Thought while scrolling

Why yes, I suppose you could put it that way.

Friday off

A different day than usual.  PG and I drove to the Bethlehem ShopRite to get out of the house and out of the rut we've been in.  Cold, wet weather had kept us inside for days.  It wasn't exactly clear and sunny today, but there were breaks in the clouds that let through some sunshine as we drove.  

I found the Tropicana Pure Premium grapefruit juice I wanted, and she picked up cat food along with the rabbit food for our evening salads.  I brought out the ShopRite app to get an e-coupon that saved several dollars on boxes of cereal.  And, while she picked out an eyebrow pencil, I walked across the aisle and impulse-bought some fleece pants for $7.

We paid and I drove back west to her 2:00 PT appointment.  We went to ShopRite via I-78, and for a change I drove west on route 22.  We briefly saw a field full of snow geese, gleaning the leftovers of the harvested grain.  I glimpsed several geese flying before a semi blocked the view.

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging: Kit and Nora

 

Early Sunday Morning

In the past week, I tried eating and drinking the junk foods I ate and drank for years, and it's not the same.  Doesn't taste real good, and while it's not making me sick, I feel better when I don't consume them.  I've kept off the nearly 20 pounds I dropped after July 5.  

Took a route to TP today that I hadn't tried before.  At one point south of Quakertown, I wound up in a long line waiting for a flagman to wave us through.  The drive was about the same length as the one I normally take, but took nearly twice as long.  OK, that route's one and done.  Lots of traffic and low speed limits.

Drum practice has slipped recent days.  I was going along with a structure of 5-10 minute warmup, 10-15 minutes of rudiment practice, and 5-10 minutes of playing with songs.   Starting to think that the rudiment practice is for people who are young and want the full well-rounded learning experience because they intend to do something serious with that knowledge.  Whereas I'm not young and don't care for rudiments any more than I cared for scales on the other instruments I did a half-assed job of studying.  I'm almost done with the double-stroke roll section of the Drumeo Method, and that may be where I stop, in favor of searching songs and watching YouTube videos of drummers playing those songs.   

Early Thursday Morning

This was the kind of night I had regularly before starting drum lessons.  Sit down in the recliner, put on the headphones and take a nap.  Wake up and go down rabbit holes until midnight.

"We Hold These Truths" - never had heard of Norman Corwin until an episode of Fred Allen's CBS show from the early 1940's.  Well-known then, forgotten in later years, but lived long enough (1910-2011) to return to public regard as people rediscovered his early work.  A week after Pearl Harbor, this show was broadcast on all four networks simultaneously and reached an audience of 63 million.   

The National Recording Registry - Holds the original recording of We Hold These Truths and a lot more, including Aja.  Read about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Nat G. Wells, Mary Margaret McBride, the 1925 inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, and on and on I went.  

Eventually, put on an episode of The New Yorker's Political Scene and played mindless Fishdom for the first time in weeks for the 35-minute length of the program.  Osnos, Mayer, and Glasser bat around topics in the news, and entertainingly enough so that I put aside my usual disdain for unscripted podcasts.  Give me You Must Remember This or Cocaine and Rhinestones, tell me a story, preferably about a time before I was born.  

I can understand why Karina Longworth wrote so much about the films of the 80's and 90's, because that's what she grew up with and it was something she had a lot to say about.  But I still go back to the MGM season or the Dead Blondes season to listen again, and I'm pretty sure I'll never do that with Erotic Eighties or Erotic Nineties.

Tomorrow, uh, later today, back to normal.  Eat less, drum more.

Take your pick

When I picked out a gray shirt and a black one from an MLB.com shop clearance page many years ago, little did I know...

Progression, or One Thought Leads to Another

It's after midnight, December 6.  A couple of years ago, I used to wait up and do the day's Wordle right after midnight.  Not anymore. 

I also used to play an online game where you have to guess the year a photo was taken.  After awhile, I could tell a 20's photo from a 40's from a 60's.  But all 21st-Century images look alike to me.

There's a website run by Duke University with photos of billboards over several decades.  Here's my favorite, taken in 1939, and which must have been known as the Esso Bee:

..............

Later that day, I opened Facebook, and among the on-this-date memories was one from 2022, featuring the Esso Bee.  December 6 is Esso Bee Day!

Thoughts While Scrolling

No surprises here, except that they used the word "groovy".  Music from a half-century ago, music from a quarter-century ago, and music from the current year.  Plus current music from a band that was around a half-century ago.

It says "pom," John.    P. O. M.    Just because the lower-case M looks to you at first glance like a squashed-together R and N, that only tells me you must spend too much time in a certain red-light area of the Internet.   (Although the mental image of video sex workers in those hats and little else is intriguing.)

Not only, but also

Not only is the sun setting before 5:00 p.m., during the daylight hours it's been so cloudy that the solar battery-powered night light in my bathroom isn't building up enough of a charge to light it up.  This is the third straight night that has happened.  It might be a record.

Thoughts While Scrolling

Not a valid Spelling Bee word, but the fact that it appears the week after Michigan defeated The Ohio State in football, well... I believe I see what they did there.

I'm from the Midwest, so when I saw those first three words, I wondered, "With whom?"

It could be looked up, I suppose, but just a hunch that this is one of the first times that word has appeared in the New York Times.  

Saturday Evening Post

Pleased to say that the fall off the food wagon was quick and that I'm back on and back to the weight prior to the fall.  One example:  bought a 20-oz Pepsi to go with Friday afternoon's homemade pizza.  Had 1/4 of the pizza and less than half the Pepsi.  There's still some left in the upstairs refrigerator.  

