Tales From An Alternate Reality

We've finally hit a long-delayed cooling period—just in time for us to leave for vacation on Friday. \o? But that means I've been able to bike outside again the last couple of days, and should be able to continue through Thursday. Finally!

With the Zepbound-related wimpiness, I don't entirely look forward to the rides now. I've heeded one_raido's suggestion about getting more protein, so I'm more careful about that. Yesterday's ride was at least no worse than the one the week before, which is something, I guess? Today was a little better— slightly cooler and with the wind going the normal direction so I wasn't riding into a persistent headwind on the way back. I've never been good with heat, hills, or headwinds, but right now they exhaust me. Ugh.

We'll be flying to Hawaii on Friday, to spend ten days on the big island at this corner of paradise. We went there a year ago, at my sister's recommendation, and loved it! HalfshellHusband wishes it were more compact, like the Oahu Hilton, because there's a lot of walking even just getting from the lobby to the building our room is in. (We're hoping walking in general will go better for him after his upcoming foot surgery this Fall) But the swimming pools are gorgeous, the view is incredible, and the seawater lagoon is fabulous. We'll be spending a LOT of time at the lagoon.

I've already started amassing library books on my Kindle, to make sure I can get them. Dungeon Crawler Carl #5, the last of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Genarro mysteries, a Lisa Jewell, another Mike Chen, a deeply weird Emily Jane, and an Anthony Horowitz. I'll be looking for another book today, since I finished Cinder House (Cinderella as a ghost! And also a house!) faster than expected. :D

Other recent reads: The Life Impossible, which I liked but didn't love, and We Burned So Bright (same). The first was kind of sci-fi, and others may have felt it was profound? Eh. The second was good but really preachy, though I liked the ending a lot. A similar setup to The Last Policemen series, but with a very different feel to it.

All right, time to give in to the urge to do some early packing! Toodles. :D

Boy, this is tedious. It seems like almost every photo taken inside our house or my parent's house needs the lighting enhanced. My Dad always wanted the drapes shut, so his houses were always dark. And our house? It has 8-foot ceilings, and there were no overhead lights in the living room before the rebuild. Plus, the dining room had no natural light until we opened the wall to an oddly-placed third-bedroom (some kind of nanny suite?) and converted it to a family room with glass-paned pocket doors. Much of the downstairs was cave-like. :O

I just finished editing 2008, which was the year of lost pictures, thanks to an unrecoverably-crashed hard-drive on an earlier PC. Our daughter had backups, somehow, so I'm mostly missing January and February (slow months), plus there are no Father's Day pictures (boo!). I hope to get through at least 2009 today, maybe even 2010? Eventually, I'll get to when all the photos were taken with my phone, so I'll have to drag them down off of the cloud. That'll be a new kind of hassle!

We saw The Odyssey last weekend, which was much better than I expected. Matt Damon was able to bring gravitas to the role of Odysseus, and Ann Hathaway was excellent (as were the various monsters!). Tom Holland and Charlize Theron both sounded too modern for me, like a "gonna" was about to show up at any moment, and Eliot Page was an odd casting choice. The movie's pace was good, though, and the storm scene was fantastic! Now we're all looking forward to the Acme movie, though HalfshellHusband and I might go see the Minions at some point without The Boy.

The New York Times posted a list of The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century yesterday, and between that and the ballots of the authors they consulted, I added about 15 books to my library Wish List. Tana French was incredibly popular, as was S.A. Cosby. For some reason, a LOT of authors mentioned Jo Nesbo's The Snowman, but it's #7 in the Harry Hole series, so it would take a while to get to it. Thinking of Lisa Jewell's And Then She Was Gone (several mentions, but not enough to make the list) inspired me to check out one of her newest books, Don't Let Him In, and put a hold on the most recent one.

