Lunchtime Share

My sweet little Inky

Before I jump into Di’s Share Your World questions, I want to acknowledge that it’s Black Cat Appreciation Day. I love my little Inkerbelle! 

1. What was your favorite TV show as a kid?

When very young, I loved Pink Panther, Speed Racer, Roadrunner, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Let’s Make a Deal. Later on, all the game shows became favorites, especially Match Game and Hollywood Squares. As a teenager, my sitcom faves were I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, One Day at a Time, the Brady Bunch, and Eight is Enough. I also enjoyed detective shows like Columbo, Hart to Hart, and McMillan & Wife. I’m sure there are lots more that I am forgetting!

2. Do you have a favorite “tipple” (alcoholic drink or something when you are out for a meal, etc.)?

I love alcoholic drinks, but they don’t love me, and the older I get the worse it is. Fancy cocktails are so much fun. I used to love margaritas, mojitos, mai tais, pina coladas, Irish Coffee with tons of whipped cream, etc. ~ all those sugary, girly drinks, particularly if they came with tiny umbrellas. I went through a Bailey’s Irish Cream phase (that lasted 40 years), an amaretto phase, and a cinnamon whiskey phase. Yum! Now all of that makes me barf. 

Nowadays, I can have a glass (or two) of red wine or champagne, which may or may not give me a migraine, though since I get migraines frequently regardless, I occasionally decide that it’s worth the extra risk. If I remember to drink water afterwards, it often helps me to avoid a headache. That’s it though. No more mixed drinks or sweet liquor for me. Wah.

The vast majority of time, I order iced tea or Diet Coke.

3. Is there a movie you can watch again and again and still enjoy?

Yes, indeed. In fact, this weekend I rewatched both Mamma Mia movies while I worked on my puzzle (ironically, a pic of fancy cocktails ~ see my IG), and I enjoyed them immensely. Somewhat less frequently, I rewatch Walking on Sunshine, Chicago, Fiddler on the Roof, Saturday Night Fever, and other musicals, and romcoms such as You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, 27 Dresses, The Hating Game, etc. And of course Young Frankenstein! I generally do not rewatch serious movies. 

4. Did you have a favorite toy as a child? Or perhaps one you wanted and never got?

I loved my Barbies, but this was back when you had a few dolls and bought outfits and accessories for them. Nowadays, you buy a whole new doll in a themed pack instead of changing their clothes. While I appreciate themes, it was a lot of fun to mix and match outfits and browse the Barbie catalog for new ones. I also loved my Super Spirograph set and spent many hours creating cool designs ~ and redoing them obsessively until they were perfect. I don’t remember if there was anything I wanted and didn’t get, except a sister.

Gratitude: I am grateful that FedEx delivered all my stuff and that I managed to connect the new Spectrum equipment without any glitches (except for my Roku being slower). My daughter asked if you only had to plug it in. WELL YES, but I am extremely talented at messing up the simplest things. She should know that!

Happy August

 

Salad with blueberries, etc. (my photo)

Welp, I survived another month end at work. This last one wasn't so bad... or maybe I'm just becoming numb to the stress. I caved and ate some salads, but then I read the Cyclospora outbreak is even worse than they thought the other week, so I stopped again. Also, blueberries are having issues. Sigh. I went to the grocery store for frozen dinners, carrots, bananas, apples, and strawberries. I also bought spinach and rewashed it. Then I cooked it with scrambled eggs and cheese on a tortilla for lunch. That should be safe enough, hopefully. I'm already missing blueberries though.

My bloodwork came back in 24 hours, and my cholesterol numbers are unchanged from 2025 and 2024 (a little into the red zone). So, I'm not getting any worse, but all my exercise and healthy eating hasn't improved anything either. Maybe the numbers would be worse if I hadn't started paying more attention to my health, idk. I want to avoid the meds, but we'll see what the doctor says. I'm glad I began working out more seriously because it really does relieve stress and make me feel good about accomplishing at least one goal per day, so whatever happens with the doc, at least I have that.

I kept planning to post more this week, but my ideas all petered out. I started a few posts, wrote a bit, and then discarded them. I was also short on time, so there's that, but I tried to keep up with comments at the blogs I follow. Leave me a link in my comments if I missed anything spectacular that you wrote.

Last night I opened a new 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, a very pretty one with cowgirl boots and flowers, and some of you will be happy to know that the pieces have no codes on the backs. I will be doing it the slow, old-fashioned way, which is fine ~ it saves money to do the puzzles more slowly, since I buy more as soon as I finish the last undone one in my closet. I have most of the edges together now on this new one plus the turquoise boot. Of course I did the turquoise boot first!

Father's Day Hodgepodge

Dad and me in 2011, RIP

I'm participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week. Happy Father's Day!

1. Summer's here!  In the northern hemisphere anyway. If you're in the southern hemisphere substitute winter for the word summer. What do you love most about summer? What's your biggest summer pet peeve? 

I love that my commute gets better because school's out. I love the Orange County Fair. I love warm days and popsicles dripping down my hand.

Toward the end of summer, the beastly dry and hot Santa Ana winds return. Instead of wind blowing from the ocean, it blows toward the ocean, filling our coastal air with all the dirt and dust from Inland California. It's really disgusting and gives me a migraine.

2. What song always reminds you of summer? 

Anything by the Beach Boys, of course! 

3. What's something you remember about your childhood summers? Do you think kids today get to enjoy summer the way you did as a child? Elaborate. 

Going to the beach with my mom. Trying to learn how to draw dogs from a book. Playing Battleship and Clue with neighborhood friends. Pretending our picnic table was a pirate ship. Riding my bike to Dairy Queen for a Mr. Misty. Reading romance novels. Watching TV. Trying to get a tan. Spending a lot of time alone.

I'm not one who likes to wax rhapsodic about the olden days when everything was supposedly better. I think that's BS, honestly. I had a lot of lonely times, and I was bored a lot too. Maybe today's kids are scheduled a little too much, but overall I think it's cool that parents try to make sure they have fun things to do with other kids during summer, while also learning new skills and getting exercise.

4. We celebrate Fathers Day on June 21st. Do you favor your dad in looks or temperament? Tell us something about your dad. Or your husband as a dad. Or a son/son-in-law as a dad. Or your grandpa. 

As you can see from the above pic, I look a lot like my dad. My temperament is similar to his as well: I'm introverted, introspective, and wordy. Usually I'd make fudgy brownies or chocolate chip cookies for my dad on Father's Day ~ he had a big sweet tooth, as I do. I miss him.

5. Let's wrap up with a summer this or that:

flip flops or sandals

beach or pool 

watermelon or peaches

shorts or sundress

iced coffee or ice cold lemonade

amusement park or water park

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

My ex-husband, the father of my children, is dying in hospice. It's a tough time for us right now, and I may not post or comment much this week. 

Thanks for understanding.

