Patricia Abbott (pattinase): Monday, Monday

Monday, February 26, 2024

Monday, Monday

11 comments:

Jerry House said...: I hope you are having a great time in soggy old California, Patti.

Jessie ended up sick with some sort of non-Covid, non-flu illness that knocked her out for a couple of days. She got better just in time for Amy to catch it, the same time that Amy was headed to Orlando for a work-related conference. Despite the illness, Amy had a good time and has come back with a lot of ideas that could improve the animal shelter. Mark became the only person I know who was attacked by a kookaburra. He had to check out the nesting birds at the zoo, and (as we now know) kookaburra are very protective of their eggs. He ended up with a few decent scratches on his leg and another zoo story to tell his eventual grandchildren. Ceili's work friend Ivory had moved in with them for a couple of months. Ceili, Ivory, and two other work fiends are planning to rent a house in Milton, about half an hour from work.

I spent a do-nothing week. (You could call it a do-something week if you consider "Something" to be sleeping.) I had a mild reaction to my second shingles vaccine. My arm swelled up and was sore for several days and I just felt exhausted -- the first time I had any sort of reaction to any vaccine. Then, on Wednedsay, I had to see the podiatrist because something was embedded in left heel, making it difficult to walk. The something embedded turned out to be a wart. The doctor chopped at my foot, slathered it with medicine, and said, this is going to hurt like hell tomorrow. Great. I have two or three more treatments before the thing is gone completely. In the meantime, my attempt to join Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks has thrown my back out. This coming week will be much better.

As a result, I read ZERO books this week, although I did manage to read three short stories. I slept a lot and was at least able to concentrate enough to catch up on my binging of DEATH IN PARADISE.

The weather turned good this weekend and we we able to hit the beach on Sunday. A large (13-foot, 1500-pound) great white washed up on Navarre Beach Saturday, just a couple of miles from where we normally go. Sunday, a large flock of birds, mostly pelicans, kept diving into the water to gobble up fish about 100 yards from shore. There must have been well over sixty birds and the constant smorsgabord lasted over forty-five minutes. Something threatening must have been swimming underneath the school, bringing them closer to the surface. Another shark, maybe? It was a fascinating sight to see, although probably not that fascinating for the fish.

Missing your MONDAY,MONDAY comments. Take care, and have a fantastic week, Patti.; 7:37 AM
Todd Mason said...: Hope the vacation lodging and weather are pleasing at this early point, Patti!

The new/continued seasons of US broadcast tv aren't off to their best seasons so far, at least in several examples that should be better...WILL TRENT's season premiere features some idiot-plotting, as did the season closer of QUANTUM LEAP (beyond the goofiness of the premise there), even if it was banging on an old crotchet of mine, drivers of automobiles looking at their passengers for minutes on end rather than through the windshield (in this case made more ridiculous since the protag was driving a stock racing car through neighborhood streets at something like 100 mph). And then there was Shane Gillis's embarrassing effort at "hosting" SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE...his Trump impression was the closest he came to a professional performance, or to anything funny, while rather easy (he had been tapped to join the cast last season, but his tendency toward MAGAt-pleasing humor led to successful demands that Lorne Michaels reverse himself, and this hosting gig was apparently Michaels's revenge on his cast and audience for successfully saving us all from his bad decision-making. Worst SNL work since Jim Breuer, Gilis's closest approximation from the past. Best thing on tv last week might've been Desi Lydic's explication of just how un-moderate Niki Haley is, on THE DAILY SHOW...I mostly see her as useful as the thorn in Trump's easily-irritated flank, playing the odds that she will the one standing after his is incarcerated, and probably sabotaged by him throughout the campaign if she does pull ahead of him if he's incarcerated (even if she's the best hope for him to get pardoned for federal offenses...I can see him being that stupid).; 7:44 AM
Todd Mason said...: I mostly know of kookaburras as the Australian bird with the distinctive "laughing" call that Hollywood couldn't resist adding to the soundtrack of "African" scenes, and a song my first ex learned to sing in childhood, "Laugh, Kookaburra. Laugh":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxS6kchC2T8 Much better health for you and yours, Jerry.; 7:57 AM
George said...: Diane and I spent most of the week getting caught up on email, snail mail, phone calls (on our landline answering machine), and newspapers/magazines after our trip to Georgia. We woke up to 17 degrees yesterday and 30 degrees today. But, tomorrow we might hit 50 degrees! Wacky weather!

