Sunday, May 25, 2014

Sunday Sundries, 1



A bit of this and that from the past week ...

  • I can't remember the last time I slept all night ... twenty years ago? Longer?  Older men. Prostate problems. (We in the club know the drill.) I'm up three-four times a night. The only thing I hate: having to get up less than an hour before I'd planned to. Existential angst: Should I go back to bed for forty minutes? Stay up? (Guess which I do more often.)
  • The story of the discovery of the bones of King Richard III under a parking lot in Leicester was an amazing story (there's a very good documentary about it on Netflix)--a virtually impossible occurrence. This week an English court ruled the bones will stay in Leicester, not go back to York, his home. There's been some outcry against that decision--some understandable outcry. Let's say you were killed in an auto accident on a country road in Nebraska. Should your grave be in the nearest cemetery? Or with your family? (Duh.) Not that Richard III was the best of "family men."

  • Last Christmas (2013) our son gave us two universal remotes, one for the upstairs TV, another for the down. They have lain, unopened (in their impossible plastic packaging) since the Holidays, on our "junk table"--I bet your house has one, too--a surface where you put things you don't know what to do with? But this week I decided to get them going--and, a few hours later, they were. It wasn't all that simple. I had to get the model numbers from all our "devices" (DVR, cable box, TV, etc.), then hook each remote up to the computer, upload the information, sync the device, try it out ...  Visitors to our household would have heard some ... colorful ... language during the process.

  • Why don't they make movies for adults anymore? It seems the theaters are full of cartoons, horror and superhero films, pale and superficial and forgettable romantic comedies. Yes, we can drive to the Cedar-Lee to see something else--but it's about 50 minutes each way ... worth it, yes, but by week's end we're often lacking the energy to head out to Cleveland Heights. It's a dark time in Movieland.
  • And, finally, I've written here before about my many habits ... Creature of Habit is a phrase invented for me. This morning, driving to Panera (one of our Sunday habits), I asked Joyce a question: "How would you rank me on the Boredom Scale? One = so boring that one more syllable from me would kill you. Ten = never boring." She paused a bit too long, then said, "Well, you're neither one nor the other. You're kind of both." I laughed bitterly. Then she said, "I'm sure I have my flaws, too ..." Okay. Here's what I think about that. Someone who says "I'm sure I have my flaws, too," means, of course, that he or she has no flaws. And if I were so unwise as to mention one or two, there would be a Consequence whose dimensions I don't wish to imagine. So ... the best policy in such situations? Silence. (But, actually, we both laughed a lot about it. The truth often is very funny.)



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