dog biscuits. I didn't even bother trying to park out front on Cobb Parkway; just left the car in the public lot behind Johnnie McCracken's Irish pub. This was actually a good thing because they had the market in front of the old courthouse again this week and it was a shorter walk. I scored the dog biscuits (they have corporate sponsorship now: new bags and correspondingly higher prices) and two bacon, cheddar and chive scones for dinner tonight, but the place that makes the chicken salad lost their lease and they have to find somewhere else that has a USDA-approved kitchen before they can make it again. :-(

I mailed the Thanksgiving cards, then drove to the antique mall that's on Cobb Parkway, across the street from the Big Chicken. I love to go to antique stores before Christmas, when they scatter garlands and ornaments and old decorations among the booths to give it a festive look. There was a big lighted tree at the entranceway, and they were collecting toys for Egleston Children's Hospital. I hadn't had breakfast except for a couple of samples at the Farmer's Market, so was happy to nab a couple of free ginger cookies while I walked through the aisles of different booths. Found several dealers who had some Happy Hollister books, but didn't buy them, and enjoyed all the vintage goodies, including a tall Edison phonograph with two levels of storage for records below, an old Underwood and 1940s Smith Corona typewriters as well as an IBM Selectric II (yeah, sad: Selectrics are now antiques), 1950s metal kitchen tables with formica tops, old plows, seeders, a nice Hoosier cabinet despite the warped bottom door, old electric organs, vintage furniture, and even an old Bakelite Viewmaster like I had as a kid, plus lots and lots of china tchotchkes.

I was pretty peckish by the time I left, but I really didn't want to eat lunch out. What I did want to do was find something for supper tonight. I thought some of Publix's chicken and wild rice soup would go great with it. Yep, of course they didn't have any. At the first one I got some French bread for my sandwiches this week, paper towels, and donated $10 worth of food to the can bank and got another reusable shopping bag with the Pilgrims on it. I took the food home and then went to Costco, where I noshed on some samples, bought milk, a copy of Planes: Fire and Rescue for James, some crackers and some lobster spread, and what I really, really needed: omeprazole. With the milk in the back I now had to work fast, so I was happy to see there were not long lines at the gas station, where it was $2.75. Of course by the time I made my way around to the line, eight other cars had gotten in ahead of me. Thank goodness it didn't take so long.

The second Publix just had chicken noodle soup, and I gave up and bought it, then came home, put everything up, and watched Love Actually, which I'd heard a lot about. I could have lived without Kris Marshall's storyline of the young guy who just wanted to get laid, but was totally charmed by both Colin Firth's and Liam Neeson's storylines, and got a good giggle out of Martin Freeman's part of the story.

I was supposed to be warming up supper when Tucker abruptly decided he needed to go out, but supper was done pretty quickly by the time James got in. I had more noodles, chicken, and veggies than soup, so I thinned it with vegetable broth, added a little white wine and ginger, and warmed it up slowly. With the scones on the side, it was a nice treat. James needed it because they ran the air conditioning so high all day he was freezing.

And then it was time for the season finale of Doctor Who. I'm still waiting for a dangerous version of the Master rather than the full-crazy version they have had lately, and I wish they hadn't killed off Osgood, but...Kate! Danny! And that coda with the Brigadier! I'm still not satisfied with the stories they are giving him—my favorite this season was "Flatline" because I've been watching the old series on RetroTV and this was the closest I've seen to a classic episode in ages—but I absolutely love Peter Capaldi in the role and I wish they'd give him more to do; why is the companion always the salvation lately? I liked Matt Smith but his Doctor was getting too wired and the stories were like puzzle pieces. Can't we just have a simple straightforward adventure any longer?

Slept in this morning, and then it was rush, rush, rush all afternoon. First was the weekly run to Kroger. I needed yogurt. We ended up with a scooter cart basket full of all sorts of things, including sale meat, burritos, and popcorn. James forgot and left the newspaper on the "trunk" in the bed of the truck and we almost got it home, but it fell in the street when we turned onto Gray Road. Luckily it didn't scatter much and I was able to collect it. With the groceries put up, we went out to celebrate our anniversary one day early by having dinner at Longhorn. We shared a plate of ribs and had the shrimp and lobster dip appetizer. Between those two things, we were too full for dessert. James bought me a pretty sweatshirt at the Apple Festival and has something on order for me, but I was able to give him his gifts: the Planes DVD, of course; a gift for us both, all 44 of the Dave Allen shows that were broadcast here in the United States; and something he's been looking for for years, a copy of the series Our World with Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf.

From there we went to Hallmark to use some coupons. Got a couple of ornaments and two additional Thanksgiving cards. We also stopped at Petsmart to get a few things for Tucker. Couldn't find what I needed to get for Snowy, though. Best part of this trip was the nice ride through Lower Roswell Road out to Merchant's Walk.