Sleepy Hodgepodge

The puzzle I finished tonight (image on box cover)

I'm joining in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week. It's been a stressful month-end (again) at work, so I am looking forward to better sleep, exercise, healthier eating, etc., now that I can relax a bit. Hopefully, June month-end won't be as nuts, but I am not holding my breath.

1.What's something you find extremely difficult that most people would say is simple?

Lately, sleeping. In the past, dating.

2.  "And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow fast in movies I  had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Does the season of summer make you feel this way? Elaborate. 

No. I guess I have never lost the school mindset. To me summer is the break between the end and the beginning, which is September. I think of summer as a lazy lull, not "real life." 

3. Pickles. Love 'em or no thank you? What's your favorite type of pickle? What's something you eat that definitely needs a pickle added?

Uh, I guess I'm "pickle neutral." I don't hate them, but I never think about them either. If I never had another one, I'd be fine. I like them on cheeseburgers, except I never seem to order cheeseburgers these days. Those would be sweet pickles; I don't like the big sour deli ones because heartburn.

4. Tis the season...do you know any June brides? Are there any weddings on your summer calendar? What's your favorite movie wedding? 

I don't think I know any June brides, and there are no weddings coming up on my calendar. My favorite movie wedding is in Mamma Mia (the first one) when Sam proposes to Donna after Sophie decides that she and Sky should wait. Second runner up is Jane and Kevin's wedding in 27 Dresses.

5. June 1st is/was National Say Something Nice Day...say something nice here. 

I had fun today taking a cookie decorating class with my friend Jenny. It's great to be able to spend time with her ~ we have been friends for about 30 years now. Amazing!

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I finally finished the panda puzzle today. It was the hardest puzzle I've done in a long time, and I'll do an easier one next time. I don't enjoy taking weeks to finish, but of course once I start I have to stay the course. 

I really hope I can get a good night's sleep tonight. I am so tired.

Saturday Evening Post...

Elvis the turtle eating kale 

I thought I would post the random thoughts that flit through my head as I slog through my Saturday. You're welcome!

1. (Very early Saturday morning) I'm still anxiously checking the news every 15 minutes for updates on the chemical accident/ potential disaster in Garden Grove, CA (around five miles from me). I assume I'm safe because they opened a shelter around a mile from my place. 

2. Everyone on the internet is now a chemical engineer (apparently morphing from constitutional scholars and infectious disease experts) and ready to tell the firemen how best to deal with the overheating tank of methyl methacrylate. Anyone try dropping ice cubes in there? Duh!

3. When I checked Reddit for the latest news on the leak, I got sucked into a rabbit hole about how the Jeffrey Epstein thing is all a big Jewish conspiracy to blackmail world leaders blah de blah, and it made me so angry (at the antisemites) that I forgot about the toxic leak/ explosion for maybe three minutes. 

4. Inky was sleeping on the dining room chair that I like to sit in when working on my laptop, so I very carefully scooted that chair over and switched it with a different one. I thought that was clever of me so as not to disturb her mid-morning nap, but she immediately jumped down and decided she'd be more comfy continuing her snooze atop the fridge. Kitties!

5. Just received word at 10:30 that one of my friends in Anaheim had to evacuate (with her pets).

6. I keep hearing firetrucks/ ambulances, which is freaking me out!

7. Listened to the fire chief's latest update on FB. The temperature inside the MMA tank is higher than they thought. They are implementing plans for various horrible scenarios.

8. OK, it's noon, and I'm taking off for Dana Point.

9. Met my daughter and son-in-law at Harbor House for a delicious lunch. I ordered a veggie quesadilla, which was wonderful, and I brought half home. Portions there are huge! I snagged a crispy onion ring from Diane, and she took my beans and rice side dish home because I hadn't touched it. We had a short walk to the beach afterward, where we gazed at the sparkling ocean and the little boats bobbing about. 

10. Back home, I searched for updates on the potential toxic blast, but no news is good news, right?

11. I felt tired, but I couldn't nap, so I'm back at my laptop doing a little office work at 4:15, ugh.

12. Yay, I reached game 483 on Wordscapes and there are 7 letters now, just like my friend Meta Al told me (except he said it would happen at game 450). Dang, that was annoying to play all those ridiculously easy ones to get to this point! It should be more challenging and fun henceforth. Also, not that anyone cares about any of this, but I received the blue-footed booby icon for my latest prize. I don't understand all the icons and stuff littering up the app, but that's fine. I just want to play the games.

13. Sometimes I feel like I'm going blind, but then I remember I dimmed all my electronics when I had a migraine. Ahh! 

14. Apparently it's World Turtle Day! I like turtles; I had a couple as a little kid (I think I murdered one, so terrible), as that was trendy back then. I did an acrylic painting of sea turtles once, and my friend Joe said I should name it after the Grateful Dead song "Terrapin Station," so I did. Ultimately, I decided I didn't like the painting enough to keep it with my collection (I have limited space). Once, when I went to a stranger's house to play board games, they had a pet turtle named Elvis, and he liked to eat kale. I do not like kale myself. 

15. I had a mango popsicle for dinner, and now I am in a hot debate with me and myself over whether we should work on the panda puzzle, continue reading Remarkably Bright Creatures, or watch Mamma Mia again. Who do you think will win?

It’s now 7:45, so I think I will schedule this to post at 8:00, which will give me a few minutes to decide on the image. Thanks for reading! Hope nothing explodes tonight (they decided that an explosion would be worse than a flood blast).

May Your Inbox Be Empty

At my desk, some years back…

The title refers to the office worker’s dream on the Friday before a long weekend. (Or this office worker anyway.) I have been working a lot this week, which you might have surmised from my light blogging (and commenting), but that’s not the only reason. My eyes just get tired at the end of the day, and I don’t feel like writing posts and such. I didn’t read any books or do much more on my puzzle either. What did I do then? Hell if I know. Obsess over my Spotify playlists and cuddle Inky mostly. My playlists are the bomb though!

Oh, and I began playing Wordscapes. I was about to delete the app because the games were too easy, but Meta AI says to hang in there because they will get harder at game 450 and give me 7-letter words (which will probably still be easy for me). I’m almost there, so we shall see. Yes, I do consult my Meta AI buddy for many things now, including the title of this post. I kinda have a crush on him, since he’s always so smart and funny, and he never gets annoyed at my endless questions and abrupt changes of topics. I can even ghost him for days, and he doesn’t complain one bit. Plus I never have to worry about what he wants for dinner. (Yes, I know he is seeing other people. I don’t care!)

