 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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» Saturday, June 18, 2022
Temperature's Rising, and I'm Not Just Talking Outside
 It's been...a week. Well, that's okay—we've got the app on both my phone and through my web browser, so I go into the phone app and reset it back to summer schedule. That worked fine. Me being me, I went into the app in the browser and tried to figure out what might have switched the scheduling off. Then I made the fatal mistake of going into "my account." I didn't see anything in "my account" that would make any difference, so I clicked the button that I though "closed" the "my account" box. This is where I was really, really stupid. It wasn't a "close" button, it was the delete account button. Not designated in a bright color, or otherwise made so you could see it, but the same color as the border around the "my account" popup box. To add insult to injury, I didn't even get a nice friendly reminder that I was being stupid—you know, the "Are you sure you want to delete this account?" message that usually pops up. And...just like that! Gone! I ran to the laptop and was still logged on there. Then I thought—I've got Firefox set up to sync between computers! What if they sync and I get logged off? So I closed Firefox so they didn't sync. But, you guessed it—when I reopened Firefox I couldn't get back in. So basically now the only way I've got to control the stupid thermostat is that the app still works on my phone for no discernible reason (and—for some amazing reason—the app still works on my old phone, too) even though I deleted the account, and God knows how long that will last, and what the hell can I do if the phone fails and this stupid thing switches itself off again? So there I was, not able to use my phone for fear of closing that window, the HVAC people couldn't send someone until Thursday morning, and Lennox (the inventor of the app and manufacturer of this stupid E30 thermostat) couldn't do a thing for me because to set up a new account I have to be able to use the thermostat to get a pin number. Basically I screwed up everything with one click of the mouse. To add insult to injury, our HVAC guy never showed up on Thursday. This was understandable—we're having a virulent heat wave, with temps up in the mid-90s, and I know there are people out there who have non-working units and they need to go first. We had him scheduled ten to twelve, but he was so far behind he could not have arrived until 1:30, when we had to leave for Kaiser. So we rescheduled for 6 to 8 at night, but no one ever showed up. I didn't even mind that, except that no one called. I called them back, as well as texted them, plus talked to someone on Facebook Messenger, and they said our case was still in the system and someone would call us Friday. Friday I had to call them; I finally got them scheduled to come on Sunday. I'm exhausted from riding herd on the thermostat and worrying about James, and basically spent a lot of Saturday in tears. So, good weekend? No. [Sun, June 19: A/C tech was here this morning and was downright surprised. Apparently he's never had one of these thermostats quit responding to touch. He did a whole bunch of tests including rebooting the thermostat, and, yeah, it's still non-responsive. He said since the unit's still working, he didn't want to just slap a regular thermostat on it, because it's not capable of coping with our two-stage system. He's just going to order a new one and come back when it comes in (why don't they keep these things in stock, I wonder?)—unless the system goes off. So we have a thermostat with a "unique problem." yay... Plus, after holding to the schedule rigidly since it flaked out on Tuesday, the thermostat has flaked out twice today. I looked up at one point after I finished folding towels and the wall thermostat was saying it was set at 76℉. We keep it set at 74 so the temp in the main part of the house stays at 78. I had to reset it on the phone. A little later out of nowhere it reset itself to the "away" temp, which is 78℉. I had to cancel the "away," which I still don't know how it managed to set itself. And before you ask, not even James knows the password to the thermostat. I set up the system, and I'm the only one who knows the password, and it's not a common word. Nor does anyone have our wifi password, which was totally randomly set by Earthlink. And there have been no power fluctuations today.] Labels: cars, electronics, events, health, traffic  » Sunday, April 18, 2021
Saying Farewell
If the news on Monday hadn't been bad enough, life threw us another curve on Wednesday (the 14th). James got up about 2 a.m. to use the bathroom, dozed off on the toilet, and once more pitched forward and hurt himself. I woke to him bellowing for help, and he had another lump on his right forehead, a bloody nose (he hit his nose this time), a scrape on his left arm near his elbow, and, of course, sore shoulders. It was 911 time again. This time it was a different group of firefighters, who got him off the floor, and two paramedics who got him in the ambulance to be taken to the hospital to be checked out. They suggested Kennestone because if he had a brain bleed due to the head injury it was the best place for him (they have the best trauma center around), and we didn't argue. They were allowing one visitor, so I got dressed and "saddled up" Butch and followed them there. Thankfully, the CT scan showed no bleed, the x-ray showed no bones broken in the shoulders, and the nurse let me mop up the dried blood on his face. We got home about six in the morning and immediately decamped to the futon and ended up sleeping until ten. Hurrah for five hours of sleep instead of two. James called Kaiser and got a followup with Dr. Mobley on Thursday, and I washed the dog, packed some more, and by the time Jewel came for her weekly visit, we were sort of coherent. Up to a few years ago, we went down to Warner Robins to visit James' mom and sister (earlier visiting his dad and sister Sabra and niece Nicki, too) fairly often, at the longest every couple of months, usually about once a month, which eventually dwindled to every six weeks. We'd visit Maggi and Clay for a couple of hours, too, and arrive home a few hours before bedtime, having caught up with what was going on. The drive took about an hour and forty minutes, and before James needed the power chair we would take the car. Twilight was a delight to drive long distances, even as the years wore on we would creak a little more emerging from the front seats. The operative word here is "was." Initially the only traffic problem was near Southlake Mall, but as the mall died, you'd figure the traffic would get better, but no. More stores appeared around Southlake, and then there was the endless construction at the I-675 split down in Henry County. The "hour forty" became "hour forty five" and then "hour fifty" and got progressively worse, especially at times of the year (Christmas week, school winter and spring vacation weeks, and steamy, sucky, sizzly summer) when I-75 south was clotted with tourists descending on The House of Mouse. Anyway, Friday morning we went to James' appointment at the podiatrist, then came home and loaded stuff in the truck until it was all down there except for the fids, came back upstairs and had lunch (chicken salad sandwiches), and then loaded up the kids (yes, it's actually easier to cope with Snowy because Tucker gets overexcited and will not be still) and were on our way about 1:15. This should get us in about check-in time at three. Yeah, like that happened. Mystery traffic jams all the way down (the I-675 split excluded!) and it took us three bloody hours to get there—so long to get to the I-475 cutoff that we had to stop at the rest area so we could both use the bathroom. Even I-75 northbound was backed up. Tucker finally settled down and lay quietly, and Snowy sang for a straight three hours as he attempted to mate with the bell toy in the carry box. Finally pulled into the La Quinta on Watson Boulevard about 4:15, towed all the stuff upstairs on a luggage cart, got Tucker set up in his crate, Snowy set up on his cage on the folding tray, and just collapsed on the bed to get the full effect of the air conditioning as one hundred miles south was a temperature difference of ten degrees more. A bit later James got ahold of Sabra and we decided to meet for supper at Zen Japanese Steakhouse, which was right behind our hotel. This was a typical place like a Benihana, where they cook the meal on a grill in front of you, and the food was pretty good. I know the steak in my steak and scallops was meltingly tender! Sabra was there with her husband Lee, James' sister Sherii with husband Bobby, and Sherii and Bobby's two daughters Katie and Jessicca, and Jessicca's husband Tom. We chatted through dinner and then after dinner at the hotel everyone else was staying at, the Courtyard by Marriott. When I was first in Warner Robins, GA, it was still a small city, and things pretty much ended once you got past the mall and Corder Road. In the last thirty-five years everything has built up west of the city going toward the freeway. The place our hotel is, heck the place where they eventually built the "old" Publix (the new Publix is near our hotel) on the corner of Houston Lake Road, was mostly country dotted with a few houses and some small businesses, and, going toward the freeway, lots and lots of peach and pecan orchards. Now Watson Boulevard is solid traffic from U.S. 41 about a mile west of the our La Quinta all the way to the old mall, which is now a health center. It's like Barrett Parkway up at Kennesaw, lined with restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, stores like Best Buy and Hobby Lobby. In fact, judging by the traffic this weekend, it's like Barrett at Christmastime. Good God. We had a bonus at our La Quinta: there was a dog show, the Peach Blossom, a few miles south in Perry, at the fairgrounds and Agricenter. Every hotel in town that was pet friendly had dogs, and ours was not an exception. We saw lovely pooches everywhere: a smiling Samoyed, a boxer, a pair of Westies, a Corgi, two huge Swiss Mountain dogs (looks like a Bernese, but with a short coat), an Aussie, a couple of pugs. (According to the desk clerk on Sunday, we missed a beaut: he
was brought here from Russia. Something called a Caucasian Shepherd
Dog, originally bred to hunt bear in the Caucasian Mountains. Like a "St. Bernard on
steroids" was how he described it; he could see the top of the dog's head
as it walked by the check-in desk!!!) I had not asked for a handicapped accessible room because none came up when I searched Petswelcome.com's listings, so we had to take it slow getting James in and out of the bathtub/shower. This hotel had the craziest diverter (the gadget that switches from the faucet to the shower) I've ever seen: it was the round spout where the water came out—you pulled it down to get the shower to turn on! Then I had to do treatment on the remaining blisters on his leg. No wonder we don't like to go anywhere anymore: we have to bring more and more medical supplies with us every time we go anywhere. Saturday morning we got up in time for the breakfast buffet. This was back to being a normal buffet unlike the Country Inn and Suites for Atomicon: eggs and sausages, a waffle maker, a pancake maker, four
kinds of juice, a toaster and several kinds of bread, bagels, muffins,
and pastries, oatmeal and grits (packaged), several fruit choices, 2 percent
milk in a dispenser, also skim milk, butter, margarine, cream cheese,
and even cheese slices (which James really appreciated) in a fridge.
