Tag: Six Days of the Condor

Candlebright

I slept in again this morning–which has been happening alot, which means I am going to have to get used to getting up early again next week because this morning’s COVID test came back negative. It’s finally over. Yesterday I still felt a little worn down and fatigued, but managed to get things done (not much, really; but some laundry and dishes and some reading and so forth–I was afraid to overdo it, even though I felt good; cautious and concerned about a relapse), but now that I can safely confirm that I am out of the woods, it’s time to start easing myself back into my life. I ordered groceries for curbside pick-up this morning, so once I get that text I’ll drive over to pick them up, but…I’m over everything. It is now safe for me to go out in public (wearing a mask, believe me; I know that doesn’t really protect me but other people, but I can’t help but remember that it was when I allowed myself to get more lax with the masking that I got infected. So yes, intellectually I know it’s not helping but emotionally it makes me feel better to do so, so I am going with the emotions over the intellect on this one) again, and it also means I can finally return to work on Monday. Monday is usually my work at home day, but having been out of the office for the last week, I kind of feel like I probably should pop in on Monday and make my presence known again.

Plus, I have to get all the sick time bullshit sorted–and might as well do that on a day when I don’t have clients.

Huzzah? Huzzah indeed.

We finished the second season of Condor last night, which was enjoyable. If you’re into espionage/political thrillers, this is a very good one. Ben Irons (Jeremy’s son) is really good in the lead as Joe Turner, a low-level CIA employee who catches on to something major in the first season and everything goes to shit for him from there–like the book and movies it was based on (the movie was Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford; the book was Six not Three. I watched this as part of my Cynical 70’s Film Festival during the shutdown/work at home times). I have a copy of the book, by Richard Condon, that it in my enormous TBR pile. I’ve wanted to read it (along with The Manchurian Candidate) because these old political thrillers are interesting to me, with their extreme paranoia and evil Communist archetypes. I want to read them not only for their value as political thrillers but as remnants of a past time that could be said to also border on propaganda–painting the Communists, particularly the Soviet Union–as the bad guys. (This is not to say that the Soviet leadership weren’t bad people–some of them most definitely were–but their national interest also opposed to ours, so from their point of view Americans were the bad guys; that whole “no villain sees themselves as a villain” thing we talk about in character workshops and panels.)

It was also incredibly weird and strange resting so much over the last eight days. I have to recognize the fact that part of how I am feeling–the strangeness–is because I am actually no longer tired. I am always tired, apparently; not really sure why that is other than not getting enough sleep or something along those lines, but this morning, after sleeping off and on almost regularly for eight days, I feel rested this morning. Which means I can get all kinds of things done today–slowly easing myself back into my life, as it were–and plan to spend some time with Sandra SG Wong’s riveting In the Dark We Forget, should do some writing and editing, and then there’s of course all the cleaning and filing and organizing that needs to be done. I need to update my bills list, I need to make a new to-do list, I need to reread and revise a story one last time before submitting it to an anthology I want to get it into; and may I add how lovely it is not to have the brain fog this morning? My head is clear, and that feels amazing. My throat still feels a little bit more raw than I would prefer, and now I know that post-nasal drip is sinus related and a Claritin-D will take care of it. Huzzah!

I also don’t feel terribly daunted about getting started digging out from under the piles of everything that gathered while i was sick and foggy and exhausted, either–which is another good sign. I know it sounds weird, but now that I am sixty (sixty-one in less than a month; there’s still time to get a card and buy a gift, you know) I always worry that things aren’t necessarily related to an illness but rather are a permanent change to my life and my body and my brain. Our bodies and brains don’t come with user manuals, after all, so we are best off just getting by the best we can and always have to wonder. I was worried that the brain fog, for example, wasn’t something related to the COVID plague but rather a shift in my head that goes along with my age, you know? My memory has already become a lot more specious and less-specific than it used to be; I no longer remember things that were committed to memory just a few years ago. Admittedly, a lot of it was trivial information that really only came in handy when you’re playing Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, but damn it, I used to always run the categories and rarely, if ever, lost at Trivial Pursuit and those days are sadly long past me now.

