Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Teacup Progress

So this was the start of the teacup painting:

After the first glaze I just hated it:

But then, adding the cranberry glaze on the bowl and the cream glaze on the cups perked it up:

The blue ellipse on the cup is wonky on the right, and somehow adding the blue to the table threw off the bottom of the right teacup. The line at the right edge of the cast shadow is accurate but now wrong, somehow. Cast shadows.  Why are they so hard?

But you know what's easy? Highlights. The bowl needs cut-glass highlights, that'll be fun, and the cups need more color, especially in the shadows. And I have to wait days before I can do it because the glaze has to dry. Maddening.

This Must Be A First

I’ve been telling everyone that i’m working at home because it’s just too cold, and it is: the wind chill is below zero. I am taking their word for it. I didn’t leave the house yesterday and I won’t be leaving today.

Signs it is cold:

• The weather forecasters are telling us the temperatures at which antifreeze freezes.
• Schools and businesses are closing.
• Only one raccoon ventured out of his den last night.
• The U.S. Mail delivery has stopped in some parts of Missouri. They say Kansas City is still delivering, but I don’t know yet about Saint Louis. I’m fine if they skip it: I don’t want someone to die so I can get the direct-to-trash grocery circular.
• CNN says if I’m outside for five minutes I will get frostbite.
• I saw that there was a layer of ice on the inside of the window frame. I thought at first that perhaps a rubber window gasket had frozen and broken like an O-ring, but what’s actually happened is that the metal window frame is so cold that the interior side is ice cold as well, and the scant humidity in the house has collected into a block of ice in the interior.

What’s awful is that it is worse in Chicago and Minnesota. What’s worse is that some people think that ours is the only hemisphere on the globe and use this as a global ”waming” rebuttal.

Snack

Gary makes a salad for dinner sometimes. It's mainly olives and peppers and artichoke hearts and feta. And, a little lettuce. The salad fills up our biggest metal bowl and takes up half a refrigerator shelf. We go through it like an archaeological dig. It takes us over a week. Of course by that time the lettuce is limp but the rest is fine.

Usually that's acceptable to me, but last night Gary elected to go for some salad that was two weeks old.

"Throw that out!" I said. "That's rotten."

"NO IT'S FINE."  He gestured at his bowl of salad that had a dressing of pink slime mold. Suit yourself, I thought.

He sat down by me. Salad goes in mouth. "ACK." Salad comes out of mouth. "THIS SALAD IS ROTTEN."

He got up to throw out all the salad and returned with "A SNACK TO GET THIS TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH." Pretzels and Philadelphia cream cheese.

Pretzels go in mouth. "ACK." Pretzels come out of mouth. "THIS ISN'T CREAM CHEESE."

I can see how he thought the half-used stick of Crisco shortening was cream cheese: they are both wrapped in foil with blue lettering and measurement markings and stored in the catch-all refrigerator deli drawer. I felt for him.

Later he went in for a goodnight kiss. I am afraid I instinctively pulled away from the Pink Slime Mold Crisco mouth.

Mr. Dangervest

There's this co-worker. Let's call him Rex. Let's call him Rex, because he looks more than a bit like Rex Dangervest from the Lego movie.

I was watching the trailer for the new Lego movie when I noticed the similarity.

Same stubble and snarky grin. Work "Rex" has shorter hair. He protested that point when I shared the resemblance with the department. They all saw the likeness. Great amusement at his expense. That was right before Christmas.

Yesterday it was revealed that he is leaping up the corporate ladder and is now the boss of my boss.

So, guess I won't be buying the Rex Dangervest figurine for ... wait .. oh God, there's one with a coffee mug in his little Lego hand.

I had no choice. Purchase made. This is why I've only gotten one promotion in 25 years.

 

Meat Mambo

So, since Gary's adjusting to this new drug, I took over the shopping and cooking duties for the week.

Gary only buys meat that has been rendered down to the size and amount he wants. He won't take a skin off of a chicken breast, or a bone out of a pork chop. I, however, would be glad to butcher a whole cow to get what I want.

They won't sell me a cow. I asked nicely, though, and the butcher at the grocery let me have a seven pound brisket and a giant eye of round roast.

When I came home with all this meat ...