With only a little daylight left, we decided to take Tucker and Snowy out to the other Petsmart at the East-West Connector. I'm still getting Snowy used to the carry box and he is wide-eyed and a little nervous, but he did burble to his mirror quite a lot. Petsmart flat awed him: all the colors and the sounds. The one thing he didn't do was chirp back to the budgies! Maybe he thought they were television.

I was so filled up from lunch I didn't eat until eight, and then only a bowl of cereal. We watched Friday's Hawaii Five-0 (look, how many times are we going to see one of the team be tortured? it's really gross) and yesterday's This Old House, and the tribute to Robin Williams that PBS ran last night, and then missed the first seven minutes of Alaska: The Last Frontier because, while the DVD had it programmed into the schedule last night, it was completely gone from the programming today. Got to call Dish; half our music channels haven't worked since last Christmas, and last Saturday the signal dropped out on Doctor Who in the middle of recording. Both the DVR and the dish itself are slowly dying.

Oh, and we are dropping James' SiriusXM subscription. He hardly listens to it anymore, and when he does, it's always the same few songs. Tired to death of "Me and Bobby McGee."

Labels: birds, books, Christmas, Doctor Who, dogs, DVDs, electronics, friends, nostalgia, pets, radio, shopping, television, Thanksgiving

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:45:00 PM

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Sadly, the bed can't guarantee a good night's sleep. I was fine until about six a.m. and then this and that began to hurt and I began to toss and turn and...well, you know the drill. James awoke minutes before the alarm, so that night was shot.

Today was the day we were supposed to provide the centerpiece luncheon at Hair Day: James had planned to make teriyaki chicken. Then his revised May work schedule came out. Joy, he had to work today. However, his hours were from noon to nine, and he did want a haircut, so we had to hustle. This means we split up like a couple of pool balls at the Farmer's Market; James picked up the veggies and the chicken salad, and I snagged some goat cheese, some cookies for dessert, and finally some beef tortellini for supper tomorrow (I wanted beef ravioli, but they were out).

We bought breakfast (ah, I see Burger King has gotten wise and is not offering its oatmeal pre-mixed anymore) and then proceeded on one of my favorite rides, from Barrett Parkway to Macland Road through Villa Rica Road. It was in the 60s with a nice breeze, with the scent of greenery thick in the air. I'm not certain what grows at this time of year, but there is a particular spicy odor associated with groves of trees, not minty or "greeny," but unmistakably pungent. (Not to mention, judging by the way my eyes are itching now, something else I'm allergic to...so what else is new?)

We were able to spend at least a good hour talking with everyone before we were on the road again. James dropped me off and went to work, I put the produce away, wrote out the penalty check to the State of Georgia, and headed off to the post office. (I mailed in our Georgia tax payment on time, but TurboTax had the wrong PO box number on the paperwork. The post awful returned our tax payment. When I mailed it in with a copy of the incorrect PO box number and the returned envelope, they assessed us a penalty anyway. Phooey. Don't have time to mess with it.) On the way home I stopped at Kroger because James had forgotten to tell me he needed pudding and I needed bread. I lucked out and found some pork roast on the hot bar, and also got something to make sauce to go on the tortellini.

With everything stuffed into the insulated bag, I made a quick stop at Barnes & Noble, and noticed that there weren't five books out I wanted. There were six. Sigh. So I bought Victoria Thompson's newest in paperback and then headed home.

Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the spare bedroom, which has been disordered since we had the new bed installed. I took the memory-foam pad that we had on the old mattress and put it on the futon; I'll put the egg-crate foam on the sofa-bed in my craft room. It's a bit neater in the spare room now, but won't be completely cleared for a couple of weeks. Also did some vacuuming, pulled out the hose and gave the front porch a good washing down (even though Alex had used the leaf blower on it), and copied things off the DVR, including Len Goodman's Titanic special, the special about the Seattle World's Fair, the Lipizzaner episode of Nature, some short clips, and finally Castle (and Best Defense for James).

In between all that, I worked on the spaghetti sauce for tomorrow's dinner. I really don't like using sauce right out of the jar; it never tastes all that good, even if it's the best stuff, with no sugar added. So one of the items I bought at Kroger was some pork. I couldn't find any small packages of chops or boneless ribs, so I bought pork neck bones. I knew this would be extra work because the neck bones would be more fatty and also because I would have to strain the bits of bone out of the resultant sauce. But I figured I could manage it, and I did, and the strangest thing happened: as I was peeling the bits of meat off the pork neck bones to place in the container. Of course I was nibbling the leftover meat from the bones—this is the most savory meat, after all. I knew I'd never cooked neck bones before—but I remember doing this before, long, long ago, eating the last bits of meat off the neck bones and crunching cartilage. Not only that, but I recall that Mom and I did this together. It was spooky. I'm guessing many years ago when I was of elementary school age we had a week or two where money came up short and Mom bought neck bones to make the gravy rather than the cut of pork she always used. What an odd but comforting memory for the eve of Mother's Day!