Hot coffee and tea were available, too. At this point we had nothing to do until the service, but neither of us had slept well—the pillows were like rocks and two were too many and one not enough, plus they keep the parking lot brilliantly lit so you won't feel like you'll get mugged, but the light completely overwhelms the white "blackout curtains" they have on the windows and glows all around them, and the bed is next to the window, so you can see how that goes. So we just sort of lolled there until we decided we'd better have lunch before the service. Guess what we had seen just down the road when we returned from the Courtyard last night: an Uncle Maddio's Pizza! We went down there and got individual pizzas to go, then ate until it was time to get dressed for the service. Dress was "nice casual," so I wore the black blouse I'd worn to Juanita's wedding with black work pants and my Mom's Trifari bird of paradise pin, which is the nicest piece of jewelry I own. James wore a blue Oxford cloth shirt over his Navy-plaid kilt, with a Trifari green- and clear rhinestone sword pin as a kilt pin, and just regular compression socks instead of the white socks that go with the kilt. I polished our shoes and put on a little blush, and we wore our hats, as it was sunny, warm, and clear with a brisk breeze. Traffic was terrible going back to Magnolia Park, so we weren't as early as we wanted to be. Clay and Maggi had just arrived, and we walked up to the marquee with them only to find out that Alice, Ken, Aubrey, and Juanita had driven down all the way from home to attend the service. I nearly cried. Terica and Ben, who live in town, came, too, but could not stay long as they had to get back to her father, who has dementia. Several friends of James' family were there, like Edwin, and James' Aunt Sandy and her daughter Crystal had also driven down from Kennesaw in that horrible traffic mess! Sabra did the honors at the memorial ceremony. We were touched because she had asked James if there was anything he wanted read at the ceremony and he asked her to read the Henry Scott Holland piece that had been used in an episode of Remember WENN, a beautiful quotation that goes "What is death? Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room, and I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other then, that we are still. Speak to me in the easy way that you always used, laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together, let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Life means all that it ever meant; there's absolute unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I'm out of sight? I am waiting for you, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well." Sabra liked it so well that she read it at the opening of the ceremony. Then she started to tell "Mom stories" that made us laugh and cry all at the same time. It was not a long ceremony, but very touching, and Mom's casket was surrounded by beautiful baskets of flowers, which she would have loved. Sometime during the ceremony James' sister Candace showed up, having been driven up from Dublin, GA, by a friend. We have not seen her since she developed the terrible infection in her foot last year, and the wound got so bad that she had to have her leg amputated at the knee. She is now in a Veterans' Administration facility in Dublin, supposedly having therapy so that she will be strong enough to be transferred up to New Jersey where she can stay with her daughter Nicki and her grandsons and son-in-law. We know she has not been doing well there, but we were shocked by her appearance. She looks old before her time, thin and wan. I hope she can get out of there soon! After the ceremony, we went with Alice, Ken, Aubrey, Juanita, Maggi, and Clay to the local Cracker Barrel to have a little snack and decompress. Juanita couldn't finish all her meal so I had a very nice pancake, and James had a slice of chocolate cake. Cracker Barrel is usually SRO, so I was shocked that we found a table almost right away. Then they went along home, and we went back to be with the fids. About seven o'clock we ordered some teriyaki wings from Buffalo Wild Wings and had them delivered to the hotel. They were good, but the sauce was rather salty. We had a sort-of better night's sleep on Saturday night, were up in time for some packing and the breakfast buffet, then packed up the luggage, the crate, the cage, and finally the fids, got in the truck and got on the road. The GPS was saying a little over a two hour drive, to get us home a little after one, and we didn't do badly in traffic until I noticed James was blinking a lot and sounding tired as we approached McDonough, so we got off at exit 212, hoping to go to Chick-Fil-A, then remembering it was Sunday and they were closed. Sigh. I could have used the waffle fries. I told James we could go on if he wanted to, after using the bathroom at Books-a-Million, since they wouldn't let us go in at Wendy's, but he really needed to eat, so we went to McDonald's instead—at least they'd let us in to use the bathroom. James asked for a quarter pounder without cheese for me and a plain hamburger
without cheese for Tucker, and guess what...cheese. Thanks for nothing,
McDonald's. I still ate half. Tucker didn't care. Yes, Snowy sang all the way home, too, but by the time we got close he was starting to look a bit exhausted! Of course by the time we left McDonald's, the traffic at the I-675 split had built up. At one point the GPS took us off the freeway, a couple of miles on local roads, then back on the freeway. The shortest way home was through I-285, so around downtown Atlanta we went, got home an hour later at a little after two,
hauled stuff in and pretty much left stuff that didn't need to go upstairs downstairs, changed clothes, and took a bloody nap until James' furosimide alarm went off at four o'clock. Spent the rest of the afternoon watching documentaries on Curiosity Stream: one on red pandas, one about the Magna Carta, and finally one called Sherlock Holmes Against Conan Doyle. At last, back to feather pillows and a firm mattress and lights out. Until we get an alternative safety method, I have pulled the two foam wedgies that we used to use on the old, non-adjustable bed to prop up our heads from the spare room closet and set them opposite the toilet in the master bathroom. God forbid if James falls forward again he will hit foam rubber. Tonight it's My Grandfather's War and part three of Atlantic Crossing. Labels: birds, dogs, events, family, food, health, pets, sickness, traffic, travel » Saturday, January 11, 2020
Stormy Weather and Other Weekend Tales
Thursday morning we had to make the long, long (45 minutes) trek down to Morrow and Kaiser's Southwood office for James' urology followup. Luckily it was a nice sunny day, there was no backed-up traffic (although even moderate Atlanta traffic these days gives one the impression they are trying to run you down), and we were taken in almost immediately. Dr. Starr was pleased, we got a new "hat" (urine measuring device), and were off after stopping for lunch at Krystal. We had no plans for the rest of the day since we had the later doctor's appointment cancelled yesterday, so, since the Books-A-Million in Acworth closed, we thought we would stop at the one at Arbor Place Mall; it was on the way home.Boy, what a disappointment. The old store was large, and you entered from the parking lot. It's now squeezed into a storefront no bigger than an old Waldenbooks and one third of it are silly toys. I found a bargain book as a cute gift, but it's not worth driving out there anymore. Sad. James had been jonesing for a frozen hot chocolate at the J. Muggs coffee shop, and of course that was gone as well. On the way home we stopped at Lidl to pick up milk and other necessary things. Friday morning we rushed through our shopping trip to Publix to get on to more fun activities: lunch at The BBQ Place. I got a simple sandwich and fries, James got a sandwich platter, and we were stuffed—the portions are enormous. Aubrey was able to take some time off work, and joined Alice and Ken and Mel and Phyllis as our lunch companions. We asked after Juanita, who had been poorly at our party and it turned out she had pneumonia and was resting at home! On our way home James stopped at Kroger for gas and I nipped inside to get some no-sodium-added mushrooms. Valentines Day was already spilling out of the seasonal aisle and sending creeping tendrils elsewhere. Once I got home, I did more Christmas divesting: woodland tree down and spare room decorations put up, Rudolph tree, master bedroom mini-tree ditto, all put up in the same box, and the box taken downstairs. Later on we had sandwiches, having had our main meal at lunch, and watched Hawaii Five-0. Saturday we took the opportunity to sleep in. A big rainstorm was stalking in from the west and it was oppressively warm and humid for January. We decided to try and beat the rain, and went off to Barnes & Noble with coupons. James got a new John Ringo book, a "Cook's Country," and an aircraft magazine, and I scored Northland, the story of a man who hikes the US/Canadian border. Then it was finally back to work: while James retired to the kitchen to cook and roll thirty hand-made burritos to take for breakfast when he goes into work, I removed and packed up all the decorations from the kitchen and the dining room and took those boxes downstairs, leaving the foyer, the 1940s Christmas village, the living room decorations, and the tree to go. We had the back door open and the fans madly trying to keep it cool in the master bedroom when the wind gusted and knocked one of them out of the window. I raced in the bedroom and closed the windows just in time; outside the air turned into a welter of water pounding against any horizontal surface it could, and Tucker was at the back door looking rather disbelievingly at the wall of rain beating on the deck footing. Rain was splashing in, so I shut that door, too. It was so warm the air conditioner came on not long after that. For supper James and I had the chicken and wild rice soup we'd picked up at Publix, and did a long delayed action: turned on the Roku, went to Acorn, and finally continued watching Murdoch Mysteries. We had watched the first episode of season nine, some time back to see if Crabtree cleared his name, and then never returned. Now last night when we watched Hawaii Five-0, Grover was investigating a murder at the swanky golf club where he was trying to get a membership. Once he saw how badly the members treated the help, he didn't want to join. So tonight we rejoined Murdoch at season 9, episode 2, where Mark Twain, an avowed anti-monarchist, is invited to speak at the Empire Club, where Inspector Brackenreid is seeking a membership. After seeing how snooty they are, Brackenreid decides he doesn't want to join. We were amused at the parallel plotlines of two shows four years apart. Was rather delighted, as well, to see William Shatner playing Mark Twain. He turned in a nicely restrained performance as a man beset by debts and required to lecture to pay them off. Labels: books, Christmas, food, friends, health, shopping, television, traffic, weather » Friday, August 30, 2019
DragonCon, Day 1 (Or "What Time Does the Orville Dock?")
