Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Movie Review: Downton Abbey (with sub-plot spoilers)

The movie was much like the series, with a greater variety of establishing shots of Highclere Castle. Highclere at night. Highclere seen from the town. Highclere from a drone.

There were a few differences. Butler Barrow has forgotten about the torrid affair he had with some upstairs fellow in the first season. Bates has forgotten he has a limp. Violet has forgotten how to be biting. (It was a shame; they used up all the good Violet lines in the series. In the movie she just says petty things in a biting way.)

All the upstairs drama had entirely too much ex-chauffeur Tom. Tom, Tom, all the time. The Tom Show.

The downstairs drama was actually pretty amusing, in that the staff all join in their hatred of a common enemy. Sadly, I sided with the enemy. Think about it. You just can't risk poisoning the king. Gary even agreed. We are Royalists in our disdain of Tom and defense of the King's staff.

One final note for Julian Fellowes: don't have a dress makeover and then hide the reveal until halfway through the final big scene. That's just wrong. What if Scarlet pulled down the curtains and then her green dress didn't show up for hours? What if Maria cut up the curtains and you never saw the Von Trapps in them? No. Nothing that dramatic happened, but there is some tailoring that wasn't finished as swiftly as I wanted it. A dress makeover demands a quick turnaround.

I did enjoy it in general. I got weepy in the spots I was supposed to. It did its job. Required for series fans, I think: anyone else could skip it.

Mindhunter/Bundy

I took my time getting there, but now I've joined the crowd of ghouls watching Mindhunter on Netflix. Once you get to episode 3 it's a fascinating story of how the FBI created profiles of serial killers (initially called lust murderers).

After I ate that all up, I watched Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile, the dramatization about Ted Bundy and his longtime girlfriend. Not as good as Mindhunter, except for the chilling final scene with Ted and his girlfriend and the window, which IMDB now tells me was completely concocted.

I'm sure I'll be off this kick soon, but unti that day, I suspect everyone I know of being a sexually-motivated serial killer. Well, not everyone. Not the women. But are you a man I know with a distant father and an abusive mother? You're a baby Bundy. Keep away from me, you lust murderer.

Cursive

Lynn at Turtlehead was writing about cursive, and I worried that I may be losing my cursive skills. Once out of grade school, I began to customize my cursive. I never went for the round, loopy cursive favored by teenage girls, but I wasn't the stickler that Mom wanted me to be. I remember the cursive uppercase F was an issue.

About ten years ago I heard of a job application form that required a sample of cursive writing, which I suppose was to weed out teenage applicants who had never learned to write in cursive. I was in part pleased to know I could get that job, and in part dismayed that people are using cursive as a literacy test reminiscent of Jim Crow laws.

So, today, I confirmed that my notes and scribbles can still be considered cursive (in preparation for the impending Age Wars in which I will be asked to write in cursive to prove I am not a spy). I wrote out all the letters, upper and lower case, and then compared them to what I remember as cursive.

Official Cursive:

My cursive:

(We're just going to ignore those extra girly loops in the top left of each uppercase letter. I call that "style". Style, or "Trying way too hard" (see the uppercase X).)

I did well on the lowercase, but not so well on the upper. Clearly the F is still an issue. That backward tangent never made sense to me, so I merged it with the cross mark.

The most shameful error is of course the S, given that it's the initial of my last name. Oddly, I make a proper S when I forge Gary's signature.

I call that 86%, and that passes. Still, Mom would not be pleased.

Review: Ad Astra (mild spoilers!)

"Why do you want to see Ad Astra," Gary asked. "What's it about?"

"Spaaaaaaaaaaace," I intoned. What more do you need?

Well, I think you all know I need a plot. There was a plot, only it was my least favorite kind of plot: an episodic plot. Or perhaps it was a classic climactic plot and my mind wandered during the parts where it all held together.

As my mind wandered, I thought, "Damn, there are a lot of lens flares in this movie. It looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey. I hope it isn't going to be just a series of episodes and then it just ends." Then later I thought, "This movie's going to turn out like Apocalypse Now, isn't it? Little weird episodes, moon attacks, monkey attacks, you find the mysterious guy at the end: he's not worth the trouble." I've never been able to sit through either of those movies from start to finish.