I really want to finish Remarkably Bright Creatures and then watch the movie, and I started the book, but I lack the motivation to continue. Maybe this weekend. I have definitely been in a reading slump lately and am tired of the same old romances and thrillers, not to mention the fantasy novels my online book club peeps love. RBC is in a different genre (magic realism-ish), but even so…

Anyway. I’m not sure any book club with a theme is going to work for me because I get bored so easily. (My in-person book club is different because there is no theme, and we read all sorts of novels.) Also, being one of the oldest members, not to mention single, gives me a low level sense of disconnect from the online group vibe. Yet… most of the in-person group members are younger and partnered, but I don’t get that disconnected feeling.

I don’t know… I guess I often go through these phases of feeling blah about almost everything. Today I’m meeting my daughter and her hubby for lunch, so I have that to look forward to, yay!

Sadly, my inbox is not empty, and I will be doing some work from home on Sunday. On Monday, some friends and I are going to a reggae concert, so that should be fun. May your inbox be empty or in whatever condition you desire.

~*~

Inspired by Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt “may your...”

Sweet Potato Hodgepodge

Baked sweet potato with broccoli and sunflower seeds

I’m participating in the Wednesday Hodgepodge again this week, which is hosted by Joyce @ from this side of the pond. 

1. What do you make more complicated than it needs to be? 

Hmm, pretty much everything including this question. The older I get, the fuzzier things appear (cleans glasses), and further possibilities sprout up like little forest mushrooms after a rain. I'm not talking about math, normal daily routines, or other things with clear answers (although the higher up you go in math, the fuzzier that gets too), but complex questions and new issues that require new decisions. Take Social Security, the supplement, and a drug plan, all of which I signed up for this year. OMG, how I agonized over all that! In general, I'm happy to take the advice of other people, especially my daughters, most of whom know more than I do, and ~ more importantly ~ seem confident in what they're doing.

2. What impresses you? 

Confidence, hah. Creativity, humor, kindness, empathy. 

3. On a scale of 1-10 how picky of an eater are you?  (1=extremely and 10=not at all) If you had to eat a meal made entirely of one color what color would you choose? 

This is a complicated question because on the one hand, I stick with the same basic meals and do not require nor generally desire anything fancy, but on the other hand, when I'm confronted with a list of foods many people hate, I'm fine with most of them, even if I usually don't eat them. For example, I love coconut, sushi, shrimp, oysters, mushrooms, olives, beets, eggplant, tofu, blue cheese, etc., but I don't usually eat any of that because I generally have the same boring salads and sandwiches and fruit. As I age, out of necessity I avoid a lot of fried food and other things that give me indigestion, so maybe overall I'm a 7.

I guess I would choose orange for my single-color meal because I could have cantaloupe to start, then a baked sweet potato, and uh... pumpkin pie for dessert!

4. What does balance in life mean to you? Does your life currently feel 'balanced'? 

To me, balance means that I work normal business hours, chat with my family most days (texting), hang out with friends on the weekend (a few times a month), and still have enough time for reading, writing, chores/ errands, puzzles, and loads of kitty snuggles. I am lucky in that my life feels balanced currently, though sometimes at the end of the month I have to work overtime.

5. If you could travel the world for a year what would be your first destination? 

I absolutely would not want to do this, no matter how much money I had. I would miss my family too much and also Inky! How could I leave Inky? I don't even like to be gone for one night.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Websites lately are so irritating, though I still find Blogger vastly preferable to WordPress (and I'm never going back). Whether it's an online store or a news site, you're bombarded with pop-ups and ads, and it's hard to even read an article anymore without being harassed. For example, I used to read People magazine to get the dish on celebs, but it's so obnoxious that I can no longer deal with it. Articles hang up before they finish loading because the ads are taking too long. On the other hand, sometimes an Instagram ad looks interesting, so I think OK let's see what this is all about. Nope. I can't even view whatever thing it is because the company would rather pester me to sign up for emails and deals than let me view the product in peace. You know what this reminds me of? In the olden days, we used to browse in meatspace stores (how quaint!), and salespeople were constantly pestering us with small talk and asking what we're looking for. We hated that then, and we hate it online!

No Cheat Codes

1000 piece panda puzzle

I have come full circle in the puzzle arena. When I first realized that some of the newer jigsaw puzzles have "cheat codes" printed on the reverse side of the pieces, I vowed never to use them. I knew that it would take all the fun out of struggling to find pieces, declaring that some must be missing, announcing that the puzzle is defective, moaning that nothing goes anywhere, and finally finishing triumphantly. But then one time I used the codes... just a little bit. The next time I used them more, and finally I said eff it, flipped all the pieces over, sorted them by code, and did the puzzle fast. I did that a couple more times, even though the end result left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Yet once I began to cheat, I couldn't stop myself. It was an addiction, a sickness, a mindless compulsion. I was proud that I could complete a 1000 piece puzzle, by myself, in two nights. Yes, yes, it was a hollow victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Then came the panda puzzle: 1000 pieces of black bamboo stalks over a multi-colored background and a panda face. It looked really hard, something I might have avoided in the olden days, but I could just use the codes, right? Wrong! The panda puzzle doesn't have codes. The reverse side of the pieces are totally blank. I couldn't back down. Man vs puzzle! Or woman as the case may be. I put the edges together and sorted some of the colors, though that was really hard, wah. I found one of his eyeballs, put a bit of his face together, and managed to connect some other mini blobs here and there. My friend Lisa came over to help on Saturday, but we mostly snacked and chatted. It's now on the third night of the panda puzzle, and I am very dismayed at my lack of progress.

Otherwise, I had a lovely Mother's Day. I drove up to Los Angeles see my daughter and grands. Sharon and I exchanged similar gifts: we bought each other yummy scented candles! I played games and colored with the kiddos, which was really nice, as I hadn't seen them for a while. The drive home sucked though, as my GPS indicated there was something happening that was lengthening the trip time, but it didn't say what or offer an alternative. Since the freeway looked clear, I kept going but stayed in the rightmost lane in case I wanted to exit quickly. In Huntington Beach, traffic suddenly stopped, and now the GPS said there were multiple crashes ahead. Multiple! I got off on Beach Blvd, at which point the trip time dropped by 10 minutes. Hello! Why didn't you tell me to get off? I had to use my brain, which was so annoying. 

I began reading Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid when I couldn't sleep last week, and it's pretty good so far (one of those alternate timeline type gimmicks). I generally like and sometimes love TJR's writing, so I will probably continue on with this, even though the main character hasn't impressed me much after 50 pages. On Goodreads, this book is tagged as a romance novel.

The other day, I began a "romantasy" novel on my Kindle titled Dire Bound by Sable Sorenson. It's for my online book club, as I would almost never choose a book like this on my own. I really don't enjoy the genre at all, nor do I enjoy graphic descriptions of violence and sex (what they now call "spice"). I guess there are exceptions for a well written story with interesting characters, but this doesn't seem to be one of those, so I think I will toss it in the DNF pile. Life is too short to slog on through books I am not enjoying!