[I'm putting the gravy in the refrigerator. The extra fat from the neck bones should rise to the top and we can skim it off before warming it up for supper.]

Labels: chores, food, friends, health, nostalgia, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:35:00 PM

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I can now confirm that the bed really is conducive to sleep, if your body is so inclined. I woke up this morning about 8:30, squinted at the alarm clock, said "I should get up," and my head plunked back down on the pillow. The same thing happened at 9:30. At ten I said to myself sternly, "Now are  you really going to waste your day off sleeping?"

Well, it was tempting...

Instead I wasted my day off going to Walmart. :-) But we needed BreatheRights and they are cheapest there. I also found the elusive Yellow Banana, which Kroger has evidently forgotten about for the last three weeks, so bought them there, and picked up a few other odds and ends like soy isoflavones and two new pairs of diabetic socks for James. I had a nice nostalgic moment walking through the stationery department and spying a 12-pack of PaperMate Flair pens in a rainbow of colors. I had a full set of Flairs years ago, which I used along with my crayons to make covers on the spiral-bound notebooks I filled with stories, wanting "proper books."

Made a brief stop at Petsmart to pick up some fruit pellets for Schuyler. There was a gregarious sun conure in one of the glass cages on the end cap and he brightened as he saw me approach the budgies and came close to the glass. He was on the floor of the cage and when I said hello to him he obligingly rolled over like a little dog asking for a tummy rub. What a cutie! After I'd picked up the pellets I came out from the other side of the conure's cage to find him in the little fur-lined triangle "tent" that are little cozy places for birds. He came right out when he saw me, and when I waved at him, he lifted his right foot and "waved" back. Yes, a cutie. Who was $600. And noisy. Not a birdie you take "to the little room with the teevee."

I had to go to Kroger anyway, to pick up a prescription, and I'd given them enough time, so off I went, hoping to finish up the rest of the shopping. Of course I walked in and they had—you guessed it!—yellow bananas. Gah. Picked up what I thought we needed and finally came home to do some housework and try to finish The Apothecary, which I picked up at Books-a-Million a few weeks ago. A great adventure book!

We had supper at Stevie-B's again, then went to Barnes & Noble. There are more fifteen percent off coupons this weekend. Of course, we go weeks and weeks with no new books, and now this weekend we have two coupons and at least five books I want! One of them was on the remainder shelf, so I bought it as well as the new Dr. Dody McCleland mystery.

Finally we stopped at Publix to get a few twofers (and ended up, of course, getting a lot more), and then drove home past Kennesaw National Battlefield Park. It was twilight, the perfect time to drive around the park, and, as I noted on April 26, it's so funny seeing those wonderful cozy porches with plush-cushioned wicker furniture or rocking chairs and pretty tables and softly-lighted lamps, and a beautiful cool night out, and no one sitting outside!

Watched a couple of things off the DVR, including the thoughtful "The Leash" episode of Lassie (Jeff is fearful of all his family after a friend's mother is seriously injured in a car accident), and last night's Late Night With David Letterman. I remember when I loved staying up late to see the first incarnation of his show on NBC; it was quirky enough to be funny, like my beloved Ask the Manager, and had some cool guests (I still  have one of the Siskel and Ebert appearances). Today's Dave is old and cranky. He had Jack Hanna on and I wasn't sure if Hanna was scowling because Dave was being such an idiot or because he was stoned. The animals were cute but Dave was appalling. The final part of the show had him interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch. You should have heard the audience groan and seen Cumberbatch roll his eyes when Dave referred to his being in the new Star Wars movie. In the words of Marian Jordan: "'Tain't funny, McGee."

Labels: birds, books, health, nostalgia, shopping, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:15:00 PM

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Finally some peace. Work is driving me mad and I've been having some absolutely bizarre dreams, including one in which Jonathan Frakes was my boss and he was pissed at me. (I can't imagine where that came from; the last time I even thought about Jonathan Frakes was when I saw him last September at DragonCon.) I got up to use the bathroom at 7:30, and then fell fast back to sleep until 9:15. I get my best sleep between six and eight, so this is no surprise.

Had breakfast and decided to go out to Publix, as they had instant oatmeal on twofer and the lower-sugar maple and brown sugar runs out almost immediately; it must be the most popular flavor. (What's usually left over? the fruit and cream. I'm not surprised. I wouldn't eat it, either.) Hit the Publix closest to our house, and, sure enough, only two boxes left. I got James some Arnold thins, too, and two "emergency suppers," and a baguette.

