Sunday Stealing

 

Stolen from "How Far Will You Go"

1.    What have you been the most ignorant about in your life?
Always math.  I also don't know much history or politics.

2.    What in the world would you most like to see protected?
Endangered species (particularly elephants), the climate, and Democracy

3.    How do you waste  the biggest chunk of time each day or week?
It's a toss up between being on the computer and watching TV

4.    Who is the scariest person you've ever known?
He's running to be re-elected president.  (And I don't mean Biden)

5.    What was  the job you enjoyed the least?
The very first job I had in grammar school was washing test tubes in a medical laboratory.  I hated that job!

6.    What thing about your family are you the most proud of?
Our kids have grown up to be wonderful adults, we are friends with all of them, and they are friends to each other.

7.    What kind of power do you want most?
I'm too quiet and embarrassed to use "power."

8.    What's the best piece of advice you ever received?   
Someone suggested a home where I could have my mother, when it was not working out in the facility where she was living.  It was absolutely THE best suggestion I received and was a perfect home for her.

9.    What's the  thing you  know the most about?
I know a lot about Gilbert & Sullivan and The Lamplighters in San Francisco
I know a lot about breastfeeding
I know a lot about Judy Garland
I know a lot about TV shows like Monk and Criminal Minds

10.    When were you most moved by a ceremony?
Most recently, it was Rosalind Carter's funeral.  

11.    What is the best gift you ever gave to someone?
A friend had quit drinking and had lost his high paying job and was living in his brother's garage.  As the holidays approached, I knew that Christmas was going to be a hard time for him, so I made him an Advent box.  There was a gift and a letter for each day of the month of December, ending with a "good" Christmas present.  He told me years later that it was the thing that got him through the holiday.

12.    What is the cruelest thing you've ever suffered?
Being ghosted by someone I thought was a good friend.

13.    What's the single nastiest thing you've ever done to someone?
Don't ever piss off a writer.  An actor who worked for a theater company that I wrote a book about treated me terribly.  The book I wrote about the theater company was absolutely 100% true, but I printed bad reviews he had received and overlooked a lot of the good he had done. I printed the praise for the actor who shared a role with him (who was only in one show).

14.    What problem do you think is most common among friends your age?
Aches and pains, loneliness, concerns about dementia, inability to take care of ourselves.

15.    What is the strongest craving you get?
bready things (pastries, donuts, fresh bread, nut breads, etc.)
girl talk

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

Cutting Bubba's nails.

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Saturday 9

Welcome to Saturday: 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love to answer the questions, however, and here are today's questions!

Saturday 9: She'd Rather Be with Me (1967)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this week's song we learn that this particular girl would rather be spending time with her lover. Instead of answering these 9 questions, what would you rather be doing?
Answering letters.

2) Lead singer Howard Kaylan was a very good student. First he won a Bank of America Fine Arts Award, then he was the valedictorian of his graduating class, and was awarded a scholarship to UCLA. Tell us about something that distinguished your high school career.
I was the yearbook editor and had one of the leads in the senior class play.

3) Howard Kaylan formed this week's group, The Turtles, with Mark Volman. They met while performing in their high school choir and continued working together for 55 years. Are you still in touch with old friends from high school?
I kept in touch with 3 friends, one of whom died two years ago.  The other two I still hear from at Christmas and one of them I had lunch with about 10 years ago.

4) First Daughter Tricia Nixon was a big Turtles fan and brought them to the White House to perform for a private party. They almost didn't go. When the engraved invitation came, tied with ribbon, the boys thought it was an elaborate practical joke. Have you ever successfully pulled off a practical joke?
I don't like practical joke, but the year I was learning cake decorating, Walt doesn't like cake, so I made him a pie and then decorated a cake pan.  When he tried to "cut the cake" he was surprised there was no actual cake there and was happy to have a pie.

5) The Turtles' bass player was Chip Douglas. He left the band in 1967 to produce The Monkees. It's Chip that Davy Jones refers to at the beginning of "Daydream Believer" ("What number is this Chip?" "7A!"). What's your favorite Monkees song?
Like most other bands, I am not familiar with the Monkees songs.

6) The Turtles broke up in 1970. Pressure from their record label to do more and do it cheaper was just too much of a hassle. But Howard and Mark continued to work together, renaming themselves Flo and Eddie. They sang backup on records by Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper and Bruce Springsteen and on children's TV shows like The Care Bears. Backup work provided less money but more fun. Given the choice, would you rather do a job that paid well that you didn't enjoy, or a job you liked that earned you a smaller paycheck?
Since my income was secondary to my husband's, when we were working, I much preferred a job that I liked that earned me a smaller paycheck.