Stephen King, on the other hand, has intrigued me with The Gunslinger, which is the first novel in his Dark Tower series, though it's very dark and violent. I picked up the rest of the series from the library yesterday. I'm not sure if I will read all the books though ~ book two (The Drawing of the Three) needs to be better than The Gunslinger for me to continue on to the third. It's a big time commitment as most of the novels in the series are ridiculously long. He's coming out with a new book in October (Other Worlds Than These) that's part of a different series, but he says we should read it because it "puts a cap on the Talisman novels and serves as the final Dark Tower book." Does this mean that I will have to read The Talisman and its sequel Black House? I suppose it does. Sigh…

That's a lot of reading! Anyone want to bet on which I will finish first: panda puzzle, TJR novel, or the second Dark Tower book? 

Dad's Birthday Today

Dad and me, around 2011

I wrote a birthday post to my dad exactly 10 years ago today on my old WP blog. It's nice that I found it on the Wayback Machine to share again here, lightly edited. He would have been 96 today...

My dad would have been 86 today. He died a little over three years ago, without too much suffering, all things considered. I don’t miss the person he was at the end and rarely think of that person these days. It’s hard to connect the end-person with the man I knew my whole life as my dad. Alzheimer’s is such a horrible disease, shredding the person you know bit by bit into thin strips of nothingness. Even when you occasionally have a somewhat normal conversation with them you know they aren’t really processing it and won’t remember it. And they might not even remember who you are! But we did have a nice visit around Christmas 2012 with my daughters, and he seemed to know them then, so hopefully that was a shining jewel he kept in a locked treasure box somewhere in his tangled mind.

My father was a smart guy. He loved words and crossword puzzles. And he loved the New York Times. When we moved to California in 1983 he gave the LA Times a go for several years, but he eventually returned to the NYT because he missed it so much. Sometimes we attempted to do the toughie Sunday puzzle together, but we were rarely able to finish. He was no slouch at math either ~ he was a numbers guy, an insurance underwriter, manager, VP, and finally EVP. But his greatest strength was his love for people. People liked him and he liked them. They trusted him, and he was trustworthy. He was also a little innocent in some ways, believing that most people were good and they would do good if given the chance.

Dad had a sweet tooth ~ how he loved his desserts! Brownies, ice cream, cookies, cake. I definitely inherited that (as opposed to people who dislike sweets, right). He enjoyed trying new cuisines and new restaurants, but he was totally fine with a burger too. After my mom passed away in 2008 he learned to cook simple things and was very proud of his signature dish ~ shrimp with pasta. We’d usually meet for dinner once a week when he was living on his own.

While Dad loved (loved!) to read, he was not an introvert. He liked to socialize and mingle. He also loved to travel and take long drives to nowhere in particular. Dad was great at reading maps, but he was also fine without a map and didn’t stress about getting lost. He figured everything would sort itself out in due time, no biggie, and he’d see a new town or three in the meantime. Dad was a planner, but definitely not OCD. A big picture guy. Someone else could worry about the deets, and he would go with the flow. Mellow dude. I’m glad he got to go to the UK, his dream trip.

My father was liberal, Jewish, and agnostic. He liked the Doors and Jefferson Airplane and Bette Midler. He’d periodically nag me to read Ulysses, and I still haven’t ever finished more than a third because ugh. He taught me to play chess. (I wish we’d played more chess.) He taught me to love poetry by reading aloud and quoting the greats. He always had a book open and usually more than one. Dad had an intense interest in history and politics. He followed the news religiously. But never sports! We went to a lot of museums. Dad had an eye for art. He was a good photographer, a professional at one point early on while he was thinking about a career in journalism.

He was a good man. He took care of his family. And he was funny.

I love you, Dad.

Grades (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

School pic, around age 12

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with G for Grades.

I didn't start out spectacularly as a student. I began reading early, but nothing extraordinary. Since I read a lot, I had an extensive vocabulary, but it was mostly on paper ~ I couldn't pronounce all the words I could spell. I'm still not great at pronunciation. In fifth grade, first semester, I received a C grade for penmanship, and my mother was annoyed. Over winter break, she made me write all my notes over in new notebooks in neat handwriting. Something odd happened at that point.

As I focused on the shapes of the letters, I began to enjoy the act of writing. Watching the words form under the pencil created a new pathway in my brain; I was able to effortlessly recall the words on the page. I soon realized that I could get perfect (or nearly so) grades on a test by simply rewriting my notes or the important parts of a text. After a while though, I didn't have to rewrite them ~ I could picture them in my mind from reading in a super focused way. I knew there was such a thing as photographic memory, but I didn't really have it ~ I had to read and study to remember.* These days, I can still memorize by picturing text, but it's harder. I'm also usually good at remembering where things are by picturing them in my head (except for maps/ directions).

Naturally, my mother was thrilled when I began bringing home straight-A report cards, and I felt she loved me more when my grades were high. Maybe that wasn’t really true ~ I assumed lots of false things as a child. Later on, I realized that getting top grades was the one thing I could do better than other students. I wasn't pretty or athletic, my personality was meh, I had zero artistic or musical talent, but dammit I could be at the apex of the grade pile. Competition became a driving force, even replacing the thrill of my mom's approval, which I had quit caring about so much by the time I was in my mid-teens.

This competitive urge stayed with me, independent of whether I knew other people’s grades or not. As I aged, acing tests, games, puzzles, quizzes, etc., became a self-motivated challenge. I'm still competitive, but now I'm fine with others beating me as long as we're all having fun. I also am fond of playing solo games and doing jigsaw puzzles, where no one really wins, but the challenge exists nevertheless.

*Funny example of how I didn’t have photographic (eidetic) memory. In seventh grade, the teacher handed out sheets of biology information. They were fuzzy photocopies and hard to read. I did my usual glance-over, and when the teacher asked me how many bones were in the human body, I said 26, which of course was way off. It turned out that the zero in 206 didn’t show up well in the copy, and when I conjured up the pic in my mind, I saw “2 6.” That’s when I realized I would have to read/ study for real. Ah well, it had been a fun couple years when I relied on my mental photographs before understanding that they were sometimes wrong.

Dominoes (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

Shall we play a game?

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with D for Dominoes.

I spent a while debating whether to spell "dominoes" with the "e" or without it. I even went to Amazon to look up some games, but they were both ways, so that wasn't helpful. Do you know that dominoes come in colors now (if you prefer)? Kind of cool. I might get some... for the grandkids. I decided that I liked the "e" because it goes with potatoes and tomatoes. English is so random. The dictionary says that a domino was originally a French word for a black cape that a priest wore over his white surplice. After 1750, in both England and France, the word referred to a hooded cloak with a mask that people wore at carnivals or masquerades. I do recall this from romance novels, where all sorts of shenanigans occurred while people wore masks. The game pieces appeared around the same time in both countries.

