Happy Memorial Day. Hard to remember anything before this plague though.
Watched lots of movies this week: ALL ABOUT EVE, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, GROUNDHOG DAY. I think I am getting burned out on watching series right now. Messes with my brain keeping so many narratives straight. Watching THE GREAT by the same people that made THE FAVORITE though and it is fun and well-made but very vulgar and violent. Can those adjectives go together?
Reading CITY OF NETS, Otto Friedrich which is about Hollywood in the forties, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILL IS GOLD, Pam Zhang, about two Chinese sisters in goldrush California, and listening to STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (Highsmith) Again a lot of stories to keep straight.
Had friends over in the backyard several times this week. Of course everyone must visit me since I don't drive. And right now using Uber seems too risky. Who knew when I decided to ditch the car, something like this would happen. I thought I had it all thought out: uber and lyft would do me. Ha!
It sure helps to see a face ten feet away though. Although my backyard has at least two robin nests and they are not happy when we are out there.
Very hard yesterday to open the NYT and see the list of names of only one percent of the Americans who have died. So chilling and so much of it unnecessary. It's as is someone decided to clear out the people collecting social security and medicare. I lost a friend this week to Covid. Paula Wood was the Dean of Education at WSU and had a very successful career. She was 71 but in poor health. She knew it was coming for her. Talked about it for several weeks. Scary. How many of those in nursing homes or senior citizen houseing especially live with this fear.
How about you guys?
14 comments:
I'm glad that you're able to have some face to socially distant face human contact, Patti. Let the robins squawk; they have you 24/7 and should be willing to share you with your friends.
We made a pledge not to go the beach over the holiday weekend, then broke it yesterday. We decided to go at 8:00 in the morning before the crowds get there. It was more crowded than usual, but there was still plenty of room to distance ourselves. Nugget, the puppy, has decided she kind of likes the water almost as much as she does seeing other dogs. We only stayed for a bit over an hour, leaving before the rush, but it was enough time to relax and center ourselves for the day.
Amy made us some lovely face masks so now we can look super cool as we run in and out of Walmart for some staples.
Chick-Fil-A posted a sign on Christina's front lawn to let the world know that Erin had won their scholarship. They also had a sign posted in front of the store (and in a local newspaper ad) congratulating Erin and other high school seniors on graduating. The county is considering holding a late graduation ceremony sometime in late July or August, but Erin has already moved past that. The state has declared that colleges will be opened in the fall so it looks like Erin will be off to Tallahassee after all.
I've been reading some old DOC SAVAGE pulp novels, most of which were written by Lester Dent. I find I have been needing to escape the present by going back eight decades or more to simpler, action-oriented pulp times.
We binge watched both seasons of HOMECOMING, a quirky series about the dangers of government, military, and corporate overreach. The fragmented presentation helped to keep our attention.
So half of all Twitter accounts pushing for reopening are bots? That -- and the Trumpanistas urging -- explains why so many people are protesting and wanting the country completely open. Trump's recent messaging that the deaths of a hundred thousand Americans are inconsequential in comparison to opening the country. Did you know that there may not be a second wave? There might be. But there might not be. I got that straight from the president's mouth.
Excuse me while I go hide under my bed covers.
Enjoy your week, Patti!
That NYT article/list was hard to read, Patti. But I think we need to really let it sink in how many lives have been lost. This is not something that 'will pass in a few weeks,' etc.. We should remember those who died.
Glad that you had the chance to have people over. It's hard balancing our need for social interaction with the need to stay safe...
Too many suspicious groups urging every state to Reopen, Trump playing golf during the pandemic and pretending it's over, and crowded beaches fool many Americans into careless behaviors. One look at the front page of yesterday's NY TIMES tells a completely different story.
Diane and I Portaled with Patrick and Katie yesterday. They're fine but continue to instruct us to "Stay-at-Home." I think they have a better grasp on the coronavirus pandemic than we do.
Sorry to hear about your friend's death from covid-19. I saw a newspaper article that said 81% of the covid deaths in Canada came from nursing homes. Our local officials claim about 56% of Western NY covid deaths happened in nursing homes, but I question most of the Government's counting of cases and deaths these days. Undercounting is much more likely.
Stay healthy, stay safe!
Nice picture. Quiet here, and will be until I get this medical crap behind me. We don't get how we're together 24/7 and Jackie tested negative after I tested positive. (Again, let me assure you neither of us has had any symptoms.) The doctor says there are much more false negatives than false positives, but either way, the hospital wouldn't take me until I test negative. The most doctors can come up with is that maybe I had it weeks ago - it is now up to 35% people who have it but are asymptomatic - and still had cells left. Either way, it is two weeks more quarantine (one down, one to go), then another two weeks to wait.
We don't get bored with series as a rule because we have a list of 10-15 shows we are rotating (mostly Netflix, a few Amazon Prime) at a rate of three or four a night. We don't binge-watch anything, though as we get to the end we often watch the last two episodes in a row. There are a few other things on PBS, BBC America, FX we stick in there too. And, of course, Jackie is an MSNBC junkie - Morning Joe (three hours a day, Monday-Friday) and Nicolle Wallace (now 90 minutes a day). And we never miss Governor Cuomo's daily briefing.
We're bother reading more, though too much of my time is spent online. We subscribe to the NY Times and Daily News and the Washington Post.
Glad you could have visitors, Patti, I'm sure that cheered you up. We don't watch enough shows to binge anything. How Jeff and George can find so many different ones to watch mystifies me, but it's probably that they have a bunch of channels we don't. We're reading some more, and doing a little gardening but not much, and working on one jigsaw puzzle after another. Then there's staring out the window, and napping...