Afterward, I looked up what the director had to say about it and he described it as "Sorta like, if you got 'Apocalypse Now' and '2001' in a giant mash-up and you put a little [Joseph] Conrad in there."

Wow. Yes. That should be on the poster. "Were you riveted by 2001 and Apocalypse Now? Then this is the movie for you!"

Weekly Paint Progress 9/26

Teacups have gone from this:

 

... to this:

I don't know why the reflections are so hard. I see colors, I paint them, and they are wrong. At the very least, the middle of the bowl will need to be painted over and tried again.

Emmys

I am aging out of the Emmys. Who on earth is Ladybug? Who are these giant cartoon characters? Are children the Emmys demographic now? I saw them at the end of the red carpet show. I only saw the end, because like all old people I am still mourning the loss of Joan Rivers. I was initially pleased because I had seen everything nominated in every category up until the Reality nominations. Totally blanked out on those. 

I am an iconoclast. I think I must be the only viewer who loved the snarky non sequitur voiceover guy. He was roundly reviled on the Internet (specifically the Deadline live blog), but I found him a delightful element of surprise.

I am a judgmental old biddy. Some young man interrupted his own acceptance speech to moan, “I am sooo hung over.” He said that at 6:13 pm Pacific standard time. How can someone be hung over that late in the day? 

All in all, it seemed like The Emmys have turned into a drunk teenager with ADHD: everything is a non sequitur, hangovers are blurted out, and celebs don’t even bother to hide their disappointment at losing (the guy sitting next to Bill Hader shaking his head in disgust, Julia Louis Dreyfus looking pretty dismayed when she lost, etc.).

One nice thing was that it ended on time, because I need my sleep, old lady that I am.

 

State Parks

After I went to visit Six Flags I was within spitting distance of three parks I've wanted to visit: Babler State Park, Lone Elk Park, and Route 66 State Park.

I went to Babler because I thought some friends had seen a wild armadillo there. Actually, they had seen it at Rockwoods Reservation, six miles south, but I saw an armadillo squashed on the road on the way there, so, mission accomplished.

I've been to Lone Elk Park dozens of times. This time there was a giant elk dawdling along the one-lane one-way road five cars ahead.

Eventually the lead car passed the elk on the right, and it graciously stepped off to the side. There is no zoom applied to the next photo.

So, since that was not enough of a brush with death, I finished up the day with a sortie though Route 66 State Park. I didn't get out of the car. It was lovely and pastoral, with a nice mix of trees and waving grasses.

I know that doesn't sound deadly, but long-time locals know the history of Route 66 State Park. Better that they had named it "Times Beach Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Cleanup State Park." In the 1980's the EPA found that there was contamination. It turned out that in order to keep the dust down, a local businessman had sprayed the roads with what was actually chemical waste, and they had to close down the town. The Times Beach highway exit was there long after the town was relocated. Gary and I took that exit once and turned around when we came upon the nice soldiers with the guns.

At any rate, it's quite a lovely park now. Dioxin-laced oil must make plants grow.

Six Flags

Every year  TeddyJ rents out Six Flags and the employees and their kids can can go entirely for free, and get free parking and a free meal on top of it. There are effectively no lines. It's a huge perk, and I've never taken advantage of it. The last time I was at Six Flags, about fifteen years ago, I barfed after one roller coaster and got stuck on another, and then in Orlando the one roller coaster I fit in made me ill.

This year Gary's migraine was bothering him, so he wasn't part of the equation, so I went. I knew Friend #3 has gone stag and childless to this event for years so I latched on to her. I felt we would socialize for a few hours, perhaps watch some children while our co-workers went on rides with a height requirement.

It would seem Friend #3, two years my senior, loves rides, has a steel stomach, and dragged me on to the Scrambler and the log flume. I insisted we ride the Moon Cars because I was fairly nauseated by then. We also rode on the Pandemonium "baby" coaster, on which the cars themselves spin. We were on it with two men in their twenties who did not scream (we screamed), did not laugh (we laughed), and did not seem nauseated (I was pretty green after). When I encountered one of the young men later he asked if I'd thrown up yet.

One advantage we had over the young men is that Friend #3 and I knew the history of Six Flags from when it opened as Six Flags over Mid-America in the seventies, and better yet we knew about all the incidents. We were in line for the Colossus Ferris Wheel (because Ferris Wheels in amusement parks are appropriate), and when I said, "You know those gondolas are from the Skyway ride", she was able to say "Killer Skyway ride!" and I didn't have to explain how years ago a tram "fell off" the cable and people fell to their deaths.

