 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Sunday, September 26, 2021
Hurrah! It's Fall! and Other Delights
 The autumn equinox arrived this week to great cheering by the folks here at Autumn Hollow. Now only if it would feel like autumn—although we did have to wear flannel shirts Thursday morning to drive with the windows down on the way to Costco. But by the time we got to Costco (ten minutes) it was too warm for them. (We were also windows down a couple of other times, one early morning, one nighttime return trip. But it's not enough!) Went out to walk the dog Wednesday night and discovered abruptly that sometime today they changed out all the streetlights. I think they are those new lights that only aim at the street and don't glow upward, and so don't interfere with migrating birds. It's a weird effect; they make what they're shining on brighter, but the light doesn't extend as much, so our front yard is now darker. There's also a rather large dark area near the upper cul-de-sac because all the lights appear to have two light fixtures except the one on the cul-de-sac itself. We hit Costco Thursday morning because Procter & Gamble was doing their "buy $100 worth of stuff, get a $25 gift card" thing again. Since we can easily spend that much buying Swiffer pads, Oral B toothbrushes, Metamucil, and Downy, we went for it, plus we needed "plastic cheese" (Kraft cheese slices) as James calls it, and both BreatheRights and generic Flonase were on sale...needed almonds for my oatmeal and mandarin orange cups as well. It is so nice when it's not broiling outside and we don't have to rush into one store, dump perishable items in a insulated bag with an icepack, rush to the next store, etc. We were able to drive to Publix in a leisurely fashion and finish most of the rest of the shopping (although I still had to go to Kroger on Saturday morning for milk, yogurt, and no-salt-added mushrooms). Friday we did a little of everything: paid our property tax, picked up a gift, had lunch at Okinawa with all the Spiveys and John Bouler, drove down to Kaiser so James could have blood drawn for what the doctor says is a minor problem, and then went to Barnes & Noble. James bought a book and I didn't, which seems ironic, but I'd already gotten three in the mail this week: a used copy of Madeleine L'Engle short stories (The Moment of Tenderness), a used copy of Hal Borland's Book of Twelve Moons (nature essays), and the new Vanderbeekers novel. We also bought a new gadget that is three plugs that are operated by one remote. Since I was depressingly unsuccessful in trying to set up a "smart home" system to turn on the lights through Amazon wifi plugs and Amazon Echo devices—two of the wifi plugs worked flawlessly for a month and then quit working; I contacted Amazon and they walked me through all sorts of remedies that didn't work for one and they finally told me to send the plug back for repair, but when I tried to set up a third plug I had bought, brand new out of the box, it wouldn't work either. They supposedly work on the 2.4GHz portion of the router, and I tried resetting the 2.4GHz, which reset perfectly and everything else that worked on them, like the Roku box and James' Kindle, worked perfectly. Then we ended up resetting the router anyway, and the plug still didn't work. We have to press a remote button instead of doing a voice command, but it works! So Saturday I did the Kroger thing and James had to cook meat and breakfasts for the rest of the week, and we broke up the time with original Law & Order episodes on WE. I've become so besotted with Law & Order: Criminal Intent that I am reading fanfiction, most of it of the "shipping" sort, but I appreciate that the stories that I really have enjoyed have chosen to actually have a mystery plot among the romance. One story has Mike Logan down so pat I can hear Chris Noth doing the dialog. Unfortunately I think that was the one that got to part eighteen and then never was finished—and, darn, I wanted to know the solution to the mystery! This week I also worked out a way to get all the videos I've saved on YouTube to show up in the YouTube app on Roku. I have so much saved that the idea of re-bookmarking them gave me the horrors. It's a great big dog's breakfast worth of stuff: old British black and white films, 1930s black and white films, the Old Indiana Jones segments they cut out of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVD sets, an uncut version of the 1960s animated The Night Before Christmas with Olan Soulé as the voice of Professor Clement Moore, Lucy Worsley specials, Lassie episodes, and more. Today I got all my weekly chores done and there was still time to go to Alice and Ken's house after James finished work to celebrate Aubrey's 28th birthday. September 22 was the Autumnal Equinox! All hail Queen Autumn and her colorful court! (Now for cryin' out loud, do something about that big bully the Sun!)  Labels: birds, events, exercise, food, friends, plants, reading, seasons, shopping, television  » Sunday, October 04, 2015
Let's Just Kick Back...
