“And Then There Were Three”
Finn and I enjoyed a couple of TV shows on Sunday evening after I posted last week. We watched the Golden Globe Awards show intermittently – it’s just so long. Finn chuckled as I was able to guess the winners in a number of categories in a row. I could probably make some money on that. I was amazed at the video appearance from Norman Lear at 99 years old. He looks and sounds fantastic. What a ground-breaking body of work he created over the years!
We also watched Stanley Tucci’s “Searching for Italy” on CNN. I really enjoy this show and the energy that Tucci brings to his culinary (love the way he says it – coooolinary) adventures. The highlight this week was the great prosciutto scandal uncovered a few years back. Italy has so many very old laws governing how meets, cheeses, olive oil, pizza and the like are to be produced if they want to earn the official stamp. “Illegal” prosciutto was rampant a few years ago.
https://www.cnncreativemarketing.com/project/tucci/
Finn flew back to Dallas with us on Monday afternoon. He thoroughly enjoyed hanging out at the Admiral’s Club in San Francisco airport, and enjoying the snacks and food (custom made avocado toast) available in the comfy environment. The flight was smooth and on time with Finn’s checked bags rolling off before Diana could retrieve the car from the other terminal.
We took Finn out for a run with us on Tuesday. It had been several weeks since we last ran – using the snow and ice storm and bitter temperatures as an excuse – and we paid the price for sure. I dropped back a week in Couch to 5K and repeated a week 4 run – still had sore legs on Wednesday. Diana got a big kick out of coming up behind us and observing the similar gait and way we swing our arms (that was before she sped past us). I was just looking at a physical fitness test Finn did at school in 2004 and he ran an 8:40 mile and did 75 sit ups. Pretty impressive.
I dragged Finn to Market Street to stock up on groceries in the afternoon. We did a good job of finding everything on D’s list between us. He was quite impressed with the variety and quality of things available. I thought we bought enough to see us through the weekend but wasn’t planning on the healthy appetite that he brought along.
Thursday started with a big milestone – I received my first dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. The process was very efficient and I didn’t appear to suffer any big side-effects – just a wee bit of dizziness in the afternoon.
I was entertained by the huge Cowboys pictures on the wall as we lined up for the process. Jason Witten is still one of my favourites:
I just received my renewed passport (no European mention and back to the pre-EU blue colour) on Monday and so, coupled with the vaccine, should be ready to travel again in a month or two.
The three of us went for another run when I got back home. I decided to attempt Week 5 Day 1 even though my legs were still quite sore from Tuesday. Finn was a real trooper and did it as well. I was totally worn out after that, but did convince Finn to take on a crepe myrtle trimming project. Doesn’t he look like he’s having an absolute blast with the project. He did a great job on 3 trees and then had to attack the cleanup – always the last fun part.
I was the featured presenter on our work Town Hall on Thursday afternoon. We typically start out with “something you might not know about me”, and I talked about the Escape from Alcatraz swim. It’s been years since I did that but people still like the story – I remember how nervous my Mum was, wanting me to call and tell her I had survived.
The swim was 30 seconds worth of over 10 minutes of content that I shared, but that’s all people want to talk about. So much for all the great things we’re doing in Information Technology.
Finn has been enjoying working on his Pokémon art – adding another sketch every day or so. It’s really nice to see him focused and enjoying creating the art.
These characters are part of the “anime” genre which of course was featured in the NYT puzzle this week. Interestingly with Dragon Ball Z which is a t-shirt Finn was wearing when he explained all about it to Alicia last week.
We watched the Disney movie “Soul” on Friday night. What an excellent film. So very creative and clever all around. All three of us loved it. The music is excellent, the “Half Note” music club a good facsimile of The Village Vanguard where Diana and I have enjoyed such world class music, the main character (Joe) and 22 with such great messages about life. The animation of the leaders (Jerrys and Terry) in the Soul waiting area so wonderfully done – particularly when Terry makes it down to earth to try and retrieve Joe and 22. Highly, highly recommended.
Saturday started with all of us getting different forms of exercise – Finn and I went to 24 Hour Fitness where he had a back and bicep workout while I swam, and Diana went for a run and catchup chat session with Amy.
After that we were ready for lunch and enjoyed Cuban food from Guava in downtown McKinney. The Cubano sandwiches and plantain chips were great and Finn liked his Cuban pineapple soda. We followed that up with coffee at Filtered and a wander around downtown – there’s a new record store where I spent a few happy minutes.