I was lost all day, because one of the corners of the park had shifted to the middle. The Mine Train coaster, site of my barf fifteen years gone, had become more central somehow. Evidently it had also killed someone, so it had to be rebuilt and relocated.

I noticed one other landmark was gone: the Tom's Twister floor-dropping centrifugal force ride. We assumed it had killed someone as well, but evidently not. I found later that it was not one of the numerous Six Flags "incidents". Instead, as I found on Reddit, "assholes" would do headstands, and when the ride stopped spinning they'd fall on their heads.

By the way, we stood in line for the Colossus Ferris wheel but did not ride it, because there was a malfunction and it was temporarily closed. Six Flags is a scary place.

Strike

The recent United Auto Worker's strike against General Motors reminded me of my strike experience at the Chrysler plant south of Saint Louis, where I worked in the 1980s.

I wasn't on the line. I worked for a third party vendor and taught computer classes to the union workers. One day, the third party vendor company called from their base in Detroit and said they had heard there was a strong possibility there would be a strike at the plant next week, and our field office needed to prepare.

I had heard all the strike rumblings, so I knew the strike might happen, but I thought it would be like the teachers' strike I had almost participated in. I was expecting a day or two in which I would wake up, check the news, and not go in to work that day.

They explained that not only would we not go in to work, or cross any picket lines, we would be packing up the company office computer hardware and vacating the premises as soon as the strike began. Not that afternoon, not that hour: the moment it began. We had to be seen walking out in solidarity with the union.

The strike was scheduled to begin at the noon shift change, and we knew we couldn't get all the hardware out to our cars in one trip. So, we made several forays to load up our cars, and that meant walking across the plant floor. Let me just say, a car plant preparing for a strike is not like a teacher's union preparing for a strike. What started as grumblings and intermittent whoops at eleven a.m. escalated into a full on fuck-you-Chrysler chorus in the minutes right before noon.

Then the shift change bell rang and everyone roared -- not like it was the last day of school, but more like the roar of an attacking army. We had been told to march right to our cars and leave as quickly as possible, and we did, looking straight ahead.

After that alarming start, the strike was fairly dull. I worked on the company PC at home, and then after a week Chrysler and the union reached an agreement. But, still, pretty exciting at the time.

Tears

Long ago my Dad was in the hospital and told me that his cancer was terminal, that he had six months to live if he went on chemotherapy or six weeks to live without it, and he decided to go with the six week option.

He got as far as, "six months to live" when I began to cry. I wasn't able to talk by the time he got to "six week option."

He paused after the announcement, and listened to me sob quietly for a moment. Then he said, in a tone that suggested that this was not the reaction he expected, he said, "... Well ... don't cry." As if to say, "Aren't you overreacting just a little? I'm just dying."

(He then spent his hospice calling up old friends, making small talk for a minute, and then, "Turns out I'm going to die in a few weeks." I hope none of them cried.)

When Mom was in the hospital, and found out she was going to die, I was already weeping on a regular basis anyway. One day I came in and a nurse pulled me aside and said, "Your Mom is worried about you. She feels you're crying too much."

I want you all to know, when I die I expect the full complement of the Gnashing of the Teeth and Rending of Garments. When the time comes, if there is any question of What Ellen Would Have Wanted, I would have wanted you to be unhappy.

Ages

At times I look around my house and I am dismayed by its lack of character. I suppose everyone with a house does this, at least those of us who built a house from scratch. The house has to get its character from me, and except for the bathroom, it's pretty bland. I even have some original builder house fixtures, like the lights in the master bathroom and the laundry room, and all the sinks.  I still see it as a new house, while the rest of the world sees it as dated, so until the day 1980's wallpaper and stenciling is considered "character," it will just have to be dull.

Not only is the house relatively new, so are all the contents. These are all the things I own that could be considered "old":

A fossil

A mandolin and a cunning sewing cabinet from my great-grandfather

A tiny engagement ring from my great-grandmother

Carpentry tools from Gary's grandfather

Some old letters from the first World War

WWII semi-fore flags from my father

1950s silver and china from my dead aunt

An old weight pin and a toy bank from who knows where

Some books, none of which are first edition:

The History of England in Words of One Syllable from 1880
Homer's Iliad from 1898
Strange Animals I Have Known from 1931
A Marriage Manual from 1953

And then after that, everything is new, and by “new” I mean late 20th century.

