“Healing Up Nicely”
I had a check up with the hand doctor on Monday – all healing well, with good flexibility. Here’s a picture from Monday when I got the dressing off, another from Wednesday, and one from just now – I think it’s coming along nicely. Hopefully this is my final run in with dupuytrens.
I’m easily able to make a fist and stretch out my fingers.
Penelope had an oil change on Tuesday morning. And then I got myself in trouble with informative texting:
K at 9:15 : “P all done. Will head back and we can have our walk”
D: “Ok baby:)”
K at 9:30: “Decided to have a coffee at Ascension”
D: “Hmmm (with chin scratching emoji)”
Penelope needed gas, so I made a stop for that. Noticing a car wash right next door, I thought she deserved a bath and hoover to go with her oil change and full gas tank. Not well received when I made it home around 11:30 – “I thought we would go for a walk around 10am, based on the text that P was all finished and you were on your way home. Instead, I’ve been sitting around for an hour and a half wondering where you were.” Oopsy. Note to self – vaguer updates required.
Our friend Sean showed up on Monday night. He’s staying with us for a few days while doing some consulting work in Plano. We enjoyed some pleasant catch up time on the patio.
On our walk on Tuesday morning, we came across a poor duck with a fishing lure attached. It was trying really hard to get it off.
K: “Who should we call about this?”
D: “Those guys in the truck over there”
She was right, someone else must have called the McKinney animal folks. The lady did her best to catch the poor duck in a big net, but he escaped into the pond. She promised to circle back around later and give it another try. I really hope she was successful. I hope the lure was a result of someone’s line breaking, rather than carelessness.
I met Finn for coffee on Wednesday afternoon. He was excited to report that “corporate” had visited his store, and he received a perfect 100 score for the produce department. His department is also the 2nd highest revenue generator in the district. He’s very pleased with how things are going at work.
We had planned to participate in “Music Bingo” at Guitars and Growlers on Wednesday night, but Sean was too late in getting home from work. He had been meeting with a local telecom sales team to give them some recommendations on how to improve their overall processes, and that must have become pretty involved on Wednesday afternoon. We just relaxed at home, listened to music, and caught up on families. Sean left us around 7:30am on Thursday – off to give a readout on his findings, play some golf, and then catch a flight home.
The Thursday New York Times puzzle is the one that has all the special gimmicks – rebus (multiple letters in one square) and the like. It’s supposed to be the marquee day for solvers. The puzzle this week is one of my favourites in a long time.
The “revealer” (40 across) is “cover your eyes” and is clued as a hint to 4 long clues. You can see that 17, 18 and 19 across spell “vending machines”, with the “i” covered by a black square. Similarly with “Marie Antoinette” at 24 across. The clues for the long acrosses were very clever in the way they joined together to make a clue for the full word. Ok, enough crossword geekery for now.
Diana has been on soft foods for a few weeks now since her dental surgery, and doing a great job of sticking to her soups, yogurts, and cottage cheese. So, after work wound down on Friday, I dragged her to Pappadeaux for oysters. “Dragged” is not the correct term at all, as she was quite excited to go, having not tasted oysters since our residency in New Orleans. The price of oysters has doubled since the last time we were there. Still well worth it for soft food D.
After lunch, I surprised Diana with a visit to Fizz. This is a champagne and coffee bar that has been open for a month.
We arrived around 3pm – coffee service until 4pm, and then the full bar opens – ok, we’ll sit at the bar and have a coffee. Then the bar tender/manager arrives behind the bar. McD asks to see the drinks menu and starts chatting with her – happy to serve you a drink if you like, I’m here and all the stuff is ready. So, Diana was able to enjoy an afternoon glass of bubbly.
Finn came over after we got home. He was on a mission to pick up the fancy new Yeezys that Will sent for his birthday. He arrived with his burrito from Nom noms, ate that at the island, and then broke into his new shoes. They fit perfectly and coordinate nicely with his Friday work outfit.
Finn showed me this picture he snapped on his drive over. He was quite entertained with the “R”.
Clorinda thought she was super cool and hip on Friday afternoon as she prepared to head out for dialysis. We’ll have to tease her about dressing up like a rock star to go there.
We enjoyed early walks on Saturday and Sunday, beating the usual summer heat. Saturday was pretty quiet – catching up with friends on FaceTime. We watched a movie, “Guest Artist”, written and starring Jeff Daniels, on Saturday evening. Almost exclusively set in a railroad waiting room, this is a typically excellent Daniels performance. All about a washed up, alcoholic playwright, who arrives in rural Idaho, without a play to perform.
Today we have reservations at iPic to see the new Top Gun movie. We’ll let you know what we think next week.
We watched some episodes of a couple of streaming series this week. Both are acting masterclasses. “The Old Man”, starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow, is very good, with a lot of CIA cloak and dagger intrigue. We look forward to new episodes each Friday.
This series had a few episodes with Amy Brenneman, one of the stars of the excellent NYPD Blue years ago. It’s not clear if she’ll be involved in future episodes at this part in the story. I can never remember her name, and just had to look it up again. The conversation is typically:
K: “That’s the lady from NYPD Blue with the long, curly hair.”