We made a stop at Michael’s for art supplies so that Finn can continue his Pokémon drawings, and Diana picked up some paint and supplies at Home Depot so that Finn can start his next work project – touching up the paint in a few rooms and staircases.
Raya and the Last Dragon was our entertainment on Saturday night. Both Finn and I fell asleep less than halfway through – not as much a reflection on the movie as on our early start and busy day. We’ll have to finish that another evening.
Sunday was a reasonably leisurely day, as it should be. I went for a run, dropped Finn at 24 hour fitness, and Diana had a workout with Amy. We made a visit to Floor & Decor (a massive tile and flooring store) in the afternoon to continue to hone in on tile for the kitchen remodel. Wasn’t too bad of an experience and we found several new options for the Designer Twins to take on board.
This t-shirt entertained me – such a great message for the majority of Americans as we approach St. Patrick’s day:
I finished up “The Moth and the Mountain” by Ed Caesar. The adventure story should have been very compelling but I really struggled to stay engaged. Caesar is a reporter for the New Yorker magazine and the book felt more like a very detailed research article than an exciting story of flying around the world and attempting to climb Everest. Too much about Maurice’s letters to friends in England than real story telling.
I do have to correct an error from my previous post on this book – the plane flown from England to Everest is a Gypsy Moth and not a Sopwith Camel. The journey completed by Wilson is hugely impressive – particularly for someone who had just completed basic flying lessons a few months earlier:
“Wilson planned to be in Africa by the following evening. He set off in the morning for Naples, along the west coast of southern Italy. There he refueled, ate an early lunch, and took off for Sicily. It was perhaps the most beautiful leg of the journey so far. As he gained altitude, Mount Vesuvius bubbled on his port side, the island of Capri passed beneath him, and the whole, gorgeous, craggy Amalfi Coast, with its seaside towns built madly into the steep hills, disappeared behind his left wingtip. Soon, the Tyrrhenian Sea, sparkling blue and white, was all that lay ahead.”
On the final pages of the book, Caesar talks about Sir Edmund Hillary’s successful ascent of Everest in 1953 as a good present for Elizabeth awaiting coronation. That was the last straw for me – for some reason I was convinced both of those events happened in 1952. A quick Google search had me calmed down again.
Alicia sent me this picture of Grammie reading “The Paris Library” book that I left with her – her caption was “a very intense chapter.”
I barely started “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama today. This will likely take me several weeks to finish – 700 pages of very small print. I’m enjoying the writing style and stories so far. Very straight forward and honest.
“As I sit here, the country remains in the grips of a global pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans dead, businesses shuttered, and million of people out of work. Across the nation, people from all walks of life have poured into the streets to protest the deaths of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of the police. Perhaps most troubling of all, our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis – a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what is should be, a crisis that has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful, and has allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both parties once took for granted.”
Here’s some of the honest writing that I referenced:
“What I don’t mention is my dark mood on that flight back. I was almost forty, broke, coming off a humiliating defeat and with my marriage strained. I felt for perhaps the first time in my life that I had taken a wrong turn; that whatever reservoirs of energy and optimism I thought I had, whatever potential I’d always banked on, had been used up on a fool’s errand. Worse, I recognized that in running for Congress I’d been driven not by some selfless dream of changing the world, but rather by the need to justify the choices I had already made, or to satisfy my ego, or to quell my envy of those who had achieved what I had not.
In other words, I had become the very things that, as a younger man, I had warned myself against. I had become a politician – and not a very good one at that.”
Here’s some great jazz from the “Soul” movie by New Orleanian Jon Batiste:
I heard this Rolling Stones song and was intrigued by the slide guitar – really didn’t sound like Keith. I wondered if it was Mick Taylor and research proved me right. Sounds a lot like “Moonlight Mile”, one of my favourites.
How much is Bonnie Raitt trying to sound like Joni Mitchell on this song? So different from the sound that made her so popular.
I really liked this guitar sound from Phil Cook. Having never heard of Cook, I did a quick Google search and found he plays with Bon Iver and Hiss Golden Messenger – two great artists. He sounds a lot like David Lindley on the classic Jackson Browne albums to me.
Do you know a song by The Who that features ukulele and an English brass band with no other instruments? It really does exist. Liner notes say John Entwistle (bass player) played all the brass, but it’s such a great brass band sound that I have some serious doubts.
Stay safe, calm and patient with everyone. The end is getting so much closer.