I then tried to withdraw money from the bank machine after checking out, only to discover my debit card had expired and the bank hadn't sent me a new one. I got the chatty guy teller at the bank kiosk, the one who keeps trying to push a credit card on me. Does your credit card give me book points? No? Go away. Anyway, he ordered a new card for me and gave me some cash.

So I headed for another Publix, stopping at Big Lots/Family Dollar on Atlanta Road on the way. I'm looking for a cheap small alarm clock (one that looks like a clock and runs on a battery, not a digital one that plugs in) to put on the shelf in the kitchen, since the clock on the stove quit working years ago. Not a clock to be seen either place.

Scarfed up six boxes of oatmeal at the Atlanta Road Publix and another six at the one near I-285. I also found the turkey flavor Rachael Ray dog food and bought Willow a bag. She's been turning up her nose at the six-ingredient lamb-and-rice stuff and is apparently sick of both the beef and the chicken flavors. [Gave her some of the turkey at suppertime; she gobbled it right up.]

Finally I stopped at Barnes & Noble looking for the new "Home Tour" edition of "Country Sampler," which someone on my Christmas group told me was out. I shouldn't have expected B&N to have it anyway; their deliveries seem to occur with the swiftness of a bored sloth. I was right; it wasn't there. I did get "Geek" magazine with the Star Trek cover, and bought a little rechargeable iHome speaker for work. My aging ears are having trouble hearing music or podcasts over the constant hum of the fan under my desk and the noise around it, and I could get the gadget for 10 percent off at Barnes & Noble.

I'd planned to be out for about an hour. I got home just before three. Schuyler even glared at me.

On the whole round trip I had the phone clamped in the Bracketron and I was listening to a collection of musical "bumpers" over the course of the 1960s through 1975 on the NBC radio show Monitor. If you are a "person of a certain age," you may remember the weekend Monitor broadcasts. The closest thing that exists today to Monitor may be NPR's Morning Edition, where you'll find book reviews, commentary, news, special features, and op-ed pieces rubbing shoulders. Monitor was all that and more, with music, comedy routines, news and weather, and the talents over the years of some fine radio people including Dave Garroway, Bob and Ray, the unquenchable Henry Morgan, and John Bartholemew Tucker.Up until 1960, there were five minute episodes of Fibber McGee and Molly on Monitor. Guest hosts included Frank Sinatra Jr.

Anyway, this is a chronological collection of bits leading into station breaks, sports reports, or celebrating holidays, and I was laughing by the time it was halfway through, because, even if you didn't hear the "1970" uttered in a couple of the bumpers, you could definitely tell when you got to the 70s music! The set ended with the Monitor theme and the famous "beacon," which aired when the show cut back and forth to the local stations, a combination of telephone tones and Morse code for the letter "M" for "monitor."

monitorbeacon.net is devoted to the show and has several hours of Monitor broadcasts to listen to over the years (click on "Sounds of Monitor").

[Later we went out to eat at O'Charley's to celebrate "Mama C's" (Juanita's mom's) eighty-second birthday, then stopped at Wally World to restock on wild bird seed. Still couldn't find a small clock I liked. Walmart had one, but it was plug-ugly.

BTW, you can watch Disney's lovely Oscar-winner "Paperman" on line here at Hulu: "Paperman"]

Labels: food, friends, nostalgia, radio, shopping, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:36:00 PM

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I was actually looking for something else when I found a link to the 1940s census page. You've probably heard on the news that the 1940 census report has been released to the public and put on line. Sadly, you can't search by name, but if you know on which street a person lived in 1940, you can find them with patience.

I knew my mother lived on either Belknap Street or Carpenter Street back at that time, and I believed Belknap was the proper one, so I searched on that. Luckily there was only one set of records to look through, and on page 24, there they were, Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, and Uncle Sammy, Uncles Tommy, Nicky, and Ernest and Auntie Terry already being married and out of the house. There's mom's profession, a gluer—not sure if she was at Coro or Trifari at this point.

Dad was harder to find because all the records of the streets in Silver Lake were higglety-pigglety mixed in with each other. But I'm not "Quarchinese" for nothing. :-) Here everyone was still living at home, except for my Uncle Brandy. Dad is highlighted; he was already polishing jewelry by then. Two years later he would be polishing off Nazis.

If I'm reading this correctly, Mom was making about $240 a year (yes, that's a year), and Dad was making about $800. Note Grandpa Lanzi's employer is "public utilities"—he dug ditches for the Providence Gas Company.

I have been unsuccessful in finding my godmother, which puzzles me. She told me they lived in that house from the 20s, and she was a member of one of the first classes at Hugh B. Bain Junior High. However, I did find a couple of other familiar names.

Here are the DiLorenzos, who ran our local drugstore. You can see Albert's profession is already listed as drugstore owner. Anthony and Peter later worked in the store. I'm not sure Albert was actually a pharmacist, but Anthony was.

