Tag: shutdown

Mickey

Friday morning work-at-home blog, and the weather is supposed to get more back to normal for this time of year—highs during the day anywhere from the lower 70s to the mid 80s, dropping to the 60’s at night. It makes it even harder to get out of bed in the chill of the morning–and my blankets are incredibly warm and comfortable, as is the bed. But li’l Tug expects to get fed every morning around six (and is more than happy to let me know six is nigh by leaping over Paul and landing on me, before curling up next to my head while waiting patiently for me to get up and feed him and give him fresh water), which is going to make the time change this weekend a bit irritating. I also hate going to work and coming home in the dark, which is also soul-destroying because you feel like you’ve lost the entire day at the office.

But I slept well last night and let myself go back to sleep after the daily six a.m. feed-me Tug attack, which felt great. There’s a mail run to do and Tug’s first vet visit to fit into the day, and we’re going to Costco after I finish my work at home chores later. The constant, on-going kitten-proofing of the apartment can also prove challenging because you never know what’s going to catch his inquisitive must-play-with-that eye, and he is very curious and adventurous about anything. Cabinets can’t be left open. He’ll climb into the dishwasher as I am loading it–but no curiosity about the dryer yet. He’s also fascinated by water, like Skittle was–but the shower was uninteresting to him; not the case with Tug. He’ll tightrope around the rim of the tub while I’m showering and also walk between the shower curtain and the liner. He’s adorable and completely in charge around here, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

And I love having a purring kitty donut sleeping in my lap while I watch television or read.

Last night we watched this week’s The Morning Show, which absolutely felt like a season finale; I’m not sure if it was or not but it felt like it. I wasn’t super-tired when I got home, but Tug was especially needy so I repaired to my easy chair where I watched this week’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–which was kind of dull; but the fun of watching these shows is watching and reading the reactions of the fans and the recaps and so forth. I was thinking yesterday that these shows create community within their fans, as people want to talk about the cast and what’s going on with them, happily judging their lives, their behavior, their clothes, their make-up, their hair, their homes and their families. I was thinking this was unique to reality shows–remembering how everyone used to talk about Survivor and The Bachelor and American Idol back in the day, similar to how soaps would have group watches on campus where everyone talked about the storylines and the characters and their interactions. But we also did that with Glee and Lost and Desperate Housewives and various other shows. I do wonder what is it about film and television that drives people with the urge and need to talk about it with other people?

Then again, I always wanted to talk about books with other people–so I guess I can get it.

I was realizing the other day that this year in December will mark nineteen years of this blog–first on Livejournal and then moved here when I’d finally had enough of the Russian propaganda and spam over there–which is a longer commitment than most straight relationships and marriages, which is an interesting way to look at it. I started keeping it around Christmas of 2004, while we were still living in the carriage house–we wouldn’t move into the main house until June or July 2005; only to be moved back into the carriage house by Hurricane Katrina later that year. It’s also hard to believe sometimes that Katrina–and the Incident with Paul–was so long ago now; just like the Virginia Incident was a long time ago. Time inevitably passes, and just going through your every day routine living your life as best you can one morning you realize a lot of time has passed. The pandemic shutdown was almost four years ago, for fuck’s sake. We are now in year three going on year four of the COVID-19 pandemic, although no one really talks about it anymore. I am going to write about that whole experience at some point–there are at least three more Scotty books I want and/or need to write, which will take New Orleans through the cursed Carnival of 2020 (and the Hard Rock hotel collapse) and the shutdown and then afterwards. I think that’s been part of the creative malaise lately; knowing that the Scotty series, about to debut its ninth volume, is finally winding down. There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to avoid with these books but with the series continually going, I don’t have a choice. Scotty’s grandparents are all in their nineties by now–so death is going to have to come to the family. On the page or off the page? I do think it might be interesting to explore the Bradley side of the family a bit more; perhaps the death of the Bradley grandparents and a struggle over the will or something could be the basis for a book; perhaps COVID-19 might claim them, I don’t know. But I know I’ve not written about the shutdown or the pandemic, and it feels kind of cowardly to not address it in fiction yet.

Maybe I should finish that pandemic short story I started, “The Flagellants.”

I’m also thinking about getting blinds for the kitchen windows at long last; a do-it-yourself project I think I can handle.

And on that note, I’m getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Friday, and I’ll be back later with more blatant self-promotion.

Be a Rebel

And it’s Thursday now. Yesterday was an odd day, really; the water finally came back on just before or right around noon, and yes, I luxuriated in having running water for the rest of the day. I took a long hot shower (lovely), washed dishes and ran the dishwasher, and did a load of laundry. I probably washed my face about every hour on the hour. It was absolutely lovely–but am also sure I will eventually start taking running water for granted again soon. But…still, it was marvelous when it came back on; absolutely marvelous.