Patrick and Katie and some of their friends are in Las Vegas to run a marathon. I'd be running on empty!

I'll be heading back to the Pool this week. I only went to the Pool once last week, not realizing most of our local schools were off all week for Winter Break. Adding a 100 screaming kids to the mix made working out in the Pool impossible so I took the rest of the week off. Stay safe!; 8:22 AM
Jeff Meyerson said...: I agree with Todd about WILL TRENT's "idiot" plotting. Jackie is the big fan here.

Patti says the weather is cool but dry so far in California, so fingers crossed. It's been mostly relatively cool in Florida since we arrived, with occasional warm days and several chilly ones, good for us but not for beach-goers like Jerry. At least the rain has stopped for the moment.

Hope you're feeling better, Jerry. That shingles vaccine is a must, swelling or not. We hadn't realized the new series of DEATH IN PARADISE was on until I was scrolling around Britbox for something to cap off Saturday's Brit Night (after NO OFFENCE, SCOTT & BAILEY, MI-5, THE GOOD LIFE, and MUM) and saw it.

We watched the finale (not exactly satisfying, though there was some resolution) of THE WOMAN IN THE WALL LAST NIGHT. By coincidence, Dermot Crowley was also in the MI-5 episode we watched this week.

Last night we watched the Netflix documentary on the making of "We Are the World," which was pretty well done overall - THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP. Considering that it was 39 years ago, fewer of the stars featured are dead than you might expect - Harry Belafonte, of course (though he lived to be 96), Ray Charles (only 73 when he died), Tina Turner (83), Kenny Rogers (81), Al Jarreau (76), and, of course, Michael Jackson (50), who looked young and healthy there. I didn't even remember that Waylon Jennings was part of the "chorus" before he walked out.

We're enjoying the tense THE TOURIST on Netflix.

Have a great time, Patti.; 8:32 AM
Todd Mason said...: I continue to like WOMAN/WALL better than you do, Jerry, and was glad that the odd "disappearance" was explained, and the annoying plot-twist in the WILL TRENT season premiere was a step too far for me (I can dig his unlikely rise in the GBI while severely dyslexic much easier than the annoying bit in the new episode). With luck,less nonsense thus.; 8:55 AM
Gerard Saylor said...: Making sure to post on Monday.
Boy #2 had Solo and Ensemble Festival on Saturday with two solos and two ensembles. The band teacher put together a percussion group of non-percussionists to perform as an ensemble. I thought that was a neat chance for students to try it out and build a different set of skills. His tuba solo was not up to his usual high rating but his pop strings ensemble advanced to the state competition. We left before his bass solo score was posted. Having a minivan is a necessity when a kid plays bass and tuba. When both kids competed with bass and tuba we needed the van AND the car to transport the instruments and the people.

Boy #1's University Run Club traveled to University of Illinois for a LARGE indoor track meet. There were club team across the midwest from Missouri to Michigan and Ohio; the 2023 meet had 750 athletes. My mother was quite intent on going there to cheer him on. But, there is next to no parking there and nothing in the way of accessible spots. What's more, the meet does not have set times. They run all day and keep moving down the long event list. The men's 1-mile event had 17 heats with 14 runners scheduled in each heat. Boy #1 did not race until about 8PM.

Been bingeing BLACKLIST. Once I ignore the absurdity I enjoy it a fair amount. A plot crutch has developed where people walk into traffic and are hit by a bus, a car, a garbage truck. And almost one foot race per episode.