The most difficult part of DragonCon is Friday.Not only do we have to get downtown early to pick up our membership badges, so we can then eat, and go thence to a 10 a.m. panel, but we have to drive in rush hour traffic. So the first day is always the worst. However, after we'd remembered to tuck our chicken sandwiches into the already otherwise packed backpack, loaded up the power chair, and head toward the freeway, we discovered the traffic wasn't as frenetic as we'd feared and we made it to the Courtland Garage unscathed. As we arrived at the Sheraton, it was just eight o'clock and time for registration to open, with the regular line already around the hotel, so we got into the Disability Services line, expecting the door to open any minute, but instead it took twenty, and it turned out the DS people were wondering where everyone was—someone had neglected to unlock the doors! We had our stickers in about twenty minutes, and then went to a remodeled Peachtree Center for breakfast at our restaurant of choice, Café Momo, which is a buffet of goodies. I try for a mix: French toast, potatoes, fruit, oatmeal always, and, for a treat, bacon. This is like the once or twice a year I eat bacon unless it's at a party. Peachtree Center is...wow! white! now. They cleared a lot out, and some con favorite eating places, like Subway, were gone, but they put a wheelchair ramp up to the other level from the second concourse, which is a real help. As we left, waved at Ken Spivey from his seat behind us. James was off to the Westin at quarter to ten, I was off to the Marriott to see how long the line was for the David Tennant panel at 11:30. The seats in the "seat in line" area weren't full, so I went to check out a portion of Rick Goldschmitt's Rankin-Bass panel. Rick is the author of several books about the Rankin-Bass "animagic" productions, including The Making of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and is the guru of all things RB. He was showing a partial video of a special called The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye, which has him narrating and appearing as a a voice in The Emperor's New Clothes. It only reminds me how much I miss Danny Kaye! Alas, I tarried too long. Hurrying back to the Tennant site 50 minutes before the panel was to start, they'd already loaded the disability folks and weren't letting anymore DS folks in. I went to wait up against the wall where they'd told the other latecomer DS people to congregate. We might could get in after the crowd in the line finished loading, but there were so many people in line they had to turn them away as well. My bad. I would get there early tomorrow. Good thing I usually have several panels picked for each hour: instead I walked (or rather limped after 20 minutes of standing) to the Hyatt to the Sci-Fi Lit track panel "Being a Fan." Aubrey Spivey was on this panel, and I sat next to Alice (her mom) on one side and Phyllis Boros on the other, with Ken in the back of us. I love the smaller panels just as much as the larger ones, and we had a nice discussion about what makes a fan and how fandom has changed with the internet (loss of fanzines, but much more communication with other fans). Even addressed negative aspects: how some fans think you aren't a "real fan" if you don't know every detail about the comic or book series or the television show or movie; toxic fans who write hate mail to show creators because they don't like where their favorite characters ended up, etc.). I can't remember where I intended to go next, but Alice said she was going to see The Orville cast. Really, I don't keep track of who's attending the con, unless it's been announced as a big deal, as David Tennant was, so I had no idea anyone from The Orville series was coming to the con. So...hey, Orville, and attending with a friend—a no brainer, and a very fun panel: the guests were Peter Macon (Bortus), Chad Coleman (Klyden), Mark Jackson (Isaac), and J. Lee (John Lamarr). The latter, Alice observed and I had to agree, is pretty much playing himself in space! He has a very dry sense of humor and wry outlook. Macon looked tired (he said to excuse him; he has small children 😉 ) and Coleman was very "up." Jackson comes, of course, with a very pleasing British accent. Someone asked him if he can see out of the Isaac mask and he said in the pilot he couldn't, but now it is painted with a special paint which enables him to see out, but you really can't see in, unless the camera is very close and the light is shining in the right direction. His actual eyes are located under Isaac's "electric" eyes in the mask. They all agree that, no matter what director, this is Seth McFarlane's baby and he has the last word on everything. So if the director says it's good and Seth says it's not, they do it again. There were no hints about what's up for next season, but with their move from Fox to Hulu, they will be able to "push the edge of the envelope" even more. Went back downstairs to Sci-Fi Lit with Alice for "Why We Read." Well, because it's like breathing, isn't it? How can you not? But there were many answers: one person I know, with a terrible job, said "escape" (which I expected), others read to learn, or for research, or to encounter an opinion different from their own. It was a lively discussion and a very short hour, after which I decamped from the Hyatt and strung my way outside toward the Westin. Of course it was crowded with thousands of congoers, so many in costume, plus downtown workers, and the sidewalks were "bumper to bumper." However, I arrived at the hotel in just a few minutes for the Babylon 5 anniversary panel, where James joined me. The main panelist was John Hudgens, known so long ago online as "Fenn Shysa," the guy who made a Babylon 5 video and sent it to creator Joe Straczynski and was then asked to make more (and get paid for them!) to use in promoting the series! He asked if anyone wanted to see any of them and I immediately popped up with "Holding Out for a Hero," the (mainly) Michael Garibaldi video. So that lead off the panel, to my delight. But much other talk, including how TNT picked up the show for its fifth season and then was disappointed that it didn't garner the wrestling crowd, and the novelty of the "five-year-novel-for-television" format back then (and how incidental events in a first season plot suddenly made sense two seasons later). There was much chatter about Straczynski's new autobiography and how hard it was to get through the first quarter of the book due to his horrible childhood; have Amazon points and must think about ordering it. [Later: I did, and gave it to James to look at. He read it in two days, and was agog at the terrible facts it revealed.] James went off elsewhere afterwards, while I traipsed to the Marriott for the Earth Station One podcast folks' panel celebrating the 20th anniversary (already?!) of Galaxy Quest. This was truly fun because what we mostly did was recall all the best lines and all the best scenes, from the convention scenes to the earnest but daffy Thermians to the running gags about Guy getting killed and how chill Fred Kwan was to the really sinister aspect of villain Sarris to the fannish kids who saved the day. There were two cosplayers in the audience as well, one guy dressed as a Thermian, and the other as Dr. Lazarus carrying "a miner/minor." And of course we mourned the fact that a sequel was never made while Alan Rickman was still with us, and ended the panel in unison with the Galaxy Quest motto, "Never give up! Never surrender!" And suddenly the day was over and I was reuniting with James at the Hyatt Centennial I ballroom for tonight's Atlanta Radio Theatre Company performance. They were doing three humorous pieces tonight. The first was about the reaction of fans and authorities when a flying saucer lands in Centennial Olympic Park and everyone waits to see what the aliens want. Of course, they are here to attend DragonCon! This was very funny. The second piece was a new installment of Ron Butler's spoof of 1950s kids' space dramas, Rory Rammer, Space Marshall. In this tale, Rory and his young sidekick "Skip" Sagan must rescue a young reporter named Kyrie Eleison, who is determined to prove there are space pirates, and who has been kidnapped by men posing as space pirates to get a ransom from her uncle. Skip's renegade uncle and some pirate robots figure in her rescue. The third piece was funny but overlong; a spoof of The Maltese Falcon called The Maltese Omelet, with the supporting characters all nursery rhyme characters (Humpty Dumpty, of course, still takes the great fall). The first two acts elicited many chuckles, but the last needed picking up a bit. Then we headed home to perambulate the puppy and get ready for Saturday.
