Monday, March 14, 2022

Monday, Monday

 


I've moved about 10 times as an adult but never alone. If I didn't have my cleaner to help me, I couldn't do it. Thank God she came back from Canada in time.  I would throw away everything if left alone, she would throw away nothing. So we balance each other.

I'm waiting still for my new mattress and hope that arrives in time. The new TV is here and the new counter stools will be delivered on the 23rd. I've not bought much else other than new sheets. That king bed was just too big.

Watching the Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix. Also watched the Desi-Lucy bio on Amazon. Looking forward to the second installment of WINNING TIME tonight. 

Luke Kirby (Lenny Bruce) is stealing every scene in Mrs. Maisel.





I saw THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD and CYRANO this week at the movies and liked them both.  There will be no movies for adults soon if people don't get off of their sofa and go. Both theaters were empty although it was early in the day. Meanwhile kids steamed into THE BATMAN.

No reading but a lot of podcasts as I pack. Don't have the attention for any stories right now.

Can the world situation get any worse? Really was there even a week between crises? 

How about you?

11 comments:

Steve A Oerkfitz said...

Haven't been doing much this week. Nursing a nasty cold. But happy that the cold weather is finally breaking. Watched Inventing Anna on Netflix. I liked it despite Julia Garner's odd accent and the horrible music they used. Watched John Oliver who I now prefer over Bill Maher. Did go to see The Batman. I liked it but boy was it dark in more ways than one.
Read Devil House by John Danielle. Not a horror novel despite the title. Now reading The Heretic by Scottish author Liam McIlvanney.
Thankfully the MLB lockout is over.
Try not to watch too much news. It's too heart breaking.
Glad you got moved in okay. What side of Woodward are you on? The bookstore I managed was at 260 Pierce right across ffrom the police station.

Margot Kinberg said...

Moving is always upending, if I can put it that way, whether you move alone or not. I can only imagine it's been even stranger and in many ways harder for you. I'm glad things are going along, though, and I wish you well as you get ready to settle in to your new place.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I am not moved in yet and in fact, can't put anything in there until Thursday when my renters insurance begins. The building is the tallest one around and sits between Old Woodward and Woodward, just above where the Borders was (now Walgreens). I don't know the streets around me yet. But I look out on a bunch of highend auto dealers.
Getting settled will be great. I feel like I haven't been settled in many years.

Jerry House said...

Whether you believe it or not, it seems like you have a good handle on the whole moving business, Patti. Congratulations!

Bitter cold and windy for Florida this week but at least we've avoiding a bomb cyclone. As a bonus, there are no iguanas falling out of trees or Joro spiders parachuting from the sky. Not yet, anyway.

Still working on getting Kitty better. Her pulse-ox can drop to the low 70s-high 60s with just a little exertion, and she still has a difficult time breathing. Evidently a valve in her left ventricle is not working properly, restricting blood flow. Serious but eminently fixable. I suspect we will be seeing a lot of cardiologists and pulmonologists over the next few weeks.

On Saturday, the girls and out three granddaughters treated us to a proper British high tea to celebrate Kitty's birthday. Tiny sandwiches, lots of baked goods, clotted cream, and specially blends teas. Good times, good company, and lots of laughter, as well as a very low toilet in the loo.

A new arrival to the fam came yesterday. Popcorn, one of Jessie's cats, has been rehomed with us. She was being constantly bullied by the other cats and it was felt that she would thrive better with us. She is a sweet thing. She had been abandoned as a kitten when Jessie and the girls found her a couple of years ago. Somewhere along the line, she had lost half of her tail. Over the past few years she has been extremely well fed --she has a tiny head, tiny paws, and a big fat belly that looks like a football. She spent yesterday hiding behind the toilet or in the bathtub; this morning she is hiding under the sofa. It will take her a few more days to get acclimated. Willow, our other cat, is nonchalantly ignoring her.

Television has been mainly via Youtube -- historical and archaeological tidbits, top ten lists, funny compilations, horrifying news from Ukraine, late night talk shows, fashions from the past, a boatload of Karens, as well as a couple of black-and-white old movies. It's sometimes hard to concentrate for a longer period.

As far as books go, I read THE NAMELSS ONES, John Connolly's latest. This one features Louis, the black gay hitman revenging the brutal murders of a family in Amsterdam. I also read Ken Bruen's latest, CALLOUS. This one is about recovering drug addict who has inherited an Irish cottage from her aunt. A stone cold killer wants to use the cottage as a hub for his meth business. I couldn't put this one down. I also finished Connie Willis's AMERICAN CHRISTMAS STORIES, a massive and highly recommended volume of 59 short stories. I have about 30 pages left of Mike Ashley's LOST MARS anthology, an uneven mix of ten short stories. Then it will on to finish Joe R. Lansdale's novella collection FISHING WITH DINOSAURS, with Stephen Graham Jones's MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW next in line. In from the library are Max Allan Collins's QUARRY'S BLOOD, a Brian Evenson collection of twenty-two horror stories, and Grady Hendrix's THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP.

Kitty is still reading KUSHNER, INC., a rather scathing book about Jered and Ivanka. Every few pages she'd read me an excerpt, saying, "Can you BELIEVE this?" And I would always reply, "Yes. Yes, I can." The everything-Trump-touches fiasco and his wacked-out far-right allies and toadies are beginning to get me down. Add in the anti-vaxxers and Kristen's Stewart's portrayal of Diana in SPENCER and I've pretty much hit bottom. Then came mad Vlad and his salt-the-earth approach to war and I have discovered a new bottom. But then the courage, resistance, and grace of ordinary Ukrainians, as well as the broad global response against Russia, come along and give me hope. Well, that, and a new cat.

Have a fantastic week, Patti, knowing that we all love you. Get settled. Stay safe.

pattinase (abbott) said...

And I am reading...nothing. Just trying to find out where my bed is and when it will be delivered.
Thinking of you and Kitty and hoping for a quick and permanent solution.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Yeah, Kirby is very good. I still don't understand his (Bruce's) behavior in that one episode, and Midge turning down Tony Bennett is insanity, but we enjoyed this latest series.

Two episodes of SPIRAL series 3 to go. As Jackie keeps pointing out, this is so unlike most French shows we've watched, that are set in beautiful areas of the country, southern cities, etc. This is in a dirty, gritty area of Paris, and the cops and crooks (and even lawyers) are grungy to match. One thing: at last I understand the judicial system better. How many times have you read of Maigret's interactions with Comeliau or another "judge" or examining magistrate without really getting why a judge is interviewing cops and crooks. SPIRAL shows you the system in all it's ugliness. I believe there were 8 series of 12 episodes each.

We may start watching A TOUCH OF FROST (I know we watched it years ago but I'm not sure we saw them all) on Saturdays, but now we're watching POIROT and MISS MARPLE, both from the '80s, along with ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE.

Latest British additions are series two of COBRA, with Robert Carlyle as a weak Prime Minister who always seems over his head with the crises that keep coming at him, and the Val McDermid/Amelia Bullmore (she played the boss on SCOTT & BAILEY) created and written series TRACES. Young Emma Hedges moves back to her birthplace of Dundee in Scotland to works as a lab tech at the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science & Anatomy (SiFA), and gets involved in trying to solve the murder of her mother when Emma was 7. Laura Fraser and Jennifer Spence play the Professors in charge. Martin Compston (Steve in LINE OF DUTY) is a romantic interest. So far, we like it. There are two series of 6 episodes each. I think these two are on Acorn, or maybe Britbox. Actually, COBRA was on PBS first.

Yes, moving is bad. When we got married, we didn't much much stuff so it wasn't hard. But they didn't have same day mattress delivery then, so we had to wait weeks, and when we moved in I think we slept on the floor for a few nights. Six years later we moved, basically across the street. We had to walk down three flights of stairs, cross the street and walk up three (even longer) flights of stairs to the new apartment. We did get some help from family and friends and moved ourselves. Ten years later when we moved again I had a TON of books to move. We basically spent a month moving stuff (a lot of boxes of books) from the old apartment to the new one, and a Volkswagen Beetle just doesn't hold that much. On the day, we had movers (who got stoned along the way) to move our living room and dining room furniture and the six huge bookcases, all too tall to get in the elevator. (This is where the getting stoned part helped, as they were mellow about walking them up six flights of stairs.)

These days, I'm with you. I'd probably just get rid of most of our stuff if we moved.

George said...

The moving process should end soon and you can move to the Settling Phase (Diane's favorite!).

The Bomb Cyclone dumped a few inches of nuisance snow on us. But, we're supposed to hit 47 degrees today so let the melting begin! We're supposed to hit 60 degrees on St. Patrick's Day!

Diane and I are still enjoying THE GILDED AGE and PICARD. When THE BATMAN hits one of our streaming services, I'll watch it. Our Covid-19 rate is 2% but we're still wary about group settings.

Diane tried to book our flights to BOUCHERCON 2022, but it's still to early. The prices are up, up, up!

Stay safe!

TracyK said...

As Jerry said, it sounds like your move is going well. The good thing about moving is that it forces you to think about what you can get rid of. I have difficulty with that.

Not much new going on here, except that I got a new computer on Friday and spent all of the weekend setting it up and moving stuff. With Glen's help and my son's help. It is up and usable but I still have to set up a lot of stuff and get used to it. It is Windows 11, which I actually prefer over Windows 10, and a larger screen, which I love.

I have read two very different books in the last week and liked them both. First was WATERMELON by Marion Keyes. It is often categorized as chick lit, thus I was surprised to like it so much. Not my usual kind of read. The second one was THE MOST CONTAGIOUS GAME by Catherine Aird. That is her only standalone book, and it was about a man investigating the skeleton that he found in a hidden room in his house. The mystery was not as good as other books by Aird, in my opinion, but the story of his research and his settling into the small town he and his wife had moved to was excellent.

Now reading OUT by Natsuo Kirino, an entirely different type of book from the other two. Only a couple of chapters into it but I am liking it so far. I think it is a dark, gritty mystery / thriller, but I haven't gotten to any dark, gritty parts yet.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I read OUT when it came out and was very impressed. I have not read an Aird book in years. Sounds like a good one to try.
Had not thought about Bouchercon at all. San Diego, right? Or was that last year's.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Minneapolis.

Gerard Saylor said...

Jeff's story about stoned movers reminds me of David Sedaris's stories about working for a moving company in New York. Fairly certain Sedaris and his coworkers were rarely sober.

I listened to a Stuart Neville collection of stories, THE TRAVELLER AND OTHER STORIES. I regularly confuse Neville and Adrian McKinty's work. Never mind all the Irish settings and characters I've read lately from Ken Bruen, Colin Bateman, and Tana French.

Boy #1 was back home for Spring Break last week. He mainly sat around except for hair and dental appointments. He did sign a apartment lease for next year, his sophomore year. He will have two roommates in University owned housing. I'm glad he dodged the shady landlords that control so many buildings around university campuses. We just refinanced our mortgage and my wife mentioned how Boy #1's rent is higher than our monthly house payment.

Next week I help chaperone a four day whirlwind trip to Memphis and Nashville with the high school music students and Boy #2. Should be an interesting trip and we get to tour Graceland and attend an Opry show.