“A Smooth Transition”
This was a pretty quiet week of working from home and not going anywhere exciting at all. Well, Diana did sneak out twice – once to get her hair done and once to get her nails done. Oh, and we had a Presidential inauguration. As Rex Parker said in his New York Times crossword blog on Thursday: “OK, back to basking in this weird feeling of living in a county run by basically good, basically competent people. Ahh.” We both enjoyed the evening gala hosted by Tom Hanks from the steps of the Lincoln memorial. Bruce Springsteen got things started (and apparently had a positive impact on pea-coat sales):
We watched the new Tom Hanks movie “News of the World” on Friday night, and then finished it on Saturday night. Quite disappointing after the book – isn’t that usually the case? The film completely missed what I thought was the core element of the book – the struggle of Johanna as she oscillates between her Native American upbringing and her return to the “civilized” American world.
I finished up week 2 of Couch to 5K on Saturday – everything is still feeling pretty good. We received our “Year in Review 2020” blog book (300 pages) and Diana looked back to find how far I made it before the break – end of week 4 – so that will be a milestone to aim past. I did convince McD to try something new mid-week – she went for a run in the rain with me – who knows what crazy activity is next. After the run I had a short burst of energy for home tasks – installed the replacement Ring doorbell, tried to replace some porch lights but had the wrong shape of bulb, and replaced the steam shower aromatherapy bottle (a lot more work than it sounds) with some new lavender juice – my choice which McD has pronounced as a very “girlie” option. New bulbs were ordered and that will be my task after this update is published.
Almost forgot – I made a drive over to Grapevine on Friday to the British Food Emporium. My mission was to pick up some haggis for Burns night on Monday, but as usual I couldn’t help grabbing some other treats – a Turkish delight for Diana, meat pies for me, and some oatcakes to share. If you’d like to read details about the challenges with the Scottish haggis population, I recommend this article (I did chuckle when Brent observed that the hagglets look a lot like The Donald):
http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Documents/haggisarticle.pdf
I had been looking forward to a stop into Redefined coffee, a regular stop when I was driving to AIG, and right next to the British food place. It wasn’t there anymore – typical, I thought. A quick search showed it had moved just around the corner on to the main street. A really good location and a much bigger and more modern shop – just didn’t seem to have the same character as the old place, but the coffee was still the same.
Continuing the British food theme – I shared Vince’s pastrami scotch egg recipe recently. Here are some pictures of the end result that he shared this week:
Don’t those look delicious. We’re hoping to sample some when we finally make a visit to his cabin in the Adirondacks.
I watched a documentary about the first person with Down Syndrome to complete an Ironman marathon.
Chris Nikic is such an inspiration. He doesn’t have any real sense of how far he’s come or how much longer remains, but just keeps plugging away, taking regular breaks for hugs. A massive achievement.
On a somewhat related theme, I was amazed at this video of a dog limping alongside its owner. Apparently the dog was taken to the vet to be checked out. Absolutely nothing wrong with the leg, it was just limping in sympathy with its owner. Wow! The owner seemed more focused on the 300 pounds he had spent on vet bills.
Norma in Guatemala was telling me about the “Yardi Gras” houses in New Orleans. There are no Mardi Gras parades this year and so, in typical NOLA creative fashion, folks are decorating their yards to emulate parade floats. Some are really amazing.
We received a late entry for the new cactus naming contest this morning, and we’re going with it. Patty christened it “Mark 3.0” and we’ll just use “3.0” as a nickname. Apparently the idea came to her in the middle of the night last night. Our boss when we worked together was Mark and he had quite the prickly personality – so he became knows at “the cactus”. When I worked with him more recently he proclaimed himself “Mark 2.0”, the kinder and gentler version. Which was true most days. Brent’s submission of “Squid Rock” has stuck after we tried it out this week.
I’m a bit more than half way through “The Strangler” by William Landay and am getting thoroughly sucked into the crime tale. Landay is the author of “Defending Jacob” – we enjoyed the TV series and so I thought I’d try his earlier novel. Here’s what Amazon says about it:
“Before the New York Times bestselling success of Defending Jacob, William Landay wrote this widely acclaimed second novel of crime and suspense, which was named a Favorite Crime Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers.
Boston, 1963. Meet the charming, brawling Daley brothers. Joe is a cop whose gambling habits have dragged him down into the city’s underworld. Michael is a lawyer, always the smartest man in the room. And Ricky is the youngest son, a prince of thieves whose latest heist may be his last. For the Daleys, crime is the family business—they’re simply on different sides of it. Then a killer, a man who hunts women with brutal efficiency and no sign of stopping, strikes too close to the Daley home. The brothers unite to find the Strangler, a journey that leads to the darkest corners of Boston—and exposes an even deeper mystery that threatens to tear the family apart.”
I chuckled at this quote from the book. Exactly what I had just said to Diana when recommending “Kind of Blue” as an album to send Alicia:
“Kat bobbed her head to the strolling rhythm. “You like it?” “I don’t know. Maybe.” “It’s Miles Davis.” “I know who he is!” “Here take it.” Ricky got the dust jacket and offered it to her. The record was “Kind of Blue”. “Keep it. It gets better the more you listen to it.””
And another interesting passage that also includes Miles:
“It was a limitation of human consciousness. We live only in the future and the past, we cannot perceive now. Now occupies no space, a hypothetical gap between future and past. Only an exceptional few could feel now, athletes and jazzmen and, yes, thieves like Ricky Daley, and even for them the sensation was fleeting, limited to the instant of creative action. Cousy knew the feeling; Miles Davis too. The boundless improvisational moment.”
I’m looking forward to the conclusion.
I’ve been reminiscing about Austin this week by listening to the local Sun radio station. They played this excellent new song by Rob Baird. I’m interested to know who produced this for him as it’s quite a departure from his previous sound.
The Sun radio host went on a bit of Django Reinhart kick and I found these two interesting versions of his tune “Nuages”:
And finally, here’s one from a band with such a great sound that I don’t listen to often enough:
I’m off to try to replace those porch bulbs again, jump on the elliptical for a while, and then settle in for the final day of the NFL playoffs.
Stay safe, patient and kind!
Limping dogs