Kevin at 17.
I'm Still Here was terrifying but very good. Brazil 1970 v US 2024 not so different. It took Brazil 25 years to get rid of a dictatorship. Hope it's not that long for us. Phone your congress reps. Flood their phone lines.
Also enjoyed watching ANNIE HALL, probably for the tenth time. Sticking with SEVERANCE but not really keen on it. ASURA is very good on Netflix. All CREATURES might be over. Oh, no.
Still reading OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst. So much like Brideshead Revisited to me.
My DIL just finished listening to every Agatha Christie on Audible. What a feat! The gang are on their way to Amsterdam and Bruges for Kevin's spring break. Trying to decide also where he will go to school next year. It looks like he's interested in Public and Environmental Policy. Of course, both of my kids changed their majors along the way. As did Phil and I. The University of Michigan received a record 105,142 applications for the fall 2024 semester
Lots of cold, snowy temps here. Florida can't come soon enough.
What about you?
12 comments:
Love those photos of Kevin! I cannot believe how grown up he is!
Kevin is a very good-looking lad. He must take after all sides of his family.
Warm, sunny Florida is ready to welcome you with open arms and bated breath. I see lazy days, good friends, great entertainment, fantastic restaurants, pristine beaches, and meretricious politicians in your Sunshine State future.
Speaking of warm, sunny Florida, it has been just that. We finally made it to the beach yesterday, for the first time in 2025 and immediately realized what we had been missing. It truly helped calm and center us for the coming week. I wore my new tee-shirt ("Not My President - Not My Voice - Not My Values - Not My Beliefs") and everyone loved it, but because we're on the Redneck Riviera, Amy begged me not to wear in public, fearing for my life. **sigh**
Mark is just two weeks shy of finishing his 6-month probationary period at the zoo. They are having him move on to take care of the raptors, as well as his normal work mainly with the penguins. He's putting one day a week with the reptiles (his overriding interest) and there are indications the reptile team will transfer him there after his probationary time is over. In the meantime, he's been texting us interesting facts about the lack of sex life in monitor lizards (their embryos can develop directly in the egg without fertilization, creating an exact clone of the parent -- something can extremely affect biodiversity -- who knew?)
It looks like Walt is scheduled for a dozen work trips tis summer, ranging from a couple of days to two weeks, putting the kibosh on Christina and Walt's plans to vacation in the Pacific Northwest this year. Amy's penchant for absolute honesty and fairness has come back to bite her. She turned a paper just over the wire for one of her courses, and the school has a policy of automatically giving late papers only fifty percent credit of what it would have given. The instructor was apologetic because Amy's paper was excellent (the best submitted) but he would have to give her only half credit. When she got the paper back, she had been given full credit. So Amy. being honest, told the professor a mistake had been made. He evidently looked very startled and said she was very honest. I think he was trying to throw a bone that she did not deserve under the rules and was amazed she caught him up on it, to her detriment.
I spent the week sticking my fingers in my ears and saying very loudly, "La. la, la" every time the news was on. Other than that, it's been an uneventful week. On TV, I caught the late night comics and the latest episode of FATHER BROWN (which still continues to be disappointingly substandard, buyt I'll hang in there, forever hopeful). Nothing else on the tube this week.
Since I had streamed REBUS last week, I got and read the first book in the series, KNOTS AND CROSSES, which was originally written as a standalone and feels like it. I also read Donald E. Westlake's last Parker novel (as "Richard Stark" (my FFB this week), Max Allan Collins & Terry Beatty's final collection of MS. TREE comics, FALLEN TREE, HOUSE OF BONE AND RAIN by Gabino Iglesias (a hard-edged horror novel combining Puerto Rican and Caribbean myths and religions, with just a smattering of Lovecraft), Stephen Spotwood's first Pentecost and Parker novel (a series highly recommended by George, Jeff, and many others) FORTUNE FAVORS THE DEAD, Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraodinary Gentlemen book THE BLACK DOSSIER, the comic collection DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE (not the movie, but a series of stories in which the characters meet and fight and split up and meet and fight, ad naseum), and -- I hesitate to call it a book -- 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AT DUNDER MIFFLIN by Brian Baumgartner & Ben Silverman (basically meh, because I have never watched THE OFFICE).