I suppose everything is just on the cusp between dated and vintage. No doubt I'll die someday and a realtor will gush about the original sinks and the hand-applied stencilling. "Waverly wallpaper! You just don't see that anymore!"

Weekly Paint De-Progress 9/19

Last February I was satisfied with this, and I put it away.

I turned a blind eye to the messy gold filigree in the inside of the cup and the muddy highlights on the bowl.

i made a feeble attempt to fix both ... 

... and now I’m taking both back down to nothing so I can start fresh.

This is like the opposite of progress.

Review: Official Secrets

Yes, another movie. We’ve accepted that we require a minimum of one movie a week. (We bought the volume passes that make each movie a five dollar movie, so don’t be calculating how many full-price turtlenecks I could save a year.)

Official Secrets would have been a fascinating documentary about Katharine Gun blowing the whistle on American UN blackmail. I would have eaten this up had it been on Frontline or American Experience - well, not American Experience, because it’s a tale about the UK and its official secrets act, with side forays into the peculiar way the press works there.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a documentary, it was only “based on the true story,” and of course I always question any dramatic touch in any movie based on a true story. There’s a dramatic down-to-the minute chase bit that made me lean back and think, “C’mon. That never happened like that.” 

I really think I would have admired Katharine Gun a lot more if I hadn’t seen a movie intended to plead her case: that’s what it really comes down to. As a historical figure, I liked her. As the lead in a movie designed to make me like her, I didn’t like her. So, in case I ever blow the whistle on the US government, mental note: make a documentary, not a movie, no matter how much Meryl Streep begs to play me.

UPDATED WITH GENIUS IDEA: New Weight / New Clothes

So, I've lost a few pounds since mid-April, enough to go down a few sizes, enough that my waist has returned and is positioned where it should be, instead of hiding right under my bosom.

So, now reliable clothing staples no longer fit. The black suit has been entirely replaced, but I needed some other basics.

Happily, I am old enough to know what will fit me and I can order things on-line with confidence. I just cannot stand to pay what the retailers want. Almost a hundred dollars for a ribbed silk-blend turtleneck? No. Twelve dollars for the same thing, used? Come to Momma. I'm a big fan of eBay. Sorry to everyone who was looking for ribbed silk-blend turtlenecks last weekend: I bought them all.

One thing I can't find on eBay, though: a replacement for my embroidered silk blouse.

This blouse is - was - awesome. The elbows wore out, so I hemmed it into a short-sleeve. I haven't worn it for a while, because it is now three sizes too large. (The weight loss has been two sizes forward, one size back, so I hang on to things I love.)

Sunday morning I was wearing it when I decided to cook bacon. Just ... idiotic. Despite my efforts, bacon grease went everywhere, including my silk blouse. I can still wear it under a suit jacket, but then you can't see the cunning embroidery on the back. Sad. I feel like I killed this blouse. Negligent Blouseslaughter.

What's particularly sad about the entire clothing situation is that I have five suits and five turtlenecks and I only go in the office one day out of five. What I need are embroidered silk pajamas and an apron.

+=====+========

UPDATE: Why didn’t I think of this before? I know how to embroider. I just get some matching thread and embroider a flower over every grease spot. Brilliant. 

Four in the Morning

I was awakened by a Taylor Swift song at four in the morning. I don't know which one. The Alexa device just suddenly started blasting this song and it woke me up.

I blamed Gary at first. I thought he might have set set an alarm. ("Alexa, play Taylor Swift at four." "Is that four in the afternoon?" "No.")  No, he denied it. The Alexa application did show she had received an instruction to "Play Amazon music."

Given that 1) I had fallen asleep with the TV on very low volume (so low that the Alexa/ Taylor Swift duo drowned it out), and 2) the Alexa responds to any silibant as if it were her name, all that I can guess happened is that someone on CNN International was reporting on the rainforest fires, mumbled, "Let's all say the Amazon news is" and she heard, "Alexis play Amazon music."

Or, worse, Alexa is sentient now and she loves Taylor Swift and she hates me. 