D: “Yes, Amy Brenneman.”
K (5 mins later): “What’s that lady’s name again?”
The second series is “Night Sky”, starring J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek. The acting is again superb, while the story has more of a sci-fi component. It’s early days yet, and we can’t really tell where the story is headed. I can’t help but flash to “Whiplash” whenever I see J.K. Simmons – such a disturbing portrayal of a music teacher.
“The Club”, by Ellery Lloyd, was my first book this week. Here’s the online synopsis:
“Envisioned as a luxurious home-away from-home for Very Important People, The Home Group is a collection of celebrity members clubs dotted across the globe, from London to Lisbon, Malibu to Manhattan, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.
The most spectacular and exclusive of all is Island Home—a sprawling, closely-guarded complex of faux-rustic guest cabins, spas, bars and restaurants just off the English coast. To mark its opening, Home’s mercurial CEO Ned Groom and his team have planned a glamorous three-day launch party, easily the most coveted A-list invite of the year.
But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point. Years behind schedule and vastly over budget, the project has stretched a long-serving and long-suffering team to their limits. There’s Ned’s trusted PA, who has over decades maneuvered her way from coat-check girl to Home’s inner circle; Ned’s younger brother, who has sacrificed his marriage and morals to be Ned’s right-hand man; the Head of Membership keeping the world’s most spoiled and jaded individuals entertained using any means necessary; the Head of Housekeeping, who plays silent witness to the guests’ very worst excesses. All of them have something to hide—and that’s before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island.
As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members begin to wish they’d never RSVP’d at all.
Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out . . .”
This was a fast read and an engaging tale. Certainly not great literature, but a fun caper nonetheless. I couldn’t help relating the “Home” clubs to the SoHo house club that our CEO took me to in Austin. His wife is a member, and these are clubs designed for artistic folks to come together – very exclusive. They have them in major cities around the world. I smiled when I read about Ellery Lloyd inside the back cover:
“Ellery Lloyd is the pseudonym for the London-based husband-and-wife writing team of Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos. Collette is a journalist and editor, the former content director of Elle (UK), and editorial director at Soho House. She has written for the Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Sunday Times. Paul is the author of two previous novels, “Welcome to the Working Week” and “Every Day is Like Sunday.” He is the subject leader for English literature, film, and creative writing at the University of Surrey.”
It seems that Collette must have pulled a lot of her inspiration from her experiences at Soho House.
“Left on Tenth, A Second Chance at Life” by Delia Ephron was my next book. She is the younger sister of Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle, “When Harry Met Sally”, “Silkwood”,…), and the book follows her life for four years from 2016 to 2020.
Here’s the online synopsis:
“Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She’d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry’s death, she decided to make one small change in her life—she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.
She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love.
But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia.
In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.”
I loved this book and consumed it in a couple of days. The varied style is fantastic: short chapters about mundane, daily life; the details of finding love in her 70s and how she feels about it; the torturous chapters about her battle with leukemia; emails to friends and family. Just great writing throughout. It really makes the reader want to go and live in the apartment building on Tenth Street in Greenwich Village, New York. Highly recommended.
My last book was “This Time Tomorrow” by Emma Straub. A little out of the ordinary for my picks, this one features time travel, but in a very compelling and compassionate way. Here’s that the wonderful Ann Patchet says:
“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more.”—Ann Patchett
The online synopsis:
“On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?”
It seems the title was at least somewhat inspired by the song by the Kinks – one of my favourite bands. The song is quoted in the intro to the book.
Alice’s (main character) Dad is a big Kinks fan.
Prior to traveling back to her 16 year old birthday party, Alice works in a New York private school called Belvedere. Here’s how Straub describes it:
“This one was for the eating-disordered overachievers, that one was for dummies with drug problems but rich parents. There was the school for athletes and the school for tiny Brooks Brothers mannequins who would end up as CEOs, the school for well-rounded normies who would become lawyers, the school for artsy weirdos and for parents who wanted their kids to be artsy weirdos. Belvedere had started in the 1970s on the Upper West Side, and so it had been full of socialists and hippies, but now, fifty years later, the moms at drop-off idled outside in their Teslas and the children were all on ADHD medication.”
A very enjoyable read overall, and a productive week of reading.
The new album from Goose, “Dripfield”, has been on heavy rotation this week. It’s got everything I like, good songs, great musicianship and production, and a nice loose, jammy feel:
This very deep cut (I would bet there’s nobody else in McKinney familiar with this song) appeared on a playlist this week. I love the lyrics and the brass band (Black Dyke Mills band):
That sent me off in search of some brass band tunes. This one sounds good on a great sound system – those B flat bass bottom notes just resonating on:
And finally, something sublime from the Everly Brothers, from their 1960 album, “A Date with The Everly Brothers”. Those close duo harmonies from Don and Phil always make me smile. Seeing them play a few songs during a Simon and Garfunkel show was a live music highlight for me.
Coexist with kindness and compassion!