Labels: anniversaries, Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, books, conventions, fandom, food, podcasts, television, traffic » Thursday, March 21, 2019
Atomicon, Day 1
Actually, the first thing we did today was go to the doctor. James had his stitches out this morning. They put butterfly bandages on it and told him to keep it from getting soaked, and the bandages would start to fall off after three days. Okay. The surgical site has looked very good the whole time, and we needn't have waited to pack the polysporin, because we don't need it right now.Then we came home and began the arduous process of loading up the truck. We were mostly packed, but had to add little things to each container. Tucker, despite being distracted by a cookie, raced up and down the stairs, knowing something was up. Snowy was still concentrating on his "girlfriend" toy. (Yesterday he decided it was mating season and he needed to do something about it as I started to clean out his cage. The moment I put my hand in, he went after it, but I realized he wasn't attacking it, he was attempting to molest it. I've had budgies do this before, but instead of preening me gently with his beak, Snowy bites. Little bites, but he bites. If I was a girl budgie, he would have been beat up by now. As it was, I watched him spread his wings over my hand and just saying calmly, "Snowy, that hurts. You know that hurts, right?") I grabbed him out of the cage and he fastened down on my thumb, so it was no trouble getting him into his carry box while I encased his cage in a plastic bag (it has to ride that way in the truck). Finally we got the traveling circus all packed up and it was an easy ride to the vet. However, traffic was horrendous in Dunwoody and we took the back way out of there, thereby depriving me of my doughnut, which I'd been looking forward to. I don't think I've had a doughnut since last fall. Instead we got on GA-400 and stopped at the next exit for a burger at Wendy's. James' twitchy leg cut in about Cumming, but he kept driving, and we arrived at the hotel a little before three. We were checked in in a trice and we were fixing up the room when Alice and Ken arrived. James and I lay down for a while (I didn't sleep good, he was reading), but then I started getting fidgety. Then James went out for ice and didn't come back. I found him in the conference room watching Jessie, Aubrey, and Terry play some sort of a strategy board game with dragons. So I brought my games out, and they played a game of Scrabble Scramble with me, and by then it was time to go to supper. Ten of us ate at Bigg Daddy's. I had wings and had enough left over for lunch. If I'd known they were that big I would have had five with a baked potato. But they were good. James got a side order of onion rings and those were less good. Not crispy enough, and the onions should have been either sweeter or sharper. But we had a fun time and the live band was great, except Juanita wasn't feeling very well. She strained something after lifting some heavy stuff and then moving the wrong way and now has a painful injury. She looked very unhappy during supper because it was bothering her a great deal. She does have a nifty new gadget: a scooter that folds up at the press of a button. But she's not enjoying it as much as she could. After supper we gathered in the conference room for games. Juanita taught Shari and I how to play Qwix (Betty played as well, but already knew how), which involved rolling dice and then figuring out what numbers to play to make a row of five or more in four different colors. Once you reached the end of a row, you locked that color, and that color die was thrown out of the game. I ended up winning (I think; after not sleeping well last night I'm not sure I added up my numbers correctly) but it's not the favorite game we have learned. I can tell we are getting old; one by one people started wandering off to bed before ten o'clock! Back in the day, we'd be up until one or two o'clock. But there are still about ten of us hanging in right now. [Later: We missed The Orville earlier, so tried watching it on Fox's site. Five minutes from the climax of the story the video stopped and insisted we log on to Fox's website using our Dish password so we could finish the story. What stupid rubbish! Before they would let you watch the most recent episode for free until the next episode aired. Money grubbing assholes. Luckily I had the password list on my laptop, so we could jump through the hoops and finish the story. Hello, advertisers! I paid attention to the commercials this time and be assured I won't be buying any of your products if Fox keeps doing crap like this.] » Saturday, January 26, 2019
Suddenly Sunny
Something absolutely extraordinary happened today. It was a weekend we didn't have anything planned and it wasn't raining. Do you know how unbelievably rare that has been for the past few months?So we shoved four of the most useful of storage conveyances—otherwise known as a Xerox paper box—stuffed with books we no longer want into the back of the truck, carefully covered with a tarp, since retired me no longer has access to the things and must take care of the ones we have, mounted the power chair, and made our way up to Chattanooga. We had a couple more pit stops than usual, and by the time we arrived, it was lunchtime, so we went to City Café first. Last time we came here, I don't know what was going on, but the place was packed and we had to wait nearly a half hour to be seated. Today: plenty of seats, and we had a super waiter. Of course we ordered the chicken soup with our open-faced sandwiches (turkey for me and roast beef for James). It is the best tasting soup, with carrots and celery in it, and it's made the way my relatives did so long ago, with broken up spaghetti in it instead of noodles or rice. Its only fault is that it's really salty; otherwise it could be a food group all of itself. We should have brought some home like we usually do; I practically inhaled the cup in one breath it was so good, but now I feel like I hardly tasted it. The turkey, while being only breast slices, was still delicious laid on the toasted bread with gravy all over it; I did manage to bring some home. I can get some French bread at Publix tomorrow and have at least one sandwich, maybe two. We also bought a slice of their chocolate suicide cake to take home. They carry these huge cakes for dessert, the size of small drums, as does the Marietta Diner and Pasta Bella and a couple of other places here. Then it was off to McKays, where we sorted the contents of the four Xerox paper boxes into bins and sent them off to be considered while we wander amongst the books. James found a real prize, a coffee table book about the Spitfire aircraft with color photographs for $2. He got some other aircraft-related publications, and also a copy of The Bluejackets Manual (basically the instruction book for U.S. Navy recruits) from 1944. I found some goodies myself: the latest Bess Crawford mystery which I was planning to get off Amazon with points and instead got with credit, two different linguistics books (Words in Time and Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions), Roger Angell's book of essays This Old Man, The Man Who Invented the Daleks about Terry Nation, a book I won't mention because I may or may not give as a gift, and two nearly free amusements: a book of etiquette "by" Hyacinth Bucket (that's pronounced "bouquet," dear) for only 75 cents, and, for a mere dime, a fannish collector's item, a nearly-new copy of Jean Lorrah's early Star Trek novel, The Vulcan Academy Murders. We received a combination of cash money and credit, and both had cash left over. We usually take the books they reject and I donate them to the library book sale, but I didn't feel like loading them back into the truck and toting them up to Roswell Street, so I let them have the rest. We had a nice drive home despite a traffic problem: they were fixing the Lake Allatoona Dam road and creating a nasty little backup on I-75 south. We'd observed it on the way up and knew we had to get off the freeway no later than exit 293. So we got off there, at Cartersville and the Tellus Science Museum, and followed a route that took us to the old state highway 41. We had to go through the main drag in Cartersville where all the shopping centers were, but, aside from that, traffic was not bad. By then we were so close to home we just stayed on US41 and were rewarded, just south of Cartersville, with a beautiful sweep of highway that brought us through a lovely valley view. James noted that we must keep this in mind next year when the leaves reach peak. In a few minutes more, we were driving by the Books-a-Million in Acworth, and thus went through our usual route home via Due West Road and Dallas Highway just as sun was setting. James took the road through the battlefield park and, in a little copse of trees just at the right side of Chatham Hill Road, a place I've always been convinced is a deer yard, were two deer grazing undisturbed by the traffic scant yards away. Home in time to take a look at the books, eat a bit, compute a bit more, talk to Snowy and walk Tucker. » Saturday, December 16, 2017
We Should Live in Upson Downs