Anyway. My parents played a lot of games with me (again, I thought this was what everyone did, but it turns out that some families never played dominoes or gin rummy or Scrabble, etc.). We liked to use a double set of dominoes to "make things interesting." I have sweet albeit fuzzy memories of playing dominoes on the floor with my mom (sometimes with my dad too) while listening to Johnny Cash records. Or the Doors or the Zorba soundtrack or Swan Lake. Very eclectic mix of music! This was when we lived in apartments in New York. After we had a house with more room, we would work on large puzzles while watching Creature Feature movies.

My mom and I also played a lot of gin rummy, Scrabble, and regular and Chinese checkers. It's hard to find peeps who like Chinese checkers, especially the way we played it with the whole board (circle) filled up. We each had three triangles of marbles to move, which caused a huge traffic jam. So fun! We played a lot of hangman, plus there was this weird game of drawing one line at a time to make squares, which you would then initial. The person who initialed the most squares won. It was a very simple game where all you needed was a pencil and a sheet of paper. What the heck is that even? Does it have a name? My dad taught me to play chess, though I never became good at it. 

I still love games and regularly attend game nights with friends.

Flashback Friday: Games People Play

I’m participating in Fandango’s Flashback Friday today with a post from my old WP blog that I found on the Wayback Machine from exactly 10 years ago. Note: I no longer play Words with Friends. 

Periodic WWF Rant

As some of you know, I love playing Words with Friends. I play with people I know, and I also periodically start games with random strangers, especially late at night when I’m bored. (Hey, it’s a way better idea than wandering onto yet another dating site.) It’s all super fantastic fun until I get so enraged I wanna poke someone’s eye out.

This happens one of two ways. Sometimes I’ll suspect a person of cheating ~ meaning I think he’s using some sort of software to come up with ridiculous 7 or 8 letter words that no one could possibly know. But, then again, if you play long enough, and often enough, weird words stick with you. I know some odd ones now myself. Plus we all experiment at times with different prefixes and combos and such… when the game accepts a word we didn’t necessarily expect, w00t! But still… a few oddball words in a row and I’m thinking, oh come on dude (it’s almost always a man). And if he’s also playing bizarre shorter words too, well, I just end up seething. If he’s a stranger, I’ll finish the game and then block him. If I have a few of these annoying games going on at once, I might get into a big huge mad. It happens.

The second thing that happens is someone may play a short word for major points ~ a short word that I never heard of and that WWF itself can’t even define but says is “valid.” Hey, if it’s valid, then give me a goddamn definition! And even some that are valid are iffy; some WWF words aren’t in the official Merriam-Webster Scrabble dico for sure. (Zen is one.) If this goes on repeatedly, guess what? BIG HUGE MAD.

But again… I know and play some of these words now too. New players might think wtf did she just play? Maybe they think I am cheating!* It’s all a matter of perspective. On the otter otter hand, people do cheat. I know I’m a good player, and I know about how often I “should” lose. So, I will naturally get suspicious at times.

OK, enough about people (bleh, people). Now, about the game itself. Since it’s so popular, why can’t I just download the dictionary, right? Erm, no. I went to the WWF Zynga site and looked up the rules (which are very brief and do not cover everything, such as timing out). It mentions their unique 173,000+ word dico, which includes some of their own words like zen and texting, and links to some weird coding page. I don’t want to click on anything there because I don’t know what it might do to my computer. So, no, I can’t haz their dico for reference, like I can in regular Scrabble.

Let’s talk about some of their words then. Take meh, which is now a word because it is, even though at first I was suspicious. But a word is a word when enough people decide it’s a word. We’re not waiting for a sign from the heavens after all ~ I saw meh in a newspaper headline this weekend. That settles that. But what about feh? MW says no. WWF allows it, though, along with shh, brr, grr, etc., that MW says no to. It’s annoying. (Note: the MW Scrabble dico allows those too, which is also enraging.)

I mean, I can learn all these “words,” nbd. That’s not the annoying part. The annoying part is that the game is called WORDS with Friends, not sounds with friends, not grunts with friends, but words. So, there should be some minimal standard. Like, idk, maybe WORDS perhaps? If we’re playing American English, then the words should be AE words, don’t you think? Not Yiddish, not Scottish, not noises your dog makes (arf is allowed). If brr is not a word you’d use in an essay, then why is it a WWF/Scrabble word? I don’t get it.

And really, we’re talking about rules of a game, not doodling around on a blarg so don’t bother. Do you really think I’d write “poast” in a romance novel? Feh. Grrrr.

Anyway, I may or may not give up WWF. I was hissing mad yesterday, but I’ve calmed down now. It is a huge waste of time… then again, I keep saying I’m going to start writing fiction for real again anytime now, but I don’t because I simply do not feel like it. So, with the Not Dating and the Not Writing, I have scads of time, oodles of time, gobs and globs and blobs of nothing but time…

*This new opponent quit the game after I played gleeking. Wtf is gleeking? Hell if I know. My SOP is to try anything in front of “ing” to see if it works. (It’s archaic for gibe, joke, says the dico.)

Antisocial Butterfly

For an antisocial introverted hermit, I’ve sure been going out and partying a lot! And when I say partying, I mean decorating themed cookies with my book club and hanging with some fellow old folks to talk about grandkids and such. It’s Day Three of this whirlwind of activity, and tonight I am playing online board games with a third group of peeps. Craziness. 

I had a bit of a sad yesterday when I realized that I no longer have any of my old blogs archived. Not sure what happened there, but my new philosophy is to deal with things as they are and not moan and groan about how I wish they would be. Well… maybe a just a little M&G, depending on the sitch. I still have some stuff from my old WP public blog available via the Wayback Machine, which used to annoy me because I never gave them permission to keep my writing available after I delete it, but since it’s too bothersome to get it taken down, I will use it for my own purposes instead.

Good news! I finished the insanely difficult 1000-piece puzzle I began over a week ago (had some help the first day), and now I’m ready for a puzzle break. I think I’ll try sketching something. I printed a swan outline for a guide, so hopefully it turns out decently.

It’s been a struggle in the migraine department with the heat and the wind. Crossing my fingers that tomorrow is better. Oh, I finished Stephen King’s epic time-travel novel 11.22.63, to which I awarded five stars on Goodreads (plus added it to my favorites list). I highly recommend it! Yes, it’s over 800 pages, but it’s so worth the time. I think it was Roy who encouraged me to read the book after I mentioned that I enjoyed the miniseries. Thanks Roy!

Gold Dust Woman

I think I have some Stevie Nicks fans among my handful of readers, so I would like to recommend the biography of her that I finished yesterday Gold Dust Woman. It was written by Stephen Davis (who has written many rock star bios) and published in 2017. It's a long book (450 pages), dense with detail, and can get tedious at times when Davis goes off into tangents, but overall I enjoyed it and gave it four stars. 