A good day shopping.  Two pairs of no-iron Dockers that fit my 20-pound lighter body better than the khakis currently hanging in the closet.  Had some store credit and there was a Cyber Week coupon to apply, so they cost far less than sticker price.  

Found a quarter in one store, a penny in another, and one more penny in still another.  I keep thinking that with electronic payments, people aren't going to carry change to lose anymore, but people keep proving me wrong.  Every cent goes to helping shelter cats, so I keep looking for it.

Late Thursday Snapshot

Took PG to the area hospital this morning for a follow-up visit.  The appointment was for 8:30, but the woman at the window warned us he was running 15 minutes late.  Around 9:15, she was at last called in.  While we waited, we played the New York Times Spelling Bee, working on the last half-dozen words of the day's puzzle.  

Nothing but Bluesky

Actually, the code came through two weeks ago, only it was in a mailbox I don't often check.  But the code was still good, so Hello World.

 

Reading out loud

From CBSNews.com.  I’m pretty sure they mean “voraciously”, not “vociferously”.

Fenek

I'd been thinking about doing this next, and tonight was the first time I tried.  I started the phone in video mode, recording myself walking to the sofa and musing that it would be so nice if I had a cat on my lap.  

I pointed the camera toward the chair behind which Good Queen Swirly sleeps, and for several seconds nothing happened.  Then she emerged onto the hearth, and I kept her in the shot as she walked across the coffee table and climbed onto the fleece blanket I'd put over my lap.  

Camera was vertical as she approached, but switched to horizontal when she lay down.  I can do better, I thought while petting her and switching on the TV.

The phone rang, and the screen showed a familiar name.  Only one guess:  the cat I was sponsoring had died.  PG picked up and called to me, but Swirly didn't move, and I didn't want to hear the news anyway.  PG came downstairs with the phone and handed it to me, Swirly still didn't move, and KJ gave me the sad story and cried.  

Fenek was OK on Sunday, no better or worse than other recent visits.  He got up and walked away from a child who was petting him, and jumped onto my lap to the delight of everyone else in the room.

Today his heart gave out.  

He was a good cat.  

I think I can be forgiven for a few days of sertraline about now.  

After

The landscaping project that began in May came to an end today.  The neighbors must be overjoyed that the house near them doesn't look shabby anymore.  But the delays, as frustrating as they were, helped us accumulate the money to pay for it without taking out a loan.  

It's not just the cost of a house, it's the upkeep.  Last year, a new HVAC system.  This year, landscaping.  Next year, hoping to have engineered wood floors installed downstairs.  The front lawn needs to be improved, up to the same quality level of the landscaping.  (The back yard is different.  I want a small meadow of wildflowers surrounded by natural area plants.)  The driveway has one large crack completely across it and smaller ones starting along the edges.  And don't get me started on the windows and the roof.  But we're not planning on moving out, so we need to make sure it stays livable.

Two things

I was listening to Kaleidoscope, a radio program I'd listened to when I was growing up 50 years ago.  Today's show recalled highlights in the life of Edward R. Murrow.  He died at age 57 of lung cancer, the fate of many heavy smokers, when I was 9.

Kaleidoscope used the quote in the screen shot above, a quote I'd never heard.  I typed it in a text editor and saved it while some music played between audio paragraphs of the program, then searched for it online.  

Not only did the search turn up the quote, but I was able to download a PDF of the book it came from, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R Murrow.  I would have been happy with a simple citation, confirming that I'd transcribed it correctly, so acquiring the book about the journalist who did so much in the 1940's and 1950's was an unexpected added benefit.  Being able to do that in an instant, using the internet as an enormous reference library, leaves me mentally in monosyllables:  "Wow."  

It struck me that's how I write, too.  Until I heard that quote, I hadn't thought about it in those terms.  But the writing I've done for Tabby's Place, the descriptions of cats for the website and the correspondent letters for the special needs cats, it has been dependent on observing the cat and its surroundings.  If I witness it, I can describe it.  Making stuff up isn't the way I work.  

Begging off the question

Sounds like a gag setup to me.  "What happens when you cross the Taiwan Strait with the U.S. Navy?"  

"You get a ..." (If I come up with a punchline, you'll be the first to know.)

Shopping alone, eating together

PG wasn't 100% today, so I did the shopping by myself.  There was cat food at Petsmart, bird food at Wild Birds Unlimited, and more bird food plus cat litter plus a prescription for PG at Walmart.  Then in mid-afternoon, she felt better and we had an early supper at Longhorn Steakhouse.  

Cheat Day

Breakfast was mini-wheats and juice, lunch was Crispix, supper was skinless chicken breast, mashed potatoes and corn with lemonade.  That part's OK, and eating sensibly like that is why I'm 20 pounds lighter than I was in early July this year.  

Then there were the between-meals calories and the after-meals calories.  The better part of a six-ounce bag of pistachios.  The rest of the Tootsie Pops I bought yesterday afternoon.  A bottle of Mexi-coke.  And, after a pause of some four months, I made chocolate chip cookies and ate four of them.  That has to be a one-time aberration.  Back on the wagon tomorrow.  I don't like feeling that I am unable to control what I eat.

A forgettable day

Woke up at 3:45 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Ended up on the sofa downstairs, listening to H.V. Kaltenborn describe the events of December 7, 1941.  At last, nodded off from 6:30 to 7:30, then got up, showered, and began the workday in the spare bedroom that serves as my WFH office.

