Saturday, July 12, 2008

Things Are Looking Up

Things actually started looking up around 8 p.m. last night when I realized that the temperature outside was cooler than the temperature inside, which meant I could open the back door and cool down the house.

That meant that I could actually sleep under a puppy and not feel like I was having a night-long hot flash. I almost didn't mind being awakened by Lizzie's barking at 5:30, because I'd had an almost full, comfortable night of sleep.

While I was up locking the dog door, I decided to check e-mail and that's when I discovered that the computer was off. I did not turn the computer off. What's more, it wouldn't come on. Great. Now the computer's broken, I thought. I checked everything. No puppy had gnawed on the power cord, all the cords were plugged in. All the surge protectors were plugged in and did not appear to have been peed on. The computer just. wouldn't. come. on.

I sighed, fully awake now. It was time to call my guru again and to set up the laptop so I could use that instead. This required cleaning off the desk (of course). About the time I got the desk all cleaned off and was headed out to get the laptop from its new wheeled carrier, I had this sudden thought -- was the switch on the wall in the "on" position? I checked. It was not.

I don't know how that switch gets turned off. Walt swears he doesn't do it and I swear I don't do it, but very clearly I had done it last night. The switch powers only one thing: the electrical outlet that the computer is plugged into. How I managed to turn it off is beyond me. But it was lovely to turn it on and see the computer fire up right away.

What's even better, the lovely local TV weather person was predicting temperatures "in the 90s" in Sacramento today, which is about a 10 degree drop in temperature from the past two days. The house had a fighting chance to stay "reasonable" until the air conditioner repair guy got here.

The a/c guy arrived 3 hours ahead of schedule and determined that the problem was a blown circuit breaker. It took all of 10 seconds to fix and cost $58. Now I feel like a real dummy for not checking that to begin with. But at least I'm a cooler dummy, so I won't waste valuable energy getting angry with myself. And he said that they had about 90 calls in the last few days which turned out to be exactly the same problem, so if I'm a dummy, at least I'm in good company, I guess.

MadMen2.jpg (39605 bytes)

Nothing is all bad, however, I happened to catch a promo saying that the new season of Mad Men was starting July 27th on AMC and that in preparation, there would be a marathon the previous week, or you could catch all the episodes on Comcast On Demand.

Since it was such an effort to move, causing much sweat, I kind of took the better part of two days off and watched the entire first season of MadMen, all 13 episodes.

This was a show I never heard much about when it was in its regular season. Now that AMC has become a regular commercial station and you can catch good old movies on TMC without comercial interruptions, I've stoped watching it...I used to be glued to it when we first got cable.

So anyway, I had never seen Mad Men, though I think I remember Steve telling me that it was excellent. And, in fact, it won a couple of awards during award season (Golden Globes for best new series and best actor for John Hamm as Don Draper.

Lemme tell you, if you're looking for a new good drama that doesn't involve car chases, murders, or gory autopsies, this is the show for you. It recreates the 1960s world of the Madison Avenue advertising agencies and you'll find yourself laughing at the old fashioned view of women, the office romances, the constant drinking, and especially the smoking. My god...I think one of the requirements for this show must be to sign a waiver holding the production company not responsible for any adverse health effects. Everybody smokes. All the time. They smoke during meals. They smoke at work. They smoke in restaurants. They smoke in cars. They smoke during sex (yes, during), they smoke at doctor's appointments. The women smoke while cooking. Pregnant women smoke. They smoke while taking care of the baby. You could get lung cancer just watching the show.

But if you can get past that, this is a well-written, well-crafted, crisp-looking series that I highly recommend. I will be watching when the new season starts, because I'm already hooked.

If you decide to try it out and it bugs you, as it did me, where you've seen the new secretary, Peggy Olson, before--she is actress Elisabeth Moss, who played President Jed Bartlett's daughter in the much-missed West Wing. And the white haired boss, Roger Stirling, was Gabi's short-lived politician husband, actor John Slattery, on Desperate Housewives. Also, if you old timers want to feel old, the old guy who runs the agency is actor Robert Morse, the young guy in the original (1961) How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (apparently, he did...succeed!)

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