Started listening to THE CROW GIRL by Erik Axl Sund. 29-freaking-hours-long. A Nordic mystery which means open discussion of horrible-to-hear sex crime details.; 10:42 AM
Gerard Saylor said...: I never completed watching THE TOURIST. I loved the scenery and was bummed I've never been back to Australia.

The shingles booster reminds me that my wife said many adults should get measles boosters now that the anti-vax crowd has been successful in spreading the disease.

The recent SNL was quite... odd. A very strange choice and poor result. I've not watched all the skits after a couple really soured on me.; 11:51 AM
TracyK said...: We just got back from running some errands and then having a late breakfast out. We had minor plumbing problems this week and other small distractions, so I have not gotten much done at all. And then I got a Kindle Scribe and getting that set up and me trying out new functionality has taken a lot of time. You might think it is strange for someone who reads so little to buy a new higher model of the Kindle, but I am hoping it improves my experience of reading ebooks and motivates me to read more. The larger screen is working great for me already.

We have not started the new season of WILL TRENT yet. I also want to continue watching SO HELP ME TODD now that I realize it is going to have a 2nd season.

We watched ROPE this week on Criterion. It was one of the movies that is going away at the end of the month. Next we will watch THE THIRD MAN, after I realized last week that it had been many years since we saw it.

Some TV shows we have watched this week are THE IRRATIONAL (Peacock), NCIS and NCIS HAWAII. We are still loving MURDER SHE WROTE and I calculate we have 200 plus episodes still to watch. We like the guest stars especially. This week we also watched a MIDSOMER MURDERS episode for the first time in weeks (an old one from season 11).

I am reading THE QUIET AMERICAN by Greene on the Kindle. Also another spy fiction book, JUDAS 62 by Charles Cumming. I don't usually read multiple novels at the same time and if I do, I don't read the same type of book, but those two are quite different.

Glen finished AGENT ZIGZAG by Ben Macintyre. Liked it a lot. He started reading CAFE EUROPA REVISITED: How to Survive Post-Communism by Slavenka Drakulić. He read CAFE EUROPA: Life After Communism by the same author back in 2022.; 3:36 PM
Kevin R. Tipple said...: Hanging in here as best as I can. Having the usual grief and health issues. Saw the podiatrist last week and he whacked on my feet again. In so doing, he ramped up my normal daily pain levels and made the nerves go in my left leg so I have been having a hard time with that.

Thought the first episode of Will Trent was good. Thought the one last night, the obligatory prison riot episode that every show must do, was crap.

While I normally like, The Rookie, thought the deal last night was also crap. Would be nice if they had one nice wedding episode on that show.

Overall, the broadcast TV has been pretty lame. Shane Gillis was hideous and so unfunny it was brutal to watch. My adult son, Scott, is convinced they were piping in fake laughter like a sitcom deal to make it seem better than it was. Watching the redhead in the band behind him during the monologue try to murder him with her stare was something else. She was very not pleased.

For those that do not know, VERA, is also back as is Death in Paradise.

Been insanely warm the last two days here in DFW and there are wildfires unleashed in West and NW Texas. You may have seen some of the news coverage of that. So far, we have not had the smoke get here, but with the front coming through there and here, no doubt it is coming our way.

One final thing-- The shingles shot worked me over so the decision was made by my docs not to do part two of it. The first part caused all sorts of issues. Damn near put me in the hospital. the only reason I was not put in was the hospitals were overwhelmed with Covid, as they are now, and my docs thought the chances of a bed were really low and that the hospitals were unsafe for me. So, things were sent here to the house and I had a very miserable and scary two weeks. Most folks don't have the reaction that I did.; 11:21 AM
TracyK said...: Kevin, so sorry to hear about all of your problems, but especially the horrible reaction to the shingles shot. I am glad to hear that things are better now.; 5:54 PM

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