And on another street altogether, Princess Avenue, I found four familiar names: the DePretes. Mary and Joe later moved the family to the big house on Fiat Avenue, almost on the corner of Gansett. Mary and my mom were best friends from when my parents moved in the neighborhood in the 50s to 1974 when Mary died.

Labels: family, friends, history, nostalgia

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:28:00 PM

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A fair sleep-in, the usual breakfast, then off to Publix to score some twofers. A treat this week is a coupon for two-for-one Hallmark cards, party supplies, or gift wrap. I got two things I can use later this year. Unfortunately I bought something refrigerated, so had to return home before I could go to Kroger, pick up my prescription, and finally get off to business.

I stopped at Michaels for something else, but ended up with some clearance products, including something for [mumble]. :-) From there I went to Costco for another reason altogether, and found omeprazole on sale. Score! (This is how you know when you're getting old; you get het up when your medications are on sale...LOL.) I also bought a package of Forever stamps, since I was about to max out the remainder of mine.

And finally I did get what I needed at Office Max: a tray to corral all my sticky notes and tabs for work. Bought a new pen and paperclip holder as well and messed around with the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.

Came home by the Publix near our Kaiser office, and bought two more cards, graduation cards for Aubrey and Jessie. I was going to get some soup from the deli, but they didn't have anything in a chicken flavor that I liked. I did find lamb shanks on sale and scored two of those, and bought a surprise for dessert Sunday night since James has to work.

My final stop was at the Publix on the East-West Connector. This one had some appetizing chicken and wild rice soup which was so thick it was practically stew. I bought a couple more cards, then was teased by the enticing soup odor all the way home. I had it with some milk and a piece of the baguette I had bought during the first Publix stop—an excellent lunch!—while watching a cute movie I had recorded at Christmastime.

Margie is the cute story of a teenage girl growing up in 1928 middle America (the movie was actually filmed in Reno, Nevada), within the framing story of a mother telling her bobbysoxer daughter (the film was made in 1946) the story of the bloomers and the chain found while cleaning the attic. Margie's mother has been dead many years and she lives with her grandmother; her reserved father is an undertaker and visits her on Wednesdays. Like everyone else in school, she makes sheeps' eyes at "Jonnykins," the coolest guy in the school (with the porkpie hat and the raccoon coat), who's played by Conrad Janis, the actor who played Mindy's father on Mork and Mindy, and is befriended by Roy, who writes poetry (Alan "Wilbur Post" Young in his first screen role). Then, like all the other girls, she develops a crush on the new French teacher.

This is a fun movie, with a great soundtrack of 1920s songs. Margie's grandmother is atypical for movies of the time as she was a suffragette (thus the chain stored in the attic) and encourages Margie in her role on the debating team and hopes she will some day become the first woman President. There's a running gag about Margie's bloomers (she's a bit careless with her clothing) and also the subplot about Margie's dad discovering that his daughter has grown into an intelligent and vivacious young lady whom he should visit more often.

Didn't get much else done since I had a bee in my bonnet about sending some Easter cards this year. So I sat down and wrote them out, and then realized I had no Passover cards. Well, rats. Luckily James got out early, and he had to go to Cumberland Mall to pick up his second pair of glasses; the first pair came in earlier this week. While he was at VisionWorks, I walked down to the Hallmark store and bought the cards I needed.

Then we had to struggle our way northbound. It's the Friday before spring break and traffic was an appalling snarl everywhere; at 4 p.m. there were four traffic accidents in a seven-mile corridor on I-75 North. We completely abandoned not only the freeway but US41, and wound our way through surface streets (with only Powers Ferry being a slowdown) to get to Williamson Barbecue on Roswell Road where we were celebrating Ken Spivey's birthday. We sat with the Boulers and discussed books and e-Readers, ate yummy barbecue, traded talk with other tables, and watched Ken open his gifts. On the way home we used our last Baskin-Robbins coupon on dessert.

So now we have a nice pile of cards to mail tomorrow. Going to pop the $20 we owe to the State of Georgia in the post as well.

Labels: Easter, food, friends, holidays, movies, nostalgia, shopping, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:16:00 PM

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From the late, great Lou Monte:



Grazie, paisano!

Labels: holidays, music, nostalgia

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 5:28:00 PM

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Passed along by one of the folks on my Christmas list (BTW, don't think these are "1930s-1940s good old days" stuff: most of this went on well into the early 70s):

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right—our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts—wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house—not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Labels: nostalgia

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:42:00 PM

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I wish they still sold Valentines like these! Again this year I tried to find some Valentines to just pass around at work, as a cute thing, but everything is media-oriented, Cars or Hannah Montana, or that sort of thing. No fun anymore.