Landscapers have been stripping away the old overgrown greenery, preparing to plant the new stuff.  Snapped some for-the-record pictures of the yard late in the afternoon today.  (That's where the wild radish came from.  It's about two feet from the wheelbarrow containing the workmen's tools.)

Drove PG to her physical therapy just before noon, dropped her off and took a walk around the parking lots of the medical facilities in the area.  That consumed 15 minutes, meaning I still had a half-hour or more before PT was done for the day.  I drove to the shopping center a mile or two further south, picking up a bagel and then going next door to the Dollar Tree.  

I had a bottle of cleaning liquid and was checking out the remaining Halloween special Tootsie Pops (9 in a package for $1.25 instead of the usual 6) when my phone rang.  PG wasn't feeling well and the therapist had recommended going to the doctor for a professional opinion.  I got back as fast as the traffic would allow.  

Symptoms had eased, but only a little, when Dr. V entered.  He prescribed rest and asked her to keep track of her vital signs over the weekend, then let him know on Monday.  No increase in meds or additional ones until then.  Conservative with the medications, which both PG and I appreciate.  

After we got back home, I realized I wasn't wearing my wedding ring.  I know I had it when I left, and I knew I didn't have it now.  Not in the car, not in the drawer where it usually is stored.  I tried retracing my steps and phoning the places I'd been.  The PT staff member was willing to help, more so than the person who picked up the phone at Dollar Tree, but no one was reporting that a ring had been found.  Stressed, I downed a 16-ounce Pepsi and ate five of the 9 Pops over the remainder of the day.  

I found the ring on the floor beneath my chair at the kitchen table.  Still don't know whether I'd dropped it, or whether I'd put it on the table and it had found the floor because of the actions of a Good Cat.  

Around 7:00, I booted up the TiVo and picked up where I'd left off in Bells Are Ringing.  My little cat joined me on the sofa, and I quickly laid a soft blanket over my legs so she would be comfortable.  I don't know whether she napped, but moments into the movie, I dropped off and didn't reawaken until close to 8:00.  That's why I'm still awake in the final minutes of Thursday.  

Volunteer in purple

Raphanus Sativus, but you can just call it a wild radish.  It's sprung up just off the deck, right under the downspout from the roof of the deck.  There's decent soil and plenty of water for a volunteer to thrive.  

Moxie

Years ago, I went to Knoebel's amusement park, and on the way home stopped at a store where I found a soft drink named Moxie in the refrigerator case.  I'd heard of the stuff, and this was the first time I'd seen it.  I bought a bottle and took a sip.  Then another.  Then I poured out the rest down the drain.  I decided it reminded me of "carbonated liniment."

I forget when and where specifically I saw this next, but in a recent web story, the author described Moxie as "carbonated cough syrup."  Yeah, that too.  Neither one is palatable, but I still prefer to use liniment, both for the old-fashioned word and for the taste that implies this stuff shouldn't be consumed orally.

Ding Dong School - NBC - November 17, 1954

YouTube has multiple examples of early television that were before my time, but I still heard about them in my childhood.  Only now am I getting to see shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie (I knew the song "Here We Are Again" but not until now did I know it was the theme from KFO) and Ding Dong School.  Miss Frances puts me in mind of Fred Rogers in her warm, patient delivery, although without the unconditional positive regard of Mr. Rogers for the very young viewer. 

Of course, there was no PBS back then, and even non-commercial NET was just getting started in 1954, so the show was sponsored, in this case by Ovaltine.  When she slides from the program into the commercial with barely a pause, she uses the same warm tone of voice that signifies she's telling the little members of her audience about another Good Thing.  At least Paul Harvey put a "Page Two" between the content and the sponsor's message.

Easy Come...

Medical:  A cat bit my hand and the bite area became infected.  A bill from the doctor, and a larger one from the x-ray place.

Dentist:  the cleaning and x-ray were covered, but they found the oversensitive area I felt on the lower right, and that re-filling cost me.

Car:  Registration for 2 years.  Inspection and emissions.  And since the car is five years old, a replacement battery.  Because there's a start-stop feature that can pause and re-start the engine at a full stop, the battery is more expensive.  

All that in the past month.  "Save your money -- you're going to need it."  Paul Hemphill, 1980 or so.  You bet I remembered it all these years.  He was right, and he still is.

Here I Am

No idea who else would do this, but an analysis of this imperfect Immaculate Grid can be revealing.

The player knows next to nothing about the Colorado Rockies.  Jon Gray is on the Texas Rangers, who are in this year's World Series, and the player vaguely remembers seeing in Baseball Reference that Gray began his career with the Rockies.

The player doesn't know much about the Milwaukee Brewers, or more accurately, he knows more than the average fan about the 1969 Seattle Pilots.  Talbot played for the White Sox before joining the Pilots, Baney pitched for the Reds after the '69 season, and Brabender won 13 games in the Pilots' only season.  It can be safely assumed that the player has read Ball Four more than once.

Like he did with the Pilots and the Brewers, the player has resorted to choosing members of the Montreal Expos, the previous incarnation of the Washington Nationals.  Stoneman was the best pitcher on the Expos in the team's first two seasons, 1969-70.  But Alcala, briefly on the 1977 Expos, was never a star, or even an above-average pitcher.  The player liked to refer to him as Santo Claus, based on the extra-base hits liberally strewn across his 1976 Strat-O-Matic card, a season, it must be added, in which his win-loss record was 11-4.  (And, the player further adds, an ERA of 4.70, facts recalled without any need of reference materials.)  Alcala was frequently matched up against the other team's top pitcher, and while it can't be said that he "outdueled" the other man, he was the beneficiary of the '76 Reds high-powered offense.  And finally, Edwin Jackson is one of those "when in doubt" answers in IG, so the player has been playing this game long enough to have obtained some savvy about it.  See also:  Octavio Dotel, Mike Morgan, Matt Stairs, Darren Oliver, Tommy Davis.