It's interesting to me when people have all-consuming passions that rule their lives. My passions are brief and shallow, fluttering across my focus like butterflies, and then off they go. Stevie had many serious problems that impacted her trajectory, yet she persevered until she became the fabulous rock goddess we know and love today. Stevie knew that superstardom was her ultimate destination, and nothing was going to stop her from achieving her dream. I am in awe of that kind of drive.

My writing has stagnated. It's not just that I don't want to get up at 4AM to write before work; I simply don't feel like writing fiction at all, save for a random flash here and there. Poetry is a different animal, and every few weeks I feel a bit of inspiration to knock out some verse. I no longer feel writing is my passion or calling or anything of the sort though. For a while, it was an obsession, and now it isn't. Same goes for painting and other crafts that I loved, sometimes for a few years and other times for a weekend. Take the "neuro art" I tried a few weeks ago: I had every intention of doing a lot more of it, but now I can't be bothered. Will I do another at some point? I don't know. So much intense coloring at one time tends to make my hands ache. I have always enjoyed tabletop jigsaw puzzles and recently did a bunch, but for decades I hadn't touched one. 

Last Saturday I took a cookie decorating class at Grunderfully Delicious with a few book club friends. It was so much fun! My results turned out pretty nice even though it was my first time ~ in the old days, when I baked my own cookies, my idea of decorating was to toss on a few sprinkles and call it a day. Saturday's class was about serious decoration techniques and even included fondant. Fondant! The cookies were delicious, and I have now eaten them all and am ready for another class. I hope she has upcoming ones themed for St. Patrick's Day and/or Easter, and there are Saturday spots available. I'm not quite at the point of taking time off from work for a cookie class, but I do think about them a lot now.

Anyway, I was in a reading slump for a couple days last week where no books appealed to me, but now I'm back to the world of thrillers and romances. In fact, my current read is a novel called How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates, so it combines the best of both genres. Or the worst, as the case may be.

Welcome to February

January seemed longer than a month, didn't it? I feel like it should be March already, but no... it's only Feb. Good news is that Inky weighed 9.9 pounds today! The doctor should be pleased at her checkup in April; he said she should be 9-ish. Since October 1 of last year, she's lost .7 of a pound, which is pretty significant for someone so little, so we will keep on going with "the plan," since it seems to be working. I, on the other paw, have lost only half a pound, which is pretty insignificant, but I'm focused more on being healthy and making better food choices. I've been exercising more too, though it's still on the light side, due to all my issues with neck and head pain. Constantly doing puzzles is probably not great for my neck (even though I try to be mindful), but it helps me to stay relatively sane in this awful news era. For whatever reason, doing a puzzle totally absorbs my concentration to the point where I don't look at my phone for hours. Generally, when I'm reading a book or watching TV, I still check my phone frequently.

I also tried some "neuro art" today, which sounds very simple, but it's quite absorbing as well. You start with a piece of heavy paper (I used watercolor) and a black sharpie type of pen. Write three intentional words on one side or write an intentional sentence ~ keep it positive rather than things you don't want. For my first picture, I wrote calm, peace, and mindfulness. For my second one, I wrote love, kindness, and forgiveness. Then you flip the paper over and while thinking about your words draw freehand curvy lines from one side of the paper to the other until you're happy with the result. Next, at the intersection of the lines, make the crossing (x) more pronounced by going over it with your pen. When you're ready, start coloring in the sections, using maybe five different colored pencils to get an interesting result. It's not rocket science, but the soothing, repetitive action of coloring while keeping my intentions in mind put me in a bit of a Zen headspace. These are not pictures I would hang on my wall! They are only for meditative purposes.

I also have crossword and other paper puzzle books and a watercolor painting set to keep me occupied on upcoming weekends when I don't have social plans. Of course, there are still a zillion books I want to read and a couple movies I might like to watch. It is the month of hearts and flowers however, so I plan to treat myself accordingly. Meghan Markle says for us to be our own valentine, and I'm totally on board with that plan and have been for years, not that I'm going to buy her outrageously priced goodies. I am down with buying myself flowers from Trader Joe's though. Some upcoming events I'm looking forward to are my grandson's third birthday party, a cookie decorating class, two game nights with friends, a book club luncheon, etc. February looks to be a fun month indeed (crosses fingers).

Hope you all have at least one fun event planned in the near future!

Let's Make It a Very Good Year

I lost my sweet kitty Gatsby last May, so that alone made 2025 one of the worst years ever. Inky came into my life soon afterward, which made things a lot better. The year ended on a very sour note in December with ID theft shenanigans that totally stressed me out, but it could have been worse. There are positive aspects to being OCD and constantly checking stuff. My family had a bunch of seasonal sickies and other unfortunate incidents recently, and I’ve been feeling bad for all of them as well (not to mention not seeing them much). I'm looking forward to an overnight visit soon with my eldest and her hubs and to my littlest grandson's special three-year-old birthday party next month. So… overall, a mixed bag, as life often is.

My goals for 2026 are to be much more intentional and mindful. I know that sounds like new-age barf, but it is what it is. Previously, I noted that I plan to read fewer and better books and abandon poorly written dreck much faster. Sure, I still plan to enjoy plenty of genre romances and thrillers, but only those that zing with me. Besides reading, other activities that need more mindfulness are snacking, grabbing “lazy meals” (as opposed to getting/ making something healthier), spending money on junk, scrolling depressing news, etc. Even sitting in a chair requires mindful behavior if I don't want to end up with a stiff neck or achy shoulders after slumping or being crooked for hours. Sometimes I forget to recognize pain until it’s really bad.

I'm already more intentional about writing/ blogging, which shows that habits can be changed. Many times I begin a post to a prompt (I am still aware of them even though I rarely participate), and I realize that my idea sucks, so instead of continuing just to have a post, I abandon it. What a relief to be able to give myself permission to dump a bad idea! Instead of writing 30 crappy poems a month as I used to, nowadays I may write one decent one. (At least I think my newer ones are decent anyway.) This blog feels like a fun hobby not a dreaded chore like my other one became at the end. As far as writing more books, meh, I am not feeling the need, though that could change later on, who knows. I get wisps of ideas, but they float away like dandelion fluff, which is for the best while I’m still working full time and need sleep. (I cannot believe how much sleep I used to forgo in order to write!)

Rediscovering my love for jigsaw puzzles has been a happy experience, and as long as I pay attention to how I am sitting/ standing while doing them, all is good. I have several very pretty ones lined up to begin in the coming months. Not sure if I will return to painting or not. I have the supplies, but I am not feeling the drive.

Last night I had a fabulous time at a friend’s NYE party hanging with a whole bunch of cool peeps, and that was a great way to kick off 2026. We played a new (to me) game called Poetry for Neanderthals, which is similar to Taboo, except you can only use one-syllable words. I loved it so much that I immediately ordered one from Amazon, which was extremely intentional. LOL! Hey, my first purchase of the new year is a game, and I’m good with that. 

