I would have never believed I would watch as much of the Olympics as I have watched. First it was so hot I didn't feel like doing much else. Then it was so rainy. And finally I was just hooked on the drama and pageantry of it. I still wish NBC didn't focus so much on USA but I guess the majority of viewers feel that way too.
I went to the Sixties concert at our park on Wednesday, which was lots of fun. A huge crowd for once felt all in the same place--politics aside. Really not watching much on TV except the Olympics. I keep starting then stopping everything else. Reading this and that too. Really seem to lack focus of late.
Hope your week has been more productive than mine.
28 comments:
Productive week? For me? Ptah, and double ptah!
First of all, it's been hot. Super hot. With an outside "feels like" temp of 110F. Second of all, the air conditioning in the house died on Monday, giving us an inside temperature of 89. The air conditioning is covered by a home warranty, which works very well when and if the warranty companies decide to respond. So on Monday, Walt went out and bought half a dozen standing fans to spread around the house. The great thing about a fan is that it moves hot air around. Worst case scenario at the time was that we would be without air conditioning for up to two weeks. Tuesday morning at 5:30 Walt said, "This cannot be sustained," and went out to buy an air conditioner. I was lucky because we already had one in my room -- a ten-year-old jobbie that we brought with us two years ago when we moved it; it works although it has never been properly maintained. The new air conditioner went into Walt and Christina's room. In a fortunate bit of serendipity, Jessie has juts had a new HVAC system installed in her house a week before after having her old system clunk around for years. That meant she had a nifty room air conditioner available, so on Wednesday, Christina and Mark picked it up and installed it in Mark's room. That left only Erin and Jack and numerous pets without air conditioning. Erin and her hedgehogs headed over to Trey's parents house for the duration, and Jack was ensconced on a cot set up in my room. Duncan, the phlegm-inducing allergen also ended up in my room. In the middle of the night -- every night -- Jack and Duncan both ended up in my bed. Jack flips and flops and twists and turns in his sleep, usually ending up trying to stick his toes up my nose, so usually I'm up at 2:34 in the morning playing on my computer while Jack and Duncan sleep the sleep of angels. Then one of the home maintenance people picked up the repair ticket on Thursday, called, and said he would be over on Friday. On Friday he called and said he would not be coming, so the repair ticket went back to being unclaimed. Walt called the home repair maintenance company and got permission to hire someone outside their venue and the maintenance company would reimburse him. So on Friday, someone came out, took a look at the system, replaced a blown capacitor and we had air conditioning again. Huzzah! But it seems that when a capacitor blows, there is probably a reason is blows, and that reason was not addressed or diagnosed. Less than twelve hours later, the entire system overheated and blew. It's now 89 degrees inside and due to some arcane rule at the home maintenance. company, they cannot pull a new ticket to get it fixed for another thirty days. Now it's a matter of getting another company out and being reimbursed later, but we're still in a heat wave and most HVAC companies have a long list of people needing repairs. **sigh** In the meantime, everyone is fine, although Walt's temper is getting shorter (it's also being acerbated by numerous problems with AT&T). the only ones not being cooled at night are Jolly the Golden, who for some puppy reason does not like any of the bedrooms, and Sage the cat, who does her own cat thing. They both spend the night stretched out semi-comatose on the kitchen floor, with fans blowing over them.
Last week also marked the second anniversary of Kitty's death. i think I handles it pretty well. Jessie and Amy were planning to come over to check on me, but two extra bodies in a house without air conditioning would not have been a good idea. So yesterday, we all went out to lunch to memorialize Kitty. Nothing ever made Kitty happier than to have the while family together, eating, laughing, and enjoying each others company -- so this was the best way we could think of to honor her memory.
More later.
Back again. Yesterday was a beach day. the girls and Jack love floating in the water while I stay safely on the sand like a beached whale. A small shark swam up to them, nosed around a bit curiously, then swam away. A couple of rays also came up to them to investigate. Before we got to the beach a lizard (a small anole) managed to find its way into Christina's care and ensconce itself somewhere in the dashboard on the driver's side. As far as I can tell, it's still there. The beach was not very crowded, considering it was the last day before school started.
Ah, school. Jack is all supplied and scheduled for the seventh grade. Once again Christina will drop Jack off and I'll be picking him up in the afternoon. Christina's deaf student is entering the third grade at a new school. Christina toured the school, received keys to both the classroom and the school, and met the teacher, who seems very nice, although a little unsure of having a deaf student in her class. All Christina needs to do today is to figure out where the cafeteria and the bathrooms are.