... I knew enough to tell Gary to stay out of the kitchen until I was done sawing and bagging and prepping it all. He was only able to avoid the kitchen for an hour before he came in and began howling about:

1. "WE DONT HAVE SPACE FOR ALL THIS MEAT!" (We have an utterly empty chest freezer in the basement AND a half-empty freezer in the garage.)
2. "YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'RE DISMEMBERING A DEAD BODY!"

I have heard these complaints before. It's okay. It took hours, but we're all set for meat for the next few months, and everything's seasoned and waiting in sous-vide bags. I need that full larder feeling in the winter months, even if I have to play butcher to get it.

Hot Cocoa Limbo

Last week Baby was cold, so I thought I would serve up some hot cocoa. This thought came to me at the grocery. I thought I'd pick up some packets of Swiss Miss instant cocoa.

I know, I could make my own, but I wasn't inclined to buy dry milk and sugar and cocoa and make my own mix and then have to store it. I didn't know the difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate at the time. (Here's the difference: one is heated wet cocoa powder and one is a heated wet chocolate bar.  YES, I know, it seems obvious now.)

So I went to the far reaches of the store to find the hot cocoa. Powdered drinks - no, just Koolaid. Coffee? No - just K-cups of hot cocoa. K-cups that will fit in my Nespresso machine? No.

"How do kids today make hot cocoa?” I wondered. “I know they don't make it from scratch."

I never worked out the answer. I called an audible and bought chocolate milk and heated it up in the microwave. Tasted hot and chocolate.

Of course, that left me with too much chocolate milk. I got the bright idea to put it through the cappuccino milk frother. It came out hot and foamy and utterly tasteless. Peculiar. I'll have to start using it on my granola, instead.

That was last week. This is the east side of the same store this week:

And here is the west side:

I should have bought some hot cocoa when I saw the hot cocoa aisle and hot cocoa armoire, because evidently this is the week the hot cocoa Brigadoon is visible, and it will disappear next time I want to find it.

Das Tut Mir Leid Calypso

"Das tut mir leid" is about the only bit of German I know. It is from the Sarcastic Grandmother dialect of German, and it means, “Oh, poor pouty baby, sucks to be you.”

I was a pouty baby today when I got my copy of David Sedaris’ Calypso from Amazon. "CALYPSO," it said on the dustjacket, “vom autor des weltbestsellers NAKED.”

”Nooooo,” I whispered. Nein!

I turned to a random page. 

“Tiffany ... Cool. Stoned. Hacke. Durchgeknallt.” 

(Tiffany ... Cool, Stoned, Hoe, Girl Interrupted.) [sic]

It is all in German. I should have been alerted when I looked at the price, but I didn't look at the price, or the faint, tiny German text on the image of the cover.

I'm a little verärgert.

Typing Diagnosis

Since October, when we moved into the new office and I got a laptop, my typing has been horrendous. People at work make comments like, "Who wrote defect summary 87 - oh, it was Ellen, I can tell from the typos."

It's as bad as when Caroline felt my typos warranted an MRI.

I've been blaming my new keyboard, but that's a dodge. The typos are equally bad no matter which laptop I'm on.

Finally, I realized what I'm doing wrong. If I'm using a normal keyboard, I'm sitting erect and watching my hands as I type, but if I'm using a laptop or iPad I am reclined and ignoring my hands.

One would think that if I could teach myself finger-style guitar, I could learn to touch-type. Perhaps I should take up typing as a hobby.

This Russia Thing with Trump and Russia

The recent Buzzfeed kerfuffle made me question some fundamental assumptions we are making in our house.

Of course, in this house we think Trump is guilty (guilty guilty guilty, as they said in Watergate). However, I did react to the initial Buzzfeed accusations by calling for evidence, which didn’t go over too well with Gary.

“EVIDENCE? HE IS GUILTY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

And then, of course, Mr. Mueller stepped in and flopped an icy wet blanket over all the impeachment talk.

It made me think - and question - why are we so sure, in lieu of evidence, that he did something underhanded to win the election, like conspiring with Putin?

Like the conspiracy theories that still bedevil the Kennedy assassination: it’s unthinkable that something so earthshaking could happen if there wasn’t an earthshaking cause.

Some pipsqueak murders a president? No way, had to be the Russians/Mafia/CIA. 