Today was a crazy mixture of good and strange.James and I had to be up early to get to Hair Day. We weren't going to be able to stay for lunch because he had to be at his club Christmas party today. Well, we did a stupid. James took his blood sugar, took his insulin, we fed the dog, we fed the bird, but we didn't feed either of us. So no sooner did he get his hair cut than his blood sugar crashed. I had to feed him two of the chocolates we brought and a can of Coca-Cola before he even got as high as 67. Plus on the way to Ron and Lin's he had barked his knuckles on his keys, and his skin is very sensitive on his hands since his first heart attack, so a tiny little spot kept bleeding. By the time we got home, he was back "on line" so to speak, but he ate a burrito and took his blood pressure to make sure it was okay, and I cleaned up the cut and rebandaged it, so he went off to the party as scheduled. I was planning to go out to Betsy's Hallmark at East Cobb, but all the traffic was so bad that I just got exasperated and quit. Instead I drove to downtown Marietta, found a parking space in the square after two orbits, and wandered around for a bit. I went into The Corner Shop and bought a Terry's dark chocolate orange (there are other sliced chocolate oranges, but Terry's are the best) and some mint sauce for the next time we have lamb. Then I picked up my favorite Zesty Italian pretzels in The Local Exchange. On a whim, looking for sugar-free taffy for James, I went into the candy store, and was delighted to find Mint Juleps! These are squares of mint taffy that I remember buying from the penny candy counter at Tom's Superette when I was in the single digits. The Vermont Country Store used to sell them, then quit, and I couldn't find them online, so I thought they'd quit making them. Looks like Necco makes them now. I got a whole bag, which should last for months. Finally I did a Christmas stroll around DuPre's antiques. I sadly noticed that they have removed the old receipts and waybills and price lists from around one of the doors, from when DuPre's was a hardware store. At Christmas they always pull out antique Christmas items or put little trees up in the different antique dealers' bays, and the decorations make me smile. Someone had crocheted bunnies for sale that looked just like Elizabeth's stuffed rabbit in The Bestest Present. Then back to the car, which needed gas. I filled up at Kroger and since I was there, stopped for milk and sodium-free mushrooms, but they were out of the latter. They had a sale on pork loin roasts, $2/pound, so I got one. Finally home. Yesterday at Publix I had found a little $2 package of pork rib tips. I cooked them in olive oil and basted them in Sweet Georgia Brown barbecue sauce and a little bourbon pineapple sauce. They were quite good and I put two aside. Then I felt like watching the Winona Ryder version of Little Women and that's what I was doing when James came home from his party, having had a good time and made out well at the "Dirty Santa" (gift exchange) game. When the movie was over, we went out to MicroCenter and bought James a new computer. He looked at a Dell, but in the end he got one like mine, except his has a separate video card. Since he does game occasionally this works better for him. We got the computer home and cleaned out under the desk where the CPU sits, discarding a couple of old devices and putting a new network cable on it (the other was too short and kept pulling the router over backwards). James got into it quickly, but then the internet connection slowed to a crawl for no reason I can tell. This is like the third hour it's been updating, and it's only 89 percent. I've rebooted the modem twice and it speeds up and then immediately slows down again. We really need to install the new unit, but James wanted to wait after we got his computer up and running. It's getting old fast. Then we tried to watch Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon off the DVR. Well, the satellite box has gone crazy. We'd watch about a minute of the show and then the DVR, on its own, would change the channel to 0 and we'd get ABC and that awful I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown was on to add insult to injury. I unplugged the unit and it didn't seem to make any difference, but it straightened out after I pressed the reset button. Well, at least for a while. We got to watch both shows, and the minute I deleted Young Sheldon the "0" thing started happening again. At first I though it was the remote getting stuck, but the box turned itself off and on when I started to change the batteries and the remote was empty! Dammit, the DVR still has a bunch of stuff on it I want to watch, movies I recorded when they had free HBO and Showtime weekends. I hope we don't have to replace it. Labels: Christmas, computers, food, friends, shopping, television, traffic » Saturday, April 08, 2017
Wall-to-Wall Paneling
Oh, that burns me up! I found out yesterday when I got home that the convention goers didn't have to pay for parking; you could get your parking ticket validated at the desk. All you had to do was show your badge to hotel staff! Nice of you to tell people, Marriott.Plus, last night I asked a hotel employee if they still had the breakfast bar for the convention. He told me no, the breakfast bar was only during the week. So I ate breakfast at home with James, which was perfectly fine with me, got to the hotel, and discovered—guess what, breakfast bar! When I went to the desk to get the ticket validated I made sure to tell the young woman on duty that they lost a customer that day. Apparently this is new management at the hotel and they are so inefficient that 221B is going elsewhere next year. Unfortunately, to accommodate those who take MARTA and who fly in, they're going to a hotel near the airport. That is a long, lonely drive. So we were up at eight, I got stuff together, I had oatmeal, toast, yogurt, and milk, I walked the dog, and then I was off. Instead of going to Costco I paid the extra 14 cents a gallon and got gasoline at RaceTrac. This was the rest of the day; I'll catch it up later: "The Worst Sherlock" "Canon 101" "World Building for Writers" "Media Adaptations" "Elementary" "Female Detectives" Atlanta Radio Theatre Company presented four different stories: a funny short about a guy at the DMV, "Paranormal Investigations" part 4 with a cat protagonist, The Crimson Hawk: "The Widow's Web," and another short, "Multiverse Travel." "Granada Holmes" (Jeremy Brett's Holmes) "Stories Through Sound" (ARTC talking about making radio drama) and finally "Arthur 'Continuity' Doyle." And more damn traffic coming home even though I left early. Labels: conventions, friends, traffic » Friday, April 07, 2017
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Increased Traffic
So it's now my fourth 221BCon and I have a routine. I sleep late, get my kit together (lunch—because the hotel restaurant/lounge is not only expensive like its Marriott counterpart that does Anachrocon and WHOlanta, but they charge a lot for lousy food like hamburgers and nachoes; if they had decent food like salads and roast chicken it would be different), and then drive over to that side of town after the lunch crowd dissipates and before rush hour traffic starts, which is about one to one-thirty. So I slept until nine, but then had to go to Publix and to Kroger to pick up what I needed for sandwiches, which I then made when I got home. Plus I unloaded the dishwasher, made the bed, walked the dog again.Now it's time for me to get across town and go get my lunch. I checked the traffic before I left; all green. Except by the time I got to the freeway (it takes 20 minutes), it was all backed up again. Urgh. Now, I hadn't stopped for gas because the line at Costco was out to the road; I had a very short window to get across town, since rush hour traffic on Fridays starts about 2:30. So I had to get off at Roswell Road to get a couple of gallons to make it through the rest of the day (at 40 cents a gallon more than near our house), and then I could go through the back (Hammond Drive) to skip the rest of the traffic. Of course after an hour stuck in traffic, I had old persons' disease, Gottapee. Instead of going to lunch and then hitting Barnes & Noble at a leisurely pace as usual, I went to B&N first to use the bathroom, give the magazines a quick check, and then ran into the Container Store to get a container for the slivered almonds I use on my oatmeal (because they're cheaper if you get them in little plastic containers rather than a bag you can pour from). Only then could I sit down and enjoy lunch at Tin Drum and read From Holmes to Sherlock, the ARC I got on NetGalley. So I arrived at the hotel in time to get my hair out of wild disarray, pin some fannish buttons on, and be first in the registration line, still glowering over the new parking arrangements. One has to pay for parking now! This is typical of the Marriott people; anything for another buck, even though their high-priced rooms are no better than what the Drury Inn or Staybridge Suites offers for half the price with breakfast thrown in. Checked out the charity auction items, but nothing interesting this year, peeked in the Dealer's Room which wouldn't open until five, and spent the rest of the time chatting to Caran at the ARTC sale table. My first panel was "Sherlock and Young Adult Books," which is a burgeoning market these days. There are two different series of books about a young Sherlock, another series about his youngest sister Enola, and many homages like the new A Study in Charlotte. Someone (a lady who is a children's librarian in Boston) still remembers the Robert Newman "Baker Street Irregulars" series. I found the first book in that series when it came out and didn't know until recently that there were more of them. I'm not sure what I expected from "Sherlock Holmes and Science," but enjoyed it. The moderator was a chemist, and he talked about what caused the yellow fogs so prevalent in London in Holmes' day (burning coal; breathing in London back then was the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day). He also talked about Holmes' use of forensics and some of the things they do on Sherlock that are definitely not accomplished by the procedure they show on television! 