Sunday Sundries, 66

1. AOTW: A couple of them, performing the same traffic maneuver on our journey to and from Massachusetts last week, both on I-80. I've awarded the AOTW for this maneuver before, but it's this one--assuming as you roar down a freeway on-ramp that you have the right-of-way. You don't, you AOTWs out there. The traffic already on the freeway has the right-of-way. And sometimes (as was the case with me this trip) we can't move to the left lane to accommodate you because someone else is there. So ... slow down ... look for your opening ... JERKS!

2. We had a great visit in western Mass. this week for my mom's birthday. She was happy to have all three of her sons there--in addition to a daughter-in-law (Joyce) and a granddaughter and grandson (Bella and Rick, my brother Dave's children). Other folks were working and could not be there (Phil, my older brother's partner, Dave's wife, Janice, and our son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, Logan and Carson).

We actually had the "big" celebration the day afterwards--out on the patio of her assisted-living unit. Lots of chocolate (her Major Addiction) and good feeling. I posted this photo on Facebook--but here it is again.

L-R: Dan, Richard, Dave, Mom in front

3. Joyce and I started watching (via Netflix DVD) The Ice Storm (1997), the Ang Lee film (based on the novel by Rick Moody, 1994), and once again (yes, we've seen it before) we're enjoying and laughing and grieving. Great performances from Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes--all looking impossibly young. (Link to trailer for the film.)

4. I did not finish a book this week--not counting the one I finished for Kirkus Reviews--but I'm not allowed to tell you Kirkus titles I've reviewing. Although my name is listed in the journal, all the actual reviews are anonymous. But as usual I'm reading multiple books--including the new Lee Child, the new Sue Grafton + some classics (Twenty Years After, Romola) + a long, long journey through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

5. The three book reviews in today's Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer came from Cox Newspapers, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

6. Joyce and I are also watching Treme, the HBO series by David Simon (of The Wire fame), the series that ran from 2010-2013. It deals with New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is full of local culture and music. And disturbing behavior by that most disturbing creature, Homo sapiens. I don't know how/why we missed the series when it originally aired (we are HBO subscribers), but it's powerful stuff--and we're also watching (streaming) Spike Lee's documentary, When the Levees Broke. Fascinating to see how the two series enrich the other.

7. Oh, on the way home from Mass. I got a dynamite idea for a children's book (Dr. Seussian age), but I ain't tellin' you a thing about it! Gonna get to work on it this week, though, just to see ...

8. Finally ... later in her life my grandmother Osborn (my mom's mom) took up oil painting. Here is one that hangs on my mom's wall now. It shows Grandma's four grandchildren (Dick, Dan, Dave) and her granddaughter, Virginia (the daughter of my uncle Ronald), who died in a bizarre traffic accident, spring break of her freshman year in college, 1967. We four children are playing on the snow-covered golf course in Enid, Oklahoma, the Phillips University course (at the time--it's now public). Grandma died in the spring of 1978--so wonderful these paintings remain.