Labels: nostalgia, Valentines Day

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:51:00 AM

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Reading Dave Aldrich’s blog (check blogroll) about old retail stores always makes me think about “going downtown” with Mom. We’d do it at least once during Christmas, winter, and Easter vacation, and at least twice during the summer, and it was always something to look forward to, despite declining fortunes (as a cynical teenager I used to refer to taking “the bus UP Cranston Street to watch the neighborhood run DOWN”). In the early sixties there was a chirpy radio jingle about Providence being “Southern New England’s largest shopping center”; by the late seventies “downcity” looked like a once proud dowager gone to seed.

These excursions always started the same way; we’d be up to have breakfast with Dad, who rose at six and left the house by twenty past, after gulping a homemade eggnog and hot coffee. I drag myself out of bed at six these days, but on those downtown days was dressed, washed, and into the kitchen in a flash. I had an eggnog, too, for breakfast (it was the only way I would eat eggs willingly) on other mornings, but not on these. We would hustle to get dressed, make the bed (heaven forbid we left the house without making the bed!), and walked the three blocks past Berkeley, Doane, and Clarendon Streets, crossed the WPA-era concrete railroad bridge past the junkyard, walked past Harold Crook’s garage, the Hideaway Inn, and Cleary’s Dry Goods to wait for the bus on Cranston Street. On winter mornings the bus was invariably late and you’d stand there stamping your feet and sticking gloved hands deep in the pockets of your winter coat, the wind always finding a way down your coat collar despite a scarf. Later we had a bus stop across the street, and if we didn’t hustle we had to make the walk. This is how I learned to make a bed, complete with tucked sheets and rolled pillows, with no wrinkles under the spread, in 2 minutes and 14 seconds!

The bus chugged its way into Providence with many starts and stops, past the looming dirty brick walls of the old trolley barn on one side and the Narragansett Brewery on the other (trolley barns seem to have proliferated in Cranston; the Taco company was also located in an old trolley barn and my dad remembered another on Webster Avenue), through the old neighborhood of peeling triple-deckers and taps with their round brick windows and the only A&P nearby, past the castellenated, fantasy-inspiring structure of the Cranston Armory, and finally taking a sharp left at the Saints Peter and Paul Auditorium (I still recall a heart-stopping hard left there when they were building the auditorium, riding on a school bus going to the annual Rhode Island Philharmonic concert for the schoolchildren, where we were all certain we were going to be tossed into the maw of the building excavation), before trundling into downtown and getting off at Weybosset Street.

We hadn’t eaten breakfast because we were going to confession at St. Francis Chapel, then in an old brick building owned by Johnson & Wales business school. I preferred confession at St. Francis because they still let you do it the old way, where you said “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” rather than the new way we had learned in Catechism class where the priests asked you questions. We didn’t usually stay for the 7 a.m. Mass, but it was comfortable when we did, only a half-hour service in the small chapel downstairs, the air pleasant with the scents of incense and candles (in the winter wet wool coats and mothballs tended to be added to the mixture), older people who attended Mass daily around you, murmuring silently to themselves as they fingered beads while saying their Rosary.

Now that the solemn part of the day was over, we were free to have a rare treat: breakfast out. Today when I eat out each weekend it is hard to remember how very special this really was. Dad worked in a factory; later Mom went back to work, also in a factory—there wasn’t much money for dinners out. Big formal dinners where you dressed up in Sunday clothes were confined to holidays: Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Mom’s birthday. Occasionally on a Sunday we might grab a hot dog from a truck at the beach, get a burger at Burger Chef or go to Aunt Carrie’s or Rocky Point for clam cakes, or Gus’s at Oakland Beach for doughboys, but this was chiefly confined to summer. (Later Mom tired of lingering fish scent and she and my dad started getting fish sandwiches at McDonald’s on Friday. I despised fish, especially battered and fried, and would either have “rice and gravy”—white rice with Mom’s tomato sauce on it—or pork fried rice.)

We would have breakfast at the Crown Coffee Shop, in the lobby of the Crown Hotel. The waitresses wore little white caps and starched white aprons, and I had toast with real butter instead of the margarine at home. The seats were revolving stools which Mom would have to make me stop spinning on. We’d be among mostly businessmen having a coffee and some eggs and toast before going to work, and professional women with their alligator purses and high heels, all who would be hunched in woven overcoats, the ladies with fur collars, in the wintertime.

Breakfast was almost too leisurely, since we had to wait for the Outlet Company to open; they were the first store available, at 8:45 on the button, not a minute earlier, to my chagrin. If it wasn’t cold, we would go stand at the brass-and-glass doors with the other early shoppers, and I would press my nose on the glass like a kid in a candy store.