Some pipsqueak becomes president? No way, had to be the Russians. 

Scary thoughts. Can’t talk about them with Gary, though. Not going to be a happy house here for the next few years.

Vacation Urge

The people at Viking River Cruises are sending me one brochure a week. I am only a little tempted.

    1) When I think of Vikings and bodies of water:

2)    Were I going to spend seven grand on a European vacation, I would rent a car and plant myself in one city and do it up right.

Instead, I read Facebook posts like: "I didn't want to shovel out my car so we went to Mexico for three days instead" (followed by photos of Tulum), or "Baby was cold" (followed by photos of the couple in shorts on a plane).

I started to wonder, "What would it cost to go to some cheap all-inclusive place on the spur on the moment?"  I was researching that when Gary burst into the room and said we needed to schedule a high-energy vacation next, since the new meds are working and he no longer sleeps all day.

That's not going to happen, though. Well, it could happen. Nah, it's not going to happen.

(Could happen.)

Gary Drug

Gary before the thyroid drug:

It’s been a week now that Gary’s been medicated for his thyroid.

On the first day  he was literally pounding on his skull from the seizure activity and panic attacks. I'm amazed he made it to day two.

For the next few days, he was fairly normal. Then, at two am, he burst in the room and announced he could feel his feet.

"MY FEET FELT WEIRD AND THEN I REALIZED I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO FEEL MY FEET FOR YEARS NOW AND NOW THEY'RE BACK! AND THIS FLOOR IS DIRTY!"

That went on a day ... and then other body parts started waking up. In answer to your question, no - the painful body parts. His chipped elbow started hurting again. His torn shoulder. And then today his lower back began acting up again.

Still, he's decided he rather be alive and in pain than sick and numb.

Today I asked why he wasn’t watching the news. “I DON’T KNOW! IT’S THE THYROID PILL! THE PILL TELLS ME WHAT TO DO!”

Gary this week:

Snowpuppy / Snowgiant

Last week's snow was perfect for packing. There were several excellent snow sculptures on my drive to work.

(Not my photo - it was taken by Friend #4, who lives nearby.)

I took this photo - even though I took it a week late. The snowman below was originally ten feet tall. They must used a ladder to add the head. The warmer weather melted off a third of its height, its hat, and the facial details.

There was supposed to have been another snow storm yesterday, but it fizzled out.

Placebo Revisited

This just happened: I found a bottle of turmeric among my medicines. "What on earth?" I thought. "Why do I have a bottle of turmeric?"

Side effects of turmeric: loss of memory of events that happened less than a month ago.

It would seem that burping up a capsule of the stuff was enough to put me off turmeric. I did not have enough success to get the delusion we all get when drugs work: "I feel better so I don't need these drugs that are the reason I feel better."

Small-Minded Dogma at Chick-Fil-A

Thursday night, for a variety of tedious reasons, we ended up having dinner inside a Chik-Fil-A.

Gary started reading his phone (rude) and of course that launched a political rant about Republicans and how corrupt they are.

Gary: [boring rant edited for time and content] " ... and that's why all Republicans are corrupt."

Me: "Stop. Listen to yourself. Stop saying 'all' and 'every'. You sound small-minded. You can't lump people like that."

Gary: (louder) "YES I CAN. BECAUSE ALL REPUBLICANS ARE CORRUPT." This he says INSIDE a Chik-Fil-A.

I'm sure all the other patrons in earshot began praying for him immediately.

 

Gary Health

Well, the test results came back and my poor husband is indeed hypothyroid. We had a brief fight about it ("Gary, stop dismissing this!" "Ellen show some sympathy!"), then realized once again we were having an Information Deficit Fight, then we went off to the internet to gain all medical information.

I found basic facts (Can you Die From Hypothyroidism?), while Gary dove deep and found the relation between the thyroid and his epilepsy (evidently your thyroid can be affected by epilepsy meds, or else both conditions are on the same gene).

He did learn the thyroid controls the metabolism because it produces the regulating hormones. He's decided that's why he swings between "I'm freezing!" and "I'm boiling."

Gary hit the word "hormone" and latched on. I asked why he was so particularly testy one day and he grumbled, "Hormones! I'm hormonal!" He gets hot? "I'm having a hot flash! Hormones!"  I'm amazed. I would have thought a real hot flash would send Gary directly to the emergency room.

