Sunday Stealing

1) What side of the heart do you draw first?
The left

2) Can you dive without plugging your nose?
I believing going off a diving board while holding your nose is "jumping," not "diving."  I haven't been on a diving board in decades, but I never held my nose.

3) What color is your razor?
Yellow.

4) What is your blood-type?
O+

5) Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours?
Harry Houdini

6) What is a rumor someone has spread about you?
I am sure rumors have been spread, but I am not aware of any

7) How do you feel about carrots?
When I was a kid I couldn't eat them raw because I couldn't swallow them when chewed.   Now I can.  I still like them cooked better than raw, though.

8) How many chairs at the dining room table?
Six, unless I put in the two leaves, when I can get another 4 chairs around the table.

9) Which is the best Spice Girl?
I never knew the Spice Girls.  Posh is the only name I know.  Is she the one married to David Beckham?

10) Do you know what time it is?
It's Martini time, of course.

11) Do you know all the words to the Fresh Prince Theme Song?
I don't know any words to the Fresh Prince Theme Song.

12) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator?
Sweat profusely, call for help, hope nobody else in the elvator is an axe murderer.

13) What’s your favorite kind of gum?
I have not been a gum chewer, but my dental hygienist just suggested I start chewing Sprye gum, which is good for dental health, she says.  I love the cinnamon flavor.

14) All’s fair in love and war?
No.  Perhaps within reason, but love and war are not justifications for anything you want to do.

15) Do you have a crush on anyone?
No.  I'm too old for crushes.

16) Do you know how to use some words correctly, but not know the meaning?
Every so often I discover that I do, mostly during Jeopardy

17) Do you like to sleep?
I love to sleep.  My body not so much.

18) Do you know which US states don’t use Daylight Savings time?
Apparently Arizona and Hawaii.  Didn't know that until I Googled it.

19) Do you know the words to the song Total Eclipse of the Heart?
Is it similar to the theme song to Fresh Prince of Bel Air?

20) Do you want a bright yellow ‘06 mustang?
Nope.  I'm happy with my boring old champagne colored Honda Accord.

Two-A-Day

There were two shows to see today, but fortunately I only had to review one of them.  In the afternoon, I had been invited to attend another meeting of the Woodland Shakespeare Book Club.

I'm still not entirely sure about this club and what it is about.  This was my third time there.  Apparently there are "public meetings" and "regular meetings," and as an applicant to be a member, I am only permitted to attend "public meetings," to which members can bring guests. All three public meetings I attended included a presentation of some kind or other (the first one was various readings, the second one a more staged presentation, and this one, which was a dramatic reading of the Moliere play --"The Learned Ladies"-- by several people).

I still don't know what goes on at a "regular meeting" and whether those include food, too, or more of a discussion about the book of the month or what.  Presumably I will find out eventually.

But I went off to Woodland this afternoon to see what this month's public meeting would offer.  The last two times we sat around tables, to make it easier to (a) eat and (b) discuss the book.  This time the chairs were set up as for a lecture.

I was glad I had read the Moliere play because it did give me a leg up in following the dramatic reading, which consisted of six women playing 10 parts, the characters differentiated by a change in hat or, in the case of one character, the addition of a moustache.

They read from scripts which contained an abbreviated version of the play -- again, I was glad I had read the entire thing before coming to the meeting!  In many respects, it reminded me of the plays of the March Family of "Little Women" fame, but it was great fun, if somewhat lacking in theatrical polish (never invite a critic to your play!)

There was food when it was over, and I had a great time talking with one of the actresses, who is a local actress, currently in a play in Sacramento, but at a theater that I don't get to review.  She was one of the three who had given the strongest performance in the Moliere, and now I know why.

In the evening, we were off to Acme, the Young People's Theater (the one that Jeri and Paul performed with and which offers a scholarship each year in Paul's name).  They did a play called "Radium Girls," which is the story of a famous lawsuit in the 1920s against the U.S. Radium Corporation whose initial lack of knowledge and later cover up of the dangers of exposure to radium caused the death of many of its workers who were exposed to massive doses of radium as they worked (they mention their clothes and shoes glowing in the dark, as they slept in their beds). They died long, painful, horribly disfiguring illnesses.