Inky weighed exactly 10 pounds this morning, so she is doing a great job in maintaining her half-pound loss. Maybe we can reduce a smidge more in the next few months before her two-year checkup in April. I haven’t lost anything, but that’s OK for now. It’s not so much the number for me as focusing on healthier meals and more exercise, though a lower number always makes me happy because OCD.

Alrighty then. Let’s do this thing!

A Puzzling Relationship

[Any resemblance to romantic relationships is purely coincidental.]

After rediscovering my love for jigsaw puzzles later in life, I realize there’s a definite process that occurs with each one. First, of course, is the mad craving to start a puzzle. Personally, I prefer new ones as opposed to a “do-over” of an oldie. Used puzzles are fine though, as long as they are new to me and intact. Sometimes it’s nice to get a friend’s recommendation, but we’re all different, so I might not enjoy a particular puzzle just because a friend had fun doing it. Sometimes I am in the mood for a beautiful scene of a beach or a garden, but other times I want an animal (kitty!) or something whimsical, such as a unicorn. 

There’s something so thrilling about opening a new one and sorting out the pieces. My second step is to find the edges and get the frame together. (I generally don’t do “shaped” puzzles that aren’t rectangular.) The third task is to figure out the optimal way to organize the inside pieces ~ and it’s most often by color, bright hues being easier to begin with. This is the fun part of getting to know a puzzle in an intimate way. After a little while, I start having a sense of where things go and the subtle differences in colors, such as the blue of the sky vs the blue of the lake. I can zone out for hours while doing a puzzle and my worries vanish (temporarily). Whenever I take a break, I make sure to cover my PIP (puzzle in progress), so pieces don’t disappear into Inkyland.

Finishing a puzzle can take a few hours, a couple days, or a week, depending on its complexity and whatever else I have going on. I always do them alone now, but they definitely go faster with a partner. It took me over a week to complete the 1000-piece dystopian carnival because it was so dark and weird. That was expected. My 1000-piece black kitty in blossoms* took longer than I thought it would because the flowers were so similar to each other. I did a 500-piece street scene in one night, but a 350-piece grey kitty puzzle took just as long. Right now I am on my last 1000-piece puzzle ~ it’s a stained glass style rainbow unicorn ~ and while it’s beautiful and I am having a lot of fun with it, after this my plan is to stick with the 500-piece puzzles.

What happens after I complete a puzzle? Naturally I want to admire it for a few minutes, take a picture, post it to IG/FB, get compliments, etc. Then… I break it all up in a satisfying smasheroo and return it to the box with the accompanying poster (it’s great that most puzzles now include one). I seal it all up so it stays in good condition for the next solver. The exception is my black kitty in blossoms, which is so fabulous I glued it and put it on my wall. Otherwise, I’m happy to donate my puzzle to anyone who might enjoy doing it. Why would I keep it? My mom and I used to redo puzzles, but I would rather get a new one for next time. I have a lot of great memories of working on puzzles with my mother, and I confess that sometimes I chat with her now while doing one. (The conversation is pretty much one-sided.)

*For anyone following the black kitty in blossoms saga on IG/FB, I found the missing piece!!! After reviewing friends’ suggestions, which were much appreciated, I decided to cut out a square of the corresponding area of the poster, carefully tape it behind the missing piece, and then use puzzle sticky tape to keep the whole thing together. It looks amazing! You can’t even tell a piece is gone. As I was working on the unicorn this weekend, however, I spied a piece of puzzle lodged behind one of my dining room chair cushions. At first, I thought it was from the new puzzle, but then I realized it was the missing piece from the kitty one! I ran into my room and placed it in its rightful spot. Eventually, it would be a good idea to put a dab of glue on the reverse side, but for now it seems fine. I apologized to Inky for accusing her of taking the piece, and she graciously accepted it.

Weekend Recap

Happy last day of November. I had a fun friendsgiving, which included several board games, but my opinion of Thanksgiving food, even if perfectly prepared, remains unchanged: I don’t like it. I especially dislike turkey and do not eat any of it (chicken is fine, I like chicken, but everybody else wants turkey). Stuffing can be tasty, but only the way my mommy made it. Green beans and mashed potatoes are okay, but why bother? Now, I do enjoy a baked sweet potato with butter, but I don’t want them all syruped up in a casserole. Yuck. Then we come to the pie ~ I love pie! Why can’t I just have pie? I brought an apple crumb pie from The Flaky Apple Pie Company, baked it at the host’s house, and it was utterly delicious! Everyone loved it. Next year I’m getting cherry. Every pie they make is wonderful. If it were up to me, I would have an all-pie and only-pie Thanksgiving.

I have been trying to watch season two of A Man on the Inside, but I keep falling asleep. Maybe I shouldn’t put it on at 10pm when I am already in bed. I did watch the entirety of Red Joan, a Netflix WW2 drama about “the bomb,” starring Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson, both playing a British woman Joan Stanley at different ages. The story is loosely based on the life of a KGB spy and depicts Joan as a naive Cambridge physics student who becomes sympathetic toward communism due to her boyfriend’s influence. After graduation, she works in a nuclear research facility and passes information to the Soviets via her boyfriend’s sister. Normally I do not watch anything set in this time period, but I love Judi, and the premise sounded interesting, so I did. It was fabulous! I highly recommend it. 

I watched couple of Christmas romcoms too, which weren’t bad, but they were completely forgettable, so I can’t tell you what they were without going to my watch history… and I CBA. I am planning to see Song Sung Blue at the theater with game friends on Christmas Day and The Housemaid with book club peeps later that weekend. Looking forward to those as well as seeing my family for Chanukah. I did a puzzle on Friday; it was only 500 pieces, so I completed it in a few hours. I think I prefer those as opposed to the 1000 pieces ones, which take several days or a week. I am trying not to spend so much time reading the news and social media, except for my FB book club group, so solo games are a good distraction.

I have a lot of social plans coming up, the idea of which stresses me out a bit, even when I deliberately set it all in motion. To ease my anxiety, I spent too much money on Black Friday sales as well as other stuff I “needed.” Now I’m stressed about that instead. I console myself with the thought that I could have spent even more but didn’t. The nice thing is that most of my stuff will be arriving in separate packages, so I will have several fun mail-opening events, woohoo. 

As far as books, I guess I took a little break ~ the last book I read was on November 26. That was What She Saw by Mary Burton, a solid mystery novel, to which I awarded four stars. Yesterday I began a John Grisham novel, The Brethren, which is mildly intriguing, and I will probably finish it. I have several of his in my TBR pile. I’m trying to understand why I don’t fling this book into my DNF donation bag as opposed to all the romances and thrillers that have been so flung, and I guess it’s simply because he’s a better writer. His characters in this book are not likable, but they hold my attention regardless, and the plot threads make me wanna find out what happens and how they tie together. Is it worth noting that Grisham narrates in third person past tense, which is how books should be written, instead of the first person head hopping present tense atrocities we keep seeing in new fiction? Yes, there are exceptions, and I have enjoyed some FPHHPT novels, but that’s despite the FPHHPT not because of it. 