Memorial Day seems so sad this year. When did that start? We started to watch a show on PBS last night and gave up on it, too many crying people. We ended up watching Barnwood Builders instead.
Chin up, Patti. We're all here for you.
Bored. Especially now that the weather seems to be warming up. A friend of mine is having a few people over this afternoon-all staying a safe distance. He has a friend who is a musician and will play out side.
Watching mostly second rate stuff on tv. Did binge watch The Kominsky Method on Netflix.
Haven't been reading a lot. My vision still bothers me. Having my first injection Jun 1. The new Michael Connelly and Jeffrey Ford novels are out this week and I have them on order.
Yeah, I am going to my son's. Sadly there is now this anxiety with any social gathering. It may be small and forgotten for a time, but it is there.
Still here as well and hanging in. Glad you had folks over. We have not done that. Scott's plans regarding his job hunt and quest for a DL remain very much on hold here.
For the first time since mid March, we were around people Friday morning. It was our Doctor and staff as we had to do our physicals. I had thought about rescheduling, but with the ongoing push to reopen by so many here and so many going around unmasked and gathering in hordes, I am very afraid we we will be back in a major lockdown in Dallas by the middle to the end of the month. I also have some health stuff going on that needs to be checked. So, we covered up and went. It went okay. Blood results will be back in a few days and we will do some sort of online video thingy to go over that. Doc pushed hard for me to go do grief counseling. Kind of hard to deny the need when one loses control in the office and starts blubbering everywhere.
Reading some, watching tv some, and bracing for the heat that is sure to come though we have rain right now again today. At some pint the Sky Gods will throw the master switch shutting off the flow and the annual searing will begin. Not looking forward to it as I am not a fan of summer at all.
Kevin
I am so worried about the outcome of this unfettered mixing with others. Southern states just value freedom far too much. I cound never live in the south and would live in Canada if they would let me.
Surely this pandemic has exacerbated your grief. I would not have survived without my therapist. We need a place to grieve and friends/family can't take it, I find.
We had a nice weekend. We went out Saturday morning to a nearby plant nursery, the first time we have been anywhere but the grocery store or to pick up take out. We got potting soil and geraniums and succulents and I have more motivation to work outside, although it is too sunny. This morning it was overcast for a while and we walked on the bike path behind our neighborhood and took photos. Glen has a new camera with two lenses and wanted to try it out.
We watched the 1945 film of And Then There Was None. It was good, lighter than the book though. At Rick's suggestion, I found a copy so I could watch it before viewing the more recent BBC series. Otherwise we are wathing our standard comfort viewing: NCIS (as season 6 now) and the Mission Impossible TV series.
I agree, Patti, you would not want to live in the South. I am sure everyone there is not in favor of loosening the restrictions so much, but even so, it is a different world.
I'd suggest it's not so much a Different World in the southern US so much as a cultural strain all over the US that is bred of resentment...it wasn't a souther state that had the armed invasion of the Capitol building. Self-justifying idiots at the beach just have been raised in somewhat more of a beach culture, as well...as with summers in the mid-Atlantic, it's an almost mandatory hegira. What do those pointy-headed nabobs of negativity know, anyway? Etc.
Newest thing on US sets I'm watching is a Brazilian series on HBO, based on a French series with the same English title (are we interlocked enough yet?), HARD. A wife and mother discovers her suddenly late husband's successful web tech business is far less diverse than she blithely took it to be...it's primarily a porn/live-cam outfit. It reminds me of THE GOOD WIFE to a surprising degree, down to the protagonist being a lawyer who hadn't practiced in decades trying to find a way to keep things going forward for herself and her teen daughter and son, and reluctantly taking on her husband's role, in this case in porn studio management. It's a comedy with some sobering aspects, as you might gather, and part of what's attractive about it is watching the cablecast in Portugese with Spanish subtitles, which is helping rather painlessly to stimulate my halting Spanish ability (though the Portuguese soundtrack while reading the subtitles can make for some cognitive dissonance, even if sometimes Portuguese has more cognates with English than Spanish does--both languages have chosen to borrow the English word "spoilers"). Meanwhile, with the second episode last night, I watched the on-demand version with English subtitles in for the Spanish ones, to see what nuances I misunderstood or punted...and was amused to see the over-explaining deviation in the Spanish subs in one little bit of business, the boy's bedroom door sign reading in Portuguese, Warning: Maintain Distance, was replicated in the English translation as Mom, Keep Out. It's genuinely funny in bits, not at all typically telenovela-frantic...a more typically HBO-style project.
Beyond that, still keeping up with THE DAILY SHOW, THE LATE SHOW on CBS, and LATE NIGHT on NBC (all off/in repeats this week), and the current Sunday premium lineup of HIGHTOWN on Starz, THIS IS WHAT I KNOW TO BE TRUE on HBO, and PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS on Showtime, capped with LAST WEEK TONIGHT...and odd bits during the week including FULL FRONTAL, the occasional CONAN or JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE, the odd series such as WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS and, when in the mood, FBI and FBI 2, which has an amusingly native-nations thread or so running through it...though they didn't manage to hold onto Irene Bedard to continue piquing my interest.
Get-togethers sound like an excellent thing, even with upset robins. Who knows when apes will get hungry for robin chicks?
What I'm reading today: A BUDRYS MISCELLANY by Algis Budrys:
https://taff.org.uk/ebooks.php?x=BudrysMisc
Just saw this now, Todd. I don't get notified of comments so I don't always go back and check.
I used to get STARZ but not anymore. Nor Showtime. And I don't seem to watch much HBO. I do want to try WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS.
Both the film and the series of SHADOWS are quite amusing.
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