THE INVITE was the best movie I've seen in a while. Seth Rogan was especially good. Very well-directed too. I also enjoyed PETER ASHER: EVERYWHERE MAN, about the former singer and now record producer and manager who had a hand in the careers of so many musicians. Also rewatched SUMMERTIME from 1955 with Kate Hepburn,. Venice has never looked better.
Finished two seasons of PARADISE (Hulu), which was fun if you can look the end of mankind as fun. Started LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, which is trying hard to be more authentic.
Still reading YESTERYEAR, which is sort of a slog.
What about you?
I guess it's going to be another hot week here.
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Western NY is going to bake this week, too. Mid-90 degree temps start tomorrow.
Katie is driving the Nissan Altima we gifted her back to Boston today. Patrick is preparing for a conference in Germany next month that he will be running. Hope there's jet-fuel for his trip...
Nothing much on TV to watch. I'm debating about seeing THE ODYSSEY later this week. Stay safe!
Yes, hoping the Odyssey lives up to the hype.
Another week torn between violent rain storms and blistering heat, with little left between. The weather conspired against us to keep us from beaching this week. Ptah!
In a massive display of (choose one) stupidity or cockiness I ignored common sense and was felled by heat exhaustion earlier this week lugging heavy boxes to my car. When I became faint and realized that my muscles were working well, I staggered back to the house...and almost made it, collapsing on a chair on the front steps and could not find the strength to get up from it. It was about twenty minutes before Walt came by and helped me to stand; by that time I had basically stopped sweating. I made to my room, turned on the fans and the AC and thoroughly rehydrated myself before lying down and sleeping for a couple of hours. Woke up feeling better but my muscles were screaming to me for the next two days. Heat can be be killer. Like I said, I was either stupid or cocky and will not make that mistake again. Or at least until next time.
So my week has been pretty quiet. Christina, on the other hand has had a busy week. A Costco finally opened up in Pensacola (before this week, the nearest one was in Mobile, Alabama), so she got a membership and spent almost all the money in the world. She also attended her first pottery class and ended up with a bowl she decorated with sea turtles swimming in kelp, although it more resembled sea turtles eating pickles. Christina also renewed her CPR certification for the first time in ten years because she may need that working at the police station. And on Sunday, she and Erin, and Jessie went on a wedding shopping and bonding trip, and spent jst about all the remaining money in the world -- she got a dress for the wedding which she is tickled pink about, Jessie also got a magnificent dress, and Erin got wedding shoes. It was a very successful trip.
Although Jessie turned down the Finance Manager for the Transportation Department job, she is still trying to help them out. The man who got the job has an MBA but not a finance degree and is clueless about finance and accounting and Jessie is going crazy trying to teach him but, as she says, sometimes fish can't climb trees.
It's an interesting time for Republican politicians. I did not expect Lindsay Graham's death and am looking askance at Mitch McConnell maybe being alive -- two men who have done much to help bring this country down, IMO. I truly regret the death of any human being, but in this case I fear my regret might be a tad diminished. It looks like the GOP is in more trouble than I had previously imagined, and that's without even mentioning the Representative who had vanished for 142 days.
So this week I read a lot. Two novels from John Farris, SACRIFICE and SON OF THE ENDLESS NIGHT; the latest Sunny Randall mystery from Alison Gaylin, ROBERT B. PARKER'S BOOKED; the first book in Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Helen Trilogy, FEVER DREAM; and an early science fiction novel from Fred Saberhagen, THE WATER OF THOUGHT. Also two Hard Case Crime Graphic novels, Charles Ardai's GUN HONEY and Eldo Yoshimizu's RTYUKO, VOL. 2; other graphic novels were EXQUITE CORPSE: VOLUME ONE by James Tynion IV with Michael Walsh and Pornsak Pichetsole, THUNDERBOLTS: WOLRD STRIKE by Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly, Chris Sequeira's STAR TREK: HOLO-WEEN, Pat Shand;s BREATHERS, VOLUME 1: PAY TO LIVE, and Harold Schechter & Eric Powell's "DR. WORTHLESS", a well-balanced biography of the man who destroyed comic books in the Fifties.
Enjoy your week, Patti. Stay safe. Stay hydrated.
Rather a busy week here. The awful rain led Jackie and my cousin Nancy to push the trip back one day. (It cost us more money, but it was the smart way to go. ) Instead of Monday to Saturday, we left Tuesday and came home yesterday. The weather was beautiful, even warm for Maine - mid-80s mostly and no rain other than a few lingering showers on the way to Connecticut Tuesday.
Nancy's mother (my Aunt Ruth) was my father's older sister, and I've always felt close to her. Her husband Jerry is a pediatrician and keeps working at 81.
Tuesday we had dinner with them and Nancy's sister Penny. We stayed at a Marriott near Hartford and left for Maine Wednesday morning. We stopped for the first of our three lobster roll lunches (pricy at $32) at Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, then went on to the Sheraton in South Portland.
Had a nice seafood dinner with friends of theirs.