 

Un trou de lapin?

From a story in Le Monde about un nouvel album d’Astérix:  « J’aime les contraintes, elles m’aident, c’est mon côté oulipien », admet Fabcaro...

Oulipien?  Qu'est-ce que c'est?

As a group, Oulipo (an acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, “workshop of potential literature”) was co-founded about 1960 by the prose polymath Raymond Queneau and included [Georges] Perec, whose most famous, or perhaps notorious, work is perhaps the book-length lipogram La Disparition, translated by Gilbert Adair as A Void. The novel entirely dispenses with the letter e, the most frequently used alphabetical letter in French (and English.)

                                                    -- Generally About Books, 15 September 2019 

It was a rabbit hole that kept me hopping for more than an hour.  Here an essay from the New York Times, there a book review from the New Yorker.  

But it all reminds me of this:

Tiny flowers in the back yard

Now, to find out what they are.  Google's answer:  It's thyme.  Good for pollinators, and a worthy subject for an artist.

 

Walking with a camera

While PG was doing her PT at the 1621 building at the top of the map, I took advantage of Indian summer to stroll around the adjoining neighborhood, snapping a few pictures along the way.  This shows how camera-phone shots also include latitude and longitude information that can place them on a map.  The six up top were just off a parking lot and show the asters thriving in stony ground.  (Not sorry-asters.)  I appreciate being able to walk that far and back without pain or difficulty.

Thoughts While Scrolling

If Ralph Edwards were alive in 2023, would he be amused to hear the phrase a "bizarre proto-reality show" used to describe his creation, "This Is Your Life"?  

Then, there's a report this week that the Steely Dan song "Dirty Work" is appearing in TV shows, movies, and thousands and thousands of TikTok posts.  "Are Steely Dan Songs Secretly Cool?" asks the title of the article.  The author attempts to answer the question in this writerly paragraph:

To someone steeped in proto-punk and indie of the same era, Steely Dan represented everything unappealing about the excess of the ‘70s studio sound — a band so into cocaine and cleverness that they engineered all the passion and energy out of their music. Their overtly literate lyricism was clever but self-conscious, a far cry from the visceral howl emerging from the heart of punk rock, while their musical inspirations — show tunes, easy listening, jazz, funk, and lounge music — were always handled with a sense of fundamental irony and distance, subverted with strange chords and quirky lines to distract from the music’s foundations in kitsch. No matter how complex the songs were, they always felt too clean to stand out. Like particularly high-end elevator music. 

I haven't forgotten...

It's the sertraline.  I used it to suppress my appetite and block stress eating, and it worked.  I lost 15 pounds quickly, but then hit a plateau.  I stopped taking it, followed by the return of occasional desserts, and what do you know, I went from 237 to 239 in short order.  

So after a few weeks of that, I went back on, cut out desserts and anything resembling stress eating.  Dinner table conversations dwindled to nearly nothing, which is a negative side effect.  Blog posts disappeared altogether, which isn't all bad, except for the times I'd think of something overnight and forget it by morning.  

But once more, sertraline did the job it was intended to do, and I weighed in at 233 point something this morning.  If/when I reach 228, that'll be 25 pounds, and good enough that I'll give cold turkey a try.  I've been lethargic, and I'd like to feel something again.  I do function, fulfill obligations and all, but not as much beyond that as when I don't take anything.

The typical day consists of a bowl of cereal with whole milk and a 50-50 combination of juice and seltzer.  That is ideally done at 10:00, so I don't miss lunch.  If I do want a bite in the afternoon, I get a banana, maybe some peanut butter with it.  Maybe a cheese stick.  Then for supper, a small serving of something.  Spaghetti with meat sauce, or a small bowl of homemade chili.  PG makes chicken scaloppini with skinless white meat, and I like that a lot.  Tonight, it was a 1/4 pound burger with A1 sauce and a pickle slice.  Generally, either milk, 50-50 lemonade and seltzer, or Evian.  A few mixed nuts or peanuts. So two small meals, almost no sweets, and walking around the block for exercise.  

The doctor P.A. tossed off "Lose 10% of your body weight" as if to say "like you could do that."  Maybe it was reverse psychology, but I'd already begun losing weight before the appointment and nothing she said changed anything I did after it.

 

Thoughts While Scrolling

As soon as I saw the subject line, I thought, "That looks like videotape, but it can't be, because The Edsel Show...".  So I checked the comments, and saw that someone had beaten me to it.  

Come to find it out, the definition of a perennial plant doesn't define "perennial" as a plant that returns every year.  The bar is set lower for plants - "a plant with a life cycle lasting more than two years", according to the dictionary.   

Can't... help... myself... must post...

More accurately, "the first American League player to", or "the first MLB player in 52 seasons to".

How do they put it (or perhaps, "how did they put it", I don't keep up with these things)?  Rick Wise says ohayo.  He's probably too much of a gentleman to say anything about Ohtani surrendering one hit.

But I'm confident Louisa Thomas has been corrected by now, even though as of this morning the essay is still unchanged on the New Yorker site.  

At least here, my compulsion to correct is limited to myself and the occasional accidental visitor, plus those multitudinous Singapore bots.  

