From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

 I haven't read much lately, so I've been trying to get some reading in.  i had started "The Day Diana Died" and once I got far enough into it, I couldn't put it down.  The more I read of the royal family, the more I realize how terribly dysfunctional they are (when Charles was little, his mother would be gone on a trip but when she returned, she would not hug him--she would shake his hand).

Elizabeth's disregard for how upset the rest of the world was about Diana's death makes me think of  Downton Abbey's Violet who asks "what's a week end?"

But the book is a very thorough examination of everything that happened in the weeks leading up to the accident, an investigation of all the people involved, and a detailed description of the accident and Diana's injuries (she did not die at the scene, but died in the hospital).

After finishing that book, I decided I needed to read something light and so read "Raspberry Truffle Murder," by Wendy Meadows, a book which a pen pal sent me as a gift.  As I said in my review on Goodreads, I hope she didn't buy it for me.  It was perhaps the most unbelievable book I've ever read.  I finished it in a couple of hours, but it was painful.

Temu

 We can't get our NBC tv station any more.  It says "Cox and Hearst retransmission impasse moves to blackout stage.  WISN-TV, other Hearst TV stations fade to black on DirecTV after talks fail on programming fees."  Whatever that means.  A TV version of the writers strike, I guess!

But that means no Today Show, no America's Got Talent (which is showing its finals now).  It means that I've started watching Good Morning, America in the morning.  I was amused this morning to discover that GMA has discovered Temu.

Temu has become my obsession, though I'm backing off now because I probably have more stickers than I can use in the rest of my life.  But Temu has gone from being mostly stickers, to selling just about everything else, cheap and GMA featured a lot of things this morning, including a scalp massager for 39 cents and a tiny refrigerator on sale for $69 (original price $111)

The things they showed were as varied as the stickers I've been buying this past year.  Temu must be a Chinese company and now that they have gotten so much traffic, they are branching out to things other than stickers.  My stickers used to come in a Temu bag and be delivered overnight.  The things I got today came a week after ordering, and not from Temu, but from some other company and a strange bag.  I kind of feel like I helped get Temu off the ground as a business!

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Lester at the JFK library

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Another apple pie

 I've written before about one of my favorite memories of my mother, sitting at the kitchen table, peeling apples for an apple pie  I was always amazed that she could peel a whole apple without breaking the skin.  And I hate peeling apples as a result because I just can't do it.

However, the other day I found a video about how to peel an apple.  In truth her way wastes a lot of usable apple, but we are drowning in apples so that wasn't a concern.  She did the peeling with a potato peeler, but that didn't work for me.  I tried the new way with a knife today and it works!  By the time I was peeling the last apples, I was peeling them without breaking the skin.

I missed my mother so much.  Throughout her life, it seems that when she made an apple pie, I would take her picture...and then snitch slices of apple that she had cut out of the bowl.  When Ned took my picture and then took a slice of apple, I wanted to laugh about it with my mother.  I hope somehow she knows.

And I seem to be getting my pie mojo back.  The pie looks beautiful and I know it will  taste better than the last one I did, where I didn't peel the apples.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Lester

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Sunday Stealing

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. This feature originated and published on WTIT: The Blog. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves.

Stolen from Magical Journal Prompts

1. What’s the best beach or lake day you can remember?
We didn't spend much time at the beach, but the first memory that came to mind was a beach at the Russian River, when the kids were little and our dog, Seymour, was so afraid of the water she tried to climb a tree that had fallen over.

2. Describe your ideal picnic lunch
Fried chicken, my father's potato salad, stuffed eggs, grapes and probably cookies.

3. What flowers are in your bouquet?
Roses and daisies.

4. Silly ways to pass the time during a snowstorm
I've never been in a snow storm, but reading, playing card games, and listening to music.

5. The most beautiful house you’ve ever visited.

I can't think of one that stands out.  We occasionally went to houses that were open for inspection and some of them were beautiful.  Of the houses I can think of today, it would probably be Tom's house in Santa Barbara.

6. Best place you ever dined.
I love The Dead Fish in Concord, which has wonderful crab.

7. How many layers to your ice cream sandwich
I never thought about "layers" in an ice cream sandwich.  Just one, I assume!

8. Pretty things which are faux patent leather

I can't think of anything patent leather, other than shoes.  I'm not big on patent leather, I guess.

9. What is the best way to eat chocolate.

Depends on the chocolate.  If it's my favorite, See's California Brittle, scrape the chocolate covering off the brittle with my teeth and then chew the brittle.  If it's normal chocolate, let it melt in my mouth first.

10. Describe your unicorn’s special magic
I don't have a unicorn, so no magic.

11. All the fruits in your fruit salad

Pineapple, banana, strawberries, kiwi, orange, grapes

12. Describe the soil, grass, trees, flowers and rocks in your magical forest.

Thick green grass, fruit trees, a garden full of tomato plants, and an abundance of flowers...also a gardener taking care of it all.