Meanwhile, I just finished a highly-recommended short story by Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat. I was... underwhelmed. It was definitely strange and interesting--maybe a little shocking (some might say 'unrealistic'). I didn't like Spark's prose, though. She seems not to have learned that opening phrases akin to "Once upon a time" or "Before the last meeting" need to be followed by a comma, so the reader doesn't have to fight to parse the sentence. And that the flip side, lots of comma-separated sub-clauses in a sentence, MAY be a sign that you've inside-outed your phrasing and might consider wording things more straightforwardly. \o?

In weather news, I might be able to ride out in the world again later this week (Wednesday or Thursday). After a gap of three weeks in the garage. :O

Today's bike ride was not quite as bad as Monday's. Less hot, though windier. Still exhausted by the end, still had an extra unplanned stop. But at least this time I went the full distance!

I can't tell if the bulk of this tiredness is the weather, the altered biking position, or a side-effect of having started Zepbound. Possibly all three. \o?

On the plus side, I finally saw something going over that second train trestle! The maps say "Western Pacific", but it looks like those tracks are for Union Pacific (the other trestle is Southern Pacific). On the negative side... there's a manure stench at the Business 80 over-crossing. The wind is blowing the wrong way for it to be coming from the State Fair, so IDK why it's happening. When I used to bike near the office in Roseville, construction would sometimes unearth that smell and it would last for months. That all used to be cattle-grazing land, and I use to wonder if backhoes were cracking into a reservoir of buried stench just by breaking the surface. Ugh.

I finished reading On Earth As It Is On Television, which was fun. Then I plowed through A Quantum Love Story, which was wonderfully soulful and bittersweet. It's about two people who are the only ones who realize the Earth is in a 4-day time loop, and they fall in love as they work together to try to fix that. Based on how much I liked it, I've put a bunch of other Mike Chen books in my online library wishlist. Now, I'm reading Three Days In April.

And TV-wise? I finished Hope Street (unresolved ending--boo!) and have started a single-season crime drama on BritBox called The Jetty. After that, I've got a couple of things to try out on Hulu, based on friends-list recommendations. :D

We had family visiting us over the 4th, which was great, but it meant I didn't get around to posting any updates. The day itself was kind of weird, in that the 250th would normally be a big deal and instead inspired a "meh" feeling, thanks to Trump ruining it for everyone (both by killing the celebration and by putting the country in the state it's in). Our daughter bought some fireworks, though, and so we had a little show at the bottom of the driveway. First time for that since my brother moved North about 4 years ago. He used to go nuts on the 4th -- it was his favorite holiday! And now he's passed on, so I have a lot of bittersweet feelings about the date.

I was shopping for something at Amazon this week, and it remembered that I've been looking at book nooks, so it suggested a Dolphin Island set to me. Is that a thing? I guess it must be. Anyway, this was a much better set than the one it suggested, though still not as good as other book nooks I've seen. AKA,

* Dinosaur Museum

* Magic Station (Harry Potter Hogwort's train)

* Voyage Memories

* Whatever This Dreamy Seafaring Thing Is

* Steampunk

* Zodiac

* Tarot

* Pirate Bay

* Dark Family (Netflix's Wednesday show)

Whoo!

In TV viewing, we watched The Vow on Netflix last weekend and enjoyed it, and I've been bingeing on Hope Street (Britbox) before it gets removed. I was unprepared for the cast shakeups that happen each season, especially since Nicole and Clint and their toxic, histrionic relationship is one of the storylines I least like, and yet they're still around and still yelling at each other. :(

We've also started S2 of The Good Girl's Guide To Murder, which we both like. The lead character is played by the actress who plays Enid in Wednesday, so that's nice. She's very likeable. But looking through my Netflix list yesterday, I can see that I really need to finish S2 of Beef (disappointing) and get to one of the other 30 or so series in my queue. Probably this week, since we're having a heatwave and I'll be biking in the garage for-e-ver. \o?

My son and I went for a walk/hike along the parkway on Memorial Day. 6 miles, which I previously would have considered a short hike when I was walking or running at least once a week. Now? My feet were sore by the end of it. But my plantar fasciitis is definitely better, because after a day of rest, my feet were fine.