Technology, parts 1 and 2

Part 1:  Pat likes a certain brand of salad dressing that she buys at Whole Foods.  I like a certain brand of whole-milk buttermilk that I use to make pancakes.  Over the noon hour today, we stopped by WF to pick some up.  

At the self-checkout, there was a new option, Amazon One.  Enter your Amazon Prime credit card, have a camera scan each of your palms, and you're registered.  After registration, check out as usual, but just scan your palm instead of tapping or swiping the Amazon Prime card.  

It all went off for me without a hitch.  No floor on the amount that can be charged to Amazon One, from the looks of it.  Today's bill was 13 dollars and change, and 5% of that comes back in Amazon credit.  

Part 2:  With an eye to getting away from Twixtter, I looked into Threads.  To get an account in Threads, you need an account in Instagram.  I didn't want to use my Facebook account for Instagram, so I entered a different address and filled in all the other required blanks.  The two-factor ID went through smoothly, but instead of a welcome screen, the next thing I saw was a full-screen advisory that my account had been suspended for 180 days for a violation of terms of service.

The violation appeared to be that I hadn't used my Facebook account to sign up.  There were some words about creating fake accounts and anonymous entries, and at the bottom, a notification that I could appeal.  However, if the appeal was denied, my Instagram account would be deleted immediately.

I wanted to know more, and to assure the gatekeeper that the email was mine and is active.  What made them think I was creating a fake account?  I clicked Appeal, and the screen changed to a message that the appeal had been received and I would hear from them directly.  Missing was any space for even a 25-words-or-less statement in my defense.  

So it looks like you have to use Facebook credentials to be permitted to create an Instagram account, and Instagram is required to create a Threads account.  No thanks, never mind.  I deleted the new Instagram account, and I'll just have to get along without Threads.

Lots planned, lots done

Sunday, September 17

Just notes for now.  If I feel like it, I'll expand on them eventually.

Photos of the freshly blossomed purple asters in the wildflower patch around the corner, below the Route 222 bypass.

Photos of the Quakertown, NJ meadow.  Different from last year.  Signs warning to keep out, don't pick the flowers, beware of the bees, and a rope "fence" to delineate the Keep Out area.  Earlier this summer, I walked in a large section of the area that's now roped off.  (Not the meadow part, but the mowed part along the edge of it.)

Quality Time with my good girl Lorna Doone.  They should take off that orange collar soon.

Cookie "Monster" swirling at my feet to greet me.  I didn't offer her the Hand of Friendship, though, not yet.

New cats on the list for photos needed, but several are hiding, can't photograph them

Was able to photograph cats in Suites B, C, E, I, lobby, Community Room

Good Quality Time with Fenek, plus good snapshots and an interesting situation to describe in next month's letter to his supporters.  (YIL about microchip feeders, which open only for certain cats.)

Shoprite:  Whole milk only 3.69, 50 cents or more lower than in PA.  Sale on Tropicana juices, $1 off per bottle, max purchase 4.  So I saved $4.

Back home, downloaded and tagged photos

Practiced 20 minutes before calendar program beeped at me.

Watched Nebraska-Kentucky without falling asleep.  Probably couldn't have done it before losing 15 lbs.

Not bad for a man of my advanced years.

Saturday Evening Post

There was a session of Spelling Bee at 3:00 a.m. due to insomnia.  

At 9:00, Immaculate Grid.  First, the one where I played by the rules and finished with an 81 rarity score.

After that, I looked at the answers and put together another full grid with only non-Hall of Fame players.

Later in the morning, a bit after 10:00 according to the time stamp, I brought out the ingredients for a peach streusel cake.  

Some 90 minutes later (at 325 low-and-slow degrees) it came out of the oven looking like this.

After lunch, one more household task, making a pot of chili.  No pictures.

Took a walk, didn't eat any pizza, but did drink a Mexicoke and ate a Dove Bar, for 400 calories.

Here he goes again

I've seen these Kias on the road, and now I know how those Palisades park.

My day

At the end of week 1 of 30-Day Drummer, the instructor told us we could rest, and while I haven't played much today, enough happened that I wanted to write it down before I forget, to coin a phrase.

Installed the new window shade in Pat's office.  We got it the day before at the new Home Depot a mile or two from the house.  The woman in the department with the shades and blinds just about talked our ears off before selling us the product.

Home Depot doesn't appear to have a checkout cashier anymore, only self-checkout registers.  In that area, one woman was responsible for fixing any issues, and I presented her with one.  

I'd collected a bunch of change over a period of months, keeping it in a small glass jar in the drawer with my wallet.  When I took the jar to the credit union, I found that the change-counting machine charged 3% of the total for the service, and I knew where I could do better.  

The Giant supermarket has a CoinBase machine that gives you the option of cashing out for a 3% service charge or getting the full amount ($22.90) in store credit.  I was hoping for Amazon, but Home Depot was acceptable.  However, the HD self-checkout assistant had never seen one of those vouchers, so Pat and I waited until the assistant brought in a superior to apply it to the total.

This morning, I installed the new blind, measuring twice and drilling holes once for the brackets in the window frame.  There I go, playing handyman again.

Out in the back yard, I pulled weeds and cut down budding trees that Google Images notified me are mulberries.  I found a great many of those trees in varying sizes, and as much as I'd like them to grow, I've learned enough to know that mulberry trees grow 40 feet tall and drop lots of berries that stain the shoes of anyone who walks through them.  One mulberry had taken root a few millimeters from the stump of a burning bush that had been cut down on the south side of the house, and I took the pruner to it.  