And that we did. We slept in, sadly had to go to Kroger again because we had forgotten something on Friday night, filled up the truck, and went to Publix to hit a couple of twofers. Came back to chill out—read fall magazines, played fetch with the dog, worked on my Dan story a little, had Submarine X-1 on the Works channel (stars James Caan, but I know it because it features Nick Tate from Space: 1999 in a very small role). BTW, James said this was based on a true story. The real submarines went after the German ship Terpitz. Had bagel bites and a cucumber salad for dinner. And then, yes, the season premiere of Alaska: the Last Frontier.
Labels: movies, reading, shopping, television » Sunday, June 14, 2015
One Hot Weekend in June...
...starting Friday evening when we went to West Cobb Diner for dinner. Who did we see just leaving but the Butlers and Charles Rutledge, who said they had come in just as the Spiveys and the Gibsons were in the middle of their dinner. Looks like the bunch of us are making sure the place stays in business. Hey, they have the best turkey-and-dressing dinner next to the Colonnade, after all! Of course, just a few years ago we'd bump into each other at Borders (::sob::) instead.James went off to work on Saturday, while I ran by Publix to stock up on a couple of twofers and more "spots" (Band-Aids) for my nose. Bought bananas there, too, since you never know when Kroger's banana selection will be a wilderness of green. I brought all that home and then, James having asked if I could find an ultrafine light blue marker or paint pen for him (he needs it for the windows on the Quest jet), I took a coupon and went to Michael's, where I got him a Sharpie and a couple of clearance items for use as a Christmas project. Gawd, the shopping center was mobbed. If I hadn't needed to go out, I wouldn't have stepped out the door. It's like an oven outside. Then I went over to Barnes & Noble and traded my Nook tablet in for a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook. The old one was a Nook with tablet functions attached, this is a Samsung tablet with a Nook function attached. They were giving a $50 trade-in, and the new one was smaller. Their covers are overpriced, though, so I ordered one from Amazon when I got home at about a 75 percent savings. Spent the afternoon watching the Doctor Simon Locke episodes I was able to record and charging and setting up the tablet. The one thing it doesn't do well? The Nook app! Apparently there is some flaw in it that, even if you don't have accessibility options on, when you open a book and try to turn the page, a stupid woman starts reading to you. If you bookmark a page (or unbookmark a page), she tells you. I finally figured out the swipe combination to keep this from happening. We ate in; James had his leftover turkey and veggies and I had the rest of my Italian wedding soup; we had ice cream bars for dessert. He went down to the man cave until one o'clock and I watched more Locke. Wish I had those other five episodes I missed (and a decent second part to "Two Points of a Pitchfork"). Today we slept in, then, about noon, drove out to Books-a-Million, where we got a couple of magazines and a gift for Daniel Kiernan, whose birthday it was yesterday and who is retiring (lucky dog!). It's a Batman bank. On the way home we stopped at Kroger for milk and other necessities of life. By the time we got home, I had an hour to walk the dog, stuff the dishwasher, wrap Daniel's gift, sign the cards, and wash and refill four water bottles. We were both wiped out just by being out in the sun loading the chair in the driveway, loading and unloading the chair at the bookstore, and loading and unloading it at Kroger. God, I hate summer. It was about 93°F. We had a nice time at Daniel's dinner despite sun weariness. This was at Joe's Crab Shack and I had snow crab legs for the first time in years. I adore crab, but now many years back we used to go to a Chinese buffet that had snow crab legs on the bar. It was great until the night we went and the crab was a bit "off." I've had bits of crab cake since then, but no crab legs. Had this with white potatoes and an ear of corn steamed. Bill and Caran came in just as dinner was over and regaled us with stories about their trip to Paris and to Normandy. Oh, I'd love to see Normandy and Brittany! However, this was a splurge we shall not indulge in again. That's why we skipped going out last night. Oh, Clair showed us her new car, an avocado-green Kia Soul. Well, the Lawsons love theirs! We got home at 9:30, completely wiped out, and I still had to walk the dog and throw out the trash before I could sit down. As for tomorrow: I owe, I owe, so it's off to work I go... » Friday, April 03, 2015
A Quiet Friday
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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