13. The lyrics which move you the most are:

For Good, from Wicked

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

14. What are the best sauces in the world?
Wow...so many sauces.  I like bordelaise, alfredo, any sauce made with wine, mushrooms and butter, and bottled Baby Ray's BBQ sauce

15. Write a haiku about nature

Waves crashing on shore

The sound and the smell of salt

I love the ocean

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Another new child,

for whom I am correspondent

He's from Ghana

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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 memes, however, and here is today's meme!

Cheeseburger in Paradise (1978)

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

From the archives; Repeated in memory of Jimmy Buffett, who died on September 1.

1) In this song, Jimmy Buffett briefly attempts a healthier diet, which included sunflower seeds, carrot juice, zucchini and bulgur wheat. Do you pay attention to your daily consumption of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, etc.?
I don't do it as much as I should.  Ned does a good job keeping us healthy at dinnertime.

2) Jimmy sings that he'd like French fries with his burger. Do you prefer to dip your fries or drizzle the ketchup over them?
I actually prefer my fries plain.

3) Which cheese would make yours a cheeseburger in paradise: American, cheddar, Swiss, bleu, Muenster, or Monterrey Jack?
Swiss, definitely. 

4) Buffett fans call themselves Parrotheads. Concert attire for a well-dressed Parrothead often includes a Hawaiian shirt and a foam fin hat. What will you be wearing tonight?
Same thing I'm wearing now.  PJ bottoms (which look like slacks...but they are light weight) and a t-shirt. 

5) For someone with such an easygoing and laidback vibe, Jimmy is a very busy man. His business ventures include liquors, restaurants and hotels. He's also published eight books. All this in addition to making music! On a scale of 1 to 10 -- with 1 being lazy and 10 being highly motivated -- how would you rate yourself this morning?
If you could things I do on the computer, like Sat 9 and Sun Stealing, writing letters, and working on the journal I'm doing right now, probably a 5.

6) Jimmy has some very famous fans. Paul McCartney asked him to play at one of his parties, and Barack Obama invited him to perform at a fundraiser. If you could invite anyone -- anyone at all! -- to play at your party, who would you ask?
Steve Schalchlin, of course!

7) Jimmy was born on Christmas Day. Does your birthday fall on a major holiday? If yes, do you mind "sharing" your special day?
No.  If it did, I wouldn't mind sharing my spacial say.

8) In 1978, the year this song was popular, the Susan B. Anthony Dollar was first minted. The initial design was not a hit with the public because vending machines could not accept it. What's the last thing you bought from a vending machine?
Wow.  I can't even think.  It was probably something at a rest stop on the way to Santa Barbara, but not recently.

9) Random question -- If today's your birthday, your zodiac sign is Virgo. When did you last check your horoscope?
I never check my horoscope.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

My new sponsored child,
from Brasil

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Happy Birthday

I've always loved this photo of my mother that Jeri took.  I believe it was the last picture taken of her before we moved her to Atria in Davis.

Today she would be 104.  I don't know why, but I've just been missing her the last few days.  I'm remembering how she would go through periods where she missed her mother, who died when I was probably in my 20s, or late teens. 

There are days when I feel I have nobody to talk with and would dearly love to pick up the phone and call her.  I'm imagining heaven today, with a card game going on among my mother and her sisters...or my cousins...or my sister.  I feel left out.

Happy birthday, Momma. 

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

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Wordle n stuff

A group of us -- me, Jeri and Phil, Walt's sister and her husband, his brother and his wife -- play Wordle each day and text our scores to each other. We don't usually post the figure of our play but this morning I was sad that it took me 6 tries to solve the puzzle.  Then Jeri posted her figure.  It took her 6 tries to get it too and it was interesting that our figures looked pretty identical, except for the starting word.

I love doing Wordle.  I generally go to sleep at 10 p.m. and wake up automatically around midnight, when the new Wordle is up and don't go back to sleep until I've solved it.  (Walt's sister says she sometimes takes all day to solve...I can't possibly put it down until I've solved it!  But then my normal score is 4 and hers is 3, so maybe I should take more time working on it!)

My pen pal Jeremy says he is no good with words, but he plays "Worldle" and "Globle" because he's so good with geography.  I'm terrible at geography and would do very badly with those games.

Likewise, Steve (Schalchlin) plays Connections, another NY Times game where you create 4 groups of  4 from a box of 16 words.  Jeri has played that too and is pretty good at it.  I'm terrible because I can't see the second use for some of the words and can't get a group together, so I stick with Wordle.

* * *

We had warning from PG&E yesterday that our power would be out from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.  The year that Ned moved in here, he recommended that we get a generator because he expected the power would go off in the summertime.  It didn't that summer, but when winter storms came about, it did and he was able to power the important things in the house -- the refrigerator, the TV and the bidet.  I'm surprised at how many times we have used the generator and so we had no concerns about the power being out yesterday.  He got us all set up and then the PG&E turned the power back on again after an hour, so we didn't really need the generator, but how nice to have it!  And not being able to use the computer was great because I didn't need to feel guilty for sitting in my recliner just watching TV in the morning!

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

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