Terrifying. He is now exacting payback for my menopause.

Gum

Sometimes I chew gum when I am hungry at work. My work area has recently been rehabbed, and part of the rehab is the recycling station.

Paper / Recycle / Landfill / Compost. I am stymied on where to throw my used gum. I no longer have my own trash can, and I chew too much to swallow anymore - smaller throat or bigger gum, I can't tell.

So where does gum go? Obviously not Paper. I would say Compost, but I've seen it come out of the trash at home and it is moving further from nature, not closer to it. It's like dried caulk. Also, I'm pretty sure one of these ingredients doesn't biodegrade: Xylitol, Mannitol, Blue 1 Lake, Acesulfame, BHT (TO MAINTAIN FRESHNESS) (Geez, CALM DOWN Gum Labelers), Neotame.

I'm drawn to Recycle because I get the idea that there is a large plastic component to this gum. Not from the ingredients, but the gum itself. You start off with nice soft gum and it gets harder and harder as you chew it. That's not natural.

That's why I just throw it into Landfill, since it's Pascal's Wager: if I'm wrong and it's compost, it can still degrade at the landfill, but if it's artificial I don't want it clogging up the works at the recycling place, or choking some dolphin somewhere.

Work Ellen

One of the reasons I've been quite happy that Gary quit his job five and three-quarters years ago is that I don't have to deal with Work Gary anymore. Work Gary was an ass. He would come home angry, yell at me, I'd ask why he was angry, and it always turned out he was angry at someone at work. But of course he couldn't yell at them, so he'd end up yelling at me. I would always point that out with, "I am not the person who is making you angry. Take it out on the people at work. I am not a punching bag."

Not that he's retired, the stress ball has been passed to me. I'm the one yelling and having nightmares. I've been routinely annoyed about work the past month, not pleasant to Gary, and at one point he said, "Take it out on the people at work. I am not your punching bag."  Touché, mon chere, touché.

Gary is now the one studiously avoiding conflict. Case in point: Wednesday his car battery was dead, and in the past some of our most epic fights happened while trying to use jumper cables, with the combination of Fear of Death and our main fight trigger: Lack of Knowledge. Add in a touch of Man Shame and every fight was inevitable. This time, he bought new cables, researched how to use them, gathered supplies, put on his headlamp, and all I had to do was start an engine. It was amazing. No fight at all.

Lady Garden Blight Returns

My affliction is back, despite a respite of almost half a decade. The labia is again weeping blood from the outside, not the inside. (See here. In fact you should see here, because that post-menopausal post from five years ago sums up my attitude today.)

Since my reproductive hormones have utterly shut down now, I would have thought that would be the end of my pudenda problems. But, actually, it's comforting, since I know I can write off endometriosis or hormonal fluctuations as a cause for the spontaneous labial bleeding.

It's probably been an infected ingrown hair, only ... there's no hair there on the inner lady curtain. Or perhaps there is, only they are small. I have fuzzy hairs everywhere else now, why not.

Really, that's should be my attitude about the entire crotch issue. All the emotional attachment to my labia is gone now that I am 'paused. Do what you want, crotch: spontaneously bleed, spout glitter, rub together and make sounds like Cuban diplomatic crickets. Over. It.

I Brave the Fifty Three Hour Brisket

Remember when I was too chicken to cook beef? I couldn't bring myself to brine a brisket for almost a week and then cook it in the sous-vide for two days. Well, I am braver now.

I think I balked at the five days of brining, because my new recipe requires only a half hour marinade and then two days of sous-vide, followed by three hours in the oven.

I know it will be cooked through. I think the texture will be great. I'm sure it's going to taste bad, because I used the marinade I had on hand, which was a Lime-based recipe, but the sous-vide directions had me add liquid smoke. Smoke plus lime? I can see a lime-flavored barbecue chicken or shrimp, but beef seems strange.

------ 53 Hour Pause for Brisket to Finish -----

The texture was excellent, but I couldn’t taste the marinade or the liquid smoke, which might have been a good thing. Since it needed sauce, I made barbecue sauce from scratch and we couldn’t eat it (I added too much vinegar, somehow.) Luckily I had enough self-doubt to serve that on the side.