I am so consistently impressed with the quality of this theater company.  For a bunch of young people, they sometimes give the most professional performances around.  There wasn't a weak link in the 8 person cast and the show itself was excellent, with little light touches here and there -- like lighting the back of the stage a radiation green during set changes!)  Writing the review was a breeze.

But now it's off to bed ... big day tomorrow.  Jeri, who has been in Santa Barbara being Aunt Jeri for a few days, will be arriving in the Bay Area and we are going to drive down and have a belated Christmas with her and with my mother.

Feeling Old

I had a particularly "old" day yesterday.  No explanation for it, that I can fathom, but I was just feeling my years with accompanying aches and pains caused by no extraordinary physical exertion or anything else I could figure out.

It started with a trip to Michael's to get the kind of glue sticks I like, which I have been unable to find anywhere else.  For those who don't know, Michael's is a huge craft store.  Now, I am not particularly crafty, but there is within me this feeling that I could be crafty with the right tools, equipment, and the ability to find a clear surface in this house.  So I occasionally take a browsing trip to Michael's.

That's like going to Costco for a dozen eggs.  You walk out with $200 worth of stuff you had not intended to buy and don't know what you are going to do with.

My first mistake at Michael's was getting a shopping cart "just in case."  Walt accuses me of using shopping carts as walkers, and he's right.   It's easier to walk around a store pushing a cart than having to, good Lord, stand unaided on my own two feet.

So I had a huge shopping cart with two little packages of glue sticks in it.

What was worse was that Michael's was having a huge sale.   Everything seemed to be 50-80% off.  There were bins with things you couldn't live without (but have no use for) for 25 cents each.  So I wasn't really spending all that much money, I told myself, as my cart piled higher and higher, but even when everything is ridiculously cheap, when you buy lots of it, it somehow miraculously adds up.

I bought several kinds of boxes, for example.  Boxes for storing stuff in.  And they will be helpful.  I now have a box for the stickers which I use to decorate letters and which I also send to the Compassion kids when I write.   And I have a box for the rubber stamps I buy, which I almost never use but swear I am going to use some day.  It's great to have these all in one place, if only I had a place to put the boxes themselves.  But let it pass.

When I had finally recovered from the price tag at Michael's, I headed over to nearby Costco.  We needed mayonnaise (and of course buying it by the vat at Costco was better than buying it by the reasonable two-person size quart at the local supermarket), butter (Costco does have the cheapest butter around) and puddle pads for the dog who WILL use one indoors, but dares not sully her feet by peeing outside.

Costco -- that monument to excess

$180 later, I was straining at pushing this cart filled with such necessities as fresh raspberries, stuffed jalapenos, and more romain lettuce than we can finish before it goes bad.

By the time the cart was unloaded, my knees were telling me to sit down.  Now.  Fortunately I was near the car and did.

I came home and collapsed in a chair, unable to move, though I did eventually hobble to the kitchen to try to find a place for all the stuff I had just bought.

Every time I got up, I ached.  I thought, briefly, of getting out my cane, which I retired after I recovered from the Europe trip.  But I didn't.  

We went off to see Follies, which I had never seen before.   The box office knows that my preferred seat is in the upper part of the theater and is very good about always seating me there, but last night I was sorry for that because climbing the stairs up to Row G was a schlep.  Fortunately this theater has a guard rail on the steps because I literally hauled myself up each step. 

I never go downstairs for intermission, but even if I did usually mingle, I would not have left the comfort of my seat because the idea of climbing the stairs twice was just not pleasant.  Instead I sat there and read, as I always do, this time a non-fiction book about the gold rush in Alaska and 3 entrepreneurs (one a miner, one a shop keeper, and one a thief) who were part of it.  This is for my other book club and I must finish it within the week.  It's actually a fascinating book.  We read so much about the 49ers and the California gold rush, but rarely anything about the later rush to Alaska.  Or maybe that's just because I'm a Californian and am exposed to it more.