On television, watched some sort of Godzilla-Kong-Mothra mashup fighting all sort of monster in the Hollow Earth and in the secret world UNDER the Hollow Earth. Made no sense but there was a lot of noise and a heckofalot of CGI. Looking forward to catching Season 4 of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY but my new roommate Jack insists on watching some sort of COBRA KAI spinoff. **sigh**
Books read include Kevin J. Anderson's SKELTON IN THE CLOSET, the second outing in a humorous fantasy series. Sadly, the humor is very forced, dragging the books down with it. Loren D. Estleman's IRON STAR is a reimagining of his forty-year-old western MR. ST. JOHN. Good, but I'm not sure if he needed to visit the earlier book. I'm on a Lawrence Block kick, and read HELLCATS AND HONEYGIRLS: THE COLLABORATIVE NOVELS OF LAWRENCE BLOCK AND DONALD E. WESTLAKE, which contains three novels: A GIRL CALLED HONEY by "Sheldon Lord" and "Alan Marshall"; SO WILLING, also signed by Lord and Marshall; and SIN HELLCAT. under the single pseudonym "Andrew Shaw," which was also published as A PIECE OF THE ACTION. Continuing with block, I read the "Andrew Shaw" book THE UNASHAMED, which turns out to be an unacknowledged (by the publisher anyway) reprinting of THE TWISTED ONES, which had been published ten years earlier. I also read OLDER WOMAN by "Sheldon Lord," who was not Block this thin, but an unknown ghost writer. All the above were pretty steamy when they were written some six decades ago. Finally, still staying with Block, I read the round robin novel THE PERFECT MURDER, edited by Jack Hitt with contributions from Block, Donald E. Westlake, Tony Hillerman, Peter Lovesey, and Sarah Caudwell, in which the five mystery authors offer scenarios for committing the perfect, "artful" murder. An interesting concept, but it reads like a fairly dull instruction manual. I picked up a dozen more books by block on Kindle. so my Lawrence Block-a-thon will probably continue for a couple of weeks.
Stay safe, Patti. enjoy your week and give thanks for whatever air conditioning you might have.
The sixties concert does sound like a lot of fun, Patti. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Not sure if "productive" is the right word. We did watch a lot of television, but virtually nothing of the Olympics. I used to be a fanatic about it, much like the Oscars, but as time went on...not so much. I remember being in Europe in 1972 and 1976 and 1980 (yes, I know we boycotted the Moscow Olympics, but the British didn't), trying to keep up with what was going on. I think we had just gotten home when the Israeli athletes were killed in Munich. Jackie did watch some of the women's gymnastics this year.
We were supposed to get a week of rain, but were mostly pretty lucky, in that it rained overnight or was way lighter than predicted. We spent some of the day in the city Wednesday, as we had a concert at Madison Square Garden - The Doobie Brothers (the fourth time we've seen them, after 2017, 2019 and 2022), with Steve Winwood (we saw him last in 2010) opening. Good show. Winwood did 65 minutes, the Doobies about an hour and 45. We stayed at a Marriott a few blocks away. I guess you'd call the rooms "compact" rather than tiny. It was nice though, as we got upgraded to a room on the top (46th) floor (upgrade was the view). Their buffet breakfast was surprisingly good and very well organized. Instead of the usual mess where you scramble for tables, there were women directing you where to sit, they kept everything stocked, and they cleared the tables frequently. We only had a little drizzle that day.
We had our annual physicals and blood work , and we're basically good to go for another year, something you always like to hear. My sister (ten years younger than me) had her cancerous right kidney removed, and she seems to be recovering well so far. My brother's trip to Japan with his son and granddaughter did not work out well, as he could not take the heat and humidity. He left them there after 5 days and returned to Oregon.
We finally decided to watch OPPENHEIMER last night, and frankly, I don't see how fans of BARBIE would get much out of it. Pretty good job for the most part. We won't be watching BARBIE, by the way.