I wound up taking a personal day yesterday so I wouldn’t have to do much of anything; the first two days of the week I had felt somewhat off my game, for some reason, and with the water situation, I decided it made the most sense to take the day off and recalibrate my brain; it may have worked, I am not entirely sure–but I know I slept really well last night and feel rested this morning. It’s also hard for me to believe that it was nearly a year ago when the entire country shut down; in my wildest dreams I never expected all of this to go on for as long as it has. But at least here I am, a year later, vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus yet still adjusting to a world and life that seems to change somehow every day. When I went to work for the airline, the very first thing we were told in training was “The only constant in this business is change–and it can change from hour to hour” and I thought, well, that’s kind of like life itself and kind of adopted it as a sort of motto for a while. It eventually evolved into what has become Scotty’s philosophy of life: life doesn’t hand you anything you can’t handle, it’s how you handle it that matters.

So, I got caught up on my chores yesterday. In the afternoon (before the long, luxurious shower) I walked to the gym. It was a glorious day; beautiful weather with the cerulean sky and no clouds and a nice cool breeze and in the low seventies; I again marvelous at how gorgeous the city of New Orleans actually is. There’s a lot of city work going on–I think it’s Entergy–so it seems like every block in my immediately neighborhood has at least one place where the sidewalk had been torn out and an enormous hole dug; it’s roped off so you have to walk in the street (and sometimes around parked cars). I’m not exactly sure what all this work is (I also suspect that an accident by the Entergy people could be why our water was off), but one thing I know for sure about New Orleans is that our infrastructure is crumbling. Oh, sure, there have been a lot of improvements (the years of construction on Rampart Street as they relaid the streetcar line is one example) made throughout the city, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that most of our sewage and water pipes are over a hundred years old and in some cases made from lead (which is why you never drink tap water in the city unless it’s been filtered), and of course our constantly shifting ground means unfillable potholes that just grow and grow–they’ve been filling and refilling the massive one on our street for years, to no avail as the filling just sinks and disappears into the yawning opening; sometimes I wonder if it’s one of the gates of Guinee that are theoretically scattered throughout the city–and of course the flooding during heavy rains doesn’t help that at all. New Orleans is an improbable and impossible city but one that is absolutely necessary (you can probably tell I am thinking a lot about New Orleans again lately; there’s a Scotty book percolating in my brain on the back burner that I will get to later this year).

Yesterday I was scrolling through the HBO Max app on the television and, like always, went to the Recently Added line and saw, to my great delight, that The Lost Boys had been added for streaming. I hadn’t seen the movie in years, and was actually thinking about it the other day–someone on Facebook had mentioned the soundtrack, which I actually had on vinyl over thirty years ago and really liked–and voilá, there it was. I saw in the theater back in the day when it was a first release, loved it, and watched it several more times once it was on video or cable (remember when the purpose of channels like HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime was to simply show movies endlessly?). I’ve always been fond of the film, and so thought why not give it another whirl and see it it holds up after all this time? It’s a good film–visually stunning, really–and is also memorable for giving Dianne Wiest one of her first major film roles, following her Oscar win for Hannah and Her Sisters. It was clearly intended for young viewers, who’d grown up and mature with MTV–hence the great visual look of the film–and while there were some holes in the script (the boys had never once been to their grandfather’s home for a visit, despite the fact he lived in a resort town on the California coast?) the casting was excellent–Keifer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Jamie Gertz, and the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman), and even a pre-Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Alex Winter as one of the gang of young biker vampires. It was shot on location in Santa Cruz, which was another reason the film endeared itself to me; I’d spent time in Santa Cruz and loved the offbeat town (and have always wanted to write about it) and had explored many of the places that showed up in the film. It was an enjoyable watch, if not particularly involving, and the acting isn’t particularly deep; and it is very much an 80’s film–the clothes, the hair, the soundtrack–and I was amused to see that the young gang of vampire Sutherland leads looks like nothing so much as an 80’s hair metal band. But the soundtrack also still holds up…it’s just a shame to see how charismatic and talented the Coreys were before their lives and careers went to hell.

This morning I have data entry to do, and then of course this afternoon the inevitable condom packing. I haven’t decided what to watch for today as of yet–I’ve been thinking Saturday Night Fever was due a rewatch and was going to queue it up yesterday, but then I remembered the gang rape scene (although it wasn’t called that in the movie) and how cretinous the guys are…and despite the soundtrack and relative importance of the film, I just wasn’t feeling it. I do want to rewatch it sometime, but I am not really sure when. I guess it’s going to depend on my mood; I have a rather extensive watch list on most of my apps as it is, and find myself scrolling past some of these great films I’ve never seen because they simply don’t strike my fancy. Although it definitely belongs to the 1970’s with its focus on disaffected characters feeling trapped by life and circumstances.

And on that note, tis into the data entry spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will see you tomorrow.