When the show was over and I had to face climbing back down the steps, I must have looked like I felt because people were stepping aside and waiting for the old lady to gingerly make it to the next step.  As I walked across the lobby to get a piece of opening night cake, I desperately wanted my cane.

Every corpuscle in my body was crying out for sleep as we pulled into the carport and I went directly to the couch and was asleep before Walt had turned out the lights.  Except for moving to the recliner at 5 a.m., I slept through until 7:30.

This morning I dragged the body out of the chair and hobbled into the kitchen to fix breakfast for the dogs, who have NO sensitivity about the mental state of someone just barely awake, and I have now deposited the remains of my body here in my office to get this entry written and start the review.

I now understand what happens when Grandpa's lumbago is affected by the changing seasons.  It has been so cold here (28 in our carport recently) that I can only assume that this complaint by my body is a result, and hope that it will soon return to its normal state, as the weather warms up.

The aches and lack of energy might also have had something to do with being rejected as a blood donor yesterday because my hemoglobin was too low again.

With a Little Help from My Friends

People are so wonderful.  When I got home from the book store today, I found this:

They are from a friend here in town, who writes: "A reminder that you are always much beloved."

I am assuming this is in response to the note about my bad day the other day.  This woman is such a sweetheart.  A couple of years ago I wrote something about not having a waffle iron, and next thing I knew one showed up on my doorstep, in a box from Amazon.  It has been used frequently since then. She is so incredibly thoughtful.

But I guess I should report that everything is fine now.  I had a couple of wonderfully supportive phone calls from people who read what I wrote and the person I had the difficulty with seems to be better now and we are back where we were before everything happened.

---

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I was trying to figure out how to download a video from You Tube to my iPad.  A wonderful reader named Elaine Normandy wrote on my guestbook and posted a link to an app called McTube which comes in both a free version and a $1.99 version.  I downloaded the app and then tried to figure out how it works.  I ultimately did, and my video downloaded without problem.  I took the iPad to the book store today, where I cannot connect to wifi, just to make sure that I really had downloaded it and that I wasn't just accessing it from YouTube.

It worked.  Thank you so much, Elaine!

But trying to figure the app out makes me realize that the biggest frustration with these apps that you can download is trying to figure out how to use them.  There are no manuals and if you're an old poop like me, where things are not as intuitive as they may be to some geeky whippersnappers, it can be frustrating.  (After having tried to play Angry Birds for literally 2 years now, I suddenly discover that there are tricks, and there are videos showing you those tricks.  I swear Brianna can do better at Angry Birds than I can!!)

But what is even more frustrating is that when you search for help in how an app works, you find videos that people have recorded to help folks like me figure out their app.  That is very nice of people to take the time to make a video so that everybody can get the most out of their apps.

HOWEVER, so far every app I've checked, not only for this one but for other apps I was trying to get help on is that the guy (so far it's always guys, no girls) recording the video starts cold and decides he's just going to show you what he does.  But they almost all end up with his trying to figure out what to do, and why it isn't doing what he thought it was going to do, and a lot of time spent going to different screens and muttering to himself trying to hit his stride. ("Hmmm...I wonder why this isn't...wait a minute...let me try...now it should...no that's not right," etc.)

Now why someone would POST this sort of video is beyond me.  Why not have a rehearsal so you know that your app is going to do what you think it's going to do.   And if you start videotaping and things go haywire and you can't figure out what went wrong, don't continue recording and then post that video!  Stop recording your video.  Erase your video, practice a bit more and then when you have a recording that actually HELPS someone, post that to You Tube.

But that's maybe just an old poop being entirely too logical for young geeky whippersnappers.

Take My Heart--Please

I've been thinking about David tonight.

We watched a show called Mobbed, which I had never heard of and which I don't see myself ever watching again, but I had been on Twitter tonight and my twitter feed was flooded with requests from Howie Mandel (the host) to watch it, and after it started on the East coast, from people who were raving about it.

The hype worked.  I decided to find out what it was all about.

It's a reality show and I guess that they choose someone who wants to honor someone--or surprise someone--and build an hour program around making that into an extravaganze.  I saw that Part 2 tonight was a girl who had a crush on someone at work and wanted to let him know she was falling in love with him.  I think a proposal might have been involved and from the look on his face, it might have gone badly, but we only watched the first hour.