We saw a coyote, which might have only been our son's second sighting of one? It would have been the first, but there was a coyote on our front lawn a couple of weeks ago. Not good. :(

Tuesday, I was out there biking again, and at my last turnaround point (a nice shady spot), I saw what looked the the biggest, fattest caterpillar ever shuffling across the pavement! When I got closer, I saw that it was a tiny mole. :O I haven't seen a mole since I was a kid, when we were out digging in the yard for one of my dad's interminable child labor projects. Possibly the summer we made a French drain? Anyway, my brother put the shovel in the ground, and it came out with a large mole on top of the dirt. Ewwwww, but those things are ugly. We put it in an empty Folgers coffee can, and my brother later walked it several blocks up the road to release it into the forest patch that abutted our property.

My husband's wildlife sighting beats mine, though. He was out riding his recumbent trike yesterday, and had to slow because a skunk and her babies were crossing the path. He gave them a wide berth, which I think could have ended badly. I would have waited until they were all the way across and out of sight!

Speaking of skunks, I've decided the odor at the downriver spot where I turn around is skunk and not weed. That's because the mystery construction project beyond the clump of tall bushes there has moved much closer, and you can't smoke weed while working construction. Fortunately, the smell has cleared away from the surrounding areas. Nearby, I biked past one of my favorite smells: the sweet, peppery aroma given off by the buds of wild grapes. No idea why they smell like that this time of year, but it's very consistent!

Do you all have plans for the weekend? We're going out for a belated anniversary dinner tonight, and then tomorrow I need to get my new laptop running. Always a chore...

Our daughter's Mother's Day present finally arrived, and it was a complete surprise! Also very creative, and true to her snarky sense of humor. It's our family, in LEGO people!



She and our son were on the same wavelength: "Do you know what would be funny?" he said during the individual figure unboxing, and it turned out she had thought of the same thing. The short person with the child-sized legs is ME. Because I'm only 5'6" in a family of 5'10", 6'2", and 6'4" giants. :O

The accessories were well-chosen. Our daughter has a camera, our son has a cat, I have a computer, and my husband has a banana. She apparently was laughing herself sick over picking out that banana, too. :D

My son and I went to Scandia Fun Center and played a couple of rounds of mini-golf before it got too hot. We were both unpredictable and relatively bad, as usual. He got a hole-in-one and shot a few holes under par, but also got a 7 on a couple of them. I managed par or under on a few, but also got 9 on one of the holes, so he managed to beat me. Putting is my nemesis. :O

We were done outside by about 1pm, and went inside to use the free arcade tokens that came with admission. Then we came home, and I got caught up on a couple of chores. Late afternoon, HalfshellHusband and I watched The Proposal, and then all of us watched Moana and ate takeout Thai food for dinner. Our son was the only one who'd seen Moana before. "Meh" to all of the main character's songs, but The Rock's "You're Welcome" was fun and catchy and I loved the crab's Bowie tribute number, "Shiny". Also, the deranged chicken sidekick was hilarious.

Our daughter called in the evening, and it was nice to talk to her (she lives about 12 hours south of here). Then I opened presents, which included a LEGO-style set titled Dwarf Cabin. It is actually a hobbit house, but you have to love the technically non-copyright-infringing name choice. I hope to start it today!

They've been tearing up the streets in our neighborhood to install a new metered water system for about three years now? There's the jackhammering to break the concrete for the installation, then they patch, and then after months and months they come back and scrape off the street surface (loud) and repave. In theory. The main street in front of our house still only has the patches, and it badly needs repaving.

The side street has been completed through the repaving, but today we're in our second post-completion jackhammering episode. The first time was a couple of weeks ago, where they opened the pavement around pipe accesses (who knows why?), and then repaved. Now they're back again. WHAT are they doing over there, and why aren't they ever done?