Mph. It was okay. Still not as good as any pork product in the sous-vide.

 

Snow

So, last year we didn't get the snowblower out at all. We've taken to storing it in the basement instead of the garage. There was an anticipated snow earlier this year so I brought it upstairs, but that ended up being light enough to melt.

So, now we have actual snow. I am wild with excitement. I'm looking through the larder and making plans for all the meals for the next three days. In additon, I was very excited to blow snow tonight.

We disagree about when to use the snowblower: once every 7 inches (me, so 3 passes for the forecast 24 inches) or once at the end (Gary, who thinks you can blow off just the top layer). We agreed to disagree and that Gary would run the snow removal process. That will be fun to watch.

I'm also having a lot of fun watching the news, because I am always tickled when our weather report leads the news on CNN.

I don't think this has happened before though: it snowed enough to bring Jim Cantore to town.

Gary Cheats

No, he hasn't cheated on me. I'm just referring to how he cheats on these games we've been playing.  Since he bought me a new game for Christmas, and then I found him a game right after Christmas, we've been having to modify the "house rules" ("house cheat modes") for two new games.

These games are particularly appealing because they are collaborative, not competitive. In most games I grew up with, winning a game meant you beat the other competitors.

These new board games make the players collaborate to beat the game, not each other. One might pit all players against a related game app that is playing out on an iPad, or against a narrative that is dictated by random card choices.

I mentioned to someone at work that Gary, the most ethical human I know, cheats at these specific games.

"But those are collaborative games. You work together to beat the game. Why would anyone cheat on a collaborative game?"

I answered, "Because he has more fun when he isn't losing," but I didn't really think about it till later.

Why does my husband, the most ethical man I know, break the rules only for these games? He would never, ever cheat at a competitive game. I wouldn't either, but I can understand the appeal. You could tell yourself that you had bested the other players in more ways that one.  You know, "I win, plus I did it because I'm smart enough to make fools out of the rest of you."

(I can assure you, Gary never would do that. I have a friend, let's call him "Joe", and thirty-five years ago Gary spotted Joe cheating at Hearts. Whenever I mention Joe, Gary interrupts with, "Joe? JoeWhoCheatsAtHearts?")

With a collaborative game, you aren't going to feel smug that you are besting your friends, because you're all on the same side. If anyone would be mad at you, it would be the game designers, or the programmers who set up the iPod app. It's like ignoring your wife when she gives you driving directions, versus ignoring Siri. Actually, when he ignores Siri, he also swears at her when she suggests any other route than the one he's set on.

And, similarly, when we cheat at our game, there is a lot of swearing too. When we read along with the instructions on the iPad, it sounds like this:

Gary: "it says, ‘Add the hotel lobby. Place a door where indicated. There are some chairs you could use as a barricade. Place a barr ’- Fuck barricades!"
Me: "Yeah! Fuck you and your barricades, game."

We don't do the barricades, what can I say? It's a house rule.

So I suppose we're looking at the game as an authority figure, just like Siri, something that's trying to boss us when we want to have fun.

God forbid we ever go to a square dance.

Volatility

I distinctly remember the 2008 crash, because it was my first year working at a financial firm. I remember the groan that went up after every closing bell when we - and we were just the support staff - realized how much the market fell.

I was particularly excited by the prospect that they would throw the "circuit breaker," which happens when trading is halted because too much money has been lost. I find the idea very comforting. The market can't lose 30% in a day. Sure, it can lose 6% a day for six days in a row, and then we're all screwed, but not all in one day.

Since 2008 they have changed the circuit-breaker rules. Now, If the S&P loses 7%, trading halts for fifteen minutes.

So I have decided (and this is just for me, this isn't advice) that I am going to stop looking at the lower right corner of any news channel on volatile days. Dow drops 1,000 points? Don't care. Wake me up when the S&P drops 150.  Anything else I'm just going to write off as political instability leaking into the market.

Value Study

So here's the latest on my oil painting glazing project. This is for the still life of the napkin, teacups, and the cranberry glass bowl (it's on its side leaning against the wall).

All I'm doing right now is the value study, in which you paint a black and white version of your painting. I keep working on it and it's pretty overworked at the moment.