Once in the store I’d make a beeline to the book department while Mom did her shopping. Mom did something that would horrify parents today: she left me alone, first in the toy department, then in the book department, of stores. I was not to move out of that department, nor talk to strangers, nor go anyplace with anyone unless it was a policeman. I didn’t move and didn’t talk, and it suited me just fine. I hated tagging after Mom as she shopped for clothes; I despised shopping for clothes and shoes for myself, even as a teenager, and did it only under duress. Better in the book department at the Outlet, which was on the first floor next to the café, running caressing hands over hardback books we couldn’t afford, or spending three weeks squirreled allowance on a Get Smart book.

We had a regular route worked out. From the Outlet we would go to the Paperback Book store across the street. I can close my eyes and see the store exactly as it was—like Ebenezer Scrooge I could “walk it blindfolded”—dark brown shelves tall enough to be over my reach, posters of everything from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to psychedelic Peter Max rainbows and glowing unicorns on the ceiling, books being sunned in the display window, the clerk in an elevated booth on the left, the mystery books in the far back right corner and the media-based books to the left under the clerk’s nose, the scent of bookprint everywhere. It was there I saw my first fanzine, out for sale with the regular books; it was pretty obvious the clerk was fannish.
We might stop at Read-All, a narrow bookstore/card shop , or later at Strawberries, the record store, on Union Street on the way to Westminster Street, which, during most of my teenage years, was a no-traffic mall area, and here there were riches indeed. Until it closed in 1968, my favorite venue there was J.J. Newberry. The main level had a coffee shop, sundries, and stationery, and there was an upper level with clothes, but I made a beeline for the basement: toyland, children’s books, and hardware. Newberry’s main appeal was the Whitman books, cheap (29 cents in the 1960s) hardbacks with glossy covers that were either classic children’s books like Heidi, Call of the Wild, Little Women, etc. , serial books like Donna Parker, Ginny Gordon, the Timber Trail Riders, Trixie Belden, and more, or media-based tie-ins. All my Lassie books came from Newberry’s. (It was not the eldest of the “dime stores” downtown: a very vague recollection of the downtown Kresges, which closed when I was small, remains: a dim interior, with the old-fashioned wood-and-glass display cases and the shelves upon shelves behind the counters. If you wanted to see something, you asked the salesperson to get it down for you. The “toy department” was a collection of windup tin painted toys and rigid dolls and teddy bears.)

Two other “five and tens” were on Westminster Street, Woolworth and W.T. Grant. Woolworth I can remember as if it were yesterday, as it was the first thing I saw after walking down the stairs of the Alice Building wearing my new glasses at age nine. I looked at the classic red sign and exclaimed to my mother “Mommy, I didn’t know the world was so bright!” (I had been living in a dull, nearsighted haze for some years and didn’t realize it, until my best friend spilled the beans: “Linda can’t read the blackboard at school!”) Woolworth’s was a sensory experience at any time of year—the scent of coffee and tuna sandwiches from the lunch counter at left, the wonderful odor of fresh popcorn, the bright candy in bins right up front, the shrill chirping of the parakeets from the rear of the store, bright seasonal geegaws from sand pails and plastic sunglasses to Easter baskets and stuffed rabbits to Hallowe’en pumpkins and noisemakers—but came into glory at Christmas with tinsel swags, ornament boxes, candy canes and multicolor “Christmas candy,” peppermint scent and sample perfumes, inexpensive toys, tissue-paper honeycomb bells, and Christmas carols playing in the background. Each of the five and tens at Christmas, especially Grant’s, had bins in the seasonal area where you could pick out individual figures for your nativity set: start with a base of the Holy Family, add the ox and the ass, some shepherds, the Three Kings, and then more figures: sheep, others offering gifts, the shepherd boy, the camels, the camel driver, a sheepdog…the possibilities and arrangements were endless.

At Grant’s, another lunch counter—all the stores had them at this time—and cosmetics, cream rinses, hair dye, toiletries, first aid. They had the best price on Crayola crayons, and each year I bought myself a fresh box with the distinctive Crayola odor paired with a Woolworth’s blank calendar pad to make and illustrate my own calendar for the year.

Westminster Street held more boring stores that I was obliged to tag into occasionally (clothing stores, of course)—Gladdings, Peerless, Cherry and Webb, Kennedys when dad needed a shirt—but there was one place I was never reluctant to go: Shepards. The big Shepard’s clock on Westminster Street was a meeting place to many, and Mom went to Shepards when she couldn’t find it anywhere else, a “dressy dress” for a wedding, pretty lingerie, stockings, a new purse, whatnot. Their book department was a nook on the first floor where I could peruse all the Marguerite Henry hardbacks to my heart’s content, wishing we could afford them, while I waited for Mom.