The first subject was a 75 year old fire chief whose daughter wanted to let him know how much he was loved and to show him how many lives he had changed throughout his lifetime.  The tribute was prompted by her sister's death in an auto accident many years ago and the parents' decision to donate her organs (at the end of the show they met the daughters of an organ recipient who had lived an extra 17 years due to the kidneys she had been given and I think the last one was the heart recipient, though I couldn't understand what she said, but she did tap her chest and it seems likely that she was the heart recipient. The girl had been given the heart as a baby and was now an adult. 

Before that introduction there were practical jokes and lots of music and dancing with everybody waving their arms in the air in the manner of a last act finale.  It was all very touching and I was sobbing by the end of it.

Which is why I was thinking about David.

When David decided to run his car (or, more accurately, Jeri's car) into a light post in front of our old meat market in San Francisco, Walt and I were in New York, where we had gone for a Jose Carreras concert with our friend Barbara.   The other kids were at "the happiest place on earth," Disneyland, following a concert the night before, where after a phone call to security, the whole band was rounded up within half an hour (they were wearing Lawsuit t-shirts).

Walt and I were at a party at our friend Ron's apartment.  He was going to introduce us to a bunch of CompuServe friends I'd never met and when "the" phone call came, we were waiting for the first guests to arrive.  As the guests started arriving, Walt and I were in the back room talking to Ned and my mother, at David's bedside.

The kids flew home immediately and were with David in the hospital when he died.  We got the first plane out of New York, but not until 6 a.m. the next morning.  It was a long night in our hotel room, where none of us could sleep.

But the most surreal thing of all was talking to a disembodied voice of the "transplant coordinator" and giving her permission to remove our youngest child's organs so that some other person could use them.

There was never any question about whether we wanted to do that or not.  It has always been comforting, in the past 15+ years to think that perhas still somewhere in the world bits and pieces of David are still functioning and keeping someone else alive.

When my sister was murdered in 1971 it was before the age of transplants.  The only part of a person that could be used were the eyes and my father was LIVID at the thought of anybody cutting up "his" daughter.  My mother regretted that for years afterwards, thinking of two people whose sight might have been restored using Karen's corneas.

We heard from one of the transplant recipients.  I think it was whoever got one of David's kidneys.  I don't remember anything about that person now, except I think it was a middle-aged man.  I always wondered about the heart recipient. 

The transplant team promised us annual updates on how the organs were doing, but after the first year, we never heard from them again.  But that was OK.   The organs weren't David's any more and maybe I'm happier thinking that his heart still beats in the body of someone else, whether it does or not.

As I said, I won't be watching Mobbed again and I'm not entirely certain that the honoree was all that happy with being the center of attention tonight, but I am glad I watched it and could think back on donating David's organs and the comfort that act brought us.

We wanted to donate Paul's organs, too, but since the circumstances surrounding his death meant he had to be a "coroner case," it wasn't possible, though we signed a release to donate whatever could be used (skin cells, and other things for research).

If you have never seriously considered organ donation, whether for yourself or for your loved ones, I really recommend that you take some time to think about it, talk with your loved ones, and let your wishes be known to those who will take care of you after you die.

Discombobulated

This may be the most disjointed, uninteresting entry I have ever written.

I think it should be illegal to have a holiday on a Monday or Tuesday -- in the case of the New Year, it started on Monday (night) and slopped over to Tuesday.   I have spent all day today thinking I work tomorrow because I thought today was Wednesday.   I don't have a clue why.  It's confused even further because our garbage pick-up day is Tuesday and it's being picked up tomorrow 'cause they gave them today off to watch football or something.

I'm hoping that by Sunday, I'll be back on track again!

However, thanks to the iPad, I did something today I haven't done in years.  I sat and watched the whole Rose Parade.

The reason I enjoyed watching the whole thing was that I am now on Twitter, so I was following all the tweets people were making about the parade, and looking at the photos that Al Roker and Alison Sweeney were posting.  It added a new dimension, somehow, to the experience.