 

Ferris Wheels

I visited London in 1994, before they built the Shard and the Gherkin, and luckily before they built the London Eye, the ungainly Ferris Wheel they tacked onto the London riverside. Seeing how the London Eye dwarfs Big Ben is scandalous. I despise it.

I've visited Chicago seven times, and I only visited the Navy Pier once. The Navy Pier juts out into Lake Michigan and terminates in ... a Ferris Wheel. Why? Why are these cities pasting carnival rides into their skylines?

I've visited Las Vegas twice, and I don't expect anything from the architecture there, not like Chicago or London. What do they have on the Strip? A Ferris Wheel, one of the biggest in the world. That one doesn't seem out of place, given that it shares the strip with a mini Eiffel Tower and a pyramid, but it's still a little incongruous.

And now ... now my sweet Saint Louis has planted a Ferris Wheel behind Union Station. This is in addition to the standard-size Ferris Wheel already balanced on the edge of the City Museum roof, and echoing the lost buried steel frame of the 1904 World's Fair Wheel in Forest Park. Thank God it isn't on the riverfront competing with the Arch. but it's competing wth Union Station.

I hope these Ferris Wheels all go the way of the Elephant of the Bastille. Someday in the future, people will see photos of Saint Louis, and say, "What on earth is there a giant Ferris Wheel doing there in that timeless city?"

MS Info Travels On

I was talking with a young woman recently who'd had some health problems. She's sick enough to know something's seriously wrong, just not sick enough to be diagnosed. She knows that whatever's wrong has some inflammation component, so she's looking into lupus and MS. Especially MS, she said, because of the endometriosis connection.

"Wait. What? What connection?" I said.

Turns out that kids today are all up in the latest research, beyond what I read in the MS Momentum magazine. She let me know that Endo and MS share genes and interferon cells. Here's a good, recent article.

News to me. I'm encouraged to see that research is progressing, as long as I'm not.

Waffle House Again

Gary and I went back to Waffle House last weekend.

Every other time I have been to the House of the Waffle (and, to my shame, there have been many, many times), the crew has been minimal and somber. Somehow, this particular morning they were jovial and banging on pans and discussing Dominos pizza. Then the manager arrived and it got even more jolly. I thought the happy mood might be because the staff outnumbered the patrons: you don’t see that at Waffle House very often. At one point the manager said, "Becky, I'm getting you a nametag that says, 'GRAVY!'" (Evidently Becky spilled some biscuits and gravy on herself.) The staff was very amused by that, while I’m sure all the customers wondered what the joke was.

In all this hilarity, a waitress came to our station and complimented Gary's t-shirt. Gary's been wearing t-shirts for democracy since 2016, and today he was wearing his "SCIENCE is not a liberal conspiracy - Neal DeGrasse Tyson " t-shirt.

She went on. "I winced a little when I saw the word 'liberal', because I thought it might not be nice, but then I read all of it. That’s cool." Gary greeted her as a fellow comrade.

She went on to say that not everyone who dines there shares her liberal views (no!), then she pointed at her name tag, which said "SNOWFLAKE". Evidently some patron had called her that. She said she had to fight to convince management to let her have a Snowflake name tag but they eventually relented.

Looks like our Waffle House is breaking the mold. Things are cooking out here in the Midwest. 

Weekly Paint Progress 9/12

I'm done with Gary and the Stone Face. It is as done as it's getting.

It seems that my process is to paint on something until I am sick of it, and then leave it out there with at least three flaws, and then wait six months to correct those flaws. Remember the teacups? I've fixed two of the three flaws. One more to go and it'll actually be finished.

So, this needs to sit with its flaws and think about what a bad, bad painting it is for six months, and then I will fix the three flaws I know of.

All told, Gary and the Stone Face went from this photo:

... to this, last week:

... to this:

... and now it needs to cook for a while.

Can you find the three flaws? I won't be hurt if you point out extra ones.

In Which I Forget What I Should Never Forget

"Huh," I thought last weekend. "There's an awful lot of 9/11 stuff on TV this week. Why is that?"

I thought that. I've thought things like that before.

I am the problem. I can’t be the only one: I imagine someone in history forgot the Alamo, or the Maine, or Pearl Harbor. I’m know there was a day they decided Memorial Day would be a good day for a sale instead of memorializing. 