Have a great week, Patti. Valentine's Day is coming, so watch out for lotharios.
My angiogram went well. I had my first angiogram 25 years ago and they sent the catheter up my groin. This time, the doctor sent the catheter up my right wrist. Everything looked good around my heart. Hopefully, when I meet with my cardiologist next week, I can get on Repatha which reduces plaque not just in the heart, but all through the body. That was the reason for this procedure.
The weather in Western NY has been frigid. This morning we woke up to 22 degrees--wind chill 8 degrees. More snow is coming Wednesday night and this weekend. More low temperatures predicted for next week, too.
Patrick returned from Columbia safely. I'm wary of international travel in the time of Trump.
Have fun in Florida! Stay safe!
I am so glad you enjoy the beach as much as you do. I think lots of Floridians rarely venture there. I am packing a beach towel in hopes we will at least walk on it. Do I need beach/water shoes? I can't remember. In CA we never were able to walk on the beach in La Jolla, which was all rocks.
Kevin looks grown up but I still see him as about eight.
What Margo said. Kevin looks like he could be a model!
Yes, Florida is perfect now - around 80 every day (at least where we are, in Palm Beach County), sunny but not terribly humid, just perfect, especially compared with cold and snow up north. New York had 3-5 inches of snow yesterday.
Had a busy week here. We got our new phones - the Verizon guy said going from a Galaxy 7 to a 25+ was like going from a beat up old Honda Civic to a new Bentley - and Jackie is very happy with it. Then she insisted that I get a new tablet to match hers. I don't know why I really needed it, but I can read books on it from the Cloud Library, stuff I couldn't get on the Kindle.
I know it was a very one-sided game, but I totally enjoyed the Chiefs being humiliated.
Despite the rave reviews, Jackie didn't love the first episode of Asura, but the second one grew on her. We're in the home stretch (episode 8 of 12) of series 4 of Babylon Berlin (MHz Choice). We finished Arctic Circle (Finland) series 3 (I think there is a 4 coming) on MHz. Watching The Night Agent on Netflix. Fallen (also MHz) is a Swedish series. A recently widowed cop (played by Sofie Helin of The Bridge) transfers from Stockholm to Malmo and heads the cold case unit. She also has conflicts with her sister. We added REBUS (which Jerry mentioned) to our Saturday Night Brit Night lineup, along with SILENT WITNESS and MI-5. Enjoying ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL. Network television seems to be mostly game and reality shows. I mean, in the past ABC would have been embarrassed, rather than proud of a lineup of two hours of The Bachelor followed by an hour of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
Reading Andrew Mayne's Uniderwater Investigation Unit book, BLACK CORAL, Jo Callaghan's second, LEAVE NO TRACE, and Dorothy M. Johnson's western short story collection, THE HANGING TREE.
Love the T-shirt, Jerry, but Jackie feels like Amy - she won't let me wear it in public. I want to get the one that has his face on it and says "Pendejo." Because he is one.
I don't watch the news - ever - which is easier in Florida than New York - but I still read the newspapers so have to make sure to skip most of the stories about how they are taking an ax to this country.
Don't know about the West Coast, but the Atlantic beaches of Florida are beautiful. We went up by Jupiter with my cousins last week, and you can walk on the sand with or without shoes, maybe sandals if you have them. (I don't, but then I just looked rather than walked.)
The last time I walked on a FL beach, I had Covid and thus have little memory of it. Yeah, ASURA grew on me. I always wished for a sister so this filled the bill. I wonder if there will be a second series.
I wish it had been the Lions or the Bills but I will take Philly. The Lions are one of the very few teams to never even made it to the Superbowl.
Kevin's school is 70% Asian so he thinks of himself as odd-looking. They do call him White Kevin.
When Jackie's sister moved to Bayside (Queens) after she got divorced, her daughter said she was almost the only kid in her class who wasn't Korean.
The Bills made it to four Super Bowls in a row...but lost all of them. This season, the Bills were 3 minutes away from the Super Bowl...but the Chiefs managed to squeak another Playoff win out. But they got their comeuppance in the Super Bowl when the Eagles trounced them!
At least they got to the Superbowl!
Houston and Jacksonville haven't made it to the Super Bowl either, but Detroit and Cleveland are the only original teams not to get there. Detroit was so close this year.
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