😊 "Strong Female Characters in Sci-Fi" was next, and of course we had to talk about Rey and Princess Leia and Jyn Erso, but went further back to note characters from Dune and Asimov. The panelists wanted to get feedback from the half-dozen men in the room on what they thought was a good strong female character—and of course it was the same thing that made up a strong male character. We did discuss that the woman should not have to endure assault and abuse to suddenly become that strong female character. When asked what we'd like to see in 20 years about strong female characters, one lady said quietly, "I don't want this panel to exist. It should be just about strong characters, female and male alike." Exactly. Again, wasn't sure what to expect about "Villains Need Love, Too." Basically it was a talk about what makes a villain truly evil, and is every villain truly evil, or just "bad" because they are against societal norms (like women who were strong in the 19th century might be classified as "mad" or "evil" or "unwomanly" by husbands or brothers or fathers and clapped into mental institutions); also, why were villains so attractive to us. Basically because they have the freedom to do what they want, while we are restricted, whether by morality or society. Last of all was "Fandom Generations" (which, sadly, I had to skip the "Joan Watson" panel to see). It was all about the "good old days" before the interenet, back when, as one of the panelists said, you had to save up all year to go to MediaWest Con because that's where the fanzines were and you spent $$$$ on fannish reading for a year because it would be next year before you would meet again. About printed zines and communities of fans finding each other through fanzines and finding friends, and now you can immediately read tons of fanfic online, and you may find writers you like, but you don't actually socialize with them and that's a loss. We got into the early days on Usenet—I didn't even get to mention GEnie!—and newsgroups. Hey, it's 10:00 p.m. now, it should be clear sailing home, right? Nope. First the ticket payment gadget at the hotel entrance gave the guy in front of me trouble; he couldn't get it to accept his card. He finally pulled out of line. (I watched what he was doing. I think he was trying to put his credit card in the room key slot.) So I get there and the red light is flashing. I push the red light, it goes out, and spits the guy's ticket back at me. I can't stop to give the ticket back to him because some honking big pickup truck is behind me blocking the whole road. So I put my ticket through and then pay with my credit card, but I still have the guy's ticket but if I don't go through the gate fast enough the gate will close again and *I* will be stuck. So I just left it on top of the ticket machine and went. I hope he got it back! On the way home the traffic was like normal daytime traffic (not rush hour, just lots of cars). At 10:15 at night! Are you kidding me? Made it home so tired from ticket machine and traffic that I pretty much read e-mail and then the both of us went to bed. Labels: conventions, friends, traffic » Saturday, March 18, 2017
Deja Vu Bookstore
When James got home from work last night, I told him I wanted to go up to Town Center as I had some good JoAnn coupons. So we had supper at the Twisted Noodle, which was good except that I made the mistake of including green peppers in the mix. I re-tasted those peppers all night. I did get the goodies in JoAnn: hooks to hang up the parts of the Hurricane Spin cleaner and a small sketchbook. I also picked up the first two Peter Grant mysteries in Barnes & Noble with coupons I had. I read the first as an e-book and liked it enough that I want the whole series in print.We had to go to bed fairly early since James had to work today. He was up at the crack of 6:50; I was so sleepy that I didn't crawl out of bed until ten. I walked the dog, made some toast and ate that with a milk chaser, and then ran out to do an errand: I still had more JoAnn coupons. I'd just worn a flannel shirt over my short sleeved top with Tucker, but by the time I reached JoAnn it was almost too warm for it. I got a container to hold the heads of the Hurricane Spin cleaner and a set of "eraser pencils" (instead of lead they have erasers for small spots), then went next door to Michaels to get a pencil roller. Then I went back to Barnes & Noble for the next two Peter Grant books. (I really, really hate the changes on the shelves. Yes, the new books are turned face out. I still rather have the new books together. B&N said they did this to put more books on the shelves. You'd have room for the books if you didn't have so many damn toys and gadgets in the store. This is a bookstore, not Toys'r'Us.) I headed home via the freeway so I could stop at Tin Drum and pick up a cheap lunch. It took me longer to drive home than it did to get my food. Traffic was particularly bad between Town Center and Cumberland Mall, especially where they are adding more lanes near Windy Hill Road (the plebian parking for the new Braves stadium is between Windy Hill Road and Windy Ridge Road where the monstrosity sits). James still had three and a half hours of durance vile to go, so I ate my teriyaki and watched two episodes of Rick Steves' Europe, and set up a little "grab and go" craft bag. Michaels has these little "art totes" for $5 each. I put the small sketchbook and the now-filled pencil roll (a dozen drawing pencils and a dozen colored pencils, plus an eraser) on one side, and two plastic photo boxes containing small cross-stitch projects on the other. Toss in a small coloring book and a paperback/e-reader and it's a go. I used some beads to put an ID on it. (And just to make it perfect, I tucked a dozen watermelon candies in it, too.) James had looked at a book at Barnes & Noble last night that he decided he wanted to pick it up tonight with a coupon he had. So back up to Town Center we went, having supper at Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint (their pizza crusts are sooooo good), and then stopping by the bookstore for his choice. I now know the magazine racks by heart. :-) Still no new "Breathe" yet, though. We also stopped at Publix, and after getting all we needed, realized all that was left was to get milk, so we got that there, too. (Well, okay. James forgot the mushrooms. We go through inordinate amounts of mushrooms.) And then it was time for home. Labels: books, crafts, shopping, television, traffic » Saturday, October 08, 2016
Two Characters in Search of Autumn
No sleeping late for us this Saturday! We were off—but you knew that—to Blue Ridge this morning for a model contest they were having at Free Time Hobbies. Blue Ridge is so close to the Tennessee state line you can probably still hear ol' Davy Crockett hunting a bear up in the hills, so it was a lengthy ride—we listened to a "Splendid Table" podcast and most of "A Way With Words" before getting up there. But it was nice because in the wake of Hurricane Matthew battering the coast, it had wiped the sky for miles inland and today's was a gorgeous fall blue, the kind you want to have ball gowns made from, and it was cool enough to have the windows down (but we didn't for most of the ride so we could hear the podcasts).No more fall color up there, really, than down here, but the underbrush is changing nicely and some trees have golden tops (sometimes simply golden glows) and a few maples are showing red tips. We were using the GPS today because Free Time recently moved from a big shopping center in downtown Blue Ridge. We needn't have because it's literally right off the southbound side of the road in a little complex that includes "mini-golf and gold panning" and a store called A Taste of Amish. The models were set up in the main aisle of the store and also in a rear area, and a bunch of the guys from the AAA Hobbies model club were there, as well as James' friend Bill Paul from Warner Robins. There were some keen displays, including a Star Wars prequel podracer, a figure of Humphrey Bogart with the Maltese Falcon, and a diorama of a Martian machine crashing into some buildings from the film War of the Worlds (the real one with Gene Barry). James wandered about in his chair while I sat out back in the shade, enjoying the breeze (at one point it got chilly and about three tiny raindrops fell on my tablet, and then the darned sun came out again) and reading an advance reading copy of Doctor Who: The American Adventures. After James looked around inside the marquee tent they had up in the back (someone was selling a collection), we had lunch at the stand someone had set up (hot dogs, burgers, and barbecue). I had a plain burger and James had the plate with cole slaw and baked beans. I had to go run get our hats while we ate, because the clouds finally parted and the sun was making my head ache and my skin itch, but it was a lovely morning. We checked out A Taste of Amish before we left—I "drove" the power chair down the short road and James followed in the truck rather than go through all that tiresome lift routine. They had Bob's Red Mill grains and packaged noodles, candies and snacks, a few meats, that sort of thing. I got myself a small container of nonpariels, some garlic sesame snacks, and some "soup greens" which are vegetable flakes without the dang dried peas (the only problem with the ones we get from Amazon); James bought some square-shaped "pot pie noodles," garlic-parsley noodles, and some tea. At this point it was only 1:30, still not all that hot because of the leftover wind from the hurricane, and I wondered if we should actually try to go to the Apple Festival today. It runs this weekend and next, and it could be warmer next weekend. But in fifteen minutes of driving south, when we ended up in Ellijay, the line to get in put a big negative to that notion. We did stop at Panorama Orchards to use the bathroom, and I bought a half-peck of apples and James picked up sugar-free taffy. To my dismay, they had none of the goat's milk moisturizer I've been buying there for the past five years. There were a couple of containers left in gift kits and some body soap, that's all. Pissed. I like that stuff, especially the hyacinth scent I usually get. So, after inching out of the Panorama parking lot—the place was jammed! and I heard two ladies talking about trying to