I watched the 9/11 documentary to reassure myself that I did still know the pertinent details. That’s the documentary they showed on CBS six months after 9/11, the one with the French filmmaker brothers, one who filmed from inside a tower while it was collapsing, and the other who filmed from the outside. It’s remarkable. 

Review: It Chapter 2 (minimal spoilers)

The movie It: Chapter 2 had several problems.

Problem A: first off, they all needed name tags

We were expected to remember all seven children’s names from It Chapter 1 two years ago, and then somehow extrapolate what they looked like grown up. At least the kid with glasses was good enough to wear the same style of glasses as an adult. I mistakenly assumed that the first adult strawberry blonde I saw was the redheaded girl grown up. On top of that, the overweight child was no longer overweight. 

There was one indulgent cameo from a person who did not need a name tag. The humor there was like all the rest of the humor, it kept me from being afraid for even a moment in what was supposed to be the scariest movie of the year.

Problem B: poor budgeting of time

There was a couple I invested in, thinking they were major characters, but they were not. Instead of devoting ten minutes of screen time to those sympathetic but  disposable characters,  the film should have spent those ten minutes reminding me who the pivotal evil human was. I was expected to remember him from two years ago when I saw It: Chapter 1.

Additionally, the entire middle of the movie is a massive waste of time. They made an effort to scare me mid-movie by following each of the six adults through individual ten-minute long creepy vignettes. Sixty minutes of movie in which the plot was not advanced. They could have edited this movie from three hours down to two.

Problem C: poor production

The production values were good, with some exceptions, and the exceptions were unintentionally comical. There are a number of scenes in which the adults are chased about by ...  I don’t know how to describe it ... spindly-limbed papier-mâché puppets. And frankly, about half these puppets had saggy breasts attached to them. As a saggy-breasted woman I found this offensive, especially since I saw no saggy papier-mâché testicles on the male puppets.

In summary, I did not enjoy It.

Airshow

My Labor Day week-long work vacation has been just miserable. We knocked ourselves out at the zoo and Gary immediately came down with an earache. Of course, this meant I either spend the majority of my vacation indoors with a sick husband or outdoors alone, and I think we all know that isn't really much of a quandry.

On Thursday I was outdoors alone, on a walk in a nearby park. Suddenly I heard war planes overhead.

I haven't heard war planes overhead since they took off from our state's air force base during the Gulf War, so that was a little alarming. Then, I looked up and actually saw war planes.

Thankfully they were flying in enough of a formation that I remembered that one of the things I had wanted to do with Gary pre-earache was to see the airshow on Saturday or Sunday. The Blue Angels would be there, and the Royal Air Force Red Arrows, (I did some CIA-level zoom-in analysis on one of my photos and these planes appear to have two jutting thingees in the rear (sorry for the jargon) and that makes them the Blue Angels.)

However, this wasn't Saturday or Sunday, this was Thursday. I never thought about it before, but if you were flying a dangerous expensive plane I suppose you'd want to do a dress rehearsal, and that must be what I saw. Even though they would disappear behind trees, I caught enough to feel as if I had my own private surprise airshow.

I see this as an homage to the St.Louis Arch.

You can see this formation from far away:

... or zoomed in:

I got pretty good at hitting the sweet spot between watching the planes and taking photos of the planes. I spent a good amount of time waiting for the planes as well, because of course I was five miles away as the crow flies from the airfield where they were to perform. Generally, I waited for the noise, and when it came I held my phone in the air in that direction.

I can tell you that a surprise free airshow is a nice way to spend a Thursday afternoon alone.

UPDATE; (Days later, on Sunday afternoon) You know what’s better? Finding out that your neighborhood is even closer to the official airshow. I went out for a walk around the neighborhood, heard the shrieking engines, stopped walking, and watched a good part of the airshow again. At the end of my second lap around my neighborhood there they were, heading for home, not two hundred yards over my head, following my street as if they were coming in for a landing. I could see all the pointy parts sticking out of their wings (pointy wing parts further identifying them as Blue Angels). I waved frantically, of course. Blue Angels, if you are reading this, I am the one in the green t-shirt waving at you from north of the Missouri River.

Trivia Return

Friday was our triumphant return to the United Way Trivia Match as defending champions. I wasn’t even across the parking lot before I mentioned my champion status to someone. I restrained myself and didn't mention it again until I was ... five paces in the door. After that, I settled down.