And I had my first celebrity message.  Let me try to explain to Mary (and others), who aren't on Twitter, how things work.  You write a message in 124 characters or less and post it.  I have been reading Twitter primarily to follow things like the fiscal cliff or other timely subjects, and surprised at how much more timely I get my news the last week or so.

But you can also send direct messages to someone, by using their Twitter handle.  If you wanted to send a message to me you would put @BeverlyASykes at the start and I would be sure to see it.

If someone else writes something you want to respond to, you can choose to "reply" and a box will come up for you to write your message and it was already have the name of the person you are replying to there.  @person.   You write your message there and it goes to them.

If you find something you really like you can "retweet" it, which means that you quote the original tweet and either just post it as is, or you can add a comment of your own.

Anyway, Mo Rocca, a writer, comedian and political satirist whom I know from his appearances on the radio show "Wait, Wait, Don't tell me" and as a commentator on the TV show, Sunday Morning, had written a tweet saying something like "years from now when historians look back on this generation they will call it the Meme generation."  I thought that was kind of funny, given my age, so I sent a tweet that read @MoRocca - Can you be part of the Meme Generation if you're 70?"

Next thing I know, this tweet appeared:  “@BeverlyASykes: @MoRocca - Can you be part of the Meme Generation if you're 70?” Yes!"  Now, granted it's only one word, but MoRocca mentioned me publicly.  I thought that was cool.

I tell this long, rather boring story because I'm feeling bad tonight about something that happened this afternoon.  I was accused of saying things I never said and NOT doing things I never said I would do.  The accusations were unanswerable and I am feeling sad, angry, frustrated, and even more frustrated because I normally address things like this by writing in this journal, but for certain reasons, this doesn't seem the right thing to do this time around, so I'm trying to find something ELSE to talk about, but it doesn't take away the sadness in my soul at the moment, which distracts from writing about anything else.

I'm sure it will all have blown over by tomorrow and I'm pretty good at forgiving and forgetting, but it's going to take sleeping on it to get to that point, unfortunately.

(And no, it has nothing to do with Walt)

But I have the whole day ahead of me tomorrow, when I thought I was going to be working in the afternoon.  I'm trying to finish reading a Moliere play that is going to be discussed at the Shakespeare Book Club, to which I am invited for Saturday.  I was able to find the text of the play on line (which means it was a free download), and I managed to find a way to get it to a word processing program on the iPad, which makes it easier to read.

It's actually a kind of fun read so far and I hope to be able to climb under Polly and the quilt for a couple of hours tomorrow and finish it--I now have a day longer to finish it than I thought I did until I realized that today is Tuesday, not Wednesday.

I also have to figure out how to get a YouTube video onto my iPad.   There is a video I would like to show my mother when I see her this weekend and there is no available wifi where she lives (and I do not have 3 or 4G on the iPad), so I want it to be a stand-alone video.  I can get it to my desktop and just have to figure out how to move it over to the iPad.

That is not covered in my iPad manual, but I know there has to be a way I can do it.

2012 Wrap-Up

This is a meme I've done in past years, looking back on the year that is just ended and how it all went.

1. Was 2012 a good year for you?
On the whole, I guess yes.
 
2. What was your favorite moment(s) of the year?
Making clam dip with Brianna.  My relationship with her has changed this year and is so much better now.  She still doesn't want to hug me, but she will play with me and sit next to me while I read to her.

3. What was your least favorite moment(s) of the year?
All of the deaths of all of our friends.  13 as of today

4. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before?
Started working in the book store, which became my favorite thing to do. 

5. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I stopped making resolutions a long time ago.

6. Where were you when 2012 began?
For the past several years we have gone to a small party attended by members of the former Davis Comic Opera Company. It's low key. We have home made soup, home made bread, fabulous desserts, great conversation, and are home in bed by 12:30 a.m. because we're all getting so old.

7. Who were you with?
About a dozen (or less) people from the former Davis Comic Opera Company.

8. Where will you be when 2012 ends?
Back at the same party.

9. Who will you be with when 2012 ends?
With all the same DCOC people, probably our best friends in Davis.

10. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not this year.