I still need to make two parts darker, and one part less dark. Can you find them? The answer is below the image.

Less dark: the, um, evocative crease in the napkin that runs from the top middle to the middle right needs to be lighter. I should probably back off on the middle of the napkin where the cups meet as well.

Darker: Somehow I completely missed the shadow that the cup on the left casts on the cup on the right. I goes halfway up the cup. I drew it: you can see the line. Plus, I need to raise where the edge of the table is, otherwise the bowl must be hanging off a nail in the wall to be where it is.

Of course, I selected two cups which are essentially white, a white napkin, and a black background, so I'm going to be challenged finding some colors to glaze on top of what's there.

What Went Wrong With My Last Apple Pie

Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, was chatting with her brother Hades. They could see me baking an apple pie in Missouri from their perch on Mount Olympus.

”Jesus, I hate her,” Hestia sighed. “She’s so smug about her apple pie.”

“Jesus?” Hades asked, "What does 'Jesus' mean?"

"I don't know. It's some slang humans use. Still, look at her, thinking she's so good at pies. Let's mess with her."

Hades giggled, gestured, and suddenly the properties of water on Earth changed so that the four tablespoons of water that have always been sufficient for a double crust were no longer enough.

"Ha HAH!" Hestia laughed, "Look at her, all confused. 'Durr, this was enough water last time.' Now she's putting the dough in the refrigerator for thirty minutes to rest. There is no WAY that pie crust will work."

Back on Earth, I asked Alexa to set a timer for thirty minutes.

Hestia demanded Hades find out who I was talking to. Hades got on line and told her that Alexa is an in-home assistant that people use, sometimes, to set timers, and the she is not actually Greek.

When the timer went off I assembled the pie. I knew it was doomed, so I didn't even bother making a lattice. I stuck it in the oven and had Alexa set another timer for the first thirty minutes.

Hestia cackled and whispered to my Alexa, "Alexa, cancel all timers."

"Canceling all timers," Alexa obediently whispered back.

Luckily, after I cleaned up the kitchen I asked Alexa how much time was left.

"You have no timers."

"FUCK." I said. Hades and Hestia high-fived.

I yelled, "Alexa, SET A TIMER for ... for ... (sigh) fifteen minutes!"

"Setting timer for -"

"Oh shut up." I was mad. I was even madder a minute later after I accidentally knocked the whipped cream canister off the top shelf of the refrigerator, and it fell on my kitchen floor, popped its cap, and the nozzle broke off.

"DAMN. IT." Then I set about to fix it, since Gary had said he had been looking forward to Apple Pie with Whipped Cream.

I put the canister in the sink, pushed the nozzle back on, and got a faceful of propellant. And the nozzle fell off.

Hestia snorted, "Whippets! Just say no to drugs!"

Hades said, "Nice one! I didn't even see you do that."

"Huh? I thought you did that." Then they both doubled over laughing when they realized the whipped cream was entirely my fault.

So here is my pie. No lattice. The edges are burnt because the crust protector didn't go on at the right time. No whipped cream to hide it.  And frankly, that is pie sand around the edges, not pie crust.

Cursed. Cursed pie. No more pies for me.

 

Golden Globes

Outrage

It seemed to me that the opening did not go over well. Granted, I had Gary's commentary undercutting every joke. It seemed as if they made jokes and nobody laughed, then Sandra Oh got serious about diversity and one person guffawed. I watched it again later without Gary and it seemed to go well. However, Twitter was outraged that there was a joke about exhuming Freddie Mercury's dead body while his family was in the audience.

I get outraged at work every time two people converse while someone else is giving a presentation. If you want to have a work meeting, go out in the hall. As you can imagine,  the Golden Globes makes me crazy every time they come back from commercial. The association's president,  Meher Tatna (Myhair Topknot) was discussing murdered journalists, while Emily Blunt was finding her seat and someone else was  waving at a friend.

Injustice

Bill Hader did not win Best Actor / Comedy. 

Benedict Cumberbatch did not win for Patrick Melrose.

The Kominsky Method won over the Good Place and Barry. (I saw the first episode. That was a comedy?)

Justice

The Americans won Best Drama.

Olivia Colman won Best Actress for The Favourite.

A Star Is Born did not win much of anything.

New Game

For Christmas, Gary and I bought each other board games.