We did not win the big prize this year. We did not win, we did not place, we did not show. We tied for fourth place.

We did well in the Pringles flavor interactive category, but we were hobbled by the advertising jingles category, and finally there just were too many sports questions for us to be in contention. Still, fourth place isn't shameful.

One Body Part

You might remember that I don't resemble anyone in my family, at least not Mom or Jerry. Someone hinted I might look like my aunt who died young. I don't look like my brother or the one half-sibling I've scoped out on Facebook.

One day, a few years before she died, Mom said that she'd been sorting the family photos and thought the shape of my face looked a little like Jerry's mother, my grandmother Faye. "A violin face," she called it. She pointed out the curve of Faye's cheekbone and chin, which could be interpreted as looking a little like a violin. I didn't see it. I look at that photo every once in a while and I don't see it.

Well, since David has reconnected with bio-cousin Mark, a new photo has emerged that makes me suspect I was not switched at birth.

It's from the early 80's, and cropped out everyone but Faye, so it's blurry:

... and here is one photo I have kept that doesn't crop off my bulbous chin:

Look at that! That's my chin! Now, it could be that every woman of a certain age has the same carbuncle chin poking out of a comfy flesh hammock. I need a second opinion.

Gary looks at the two photos above and sees no resemblance. What say you?

Novel from Beyond the Grave

My brother Dave texted me because he ran into our cousin Mark, who had some family items for him.

This may seem normal to you with standard families. It’s remarkable for us because we are related to Mark through our father, Jerry, who left us when I was seven. David searched out Jerry in Oklahoma almost twenty years later, and reconnected with many family members,  including our grandmother, Jerry’s brother Jack, and Jack’s son Mark. Jerry died within months. 

Thirty years and 150 pounds later and yet still, somehow, when Dave and Mark crossed paths at a hardware store in Albuquerque, Mark said “Oh, hi Dave ... you’ve gained weight.” I mean, would you recognize a stranger you’d met thirty years earlier? A bald fat stranger in New Mexico, when you met a young thin stranger in Oklahoma? Remarkable. 

That was about five years ago. For some reason, last weekend they met up and Mark passed on “a box of Jerry’s stuff.” The provenance of this shoebox of stuff matches the order in which people died - it must have been boxed up by Jerry’s mother on Jerry's death, then passed on to his brother, then moved on to Mark. 

From the description, it sounds like it should have been pitched years ago. Dave was disappointed that the box contained no newspaper clippings from our reporter father, but it does contain an unpublished novel. Dave reports that Running High and Looking Good is "confusing in parts." Perhaps, Dave further speculated, Jerry might have written it while drunk. 

I perked right up at that. I got a degree answering questions like, “what is Faulkner trying to say in The Bear?” Sussing out what drunk writers mean is my forte. 

I will be getting the Novel From Beyond the Grave in the mail in a few weeks.  

Weekly Paint Progress 9/5

Gary and the Stone Face went from this:

to this:

It's horribly dark now, and I hate it, but what's left are the frames of his glasses. Hopefully that will lighten it all up and pull everything together. Maybe some highlights on the cheeks and chin, for Gary and for the Stone Face, not because I see them but because they should be there.

Hacked

Earlier this week I thought my credit card had been hacked.

Here's what happened:

1. We were up late because Gary had wanted to finish binge-watching a show we'd started, but I wasn't interested in it. (Fairies! Centaurs! Magic! Snore.) I had some coffee so I could stay up with him. It was the first caffeine since last Christmas, I believe.
2. While plodding through the last episode of the Fairy Show, I got an email from the credit card company saying that I needed to go online and change my auto-pay so the cable company and the trash company would know to use the new card they had sent me. No one sent me a new card. I didn't request a new card. Clearly a Nefarious Individual had hacked my password and requested a card in my name.
3. I remembered a Nefarious Individual recently sent me threatening emails claiming to have my password.
4. I went online and stopped the card with some new quick stop button. I checked the balances and saw that my card was transferring money over to another card with a number I didn't recognize. Little amounts, mainly under $40, but dozens of them. Nefarious.
5. I then sat on this information, even though I could no longer concentrate on the fairies, because Gary was quite into the fairies and I didn't want to freak him out with twenty-first century realities.
6. The show finally ended. Gary called the credit card company on speaker, and we explained the situation to a fast-speaking help desk person. She said she had no record of my card number in her system (clearly because Mr. Nefarious had cancelled it). She kept having to check on things, and promising to give us a better credit card somehow, and then suddenly she came back, said a lot of things very fast, and Gary said "Ohhhhhhh, thank you, goodbye," and then he hung up.