Invariably we would need to make a “pit stop,” and we did that in Shepard’s, for they had, not a tiny rest room perpetually out of toilet paper and dripped with water, but a big ladies’ room that must have been something when the store was built, and was still impressive, especially to a kid from a tiny house in the suburbs. It even had an attendant. The dividing walls were made of glass bricks, and there were long counters with mirrors behind them where you could put your shopping bags down and fix your hair instead of at the sinks where you would get everything wet. People still “dressed up” to go downtown back then and you might even find older ladies adjusting fur stoles and replacing hatpins in big picture hats that you only saw in old magazines, checking their stocking seams.

We might go into Richleys, the little card shop that also sold gift items and small stuffed animals, or Pier Linen, where Mom coveted the cut crystal but never bought any, or Garr’s Fabrics. Garr’s was another place that had not changed in years; the walls were hung with satin drapery and formally dressed women helped you select thread and cut cloth for you. At Christmas I would go to Garr’s to buy ribbons as gifts for my stuffed animals.

One of my too-brief discoveries was a bookstore called Dana’s, which was very close to one of my other favorite stores, E.L. Freeman’s, the stationery shop. I used to wander Freeman’s in a happy daze, imagining all the stories that could be written on their different composition books. Dana’s was a basement shop in the 1920s (or earlier) Wilcox Building with the lovely cornices and façade of that era. Once inside, the store smelled delightfully of old books. These were not simply old paperbacks as you would find in a used bookstore now, but vintage books, many of them dating back to the 19th century. These books were always fascinating, with their small size, colorful leather covers, and inlaid, curving fonts in gold. There was one corner where all of Lucy Fitch Perkins’ “Twins” books were lined up in a row; also glimpsed were bound issues of St. Nicholas and other children’s magazines. Alas, not a year after I discovered it, a fire in the top story of the Wilcox Building ruined Paradise. The books were untouched by fire, but the water and smoke ruined them. Soon after I stood at the iron railing at the sidewalk level, looking down into the bleak, locked, dark bookstore where the books lay smeared across the floor of the shop. I could never walk by there for years afterwards without wanting to cry.

One occasional treat, at least until 1970, would be a movie. There were still four movie theatres downtown during my elementary years, the big Lowes State which got the blockbuster films like Lawrence of Arabia and Cleopatra, the Strand which showed more controversial flicks like Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the RKO Albee which had things like Jerry Lewis movies, Westerns, comedies, and my favorite of all, the Majestic, which showed all the Disney films. The Majestic was a big white stone building that had started life as a vaudeville theatre; it still had the bathrooms downstairs as in a stage theatre, with a small box office and vending machines replacing most of the once-large lobby, but popcorn and candy was still available at a small stand, and you went through curtained arches to get to velvet-plush seats. A big red curtain opened just as the movie started, giving the old blue Disney “Buena Vista” logo a rippling, purplish cast. I saw Mary Poppins there, and Old Yeller, and Three Lives of Thomasina, and other wonderful Disney classics. Eventually the Loews became the Providence Performing Arts Center, the Strand turned into a “dirty movie” house and then died, the Albee became a parking lot; only the Majestic survives as the Trinity Repertory Theatre playhouse.

The final stop involved going past the Planters Peanut shop. I have forgotten in what small corner of what side street it was in, but all you had to do to find it was take a big sniff, as the roasting peanuts—yes, they did it right in the store!—could be smelled for blocks. Mom always bought peanut clusters for Dad and herself; I preferred my peanuts directly from the shell.

We would wait for the bus on the corner of Washington and Mathewson Streets, where my godfather Armand Azzoli had his shoe shop. We’d go in to say hi, and sometimes to have Armand put taps on the heels of my shoes, since I tended to turn my ankle and wear them down on the sides. It was a tiny, narrow shop, smelling of fresh leather and shoe polish, a cozy place especially on a winter day.

I remember one thing we did was wait for a certain bus. Before they instituted the Arlington #31 bus that went past our house, there were three buses, 31-A, -B, and –C, Oaklawn/Old Spring, one I’ve forgotten, and the Meshanicut bus. We would try to catch the 31-C Meshanicut bus because occasionally, instead of turning down Cranston Street toward Dyer Avenue, it would go straight up Gansett Avenue and we could ask the driver to stop at Appleton Street. I think it had to do with the time of day, but we never figured it out. If it turned the corner, we just got out at the bus stop near DiPrete’s hardware and trudged back the way we came. We were hungry and footsore—but it had been a glorious day nonetheless.

Labels: memories, nostalgia, Rhode Island, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:44:00 PM

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I never liked Dark Shadows, but my godmother (Confirmation godmother Margaret Azzoli) and I were crazy about the Canadian serial Strange Paradise—goodness, are all of them on YouTube? I missed most of the Desmond Hall episodes when WLNE (then WTEV) moved the show from 7 p.m. weeknights to afternoons when I was in school. Voodoo, zombies, a guy trying to bring his wife back from the dead, possession, a murderous ancestor...the plot thickened daily. And I had such a crush on Colin Fox!

Labels: nostalgia, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 1:57:00 AM

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