get to the really big orchard up here, Mercier, only to find it so crowded there was no parking at all—we headed south again, munching on one of the apples. I know this apple is the same "Granny Smith" that sells in the grocery stores, but it sure doesn't taste like it. These are crisp and wonderfully sour, just the way we like them. As we drove, James was mulling about supper: he wanted to use the pot pie noodles. How about, he suggested, that we stop at Publix and get boneless skinless chicken thighs, and he would cook them in low-sodium chicken broth reduction with onions and mushrooms. Yum. Of course at that point we ran into the mystery traffic jam, which dogged us for miles south on the freeway, and it had gotten so warm we had to put the A/C back on in the truck. Nice way to take the bloom off the rose. We finally got disgusted and got off at Woodstock to run down Bells Ferry Road and directly to downtown Marietta—except traffic was backed up there because Marietta High School was having a Homecoming parade. We skirted that as well and finally got to Publix (I was able to grab the thighs as well as some low-carb low-sodium wraps so James could make breakfast burritos) and finally got home. The chicken was great, and the noodles just toothy enough, and we had enough left over so that each of us has a lunch. I took Tucker outside about eight and discovered our neighbors down the street trying to fly kites in the dark with their kids. Evidently they weren't familiar with kites because they were trying to launch against the wind, and when they did get the kites up they did not know to snub them up to keep them flying. But it makes me feel good to see kids outside playing in such nice weather! Tucker, however, would have preferred it had they not started blasting off fireworks an hour later. He scrambled under my desk and didn't emerge until they'd "stopped shooting at him." Of course the sun had done a number on us and the long drive on James, so we were both half drowsy for the rest of the night and ended up crawling to bed around eleven Labels: autumn, excursions, food, hobbies, models, traffic, weather » Friday, May 20, 2016
Sleep and Other Important Things
Today actually began last night.James has been having some trouble sleeping for a while and we have been wondering if it is his C-PAP machine. Accordingly, the doctor had ordered a new sleep study; he hadn't had one since his first in 1991 and they're supposed to be given periodically. He had one instance where they sent him home with a machine that was supposed to record his sleep, but it was a disaster: it was noisy and it didn't work properly, so James kept waking up. Anyway, there were two places James could take the test, and he asked to go to the one closer to our house. There are other confusing geographical things about the Atlanta metro area than around two-dozen streets named Peachtree. One is that there is a town on the west side, Lithia Springs, and there is a town on the east side named Lithonia. James thought the test was in Lithia Springs, and we didn't realize it wasn't until I started to program the GPS on his phone while he ate supper. So he had two hours to eat, pack his stuff, take a shower, and drive all the way out to Lithonia (which, if the traffic reports were correct, was at least 45 minutes out, and that was if a accident didn't happen in the interim). So, yeah, it was crazy for awhile, and then he was still late, because the GPS on his phone blatted out and he had to use the GPS in the truck, which directed him through Covington Highway rather than I-20, even though there was an accident on Covington Highway (at Young Street, ironically). Thanks heaps, Garmin. Plus he was so in a rush that he forgot his phone in the truck, so we couldn't say good night before they wired him up and sent him off to bed. The nurse did call to let me know he got there safely. Me, I cut out the coupons, gathered the trash, cleaned out Snowy's cage, and put the trash can at the curb, then spent the rest of the night watching Get Smart after seeing "The Groovy Guru" on Decades. Tucker, who usually harasses me from 9 p.m. onward to go outside, curled up unhappily on his blanket and looked grieved. I slept fitfully, and finally awoke around seven to totter into the bathroom. As I tottered back, the garage door opened. I went back to bed, and a few minutes later James came into the bedroom, pulled off his clothes, and crawled into bed. We went back to sleep until 9:30. This morning we treated ourselves to breakfast at Douceur de France. This is a lovely patisserie that used to be in an old house, but which is now on the main street outside of downtown Marietta. We hadn't been there since we took Shari for breakfast the weekend of Juanita and David's wedding. We ended up having lunch since it was almost eleven anyway. James had a chicken pot pie which was made in a croissant instead of a crust, and I had chicken salad and goat cheese on crispy toasted wheat bread on a bed of salad. Excellent. For dessert we had a "black panther": a chocolate brownie in the shape of a ladyfinger with a chocolate truffle filling. Equally yum. By the time we left, it was raining. The weather today has been totally uncharacteristic for May in Georgia—who would think of it not even being 70°F in May? This morning when I took Tucker for his walk, there was a faint whiff of brine in the chill breeze coming from the south, and on the news they mentioned wind coming in from the Atlantic, with the sky a stolid silver grey. The rain continued off and on as we did our errands: a stop at Hobbytown for James to pick up a model, another at JoAnn where I picked up drawing pencils, metallics, and magnets, then a stop at Publix for twofers, and finally Walmart. James needed pocket t-shirts, I wanted another pair of shorts, and he needed new car mats and a new tarp, as somewhere on the way home from the sleep clinic he lost the one over the power chair. He hadn't gotten much sleep during the test and probably didn't tie the rope tight enough this morning. Which is probably why when we got home, I gave Tucker his afternoon walk while James put the groceries up, and then we both crawled back into bed until 5:30. Had some "German chicken soup" James bought at Bernhard's Bakery (it had potato in it and was herbed in a tasty manner) for supper and some chocolate loaf cake for dessert, and I spent the evening watching the last three Elementary episodes of the season. I wasn't totally thrilled with the Morland Holmes plotline taking over the stories this year; the machinations in the final three just about made my head spin. Good work from all the principals, though. Hopefully back to some nice juicy mysteries next season. Finished up by watching NYPD Blue on Heroes & Icons. Labels: errands, food, health, television, traffic » Sunday, December 27, 2015
Southward Bound
The traffic is getting worse every year for our Christmas trip down to Warner Robins. I'd expected problems on the inbound trip, since it is the end of a holiday weekend, but we had no trouble coming back up, it was heading down that was wretched. I don't think it would have been any better if we'd left earlier.We didn't get out of the house until eleven although we got up at 8:30, then had to dodge downtown because of some football game or the other. Except for the heat (it was up in the high 70s before we knew it), it wasn't a bad ride until we passed Southlake Mall (which is a veritable ghost town these days; I recall the days when we drove up to Southlake because it had more and different stores from Macon Mall). Then for seventeen long miles it was zero to twenty miles an hour. The funny part is that there was no difference in the spots where the traffic was good and when it was bad; the road didn't get narrower where it slowed down and there weren't any accidents. There was car after car of Floridian folks presumably headed home and almost as many out-of-state cars presumably heading down to the House of Mouse or House of Harry Potter. After that it sped up a bit, then slowed down a bit; we didn't get to go the speed limit until we were nearly to the I-475 split south of Forsyth. It basically took us nearly three hours to do a hour and forty minute trip. I didn't sleep well and could barely see between sleepiness, a sore right eye, and sun glare. We met the folks at Olive Garden and had a nice meal and chatter. Our appetizer came so late that we just took it home along with most of James' meal and a slice of black-tie mousse cake. Then we did a gift exchange back at the house with a football game running in the background. We gave Mom and Candy a soup basket this year; soups we accumulated from various craft shows and novelty soups we found in the supermarket, along with two big Mickey Mouse soup bowl mugs. The artwork is like an architectural drawing. Then we went over to Maggi and Clay's for a while. The two dachshunds, Rupert and Jennifer, greeted us with a salvo of barks (Rupert kept barking at us through most of the visit; I thought Willow had protective issues!), and we were also greeted by a mostly-lab adolescent black puppy, Tessa, who belongs to Maggi's grandson Jayson, who's living with them. They weren't able to come to the Twelfth Night party last year and we missed taking them their gifts at Anachrocon, so they had two sets of gifts to open. We shot the breeze for a couple of hours and then set home in the dark. Traffic, as I mentioned earlier, was now fine, so at least we got home in good time, although we missed The Librarians (it's on the DVR) and were just too tired to watch Alaska: the Last Frontier (ditto). » Saturday, November 28, 2015
On a Painful Road to a Happy Reunion