Television goes on, as it does. We're watching two Israeli shows, one German, a couple of Danish, a Belgian/Dutch, an Aussie, several British, two or three French, etc. plus NCIS, BREAKING BAD, and SUITS. If you want something lighter (airy, one could say), check out GOOD SHIP MURDER (Britbox), a sort of combination LOVE BOAT with MIDSOMER MURDERS or DEATH IN PARADISE. The protagonist, in a less than believable premise, is a former Police Inspector who left the force to become a lounge singer on a giant cruise ship. (The first episode didn't give the back story beyond that.) He teams up with the ship's first officer, a somewhat uptight woman, to solve murders that - apparently - happen in various ports of call, the first being La Rochelle in France. The scenery is gorgeous, the lead is likable, and if you want to turn your brain off for 50 minutes, you could do worse.
Jerry, that sounds like a nightmare. Of course, we only had fans the first 16 years we were married, but we were in Brooklyn, not Florida, and we spent a lot of most summers in Europe. When my parents moved to California, hey gifted us with the "magic fan," a huge window exhaust fan. You turned it to the out setting, closed all the windows but the one(s) where you wanted the air to come in, and it did a remarkably good job of keeping you (relatively) cool. Good luck.
My AC can't always handle the pm sun (wall to wall windows facing southwest but I can't imagine Jerry's plight in FL. I'll envy you in January though. Headed to the dermatologist to see what to do about the sebaceous cyst that has blown up from watching too much Olympics. Return later.
Diane and I watched a fair amount of Olympic drama. Diane loves the gymnastics. Simone Biles lit up our TV screen with her amazing talent! And Katie Ledecky is a National Treasure! Two of the biggest moments of the Olympics for me was Saturday night's USA vs. France Men's Basketball game (aka, The Seth Curry Show). But that was topped by Sunday's Women's Basketball game with the USA vs. France. It was a nail-biter all the way! A one-point win for the USA Women's Team that will go down in sports History!
An EF-1 tornado with 90 mph winds blew into Buffalo--just a couple blocks away from City Hall--and caused $2.5 million in damage with roofs blown off, cars tossed aside, and damage to the 100+ year-old buildings in that area. When I was growing up in Western NY, tornadoes were unheard of. Climate change is the Real Deal.
Like the Meyersons, the Kelley's have a bunch of annual doctor appointments in the weeks ahead. I've pretty much recovered from Covid-19 but one night a week on average, I'm having trouble getting back to sleep. Covid continues to disrupt my Life! Stay safe!
My rib was confirmed broken at a doctor appointment and I've been taking it easy. That mostly means mindless internet scrolling and not much reading.
I'm almost done with I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy. That autobio exploded in popularity after it came out. I had no idea who McCurdy was but skimmed the book when a few months ago and enjoyed the sections I read. I think the book is very good, and McCurdy's straightforward and mostly emotionless narration on the audio just works; especially when the book gets to the part where she is in therapy and gets a glimmer of self-realization that her mom had plenty of issues and passed those on to her.
Watched first season of GIRLS5EVA and started second season.
Also started watching ECHOES on Netflix. I like the concept of twins continuing to switch roles into their adulthood, including annual trades of families and careers.
Meanwhile, the one and only year of having both children in college begins in a couple weeks when Boy #2 moves into his dorm. We assist Boy #1 move between rental places in a week.
We have not been watching any Olympics. I kept up online with how the gymnastics were going. And any other odds and ends that came my way. It has not been that hot here, the high hasn't gotten past the low seventies. But in the sun outside when I am watering or otherwise tending to plants it does feel very hot. Inside it is cool most of the time and we don't have air conditioning.
We have been watching the same shows as usual. We finished Tulsa King and we watched the adaptation of A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY with Helen Hayes.
I finished one book this week: THE MADONNA OF THE SLEEPING CARS by Maurice Dekobra. It was published in 1927, was very successful at that time, but I was disappointed in it. It is billed as espionage but seems more like an adventure story to me. I did not have any problem finishing it but I did not care for any of the characters (rich, entitled). Now I am reading A GREAT RECKONING by Louise Penny (12th book out of 18) and an annotated edition of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS.
Glen is still reading DEAR CALIFORNIA: THE GOLDEN STATE IN DIARIES AND LETTERS by David Kipen. And liking it. I will read it after he finishes it.
Comment above was from Tracy. For some reason Google often logs me in as Anonymous on Blogger even when logged into my account earlier. Oh well.
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS is a delightful book, Tracy. i hope you enjoy it.
It logs me in as anon if I am not on my computer.
Jerry, I read THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS a few years ago and for some reason I could get into it. This time it is going much better. I love reading about your family and all the books you read.
Forgot to mention I did not watch much Olympics coverage except for highlights on YouTube.