11. Did you lose anybody close to you in 2012?

January
  Concetta Jorgensen
  Mike Kelley
February
  Fred Rynders
April
  John Kahl
  Will Connolly
  Jim Hutchinson
July
  Peter Shack
August
  Barbara Erickson
September
  Gene Andreucetti
  Kat LoJacono
October
  Pat Peck
December
  Lindi Press (who died today)

12. Who did you miss?
All the same people I missed last year:  Paul, David, Gilbert, Peggy

13. Who was the best new person you met in 2012?
Kitch and his wife Joyce, who were on our European cruise.

14. What was your favorite month of 2012?
Don't think I had "a" favorite month.

15. Did you travel outside of the US in 2012?
We took our cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam

16. How many different states did you travel to in 2012?
Massachusetts (Boston) and I think that's about it.

17. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
A Congress willing to work together to accomplish things for the American people.  That would be a refreshing novelty.

18. What date from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
December 22, the date that the world didn't end.

19. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making it  to the end of the year.

20. What was your biggest failure?
The same one it always is...inability to stick with a healthy diet.

21. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really

22. What was the best thing you bought?
The best "thing" I got in 2012 would be a toss-up between my smart phone and the iPad, but Walt bought both of those.  The best thing I spent my own money on was the support for all the Compassion kids, especially the package of stuff I was able to send to Fred with someone who was going to the Philippines.

23. Whose behavior merited celebration?
We cheered Jeri's musical arrangement for Paragon Park, cheered Tom & Laurel's marathon run and have thoroughly enjoyed all of Ned's video work...he's definitely a professional.

24. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Congress.  Hands down.

25. Where did most of your money go?
About 1/3 of my income each month (from theater reviews and Social Security) goes to the Compassion kids.

26. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Lamplighters 60th anniversary Gala, where I got to see people I hadn't seen in a long time and watched wonderful video retrospectives.  A beautiful day.  (Also the Giants winning the World Series was pretty exciting too)

27. Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2012?
Almost none.  Most of it on the cruise, where I usually had wine with dinner and once in awhile had a cocktail before dinner.

28. Did you do a lot of drugs in 2012?
Only prescribed ones.

29. Did you treat somebody badly in 2012?
I hope not.

30. Did somebody treat you badly in 2012?
Yes.

32. What do you wish you'd done more of in 2012?
I'm sad that we live so far from Santa Barbara.  I would love to spend more time with the girls, especially now that Bri's school has events we would have liked to attend.

33. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Eating the wrong things.

35. What was your favorite TV program(s)?
NCIS, Criminal Minds, Homeland, Scandal

36. What song will always remind you of 2012?
Can't think of any songs that will remind me of 2012

37. How many stage shows did you see in 2012?
52 that I reviewed, and a few others that I didn't

38. Did you have a favorite stage show in 2012?
Sure!  Paragon Park, the show we went to Boston to see because Jeri had done the orchestrations.

39. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Don't think I made a musical discovery.

40. What was the best book you read?
"Book of Illusions" by Paul Auster

41. What was your favorite film of this year?
That's easy.  We only saw 2, one yesterday and one the day before and of those two, I preferred Lincoln.

42. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
My mother took me out to lunch, Walt took me out to dinner.  I was 69 and will be 70 in 2 months.

43. What did you want and get?
I wanted an iPad but didn't have a clue that Walt would get one for me...but he did! I never even hinted.

44. What did you want and not get?
World Peace

45. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
To have all the people in Question #12 back in my life.

46. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
About the same as every year.  Careless casual, with emphasis on sweat pants and Birkinstocks.

47. What kept you sane?
Writing this journal, reading, and NCIS marathons.

48. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I'm not really into "fancying" public figures, but just to pick two out of the air, it would be Mark Harmon for a male and maybe Rachel Maddow for a woman.

49. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
Life can change in a minute, when you least expect it.

50. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
From Princess Ida ...

           The world is but a broken toy,
           Its pleasure hollow – false its joy –
            Unreal its loveliest hue,
             Alas!
            Its pains alone are true,
             Alas!
            Its pains alone are true.

(feeling particularly morose today, on receiving the news of Lindi's death and Bob's latest report)