The latest edition of Arkham Horror has been out of the box for two days. Here is my review.

I spent 90 minutes unpacking it, sorting, shuffling, organizing, learning fifteen different types of cards and boards and tokens, and I swear to you, building a little cradle that a certain type of card can sit in (there it is at the top middle).

Then we gave up because it was too late to play.

Yesterday morning we sat down to play. We had to do the final setup (15 minutes), then we got ready to play, and then we read step 1, then we had to research all the steps in step one in the rulebook. Then we lost interest. We spent an hour doing that.

"They told you this version is easier than the old version?" Gary squawked. "What was the old one like?"

Last night we each took a rule book and studied for an hour, and after we got our advanced degrees in Arkham Horror, we rolled the dice. After the study sessions, it went pretty well. Gary didn’t like it too much the first four rounds because he had a run of bad luck, but then we kept going after the dice favored him, and soon we’d been playing it for six hours. 

I wish I could tell you who won, but I can’t. Neither of us had won. After six hours. “Oho,” you say, “Something is wrong here.” Nope. It’s hard to win when only two of you are chipping away at it, but we’ll get there eventually, especially since we invested all that time getting up to speed.

13 Days - Not Long Enough

Usually at the end of thirteen days off, I am ready to return to the office. The last few days I’m just waiting it out, until I “get to” go to work.

Boy, not this time. I had such a good time that it was a sad day when I put on the bra and headed back to the programming factory. Before I left, Gary said, “Don’t you want to retire? It could be like this all the time. Just the two of us, playing games, and watching the news, and eating apple pie.” 

He was so convincing that the first thing I did when I got back to work was make a spreadsheet comparing how much we’d have in the 401k if I left at 58, 61, or 65. Tempting.

Deer Season

About five times this past week I have heard what I thought were fireworks in my neighborhood. "Weird," I thought, "Maybe people stock up on the Fourth of July so they have something to fire off on every major holiday."

Then, I was about three miles east of my house when I heard either a car backfire or a very loud gunshot.

I remembered that while I was looking at wildlife cameras at the Farm Supply shop, I overheard the gun salesman say it was deer season. I did think it was a little late in the year, but then I went home and did research right before bed and I learned a number of things.

However, as I say, it was right before bed. If I am wrong, I am sure someone will let me know. These are the things I think I learned:

1. Missouri has a number of deer seasons, each with its own rules. During one deer season, you can use deer calls and deer lures like food, but those same things will be banned during a later deer season.

2. Sometimes you can use a rifle, sometimes a bow and arrow, and evidently in late December you can only use a musket or something that you load through the barrel. That would explain the loud noises I've been hearing.

3. You can't just walk in to someone's backyard and shoot a deer. You have to ask first, and then if they say yes it's good form to give them part of the deer you killed.  If you aren't sociable, there is an assigned location three miles from my house at the Busch Wildlife Area where you can shoot all kinds of deer without asking.

As I say, it was late and I was sleepy. I guess I will know if I was right if someone arrives at my front door carrying a musket and asking if I want to share some venison.

Favo(u)rite Theater

One nice thing about The Favourite is that it is showing at the snooty theater in the snooty shopping mall. Plaza Frontenac is anchored by the Saint Louis Saks Fifth Avenue on one end and the Neiman Marcus in the other, and between them you can find the movie theater. The theater has the resources to whittle their offerings down to just the four best movies, unlike Gary's favorite theater: the Saint Charles Industrial Warehouse O' Cinemas 18.

I haven't been to the Plaza Frontenac theater with Gary since we saw Schindler's List over twenty years ago. I remember that showing, distinctly, because it's the only time I have been to a movie that got a standing ovation at the end.

Now that Gary's brand loyalty has me stuck seeing only movies that show at the Cinema Warehouse, I miss the sense of community you get seeing a movie in a smaller theater. When we go to the big theater we are often the only ones there, since all the tickets have been bought up on Fandango by people who don't show. Even if you are in a full showing, the acoustics are such that you can't hear any reaction from the other patrons. Unless everyone in the place lets out a belly laugh at the same joke, you forget they're there.

I couldn't forget the other patrons were there at the fancy little cinema because as soon as I sat down I could hear them.  They sounded like locusts, chewing acres of popcorn. Then, I heard them laugh at the mildly comical pre-movie ads that the Big Box Movie Chain customers ignore.