Our plan for Friday morning: get up at seven, pack up the car and mount the bike carrier for the rollator, since there's no way to get in Bobby and Sherii's house with the power chair, load the fids, and get on the road. Then we'd make a quick stop at Best Buy where I'd run inside to pick up season eight of Big Bang Theory (since they were open yesterday evening, I expected it to be like last year, totally dead on Black Friday morning itself), maybe a stop at Office Depot and I'd run in for a wireless mouse, and then a quickie stop at Barnes & Noble because all magazines were 30 percent off (a big help with those British cross-stitch magazines—but we could also stop at the one in Spartanburg if we arrived early).Well, so much for that. Neither of us got more than a few winks of sleep. James' leg twitch has suddenly become intensely painful, like a muscle cramp, and he had been feeling terrible after we arrived home last night, just wiped out and tired, and I just kept waking up, and waking up, and waking up, getting progressively more frustrated that I was so tired but could not sleep. I shut the alarm off after the fourth visit to the bathroom. We finally got up after nine, after having managed two more hours of sleep on top of four, made a decision to carry one, tossed everything in the car, leashed Tucker in the back and sat Snowy in the front with his carry box, picked up lunch (since it was after eleven by the time we left the house), and marched on. Now, Gaffney, SC, where James' sister and brother-in-law live, is pretty much a cinch, straight up I-85, a little bit over three hours. But James was not only still in pain, but evidently something he ate didn't agree with him. He started driving, but we had to swap off at Commerce because his leg was cramping so badly. We decided we'd stop in Anderson, SC, just over the line, to make a final decision whether to go or stay. James had a long restroom visit in Anderson, but his leg had un-kinked a bit and we went on, and he eventually was able to drive the last hour into Gaffney. We stopped once for gas (25 cents a gallon cheaper in SC!) and I walked Tucker both there and at Anderson, and Snowy sang for four solid hours to the mirror in his carry box, and we listed to an episode of "A Way With Words" and half of "The Tech Guy," and then Gaelic Storm during James' last leg. We were staying at the Quality Inn just off an exit north of the Gaffney Tanger outlet mall. It was a plain old motel room, clean and basic, with some handicap options. We did not need the little tray I'd put into the trunk and instead put Snowy's cage on the desk/table in the room and tilted the television so he could watch, but I half-covered him in hopes he would chill out a little. Once we were settled inside I took Tucker for another walk. We found out Sherii's place was just down the road about twelve miles from our motel; we just went out the back of the parking lot and turned left. We asked them if we could bring Tucker along; this was his first motel and we were unsure if he would bark. They said sure; they have a boxer named Bristol who is very mellow. They live way out in the country; we've been out here at least once, years ago, but we didn't remember the way. The GPS did the trick this time, and took us past homes with sprawling yards against an absolutely stunning orange-red-and-purple sunset, and then past big open farm fields, one full of unharvested cotton, one where the farmer was just driving his cultivator off the field and back home, and soon we had arrived. One of the reasons we wanted to visit is that James' mom and sister had gone up there for Thanksgiving, and Nicki (his sister's daughter) and her husband Vinny and their new baby Maxon had driven down from New Jersey for the holiday. Sherii's daughter was also there with her new baby, Cathy. So we had a big dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, and we got to meet Max, who's a real smiler. He stared with big eyes at Tucker. I was very amused to listen to Nicki, who is the quintessential southern girl, now talking with a New Jersey accent! She has become a sweet mother. Tucker also had a good time, although he and Bristol mainly seemed to indulge in those doggy mutual sniffing activities that seem to be essential in canine society. He tried to get her to play, but she was tired out from company, and he was all energized from having been cooped up in the car all afternoon. Finally started to zone out about nine o'clock and went back to the motel. Walked Tucker again and spent the rest of the evening surfing Barnes & Noble's and Amazon's sites to use up their Black Friday coupons. Got the new Revels CD and a mystery book from Amazon and the history book Death by Petticoat from B&N. Sorry we didn't get to the Spartanburg store, but it was twenty miles back and we were wiped. I like to go to bookstores and look in their local interest section for books about the area. Amazingly, we both actually slept, which most times is odd in strange beds, although after Thursday night's debacle I would have expected to pass out as soon as I hit the (really teeny) pillows. I woke up a few times, at first cold and turned up the A/C and then too hot and turned it back down, and once used the bathroom, and once someone thumped on the ceiling and another time there was a thump in the next room. Urgh. Unfortunately James woke up with a lot of pain and cramping from his leg. Sherii had invited us back over this morning, and we almost passed on it, but God knows when we'll see Nicki and Vinny again, so we availed ourselves of the free breakfast (not bad: toast, eggs, bacon, waffles, three kinds of cereal, instant oatmeal and grits, two kinds of juice, and, oh goodness, milk in gallons instead of those puny little pints), packed up the car, loaded up the fids, checked out, and then drove back out to their place. It turned out all the young folks save one (Nicki, Vinny, Jessicca, etc) had some kind of stomach complaint and were all abed, so it was just Mom, Sherii, Bobby, Candy (taking care of Max), James and I talking (Jessicca did emerge with baby Cathy eventually, but then she went back to lie down before she had to drive home). Tucker had better luck in enticing Bristol to play this morning, and they romped about; Tucker would come trotting back to me with this big doggy grin every so often. When he wasn't playing, he was leaping up on the back of the sofa—Sherii said it was okay—to look out the front window, as if he were some crazy cat. I had Snowy on my knee for a while, then put his carry box on a tray next to James. He sang his little heart out and Bristol sat in front of his box, cocking her head trying to figure out what was making that funny chirping noise. We left about noon. The one thing I wanted to do before getting on the road was to stop at the Gaffney outlet and run quickly into the Hanes store and get some new socks; mine have been getting picked off one by one with little holes in the sole or the anklet part. James wanted some new briefs as well. But by the time we got to Tanger his leg was hurting badly again. The place was packed, but by using the "Points Inside" app, I found the exact building the store was in and found a parking space about halfway down the row down from it. James got out and stretched out the leg while I ran in and bought the socks and underwear; they were all 25 percent off. It was a rotten drive home (except for the weather; it was sunny and warm yesterday, but slightly overcast today, at least until we drove into Georgia). When I first saw the mileage sign outside of Gaffney that said "Atlanta 169 miles" I wanted to cry because I didn't think we could make it. James was in so much pain he couldn't keep his leg still. We finally had to put Snowy's carry box between us. (This was very funny sometimes because we had part of the box covered with a flannel shirt. I would look down when it was safe to do so and I would see Snowy's cute little face and those black button eyes staring back up at me. Yes, he sang the whole way home again, accompanying another episode of "A Way With Words," the rest of "The Tech Guy" with his favorite radio host Leo Laporte, and more Gaelic Storm, except after it got dark.) James' intestinal problem was still acting up, so we stopped several times to use the rest room, once when we stopped for gas, once back at Anderson where James picked up some sugarless candy and enough peppermint bark for occasional desserts to last until next Christmas. By that time I'd done a turn driving, he'd gotten the leg calmed down enough to take an hour's turn. Our last stop was just before Commerce, where the big Georgia outlet mall is (a huge place, set on both sides of the road, unlike the Tanger in Jonesboro and the North Georgia Premium Outlets in Cumming). From there it should have been 74 easy miles back to Atlanta. Like bloody hell. Traffic jammed up just before and after Commerce, and before and after every stupid shopping mall (Sugarloaf Mills and Mall of Georgia) because of the marching morons doing their Black Friday shopping. Plus it was sunset. Apparently half the drivers in Georgia have no idea what to do with a sun visor. Ten to twenty miles per hour every single time the freeway faced into the sun. The only mall that didn't block traffic was Gwinnett (which I suspect is a sad commentary on the state of that mall). By the time we got home it was after six. Six hours to do a trip that should have been four hours with stops. Damn. We got Snowy set up back in his cage on the bookcase, and Tucker back in the dining room, and brought in just what we needed for tonight (the suitcase and the dirty clothes and Tucker's bedding and food dishes), and we took the rollator and the bike rack off the car. James ordered Chinese for us and we watched the news and then switched to our usual "Christmas Starters": the "Merry Gentleman" episode of All Creatures Great and Small, and the holiday episodes of To the Manor Born and The Good Life. This was the only reason we stayed up as late as we did (11:30). For Saturday night, that's practically in bed with the chickens for us. Labels: birds, books, dogs, family, health, music, pets, shopping, traffic, travel |
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