On John Oliver's show yesterday he had a clip from a 14-year-old Australian girl who won a Gold for skateboarding who said she told her parents she wants a pet duck if she medaled.
Found the clip: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Nz7NHikKRzM
Why a duck? Can you actually keep a duck from leaving? They must have water in their yard. Or a wading pool.
It has been quite a while since I've seen a concert, sadly. Of course, C19 hasn't helped that lack of effort much...glad it was a pleasant highlight of the week. (Foolishly, I'm typing this on the Chromebook that without warning jumps up a line or two on frequent occasion, there being no key that I could hit that would properly do that.) But I have been finding more comfort in music again, via video (mostly jazz, but everything, online and otherwise).
Jerry, terribly sorry about the attack of the heat and the collapse of A/C...we are happily enjoying a week in the 80sF, which seems almost cool as well as normal for NJ August, so our system is less taxed.
More series of late include MGM+'s HOLLYWOOD BLACK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH9YNtebdjQ , a documentary series that has given me my first extended views of some of Oscar Micheaux's films, among other bits...the new season (in the US) of HBO's INDUSTRY was easy to choose against after watching about ten minutes. John Oliver/LAST WEEK TONIGHT's lowdown on the standing corruption in Hawaii, noting the exploitation of nearly everyone (who's not a millionaire+) in Hawaii and particularly those of Hawaiian ancestry, all Not getting any better since I left in 1984...a gallon of milk now goes for $9, for example. And the military as well as the tourist industry are still getting away with figurative, but not always, murder.
So it goes.
You probably have some sort of enclosure for a pet duck, yes, but pet ducks also enjoy being fed and some human company. And you definitely need to provide them with a water dip of some size, particularly in a summer like we're having (don't know for sure, but suspect, Australia's aren't much better of late)(certainly fires of at least California proportions).
Sorry about the bad health situations, Gerard and Patti...I've never broken a rib thus far...broken wrist and fingers were bad enough. Patti, I've had sebaceous cysts removed (my skin loves to find ways to be damaged)...wasn't aware that any of them are blamed on pressure points. Good luck in healing quickly.
Glad you're having a better time of the Grahame this time, Tracy...too much Edwardian whimsy the first time?
I imagine most moviegoers who saw both were amused to be participating in a return to theaters, particularly with two disparate if variously clever films.
I think you might be right about the Edwardian whimsy, Todd. I wasn't prepared for that and I did not feel it worked well as a children's story or one for adults. Some books I just have to read twice to get acclimated. And some parts of the annotated sections have helped too.
Sorry that you're getting intermittent Long Covid symptoms, George...mine have pretty much passed (still sleeping weird). I had not been getting around to watching Olympics, given how rah-rah all the coverage of US athletes vs. all others aside from a Few Stars tend to get over the decades...I did flip over to see a few minutes of some coverage before something I wanted to see, and the NBC commentators lived down to what I expect of entirely too many tv (at least) sports reporters-of-sorts, who were quite certain that the US would all but blow away the rest of the field in men's relay racing, with a possible real challenge from the Chinese team. As I recall, it came out Canada gold, South Africa silver, UK bronze...the US in 7th did indeed finish ahead of China, 8th.
Patti, that's the beauty of short stories. You can always read one when nothing else captures your attention.
Highly recommend the new Ace Atkins - Don’t Let The Devil Ride. Reminds me of Elmore Leonard.
A really good writer. And so quick.
I am amused to note that some recommend the use of doghouses for pet ducks' outdoor shelters.
I am curious how good a pet a duck is. The Australian girl seems super keen about it and if she gets one I am sure it will hit the news down there.
I didn't watch much of the Olympics as we went to our cottage on Lake Winnipeg where we no longer have TV reception. Guess I could have tried to find something on my iPad, but I never pulled it out of my suitcase. Managed to read a couple of mysteries, one by Barbara Fradkin set in Ottawa, The other by John Rickards titled The Touch of Ghosts set in Vermont is the best mystery of the year so far. It was published in 2005. Saw part of the closing ceremonies, but they never appeal to me. Was please to hear that breaking aka break dancing is being dropped for 2028 in LA and more traditional sports such lacrosse, cricket and women's softball will be added. Picked up a UK crime novel by Kate Ellis and an older PD set in Seattle by G.M. Ford in the Gimli thrift store a $1,00 each. The Ford was signed.
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