I pruned a shrub on one side of the shed out back, and dug out some of the weeds on all sides of the shed.  The catnip had died and dried on two sides, so I removed those bushes, but the one remaining catnip on the south side was still green and attractive to pollinators, so it got a reprieve.  Heavy rain at times today, saturating the ground and making the weed pulling easier afterward.

Other quick jobs:  after scooping cat boxes in the basement, I cleaned up some areas on the floor that bore dried cat puke.  Also, I used the Spot-Bot to clean up some areas on the family room carpet that bore dried cat puke.

Dishes were washed by the Braun and put away by me.  I made the bed.  I took a picture of Good Queen Swirly in her new bed and wrote a little story a la "What a Good Cat!" to go with it in a blog post.  

Weight has crept up from 237 and a fraction to 239 and a fraction, so all this physical labor should help get things back under control.  Today I ate only a bowl of raisin bran, a banana with peanut butter, and a bowl of chili with some baked Ritz chips.  The Mexicoke on the Gorilla shelf in the basement remained untouched, well out of the arm's-reach of desire that a past Coca-Cola CEO declared was the company's goal for its products.

Back to work tomorrow morning, and back to drum lessons.  I'm all set for retirement, whenever it comes.  Hobbies include photography, a foreign language, and now, learning a musical instrument.  Pretty standard pastimes for a retiree.  

And so to bed, Pepys-ily.

No trouble at all

While our other three Good Cats get into the occasional scuffle, our Good Queen Swirly stays out of the fray. I have taken to referring to her not only as a Good Cat, but also A Cat Who Never Causes Any Trouble. Even if the catchiness of the phrase is debatable, the veracity is not. Swirly is simply a perfectly well-behaved cat.

Now, there was a brief period a year or two ago when she would mess up the cover on the sofa, but it didn't take long to realize that she was looking for a place to snuggle away and hide. I began to put a soft fleece blanket over top of the sofa cover, leaving her a little room to crawl underneath, and the cover has remained intact ever since.

But recently, Pat saw a small cat bed with a hood, and immediately thought of Swirly. We bought the bed, and when we got it home, Pat asked me to hold onto it awhile so it would have a smell Swirly was familiar with. Then, Pat placed it behind an armchair in the corner of the family room, and we waited.

The result is below. Swirly now takes all her naps in the bed Pat picked out just for her. And she never causes any trouble. 

A recent arrival

Buddleja davidii, aka summer lilac, aka butterfly bush.  Seen today for the first time on the formerly landscaped area that we're letting go wild this summer.    

 

Skipper on Sedum, late afternoon sun

 

The Good TImes are Here and Now

Last night, I was looking around YouTube for songs to learn with reasonably simple beats.  I called up John Hiatt's I Don't Even Try and soon found myself playing air drums and singing (if you can call it that) along.  Then I opened my eyes and saw Pat walking past me into the kitchen.  Usually even with my eyes closed I'll see the hall light come on before she walks downstairs.  Musta really been into the beat.

This morning, as I collected the stuff for breakfast (cereal, milk, juice, seltzer, spoon) I was softly singing (IYCCIT) Walter Becker's Down in the Bottom.  That's another song with a reasonably simple beat, as far as I could tell last night.  I'm sure that the beat doesn't get lost in the music, unlike some other songs that are on the Beginner list at Drumeo.  

Pat commented that I must be happier these days, since I'm singing more.  Interesting observation, and a true one.  Work is going well, home life is great, and I have plenty of absorbing (and useful) things to do in my spare time.  

Visiting shelter cats and loving them, either socializing the frightened ones or giving the social ones a lap and some petting.  Writing, about one cat in particular, and taking pictures when I see something interesting.  At the very least, the good images get posted to a blog where at least a lot of Singaporeans see it, and the best ones are used by the shelter for promotional purposes.

Sometime in the past year, I believe, French got a whole lot easier.  Although I had re-started learning the language in 2002 with the help of Champs-Elysees -- after a couple of decades of inaction -- it was hard to read anything without numerous consults of a dictionary, either the Larousse in the office or the one online.  As recently as during the Covid pandemic, I remember just giving up and not trying anymore.  After one of my credit cards was used by someone with bad intents, the credit card company issued a new one with a different number.  I tried to change the card number on file with Le Monde, but three months later I was no longer able to log in for subscriber-only articles, and I took that as a sign to stop struggling.

Then last year, I found that it was now possible to use Google Pay to subscribe to publications outside the U.S.  Even better, I'd been away long enough that it was possible to take advantage of a lower-cost subscription offer.  And suddenly, and counter-intuitively, after weeks without trying to learn anything, I could read French comfortably.  I still use Google Translate for an individual word, and now and then I do a search when a phrase makes no literal sense and I strongly suspect an idiom.  But now I look at the Times, the Post, and Le Monde equally as much for news.  It's a mystery, but it's also a sense of accomplishment.  I've read the articles that say learning a language helps keep the brain from rusting out.  And hey, you never know when you might need another language in case Trump gets re-elected. 

So there's (1) Tabby's Place, with all the useful things it provides, (2) French, which I can understand in spoken form (as long as it's spoken reasonably clearly) and now can read (with occasional help from Translate).  And recently, adding (3) drumming to the list.  All things I don't have to stop as long as my brain and body hold up.  Maybe I'll never do any drumming except in this house, but it's a pleasant experience to learn.  

And as if on cue, a big brown truck stopped in front of the house, and its driver carried a good-sized brown box and set it down just to the side of the front door.  That would be the new drum throne.