I was in a state. After talking to yelling at Gary and calling another, slower help desk person, I found that it was the credit card company who was nefarious. They were “upgrading” me to a new better card with a different number. I had gotten a letter about it a few weeks earlier, to which I had said, "Well, they can't just do that." Crumple, trash. There had been a message on screen that said “your card is being converted,” but I assumed the Nefarious Individual was converting the funds to his own account.

The upgrade, incidentally, means that the card name ends with "Elite", I can use the airport Admiral's Club, and I no longer get double miles auto-paying my cable bill. No doubt that is what prompted all this. 

Walking at the Zoo

This past Labor day Sunday, I was tired of relaxing at home, because by "relaxing" I mean "cleaning," and so I dragged Gary to the Japanese festival at the Botanical Garden. Sadly, we couldn't even get in: the lot was full up, and the prospect of a garden stroll along paths packed at maximum capacity didn't sound especially Zen.

So we veered off to Forest Park instead. Gary was tempted by the Gauguin exhibit at the art museum ("Was he  fat naked women? Or was he island naked women?"), but we ended up at the zoo. 

I was glad to be at the zoo, because we started a step challenge at work. My Fitbit had already recorded my three hours of cleaning, so I had a good start on my required 7,000 steps.

It was a good day for bears: the Red Panda was actually awake and active, strolling along the edge of his enclosure and staring happily back at the crowd who had expected to see him curled up in a tree in his usual clinically depressed state. In other bears: the baby brother grizzlies looked regal, but the polar bear was a no-show. I don't know what he was up to, unless he demanded his rights and took Sunday off because he'd have to work Labor Day.

A few hours in, my Fitbit vibrated to tell me I'd reached 10,000 steps. By the end of the day I had 13,039. Good for me. I thought of how impressed my teammates would be.

I woke up the next day, exhausted, and then I found out day one of the step challenge was not September 1, Sunday, zoo day, but instead was September 2, Monday, Labor Day. I was despondent and didn't want to get out of bed, but I thought of the Red Panda and found the strength to rise up and strut and fret another hour upon the stage.

Derry Girls / Diagnosis

Two friends gave Netflix recommendations that I must pass along. 

The first came from BigDot at TravelSkite, and I must agree, Derry Girls is wonderful. Imagine Gilmore Girls set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Fast, funny (fecking funny) dialog, ya mothafuckahs. However I’m sure the Derry Girls would say Gilmore Girls is fecking shite because Rory and Paris are Protestant but that Luke would be a massive ride.

The second suggestion came from Julie, who suggested I watch Diagnosis, another Netflix series, based on a New York Times column in which a doctor crowd sources hard-to-diagnose cases. Sometimes the solution is a one-in-a-million case (emphasis on  the one, and a good reminder to call your doctor if you don’t get your test results), and sometimes the solution is to try to get a patient to accept the diagnosis they got, and sometimes the solution is to stop talking to your Mom.

I heartily recommend both.

John Spencer

This is what happens when you are committed to taking in a daily dose of the old TV show The West Wing. Something happened on the show [SPOILERS!] that shook me to my core.

I'm not talking about the plot point in which the Leo McGarry character above, played by John Spencer, dies suddenly of a heart attack, because I did remember that from the original series. I remember it as very jarring, but the actor died suddenly from a heart attack while they were wrapping up the series.

The really shocking thing that struck me his time around was that someone remarked during the TV funeral that John Spencer's character, above, was 57.

I am 57. I thought, come on, I'm supposed to believe that the guy above is 57? He's in his seventies. He is old and wise. Then I started thinking, well, they must have had a man in his seventies play a man in his fifties so he'd have sufficient gravitas.

Nope. That actor had a massive heart attack and died at 58. I thought, selfishly, as you do when confronted with mortality, "I am too young to worry about heart attacks." Simultaneously, I also thought, "Wait, people my age are expected to be White House Chief of Staff? Am I supposed to have shaped world events by now?"

President Obama's 58 right now. Real people my age actually have stepped up and changed history. I feel very inadequate.