I got very little accomplished this weekend apart from my ongoing project to cull pictures from our 7-8 photo albums. This is because we HAVE so many albums, and also because I haven't been adding things to them since I started taking pictures with my phone instead of a digital camera (about 10 years now). I need room so I can print out some of those cloud photos and add them. I finished albums 2-4, removing probably 160-200 photos from before we had kids. So, that's progress. The next project will be to buy full-sized photo albums for the kids, and move the pictures over from their mini-albums. I made a series of small albums for both when they were little, so they could have their OWN photo books and stop messing with the family ones. We have about 10 of them, and they're taking up a lot of shelf space. Better for the kids to have their own grown-up versions.

TV-wise, I rewatched Barbie recently (still love it!) and finally saw the first Avengers movie. So much Loki! Then we watched Avengers 2, which we also hadn't seen. NO Loki. :( And HalfshellHusband and I went to see The Devil Wears Prada 2, which was a surprisingly worthy sequel. The fashion was more weird than swanky this time around, though. The tassel jacket! The long, heavy tweed dresses! The runway ridiculousness! But Meryl Streep still looks fabulous. I honestly think that bright silver hair is more attractive than her usual blond color, certainly at this age. It's really striking.

Back to the salt mines now. Not getting enough done this week, just nebulous investigation and idea-rejection. :(

I managed to avoid running over a snake today, which is a plus. It was around 83F, and they tend to come out in the heat... and then lie on the pavement in the shade. Most of the time, I wind up running over them because I think they're a stick and it's too late to avoid them anyway. :(

This one was not a rattlesnake, thank goodness. And it was a chonk! Wow.

I also saw some turklets. It's that time of year! These were young enough to be cute (which doesn't last long). And I spotted the aftermath of a fish hoping to chomp a black butterfly that was hovering over the river.

Being early May, the wild grape buds are out. They have a sweet, peppery smell that is nothing like actual grapes. The cottonwood trees are also releasing fluff into the air, and that can come and go for a month depending on how often we transition back into winter weather. Soon, squirrel mating season will be running full tilt, and I'll have something else to dodge while biking out there. But in the meantime, I hope the sweetness of spring lingers a little bit longer. :)

another staged assassination attempt. :( What's really at issue? Distracting peole from the war in Iran and the Epstein files. Not to mention grift and treason, but who's counting?

In lighter news, Sacramento is still in the off-again/on-again rain cycle. A few days of biking outdoors, a few days in the garage. This is keeping the summer heat at bay, though, so I'll take it. May is coming, and that can be the start of hell. Or not. We got married on May 20, some almost 37 years ago. It was a beautiful day, about 80F. On our first anniversary, it poured all weekend. Other years? 90-100F. There's no way of knowing until you're in it.

We watched Beckett last night with The Boy, which was entertaining but another reminder that Denzel Washington's son will probably never have a huge career because he looks like his mother rather than his father. Pleasant, but not distinctive. Then HalfshellHusband and I watched Happiness For Beginners, which I always thought was a Simon Pegg movie. It was not— different flavor altogether— but we enjoyed it. Gorgeous scenery.

( Books )

Speaking of which, there are ads now for eyedrops you can use to temporarily remove the need for reading glasses. Ullhhhh... That seems kind of risky to me. I used to have daily contact lenses that would sharpen my right-eye vision and make my left eye work for short distances. But I always wound up taking the left lens out when I biked, because otherwise I couldn't see the traffic behind me clearly enough to know if it was safe to merge left. And most of my reading now is either computer screen or Kindle, and the Kindle lets me adjust the font size up and down!

The medical miracles I want have to do with weight control (currently ineligible) and shedding less hair. I've seen a little improvement on that last issue. My sister bought and then didn't use about 6 months' worth of Nutrafol, which she passed along to me. AFAIK, it isn't helping the corners of my lower eyelashes grow back, but it HAS reduced the amount of hair that comes off in the shower. Possibly due to the extra iodine— added to my multivitamin, I'm at 250% RDA. \o? My doctor won't raise my thyroid levels (which I think would help BOTH issues), so maybe this is a small workaround? It may also be helping my energy levels and mental clarity a little, both of which can suffer with low thyroid.

What's everyone been doing this weekend?