One last thing:  I take care to choose songs sung by humans with imperfect singing voices.  Whatever it takes to keep from sounding pitiful!

C'est cette chanson que j'aime...

Blogger's stat sheet says that there have been hundreds of hits this week on this humble, unpublicized, quiet corner of cyberspace, and they all came from Singapore.  It makes a fellow wonder.  Stocking up their files for future AI?

I spent my junior year of college in a small city in France.  Lots of memories, kept in some small cahiers and presently residing in a small box at the bottom of a closet upstairs.  

But some of those memories are in the form of music, and tonight I learned that one of the tubes of my stay in France was used last year in a TV commercial for a supermarché named Intermarché. (The link contains both the commercial and the original song, paroles et musique. A cette heure, de toute façon.)  

Back then, with my limited French, I thought it was a song like I Will Survive, where the singer was determined to go on living despite having lost their lover.  Now, I see it more as the singer rejecting that lover due to his own égoïsme.  Like the joke with a sharp point that a female stand-up made about a former boyfriend:  "We had a lot in common.  We both loved him and hated me."

Golden Hour, Brown Butterfly

Late afternoon in our back yard.  The sedum has begun to display its pink flowers, and that's attracting plenty of insects, like this skipper.

55 years too late

She's got Bette Davis eye.

Sell!

I believe it's already been noted here that my blood test in early July showed higher-than-normal blood sugar and A1C levels.  After learning the results, I got serious about losing weight, which included cutting out Coca-Cola.  Apparently, that was too much for the local bottler.  

Reminds me of the old story of two guys who drove by a distillery one night.  The lights were on, and one man said, "They're making it faster than you can drink it."  The other one said, "Yeah, but at least I've got them working nights."

 

Headline News

The story reads:  "Donald Trump has decided to drop his lead Georgia lawyer ahead of his surrender on charges of election interference in the state on Thursday evening, according to a report. Drew Findling, the attorney who has helmed the former president’s defense in Georgia, is being replaced with Atlanta-based lawyer Steven Sadow..." 

The website Daily Beast chose the headline, "Trump Ditches Top Georgia Lawyer Before Surrendering for Arrest", but this would have sufficed:

"Trump Fucking Around, Findling Out"

Double Bumble

One of the volunteer sunflowers in our back yard.

 

Voices of Experience

 * Jack Benny, who built a career on kidding about his stinginess, his constant age of 39 years and his old Maxwell, doesn't look even near his real age, 80 years. "I don't feel my age," he said, and added a quick aside. "There are moments, of course."

"I think the secret of staying young is to keep working until you can't."

* As far as 67-year-old Robert Young is concerned, "Real fulfillment is knowing what you want to do — and being allowed to do it. ... I want to work 'till I die." He says this after having tested retirement for six years...

"There were some of the unhappiest men in that retirement community," he reveals. "Former chairmen of the board — some who had ruled business empires. I'll never forget the day one of them complained, 'I woke up this morning and thought, what in the hell do I do today?'"

* Larry Brown said, “I think we’re all wired the same. We need to be busy. We need to be active. You need to feel like we’ve got a purpose and a place. Relaxation and time off gets the better of all of us. I’m at my worst when I have time off.”

* Sergio Aragonés draws regularly, basking in each day at the table: “Your only fear is that with age, your hand or brain will fail. So far, I’m 85 and I’m still okay: The brain is still thinking and the hand is not trembling.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/sports/julia-hawkins-running.html

Do you have any secrets to longevity and staying in shape?

To stay in shape, just keep active. Keep your weight down and exercise. Have a lot of passions, things that you are interested in. Keep interested in a lot of things to keep you busy and keep your mind busy.

And look for magic moments. That is something that I have done in my life — think of the things that are magic moments that happen to you, like sunsets and sunrises, rainbows, beautiful birds, music and people’s lovely comments to you. All of those are magic moments and they are free for all. Be sure to keep your eyes open for them.

Coming in for a landing

Today while PG had PT, I was getting in a little walk, just drifting along with the hovering hoverfly.

Not all the bird seed was eaten

 

My Day at Tabby's Place

Arrival:  1:30

AR2:  Lorna Doone.  She was friendly for several minutes, before turning away and eating, then lying down in her bed.

Feral Room:  2D.  He was lying on a cushion in a sunbeam, and I petted him a little before sitting on the floor.  He got up and came over to sit in my lap for quite a while.  Then he got up and went straight back to his sunny window cushion.

Suite A:  Sat on the floor near Cookie "Monster", and she only growled once while I was there.  

Suite B:  Carrot and Sketch both maneuvered for my lap, but the older, more experienced Carrot got there first.  

Suite C:  Five kittens, two of which enjoyed lap time with me.  Another jumped from the top of a cube onto my back while I was trying to get a good photo of another kitten.  

Lounge:  Good Quality Time with Fenek.

Departure:  4:00 

English!

Reading John Cassidy's column on the New Yorker site, I saw the following:

He "yousst" to go.  But then I read the full sentence:

Now I see he "youzzd" the law to go after mobsters.  Do persons learning English as a second language get told about that?  Same word, different pronunciation, depending on whether it's a verb?  