After the ads, the sleepy ticket-taker stood in front of the screen and welcomed us to the movie, asked us to silence our phones, and told us where the bathrooms are. Yes. A human being spoke to us. Compared to the impersonal Corporate Movie Complex with the Fandango ticket-dispensing machine, it was like a Greek Chorus came out and sang a little "Enjoy The Movie" prologue song.

And of course, you could hear everyone's reactions during the movie. There is one potentially alarming scene involving a bunny (THE BUNNY IS FINE ALERT THE BUNNY IS FINE) and I really felt like our audience was going to rise up and storm the screen. There were gasps, followed by shrieks of horror, then THE BUNNY IS FINE. (As Anne said after, no bunnies or ducks were harmed in the making of this movie.)

I almost wish Gary wasn't so loyal. We would be able to see more movies at the fancy movie theater, at the the fancy mall, where we are all humans.

 

Review: The Favourite

At the end of The Favourite, Friend Anne turned to me and said something like, "A movie about three despicable people, and still at some point we rooted for them all."

And then we sat down outside the theater and did research, because we are nerdy girls and wanted to know immediately how much of what we had seen was true. And it would seem while the two women did vie to be the favorite of Queen Anne, it seems the movie exaggerates the physical expressions of their loves and hatreds (no sex, no violence in real life, it would seem).

Mom judged all period movies on her Cake and Costume scale. Howards End was the standard: it had enough tea cakes and costume changes to suit her. This one would not have pleased her, because they re-use several costumes in multiple scenes, AND ... let us just say the one cake scene will put you entirely off cake.

I can see easily why it is being promoted on CNN and MSNBC during every commercial break. You can't watch Queen Anne as she makes impulsive military decisions without thinking of our current petulant despot.

2018 Year in Review

Farewell, 2018, the Year of Hobbies, Home Repair, and Amusements.

Well I almost stopped Hobby 1: this blog, because I forgot the key finding from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: the smaller the topic, the easier it is to write. And the more tedious it is to read, I am sure, but for now I'm on this strange daily post bobsled and I cannot get off.

I went on vacation and was inspired to work on Hobby 2: the guitar. The year began with the doubled-up vacations to the Rock Boat and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. That visit inspired me to pick up my guitar and up my finger-picking game. I am not making steady progress there. One day I will sound glorious, and the next I can't tell if I am more twangy or more plinky. I am doing it, though.

Speaking of vacation: I wrote that I lost my passport card and a pair of earrings on that trip. A week later I found the earrings in my trash can, and a month later I found the passport card slid under the seat in the car we used to return from the airport. So, sorry NOLA, for falsely accusing you.

Now it's been almost a year since I went on that vacation. Instead of taking any mini-vacations we spent August and September shunting money into the house. There was the new mailbox, plus the landscaping wall, and then there was the less conspicuous consumption: the attic insulation, toilet, and the termite protection racket.

A trivia game in the summer got me started on Hobby 3: oil painting. That's working out well, if slowly. I'm about half-done with the value study for the teacups. It's nice to try glazing, because it requires that you wait between coats, so instead of feeling guilty that you haven't painted today, instead you can say "I would have painted today but it's still wet."

Speaking of trivia, this was the year we finally won the United Way Trivia match. That was probably the high point in the year of trivial amusements, even though we saw the Frank Lloyd Wright house, concerts by Cowboy Mouth and Lyle Lovett, Guster, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Steven Page and his Trio.

Finally, I have to acknowledge the activity that used up almost all of my husband's time: hating on the President of the United States. While I was a part-time hobbyist hater (Hobby 4), Gary took to it like it was his job, sending out an average of six Facebook posts a day. Since we avoided the Women's March because we were avoiding the flu, our protest schedule dwindled down to seeing Kathy Griffin when she came in with her World Tour. Other than our aborted attempt to go to the anti-Attorney General rally, I didn't do much protesting. We voted as hard as we could, though.

When you spend a year and voting is the most significant thing you can point to, when the rest of the year is typified by they way you scream I LOVE YOU at the toilet every time you evacuate your bowels (and I do), then that is a shallow life. Perhaps I will find use in the coming year.