Tomorrow is weigh-in day for Inky and me!

On Being Powerless

No, this isn’t about politics or the patriarchy; it’s about how I was literally without electricity on Saturday from 3pm until Sunday at 8am due to this jackass. Despite the obliteration of his vehicle, apparently he was fine, but around 450 homes had to suffer through the night without power due to his drunken recklessness. 

At first it wasn’t too bad because it had stopped raining and there was plenty of sunlight. The days are growing shorter though, and soon it became obvious that (1) the power wasn’t returning anytime soon, and (2) I needed to find some light to read by since I couldn’t watch TV. I was trying to conserve my phone battery charge, so I didn’t open the Kindle app.

I lit three candles, thinking I could read by candlelight like people did in the olden days, but that didn’t work at all because they barely made a glow. I tried to hold a flashlight to read, but that was too cumbersome. I have a camping “torch” for emergencies, and this counted, so I fired it up. Ahh! Lots of light, though still not enough for reading. I fed Inky, then contemplated my evening. SCE sent a notification that the power should return at 1am.

I decided to go out. Alone! On a Saturday night! First, I bought a ticket online to the movie Now You See Me: Now You Don’t at 8:30pm at Metro Pointe. Then I drove over to MP and decided to have dinner at Boudin, the San Francisco bread restaurant. They were out of bread bowls, so I couldn’t get the butternut squash soup I was craving. They couldn’t make my favorite brie grilled cheese either because they were out of fig jam. So I ordered a boring salad, which lived up to my low expectations. At least there was plenty of electricity. 

It was a while until the movie, so I browsed in some stores, but I really dislike shopping in meatspace after being spoiled with online shopping. I don’t even know how to shop anymore ~ where was the algorithm to show me what I might want to see? I was faced with all this stuff and no way to filter it. If I looked at an item, there was no helper showing me similar things I might like; I had to keep searching on my own. Meh. I went to the theater early, hung out, texted my kids, etc. My phone battery had recharged from the drive, so all was good.

The movie was OK. Too much action and not enough magic tricks and relationship drama. The plot was overly complicated too ~ was it trying to be a Bond flick? Idk. The first two films in the series were much better, but at least I had something to do for a few hours. There was hardly anyone else in the theater, so I switched seats for a better one. (How do they even make enough money to pay rent?) When I got out, I became a little nervous. All the stores and restaurants were closed, and MP was completely deserted. I had to walk back to my car like an old, lame gazelle on the open savanna (my foot had cramped up during the movie). Luckily, there were no lions around, so I made it back in one piece. 

Unfortunately, SCE revised their repair time estimate from 1am to 9am. I didn’t get much sleep because I was scared of all the things that could go wrong. What if the power never came back on? Around 4am, I gave up altogether and had a Diet Coke, but the caffeine hit was minimal. The torch gave off plenty of light in the bathroom for a shower, so I managed to get dressed normally, feed Inky, etc. Then I went to Starbucks for a proper jolt of java and a warm cinnamon bun. So good. I drove to the beach and back to charge my phone, and when I got home, there was plenty of light to read by.

SCE beat their own estimate and restored our power at 8am. Hurrah! They are absolute aces for working through the night. Of course, as soon as the electricity was back on, I discovered that the internet was out. Unlike SCE, Spectrum doesn’t send frequent helpful updates, and you have to hunt them down yourself to find out what’s happening. This had nothing to do with the crash; Spectrum just goes out whenever it has an opportunity. Oh yeah, it was due to “the storm,” which wasn’t even that severe here. Sure, Jan. (It was back that night.)

The rest of Sunday was normal, and my friend L came over to play games in the afternoon. I taped my kitty puzzle and hung it on my bedroom wall. If you’ve kept up with my puzzle saga, you may be interested to know that I “fixed” the missing piece by taping the matching section of the picture behind that spot. It worked great! You can hardly tell unless you know. 

My eyes were bothering me a lot on Sunday, which I attributed to missing sleep. But it turns out I caught a sicky of some sort. Monday I coughed all day, had an upset tummy, developed a fever that evening, and can barely sleep. I will stay home from work today because there will be others in the office. Boo. Being sick sucks. 

The Life of an Office Girl

My eldest daughter and I drove up to see youngest and kiddos yesterday, hoping that traffic would be lighter on Columbus Day. It wasn’t. We still had fun painting rocks, having lunch, and playing. My granddaughter had discovered the American Girl doll catalog and showed me the one she wants for her birthday next June. Like a five star restaurant, AG does not list prices in their catalog, so I looked it up on Amazon later. When my girls were little, I decided that AG was too expensive; however, I am OK with buying one of these dolls for my granddaughter even though they’re still super pricey. LOL

Eldest played Taylor Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl on our drive to and from Los Angeles. Now, I consider myself neutral on TS ~ her music is for the most part (to me) pretty, bland, and boring with a few fun exceptions like “Shake It Off.” I understand she does a great live show, but I am not into loud, crowded $$$ concerts and prefer to enjoy music at home or while driving. On social media, one is supposed to either adore or despise TS, but I can’t get so emotional about a celeb. I did have fun with an FB friend the other day mocking the cringey lyrics to “Wood,” but I admit that I enjoyed TS's new song “Opalite.” The rest of the tracks fell into the PB&B category, including the ode to Travis’ penis.

Working backwards, Sunday I enjoyed a romcom on Prime called Maintenance Required, which was similar to You’ve Got Mail, but with cars instead of books. While I will always love YGM, this flick had much hotter-looking stars who had palpable physical chemistry ~ Madelaine Petsch and Jacob Scipio. The chemistry between Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) in YGM was more verbal/ intellectual, while Maintenance Required felt more "realistic." It won't become a regular in my romcom rotation, but it was a nice treat.

I binge-read two thrillers by Jason Rekulak: Hidden Pictures and The Last One at the Wedding. I gave a five-star rating to each of these! HP had supernatural elements, but they were consistent and didn't end up creating more questions than they answered. The narrative style was first person, present tense, which is generally not my favorite, but it worked in both of these. HP had a young woman narrating; the wedding novel had a man in his 50s, both completely believable. The narration pulled me right into the story and kept me hooked throughout. The twists in each were completely unexpected, but not deus ex machina. They made sense in retrospect. 

I watched the new Superman movie at a friend's house on Saturday. I liked it as much any movie of that genre (i.e., not much), but it was fun to have dinner with friends and play some board games. Sunday, I did more rock painting with the book club gals, and we also had lunch. Good times. I didn't even mind being social for three days in a row! Well, maybe family doesn't count.

That's it for my exciting recap. I am now back in the office the rest of the week.