7) In 1967, when this song was popular, the RMS Queen Mary was retired after 31 years of service. Now docked in Long Beach, the ship has been refurbished with state-of-the-art wifi, satellite hookups, and projection screens and is a popular choice for conventions and annual business meetings. When were you most recently on a boat or ship?
We have been on several cruises, the last of which was up the Mediterranean in 2015.

8) Also in 1967, Elvis married Priscilla. You don't need last names to know who we're talking about, do you? Can you think of another couple with whom the world is on a first-name basis?
William and Kate

9) Random question: If your phone were to ring right now, who do you think would be calling?
The only person who ever calls me is our daughter.

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

Jeri and the band she's playing in for
The Drowsy Chaperone

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Postcrossing

 

This postcard was sent to me by a Postcrossing partner from San Francisco.  It's one of the most fun postcards I've received.  There is a wide variety of postcards you get from Postcrossing.  This one from Germany was definitely not "fun,:

I am enjoying Postcrossing now that I have sent more  than 24 cards and can have 8 cards in the mail at all times.  I love trying to find the perfect card for the person I'm supposed to be sending to, like this one...

...sent to a partner who loves steam trains.  I was able to write about how my father worked on this kind of train for 30 years, when he was a railway mail clerk. If nobody has a particular like that I can match with a postcard, I send this card, that I had made, to give them a feel for Davis.  I always wondered why UCD didn't have postcards made of the eggheads and I've thought that for so many decades that I finally discovered it would be cheap to have my own postcards made, so I did.  It's one of my favorite cards!

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

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Amy Schneider

 Amy Schneider is the woman who has won the most games on Jeopardy.  During the recent weeks of invitational contests, she has been called back a couple of times and, except for the very last game she played, she always wins.  Watching her play is like watching Ken Jennings when he was winning his 70+ games.  I've always enjoyed watching her.

The other thing about Amy is that she is trans.  She speaks of her wife and she has mentioned, in passing, her transition.  Her sexual identity has been a huge bone of contention on Facebook discussion groups, with some people insisting she's not a woman; she's a man, and refusing to call her "Amy" but call her by the name she was given when she was born.

I saw recently that she has written a book. "In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life" and I was curious to read it.

I don't normally buy "full price" Kindle books on Amazon, but I was so interested in Amy and her life that I gave in and bought it and started reading it.

It is so very boring!  You'd think that someone so intelligent with such an interesting life would write an interesting book, but she hasn't.  I haven't finished it yet, but there are whole chapters I would have left out.  I did read her chapter on all of her favorite teachers, from grammar school to college.  Each teacher is given a very long description that I didn't care about.  And I skipped the long chapter on tarot.  Even her chapter on her first sexual encounter was boring.  She did get me to check out the animated TV show, Daria, which is her favorite show.  It's as boring as her book and her chapter goes into great detail about the show, the characters, and what happens in the show.

When I was midway through the book, I went to GoodReads to see what others had written about the book and most of the reviews agreed with me.  One woman said she didn't realize that a book about someone she liked could make her like that person less.  

*****

I finished the book and can't quite look at her the same way, having read about all the drugs she takes and her polyamory life, how she can't stand having sex with just one person (apparently her wife feels the same way).  While she talks about Jeopardy, it's a very small part of the book and I was disappointed by that too.

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

Hard to believe she's 16

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Eclipse

What a great day...Ned is making cheesecake, so we can have strawberry cheesecake.  He's making a much fancier cheesecake than I ever make.

It was a great night too.  I couldn't stay awake longer than 10 p.m. and was uneasy going to sleep that early, figuring I'd only sleep an hour, but I slept until nearly 3, got up, did Wordle (5 today) and posted my 1.5 second video, then turned on Morning Joe and fell asleep, waking at 7, so I got nearly 8 hours of sleep.  Then I fell asleep during the news and woke up an hour into The Today Show. I hesitate to say that I'm sleeping better these days (which I am) because whenever I write that, I end up having insomnia at night.

It's been fun looking at all the eclipse reports.  We didn't get much of the eclipse here in California, of course, but we did get some.  Char posted this as her new profile picture.  She said she didn't see much but did see some.  Both Walt and Ned mentioned that they thought that the light outside dimmed a little bit.  But of course, I didn't see anything because I was in the MRI machine.

Char's daughter, Tavie, posted some great pictures from where she was in Texas.

I made a travel ATC for a Swap Bot swap this afternoon, while listening to Ned's show.  I'm really quite pleased with it.  I was going to make something with the Eiffel Tower and in the end didn't use that at all.

LATER:  Cheesecake was delicious!

