Greetings from Fireworks Night

I had a chatty online Wednesday -- talked to my high school friend group right after lunch, then watched the first half of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with Cel and Laurie in the late afternoon. In between I did some chores and some writing, and afterward Paul and I took a walk and saw a tiny toad on the cul-de-sac with the pair of baby bunnies. 

We watched the season finale of Lucky, which was pretty satisfying; the women made good decisions and most of the men got what they deserved. It was a wild baseball day: the Red Sox lost to the Diamondbacks in extra innings, the Orioles were robbed of a home run by a bad call and lost to the Yankees, the Mariners came back from their worst-ever loss to beat the Brewers. 

Now we're watching Futurama; this week's episodes are "Our Flag Means Medical Coverage" which has pirates, yay, and next is "Lords of the Ring" which is a promising title. Here are some photos of the fireworks at Polar Park after the Woosox game last weekend; if I had known Mickey Gasper was going to play so well when he got to the majors, I'd have taken a picture of him!

Greetings from City Hall

It rained all of Monday morning, so I spent it doing exciting things like laundry, working on a book review, and cleaning the counters. Then the mail came and I got two packages I'd been waiting for from overseas, the Beatles Tarot deck from England via Kickstarter and my own reprints, after scanning and editing, of the Star Trek Tarot deck that Paul drew for me in the early 90s -- they were expensive to print and so very worth it, since I've always been afraid to shuffle the originals or risk smearing the ink with my fingers! 

My afternoon was fully distracted by the MLB trade deadline, before which the Orioles had traded a significant part of the team -- at least Ward is going to the Mariners, my side team, and Rutschman is coming here to the Red Sox, so I'll get to see him a lot sooner than I was expecting. We took a walk and started watching the second season of Citadel after dinner, but it was so insanely violent that after an episode we put on the new season of Futurama instead. Here's Worcester Common, City Hall, the Continental Army cemetery, and memorials:

Greetings from Broad Meadow Brook

Ran really late on long lovely Thursday chat so I'll be brief! Did some organizing this morning, Paul had a half day because of the federal holiday tomorrow, so after lunch we went to Massachusetts Audubon's Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, where we hiked in the woods and looked for wildlife (frogs, deer, birds, though the turtles were only in the nature center). Stopped for ice cream and at the food store, came home in a big storm for a tornado warning and the end of the Orioles-Mariners game, then dinner and the season finale of Widow's Bay. Happy Juneteenth!

Greetings from the Blackstone Canal

I had a quiet Wednesday apart from on my computer -- talked to two of my high school friends early in the afternoon and watched the last episode of the first season of Good Omens with Cel and Laurie late in the afternoon. I also folded laundry, did a bunch of freecycling (including the storm door that we got for free from the same group -- it was too small for our doorway, sigh), and did a bunch of reading. 

When Paul got home, we took a walk and saw three baby bunnies plus we finally got a glimpse of a snapping turtle in one of the neighborhood ponds, though he dove too quickly for me to get a photo. We spent some of the evening watching the beginning of the third season of Discovery before the late Orioles-Mariners game, which is ongoing. Animals and wildlife we saw by the Blackstone Canal and River: 

Greetings from Moore State Park

My Wednesday was fairly chatty after a morning of chores, with which I had a good amount of feline assistance (by which I mean "help" folding and sorting laundry). Two of my high school friends got onto chat, we shared old photos and letters, then I did a little computer work before watching an episode and a half of first season Good Omens with Cel and Laurie. By then the temperature was below 85, so we took a walk. 

The Orioles had a good day against the Mariners, including a grand slam. After dinner, we watched this week's Widow's Bay -- I like the island mystery episodes a lot better than the serial killer episodes -- then we watched some more second season Discovery, nearly at Spock's arrival, though right now I'm just happy about bad girl Georgiou being back. These are the waterfalls over the old sawmill dams at Moore State Park:

Greetings from the Arboretum

I had a fairly quiet Tuesday doing computer work. Our plan was to pick up some shelving for the garage from someone to whom we gave a lot of our moving boxes who can't take the ones he has with him, but it turned out that they couldn't be disassembled sufficiently to fit into our RAV4, so we're going to have to order some from Home Depot or someplace. I got to chat with Chris after lunch, and I got to see bunnies on this warm day while walking in the neighborhood. 

After tacos for dinner, my DS9 group watched "Life Support" -- a sad but quite good episode, though we were missing one person -- then I watched the end of the Orioles-Mariners game (I root for the Os but it's hard for me to root against, for instance, Randy Arozarena hitting a long ball, and since Seattle is leading the west I was conflicted). Now we're watching more second season Discovery, which is, well, no DS9. From the rhododendron garden at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston:

Greetings from 'Detroit'

Quick post because I'm watching The Vampire Lestat: After Dark after the first episode of the new show, after waiting with wild impatience after Interview with the Vampire; this was my favorite of Anne Rice's books and the show thus far is everything I adored about it plus extra (the sex! the incest! contemporary songs!). Anne Rice so overdid the Immortalverse that I fell out of love with it, but kick a season off with the auction from Phantom of the Opera, have Daniel call Lestat the Cuntessa, toss in some Taylor Swift insults and give me Sam Reid playing Ewan McGregor playing Iggy Pop from Velvet Goldmine -- saying lines like "MDMA and LSD, the Torvill and Dean of hallucinogenics" -- I am going to be screaming aloud on my couch. 

Otherwise, I had a quiet Monday. I was up late talking to Daniel (it was his anniversary yesterday), so I got up, did laundry, cleaned 2/3 bathrooms, sorted a bunch of photos I took over the weekend, took a walk and discovered that our neighborhood now has teeny baby teacup bunnies out running around on the back cul-de-sac by the unfinished houses, enjoyed the gorgeous weather. We ate dinner around the Orioles' loss to the Mariners (I had a bit of a dilemma because I can't root against Josh Naylor, but I wanted Baltimore to come back), then we watched the episode of The Way Home that we missed during the Tonys last night; it was fine, but let's face it, that time slot is going to vampires for the rest of the time travel show's run. Kangaroos at the Franklin Park Zoo: 

Greetings from Salisbury East

Wednesday was a warm, pretty day, though I spent a lot of it on my usual calls -- my whole high school friend group after lunch, catching up on various travel and family events, then Cel and Laurie in the late afternoon, watching some first season Good Omens and talking plans for later in the summer. The Mariners lost badly to the Mets while that was going on, and the Orioles lost just as badly to the Red Sox while we were eating dinner, leftover pizza from over the weekend. In between we took a walk and saw a couple of bunnies. 

We spent he evening catching up on Widow's Bay, which has a few too many horror tropes for my taste but the writing is really good and quite funny -- sometimes I think it's a folksy mystery with supernatural elements like Twin Peaks and sometimes I think it's a parody of small-town character shows like Schitt's Creek. Speaking of town mysteries, there's a cul-de-sac in my new neighborhood of homes where the foundations were built but the houses were never finished, though you can see them from one of the finished cul-de-sacs: