Patricia Abbott (pattinase): Monday, Monday

Monday, January 16, 2023

Monday, Monday

13 comments:

Steve Oerkfitz said...: Hope you enjoy California.
Watching some series. The Rig on Prime along with the second season of Hunters. Watched Public Enemy on Netflix. Found all of these enjoyable.
Did a reread of Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven. Now half way through The Cartographers by Peng Shepheard.
Had some cold days but it is supposed to be in the 40's this week. We have had less than 2 inches of snow so far this year. Which is fine by me.; 12:18 AM
Todd Mason said...: Interesting the degree that Le Guin's THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, clearly meant to be a fantasy novel, is often cited instead as sf...perhaps in part because it was serialized in AMAZING SCIENCE FICTION, and published in book form in the period where fantasy novels were almost always tagged as anything but by their publishers, in the same months as its companion FANTASTIC was running a straightforward Poul Anderson sf novel, THE BYWORLDER (Tolkien had caught on, horror and gothics were already starting to burn up sales charts, Howard's Conan stories had started to gain more than a coterie audience, but publishers were, as usual, slow and too obdurate to take such trivia into account. Hell, JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL).

THE LAST OF US got off to a fairly interesting start. Remarkable how much the current management is starving "traditional" HBO of new content, though the owners of Starz and Epix aren't rushing too much in the way of new series to their misspelled premium channels, either (YOUR HONOR has returned to Showtime, where Paramount/CBS is feeling about as flush, if not quite, as the Disney conglom, and THE L WORD 2.0 continues. I would like to see the new seasons of HIGHTOWN and PENNYWORTH, if they're forthcoming as promised...somehow doubt GET SHORTY's next season is too likely, and am mildly anticipating the new season of a Libby Caplan-less, alas, PARTY DOWN.

The new dishwasher will probably be an LG, it seems likely. Handwashing dishes really isn't that much fun. As well as not quite helping my mild germophobia.; 5:07 AM
TM said...: Or, even, Lizzy Caplan. I plead the hour and lack of caffiene...and media crush left in forlorn abandonment.; 5:11 AM
Jerry House said...: Happy MLK Day! Or, as they used to say in the less-enlightened South when we first moved down here, Happy Lee-Jackson Day (the South can hold a grudge).

Not much this week. I threw out my back, but only moderately -- so I'm walking like Igor instead of a scrunched-up carab. Small blessings.

While part of the fam is in the Everglades hunting pythons, Christina, Jessie, and Jack traveled down to Mississippi to pick out Christina's new golden retreiver puppy. there were two litters to choose from and they were all sweet, but they firmly believe they ended up with the sweetest, a loving female Christina has named Jolly. She will be old enough to join us in just a few weeks. The other animal addition to the household is a baby corn snake that someone gifted to Mark. That makes three snakes in total for him. The snake is named Dana, although many of us opted for Hisstopher.

Watched the last two Spider-Man flicks, FAR FROM HOME and NO WAY HOME. Both fun, but heavily invested in CGI, as expected. Also have been catching up on ENDEAVOR, up through Season 5 so far. And Season 22 of MIDSOMER MURDERS, which is wearing thin.

Currently reading Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS copncurrent with the 3-volume graphic novel version; it's interesting to compare the two. Speaking of Gaiman, I read his collection (or miscellany) ANGELS AND VISITAIONS and the graphic novel version of CHIVALRY (which he wrote with Colleen Doran). Also read QUICK FIXES: TALES OF REPAIRMAN JACK by F. Paul Wilson. THE GHOST SCRIPT is a graphic novel about the HUAC days back in the McCarthy era by Jules Feiffer -- a tale that obviously has some chilling parallels to life today. My big read last week was the Marvel comic omnibus MORBIUS: THE LIVING VAMPIRE (my FFB) -- containing everything about that character over his first ten years: 42 comic books over 12 titles, weighing in at 6.4 pounds, according to my bathroom scale.

It's been very Florida chilly here over the past week, with temps occassionally getting in othe low fifties. We're going to risk going to the beach this noontime; we may be counting the icicles on the dolphins.

Hope you are staying dry and safe in beautiful mudslide- and flood-prone CA. At least there are no wldfires this week. Take care.; 7:53 AM
Jerry House said...: Crab, not carab. Fumble fingers strike again.; 7:54 AM
TM said...: Virginia hedged its bets for several years, if we are kind enough to call it that, by declaring Lee/Jackson/King Day. They finally knocked that off, but the current Youngkin admin, when not calling for the tarring and enfeathering of schoolteachers for teaching kindergarten Critical Race Theory (somehow, somewhere), will probably attempt reinstatement of the initial misconstruction of the national holiday...; 8:45 AM
George said...: Western NY is still recovering from the narrow victory the Bills managed against a pesky Dolphins team. If they play like that next Sunday against the Bengals, it will result in defeat.

No major storms in the forecast here. In fact, the temps are Above Average!

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. And, surprisingly, I'm almost done with that pile of Library Books I accumulated over the Christmas holidays!

Have fun in California! But keep those floats nearby! Stay safe!; 10:06 AM
Jeff Meyerson said...: Hope now that the California weather is (supposedly) improving, you are having a great time. It was really COLD by Florida standards over the weekend. Saturday was cold with a 30 mph wind from the northwest. I wore a sweater and a relatively heavy jacket. But it is getting back to normal by tomorrow or Wednesday.

Yesterday was an exciting day of football with the Bills, Giants and Bengals moving on to the next round.

New shows we're watching: we had a lot of trouble with the television over two or three days because Comcast dropped this building because (according to our landlord) there are only 40 apartments, hence not worth their business (or something), so he has Roku. We had a hard time finding how to access regular network channels but finally managed. Netflix is fine but I couldn't access my Amazon account (also Acorn, etc.). Finally we were able to connect my laptop via HDMI cable, but my laptop was old and slow so Jackie insisted I needed a new one. Anyway, it works. You go to Prime Video and what you want to watch, connect the cable, and it shows it on the big screen. We're watching THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS (Italy; Elena Ferrante) and INTIMACY (Spain) on Netflix, as well as the new series of SEASIDE HOTEL (series 9; Denmark) and ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (series 3) through Amazon. We did start the second series of HUNTERS but it is a jumbled up mess, frankly. (SPOILER ALERT) Since the first series showed Al Pacino was really the escaped Nazi and not the Jewish prisoner and he died in the last episode, bringing him back this series - in very poorly explained flashbacks - is a little hard to follow, or to understand. (END SPOILER) Apparently, Hitler actually escaped to South America and they are going after him.

Other than that, it's been mostly shopping to stock the apartment. We're a few miles from the last apartment, much closer to the ocean, on a nice quiet dead end sstreet. The apartment is much smaller in that we had two bedrooms and two bathrooms there and only one of each here, but it is much, much nicer and newer looking and there is more than enough sstorage space for all of our things.; 10:17 AM
TracyK said...: We had lots of rain in the last week and possibly more this afternoon, but after that it seems we are done for a while. I hope you are have a good and relaxing time in California.

I am currently reading a Japanese mystery by Keigo Higashino, THE MIDSUMMER EQUATION, the sixth in the Detective Galileo series but only the third to be published here. I liked the first two, so far I am enjoying this one. Glen read it about 5 years ago and did not like it as well as the first two, but he still had his copy, which is unusual if he doesn't care for a book. He does like Japanese fiction. I am reading it for a Japanese Reading Challenge that I do every year in January - March.

I finished ANNA KARENINA on January 10th. It was a combination of not being able to sleep one night, so read instead, and then highly motivated to finish it finally. It took me nearly 4 months total. I am glad I read it, and the second half was definitely better than the first, but not an enjoyable read. I learned a lot about Russia at that time though. Although I was reading an article about how little we remember of what we read, so I probably won't retain it very long.

In between ANNA and MIDSUMMER EQUATION, I read a book by Robert Barnard, THE GRAVEYARD POSITION, a strange book about a man returning to Leed's, England after about 20 years to claim his inheritance. And THE BURGLAR WHO LIKED TO QUOTE KIPLING, the third book in Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series. Lots of fun to read and a quick read also. This is the first book where he has the bookshop and introduces his friend Carolyn.

So I am going to stop there and not mention what we have watched. I will save that for next time.; 2:06 PM
Anonymous said...: Hey guys! A real easy flight but so much rain. We got to the fabulous farmer's market between showers. And today went to see the very good movie, LIVING with Bill
Nighy. The house is fabulous but like Jeff we are wrestling with the tvs. Hope it stops raining soon. Much tree damage but it is as green ad I have ever seen CA.; 9:28 PM
Todd Mason said...: Glad things are going well! Of course, in CA, television viewing is guaranteed by the state, as a lynchpin of the exchequer...; 1:16 AM
Gerard Saylor said...: Nothing much from me. I listened to yet another Colin Bateman novel - I always enjoy those.
Heard John Gardner's THE RETURN OF MORIARTY from 1974 and enjoyed it a lot.
I am npw listening to Jordan Harper's SHE RIDES SHOTGUN. Also enjoyable. I was thinking it is a riff on Max Allan Collins's ROAD TO PERDITION. But, formerly-absent-parent-stuck-with-kid stories are hardly unique. PAPER MOON and Stallone's OVER THE TOP come to mind.
And why would a horrid Stallone movie come to mind? I really don' know.

Rain and unseasonably warm weather here. I fear global warming's effect on the summer.; 8:33 PM
Todd Mason said...: Went ahead and listed SSW on my blog for this week, as well as doing a mailing:
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2023/01/short-story-wednesday-links-to-reviews.html; 10:53 PM

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)