And I also feel relatively certain you’re tired of listening to me whine about being sick–well, you don’t have to worry about reading about that any longer, Constant Reader. I was even taking notes on some thoughts about Mississippi River Mischief yesterday in my journal.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up so that when I get the text that my groceries are ready I can head down to the store for curbside pick-up, which will be lovely. Have a wonderful Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Somebody Wants to Love You

I still feel a little bit disoriented, to be honest. I have to stop and think about what day it is–wait, it’s Friday, right?–and then have to check my phone (blessedly charged now, thank heavens) to see the day and date. I had posted something on my phone the other day about the misery of late August in New Orleans without power, and my friend Leslie commented, good thing it’s September now–which sent me into a tailspin of panic and fear (which was certainly not her intent) about paying the bills. I knew I was ahead on paying them, but couldn’t remember if I had paid everything and couldn’t check my Google calendar to be certain…which was one of the first things I did when we got all settled in last night. Apparently, I was even more efficient than I’d remembered–I’d paid almost everything except two credit cards (not due until next week) and in fact, other than those two, nothing is due again until I get paid again. Quite marvelous, to be honest; money has been such a stress factor for the last few years that I’d forgotten what it was like to be ahead on everything–which is always my preferred state.

And once I post this, I have about a gazillion emails to get through, try to figure out where I am with things, and then I can completely relax. This motel has a nice continental breakfast set up (only from 6-9 in the morning though) so I had to slink down there this morning to grab two cups of coffee before they closed down. It’s not the best coffee by any means, but it’s coffee–and I’ve not had any since this past Sunday. I didn’t sleep great–getting used to a bed that is not my own is always an issue whenever I travel–but I rested, which makes all the difference in the world. There’s an all-staff phone call at noon today that I obviously am going to try to get in on.

I checked with Entergy this morning as well, and there’s not even a rough estimate of when we’ll have power at the once again Lost Apartment. Heavy sigh. But that’s okay; I don’t know how long we’re going to be wandering this time but at least this time there’s definitely an end to it in sight; we were out of the Lost Apartment for 15 months (which, for those of you who are new here, is why I started calling it the Lost Apartment in the first place; we’d just moved into it like two months before Katrina from the much smaller carriage house before we lost the apartment for over a year); this time won’t be anything like that, thank God. Currently, our fluid plan is to drive back to New Orleans on Sunday, see what’s up, drop off the dirty clothes and repack with clean ones, and head back out again if we need to. We obviously don’t want to come all the way back up here to Greenville, but hopefully with Labor Day over we can possibly stay somewhere closer to home, like Biloxi or Gulfport. (And I can make those arrangements here before we check out Sunday morning, while I still have WiFi.) Ah, well. At least we have the privilege to do these things–other people don’t have credit cards or savings accounts or a working car or any of the myriad of little things you need to get out of town. And we can watch the LSU game Saturday, which is also terrific. GEAUX TIGERS!

I only brought two books with me–Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Six Days of the Condor by James Grady–but I do have the iPad–so I can always read the shit ton of books I’ve bought on sale for my Kindle over the years but never seem to get around to. I did get over my aversion to reading electronically during the early days of the pandemic, when I couldn’t focus on reading new things so I went back and reread some old Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt favorites; that cured me of not reading electronically (but it’s still not my preference, thank you very much). I also want to transcribe the short story I started writing in my journal that last Saturday night we had power (“Parlor Tricks”), and maybe work on Chlorine a bit. It will probably take me HOURS to get through all the emails that have accumulated, but that’s fine. Paul got up for breakfast, and he and Scooter went back to sleep shortly thereafter, so I have some definite down/quiet time here for a while. I had thought I had started blog entries already for the books I had read during the week, but had not–so am not sure when I will be able to get around to writing about those wonderful books; but you can be sure I will at some point–even though I don’t have the books with me for reference, and of course, my memory–already shot to pieces–is never very good after a catastrophe.

A lot of people have been recommending the Bates House of Turkey as a place to eat here; so we’ll be checking that out at some point. The only other options are fast food–blech–but we are going to need to eat and what choice do we have? I can always, once normality has been restored to New Orleans, hit the gym really hard. The wake of catastrophes are always good times for my body, really; as my body is something I can control (to a point, of course) I inevitably, when reminded that I don’t really have much control over my life and my destiny, tend to focus in on the things that I can control; my body being one of those things. Paul and I really do need to eat healthier–we ain’t getting any younger, hello sixty year old Gregalicious!–and the irony was the night I had dinner with Ellen Byron at Red Gravy (it seems like a million years ago, hello again, complete loss of any sense of time) was the first time I had worn a Polo style shirt since before the pandemic, and I was stunned at how the shirt fit–how big my chest, shoulders and arms looked; how much narrower my waist had become, just with the mostly half-assed workouts I had been doing. It felt nice, if you don’t mind my confessing to my own vanity–so if I actually started eating healthier….who knows?

And on that note, it’s time to head back into the spice mines and try to get on top of the email situation. Will check in again with you soon, Constant Reader, and have a lovely Friday!