Speaking of which, here's a list, likely only partial, of words in English that are pronounced differently depending on their meaning:

To associate

An associate

To delegate

A delegate

To duplicate

A duplicate

To separate

A separate item

To appropriate

An appropriate reaction

Invalid

An invalid

His conduct

To conduct

A contract

To contract

A present

To present

A convict

To convict

A conflict

To conflict

To confine

The friendly confines

To combine

A combine

To close

Too close for comfort

To estimate

An estimate

I suspect

A suspect

A subject

To subject

To moderate

A moderate

To compact

A compact

To syndicate

A syndicate

To record a record album

My month

When I started "Before I Forget" during the COVID pandemic, I was searching for something to do in my spare time.  Visits to Tabby's Place were out for the duration, so no petting cats, no writing about cats, no taking pictures of cats, and no preparing photos of cats for publication.  That was a large part of life that was taken away.

Between social distancing, masks, and vaccination, I got through it without getting sick.  But mentally I was grasping for something interesting to do.  

Now in 2023, I've done something about it.  Priorities look like this:

(1) Tabby's Place

(2) French (audio and print)

(3) Drumming

So you know what I do under the first item.  The second, I re-subscribed to Le Monde and found a free text-to-speech app, so I have the option of reading and listening, or just reading, depending on the degree of difficulty of the material.  I'm also using Google Translate when I get stuck on a word or a phrase.  The latest Trump indictment is giving me articles to read; for every French article based in France, I'm reading 2 or 3 based in the U.S.

And #3:  Drumming?  Bet you didn't see drumming coming.  Neither did I.  

Here's how it started.  YouTube set me up with videos of a child named Yoyoka who has lots of fun on the drums.  I didn't know enough about it to tell, but commenters who said they had many years of experience proclaimed her to be gifted.  I didn't learn anything, but it was entertaining to watch her play along with a song I knew.

Then because I showed an interest in Yoyoka, I started getting recommendations for a German girl named Sina.  She played songs I remembered from the 70's and 80's, and in particular I found she had played along with Steely Dan's "Home at Last."  Her videos utilized multiple cameras with closer shots, so I could see more of what she was doing, and I watched it again and again.  Pretty soon, I could actually see some things that made me think, "I could do that."

One day, another Sina video appeared on the screen:  "Learn how to play drums in 10 minutes."   I added the video to Watch Later, but didn't watch it for some time.  I suppose I didn't believe her and was afraid of wasting time and being disappointed.  But now I know there's a pretty easy backbeat that is used, in one form or another, in plenty of popular songs.  That was in April.  Soon, I was comfortable tapping on a table, first with my fingers and then with pencils.  

A few weeks later, I decided to take another step, and bought a 2-pack of no-name drumsticks from Amazon for $6.  Using a spare chair, I made believe the seat was the snare and the padded part of the right arm rest was the hi-hat.  Sometimes I tapped my shoe against a foot on the table, producing a hollow metal sound, and if I was barefoot I just tapped my foot on the floor for the bass drum.  

Google gets data from its users, and it started to pile up frequent searches from me for drum information.  How to, what to, when to, and especially, drumming with as little noise as possible.  So many videos showed long-haired, bearded young men bashing away at 200 bpm, and that didn't interest me at all.  I like the timekeeping aspect of drumming, not the show-off element.  So I learned about practice pads and electronic drum sets that can let me learn (and make mistakes) in near-silence.  

I also confirmed my suspicions that the e-drums from manufacturers I've heard of (Roland, Yamaha) cost plenty.  I won't spend the money until I'm good enough to justify it.  It's the same pattern as other hobbies.  Start with a cheap set of golf clubs, and when I get good enough to justify it, then get a better set.  Don't start out with a $2,000 set of Taylor Mades or whatever and shoot 120 with them.   

Last night, I took another step, signing up for 90 days of online lessons from Drumeo.  I believe I'd gone about as far as I wanted to go with the original scattered approach, and picked a focused lesson plan, "30 Day Drummer."  That starts in a few days, which gives me time to get used to the Drumeo website and what it has to offer.  I'll probably have more to say here down the road.

Now I have three activities that I find interesting which don't depend on youth, which can be done after retirement, which don't require a lot of money, and which are more than simple pastimes, like Strat-O-Matic was.  (It really *is* just a dice game, after all, even if I didn't realize it for many years.)  

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Finally, in January I saw the family doctor and got a clean bill of health, with another appointment six months down the road, this time with a general blood test.  My blood sugar had been hovering near the magic number for years, and maybe I knew that this next test was going to put me over the top.  From January to early July, I ate and drank what I wanted, just as I had for decades before.  

The day finally came.  My weight was 253, my fasting blood sugar was 114, and my A1C was 6.8.  The advisories that had turned to alerts were now flashing bright red. Time to change or join the rest of my family with Type 2 diabetes.  The PA strongly recommended losing 10% of my body weight before the next appointment in 6 months.

The first thing I did was to re-start taking sertraline.  For some people it can lead to weight gain, but in my experience it acts as an appetite suppressant, or maybe more accurately, it helps relieve the stresses that had led to too much of the wrong kind of food.

The meds did their job, and I came up with a meal plan consisting of fewer carbs.  Salads with lean chicken, pieces of apple, tomato slices and carrot slices, all tossed with red wine vinaigrette with Dijon mustard, just like I had in France in 1982.  Homemade soups and chili with only a little burger meat.  Chicken scaloppini with a tomato-lemon sauce a la Pat. 

No cookies, next to no ice cream, and only tiny squares of the coffee cakes I made for PG.   Especially nearly no soda.  (Had pizza and Mexi-coke last Friday.)  Even without exercise due to the scorching summer heat, I lost weight quickly, reaching 239 and a fraction last week.  Now it's cooler and I can add walking to the plan.  225, here we come.

I had known all about this eat-less-exercise-more for years.  Only now, I didn't just have the want-to, I had the had-to.