(Part 2) I liked that w we spent so much time along the coast, as it is beautiful there in the summer. We had another lobster roll at Cape Elizabeth at a place on a cliff overlooking the bay ( we'd eaten there three years ago too), The Lobster Shack at Two Lights. (There are lighthouses nearby.) Another seafood dinner in the downtown port area. (Also, we had a lot of ice cream stops.)
Friday we went to an old-fashioned diner for brunch, and had a really good Italian meal for dinner.
Saturday we went back to Bob's for a lobster roll on the way home, then took a detour to New Hampshire for ice cream.
We stayed back in Hartford Saturday night and ate at a deli near my cousin's place, then drove home Sunday morning after breakfast.
Next year we will either go back to Mystic or maybe stay at one of the big Connecticut casinos nearby.
Good trip. And tomorrow we're going back to the Long Island Marriott as we have another concert.
(Part 3) Because we're seeing Earth, Wind & Fire tomorrow night (along with Lionel Richie), we watched Questlove's documentary about the group on HBO Max, "Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)." Pretty interesting, though the late Maurice White comes off pretty badly on the way he treated people.
Very little reading time last week, just short stories in the Martin Edwards anthology and the Keith McNally memoir.
There was a lot about Peter Asher in that Linda Ronstadt documentary.
Books finished include DIRTBAGS by Eryk Pruitt. SO LATE IN THE DAY bu Claire Keegan. HEART OF GLASS by Jennifer Hillier. THE STAND-IN by Deborah Moggach (well, maybe that was the week before.)
I tried listening to DEAD BUT DR
EAMING OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Paul Tremblay and quit it. Boring.
Watched the first three episodes of Larry David's new show on HBO. He is too insufferable to binge watch. I was scrolling through Tubi last night and adding all sorts of films to my waitlist.
Got Boy #2 out of the house on Saturday to visit a tea store in Mount Horeb, WI. We then did a cave tour and a privately owned place. We'd been there before during an elementary school field trip. Easier to take everything in when not responsible for a gaggle of 8-year-olds.
My wife and I continue to look at materials for a kitchen/mud room remodel. Last week was flooring options. On Sunday, we went by a appliance store but the models she was hoping to see and measure in person were not stocked. The appliance store was very uninteresting to me. I sat in the car and read at the next stop on our drive around Madison which was a spice store.
A great thing about electric cars is being able to sit and run the air conditioning and not be flooding the air with engine exhaust.
Lots of activity going on.
I love Claire Keegan.
Be careful with heat exhaustion. It knocked me out at 20.
Lobster rolls cost that here and I am never sure it's real lobster and probably frozen.
Patrick is really seeing the world.
These were packed with fresh lobster meat. Jackie won't eat them with butter or mayonnaise, so wad excited that she could get them plain.
I do not like butter on lobster.
Alice, in the wake of the death of her mother, has been helping her sister and father get things resettled...which requires fairly frequent trips north to Amherst, MA (her brother jetted in from his monastery in Australia, as well). Got back on Sunday and might go back for a last long leg on Thursday. Health/exhaustion permitting. Life does keep changing.
Sleep patterns all screwed up, while mildly rearranging our house in Alice's absence (by mutual agreement)--furniture moved, storage areas re-arranged, etc., and keeping our segregated cats as happy as possible as Sole House Ape for several-day strectches. Both love company.
Sorry about Alice's mother. Sorting things out is rough. Although my parents as they transitioned from Philly to Michigan ad from indy living, to assisted living to nursing care were down to very little to sort.
Thanks. There was the move for their father into the lower-level condo owned by the sister (who lives upstairs) and even such matters as putting the brother's materials that were still at their parents' now vacated house into storage, until he chooses to move back and collect it or rid himself of it. Their father is a kind of retired workaholic, still doing work in physics, if at a relatively individual/scholar's level. Also, her sister just adopted a Basenji puppy (in the wake of her previous Basenji dying--as dogs do, too young--just before her mother did).
We are supposed have some hotter days this week... Tuesday through Thursday. Which means I need to get out and water some today so that I won't have to do so much on those days.
We did watch the last episode of ELEMENTARY last week. Last night we watched the second Harry Potter movie last night, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS. It was fun but very long. It did have Kenneth Branagh as one of the faculty and it was strange seeing him so much younger. And we are rewatching THE ARK, a science fiction TV series.
Glen is still reading ATLANTIC by Simon Winchester. He also read a 328-page graphic novel, RUINS by Peter Kuper. He liked it mostly, but did not care for the main character. Set in Mexico. I checked out the first 20-30 pages and I think I will like it too.
I finished reading GLASS HOUSES by Louise Penny. It is the 13th book in the series. I liked it but it took a long time to read and it was under 400 pages, not overly long. The structure was different; it starts with Inspector Gamache on the witness stand, but then the story hops back and forth from the investigation of a crime and to the trial. Sometimes that gets confusing, but created a lot of suspense.
Last night I started FLOATING HOTEL by Grace Curtis, described as cozy science fiction. I have only read 30 pages so far and I am liking it.
I am reading Grey Wolf by Penny.It's good, of course, but takes a lot of concentration. Just booked a house for three weeks in La Jolla, Same house we had three years ago.
Air quality is rough across the Great Lakes today. Southern Wisconsin is in the "hazardous" category.
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