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

Walt's sister and her husband in Texas
waiting for the eclipse.

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Can't eat, can't drink, can't see, can't hear

 Today I had an MRI as a follow up to my gallbladder surgery last year and to see if I need another colonoscopy.  You have to fast for at least 5 hours beforehand, so I didn't have anything after about 10 p.m., when I had a mandarin orange.  It wasn't as difficult to skip coffee in the morning, but I sure wanted water badly.

We started for Kaiser around 10 and stopped first at the hall that Ned takes care of.  He wanted  to check and see if there were any mice in the traps that he set. He traps mice live and then takes them across the road to the field and releases them.  A few mice have died in the traps and he felt so bad about that he's been studying what mice eat and drink, so he can set the traps up so that they can live there for a few days if he doesn't check the traps every day.  I have to admit I was so pleased hearing him talk about the mice and how he doesn't want to kill them.  I thought "somewhere I did something right!"  

The drive out to Kaiser was beautiful.  Everything looked so green and the orchards were so impressive.  I know it's because I almost never go out into the country and it probably doesn't look any different from what I've always seen it, but it just looked so beautiful today--and the weather was perfect.  

You can't bring anything metal into the room with the MRI, so I left my hearing aids at home, which meant I couldn't hear anything people were saying to me and had to keep reminding them that they needed to speak louder.  I did keep my glasses, but took them off when they took me to the dressing room and put them in my purse, which I gave to Walt to keep for me.  So that meant I couldn't see and I couldn't hear.

I'm also too big for the MRI machine...or almost too big.  They did manage to get me set up and I was able to be slid into the tube, but it was very, very tight.  I am slightly claustrophobic, but I kept my eyes closed so I couldn't see how close I was to the top of the tube.  It was 20 minutes of banging and other sounds, with the table moving in and out.  Each time they started to move it out, I was afraid I would get caught and not be able to be pulled out. But it was finally over and then I had to figure out how to let the guy help me to sit up...my body was very sore.  I had to find my way out to the waiting room without glasses, which was interesting, since I couldn't read the signs.

It's done and we'll see what my doctor has to say and whether I need another colonoscopy or not.  When Ned picked me up he had a bottle of water in the car and I was thrilled to have water to drink

We drove home and stopped at the strawberry stand where they pick strawberries every day, which just recently opened for the season...their strawberries are so much better than what you get in the stores.  So we have strawberries and Marta might be making a strawberry cheesecake.  Ned also bought tomatoes, which taste like tomatoes, not like whatever those red things in the supermarket taste like.  One of my favorite sandwiches is a tomato sandwich -- soft white bread, mayonnaise and sliced tomatoes, so I had a tomato sandwich and a bowl of strawberries...and lots of water...for lunch.

Walt and I settled in and watched the news coverage of the eclipse, since we were at Kaiser and couldn't watch it live.  His sister and her husband went to Texas to see it, and Jeri said that there was 95% totality eclipse in Boston, which she was able to see.

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

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Thinking of people

I saw these today and it made me very sad.

For so many years, my friend Ann MacNab (co-founder of The Lamplighters) and I had potatoes as a joke between us.  I found all sorts of potato things to send to her (including finding a site that would send her a real potato, with her address on it).  I sent her a potato radio once.  I can't remember the other things I found out about potatoes that I would send to her.

So here are these great things to send to Ann, but she has been dead for many years.

As my mother got older and especially as her dementia increased, finding things to give her as a gift was always difficult, but she always loved flowers and finding flowery things to give her was always good.  Suddenly now there are all sorts of great flower gifts that you can give...cards that fold out to become full floral arrangements that are so beautiful.  Every time I see one of those ads, it makes me sad because any one of them would have been a perfect gift for my mother.

And of course it always makes me sad to see perfect smiley face things that would have been good to give to Paul.

I'm thinking a lot about some people these days.  Every morning when I pour myself a bowl of cereal, I think of Gilbert because I took his silverware after he died and always use one of his spoons.

I think of Sister Anne, my typing teacher and lifelong friend, every time I get a letter ready to go into an envelope, remembering how she taught me how to fold an 8-1/2"x11" piece of paper in thirds.

I think of Peggy whenever I fold socks because she taught me a better way to fold socks.  (Fortunately I almost never fold socks any more)

I think of Paul whenever I open a can.  He bought me a can opener shortly before he died.  It's a terrible can opener and he apologized, after it was installed and he tried to use it, that it was such a bad can opener.  He's been dead over 20 years and it's still a terrible can opener, but I just can't bring myself to replace it because he gave it to me.  Instead we use a hand can opener.

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PHOTO OF  THE DAY

Saw  this on Facebook.
I just loved it!!!

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