Greetings from Washington Park Arboretum

Quick post after Thursday night chat while watching Stuart Fails To Save the Universe -- an episode that's particularly a propos tonight because I was just talking about when I worked at AnotherUniverse and the guys could argue for an hour about whether Captain Cold could beat Mr. Freeze. 

Earlier while looking down the basement for a box with cards, I found the black and white original copies of our Star Trek Tarot deck, which I had really wanted to scan but thought were lost forever, so I wound up making it a scanning afternoon with that and all the summer mail and stuff. 

I talked to my parents, took a walk, we ordered vegan Chinese for dinner and watched "Once La'an a Time" -- this week's over the top but fun Strange New Worlds -- before chat, during which we had the Red Sox win on in the background. Late summer-early fall at Washington Park Arboretum:

Greetings from My Laptop

I had kind of an exhausting day. My friend's surgery went well, but she's still in pain and there's just always a lot of stress and not sleeping well when someone you know is going through something like that. It was also hot and muggy -- the muggy takes it out of me more than the heat alone. Apart from putting together some storage boxes and finishing King Rat after having taken a break to read some other things, I didn't do a huge amount. 

While on calls and our computers, we did watch the Orioles win over the Cubs and most of the France-Morocco game. I talked to several technicians who agreed it's not worth the money to fix the 8 key on my computer, then did some research on replacements and decided I can live with not typing that key. We had Pokemon Spaghetti-Os for dinner, then I had Thursday night chat on Zoom. Here are some more mammals from the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence:

Poem for Monday and Rhode Island Elephants

An Elephant in the Dark 

By Jalalludin Rumi 

Translated by Coleman Barks 

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant.

They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out

saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.

A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A very strong, always moving

back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.

I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curved back.

A leathery throne. Another the cleverest,

feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.

He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place

and understands the whole that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark

are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,

and if we went in together, we could see it.

-------- 

Most of my Monday involved chores, as usual -- laundry, bathroom, kitchen because the stupid sugar ants keep coming no matter how much dusting and how many bait traps -- plus the start of the semiannual photo migration because I organize my photos in folders dated by half-years. That reminded me that I had scanned the Tarot deck Paul made for me for our anniversary in the early 1990s but never cleaned up the card images, so I started doing that, too, while we were watching the Germany-Paraguay World Cup game in Boston that the latter unexpectedly won. 

I missed the start of the Orioles game because the soccer went into sudden death penalty kicks after being tied for a long time, and then I didn't watch the end because the top of the final inning turned into such a disaster. In between we ate dinner and took a walk once it was finally cool outside and the bunnies started emerging, though the strawberry moon still isn't fully up. I'm watching the start of the fourth season of Discovery hoping it's better than the third season, and my laptop's 8/* key isn't working right, which is driving me insane. Here are the elephants at the Roger Williams Park Zoo:

Greetings from Worcester

We reached 70 degrees here on Monday! And we had a report that they were working on the cables in our neighborhood so we might lose internet, but it was fine all day and only went down a few minutes ago, so I will be brief. The major news of my day was learning that the person to whom I gave much of my Star Trek collection -- the absolutely lovely man who wrote the West Week Ever blog -- passed away after a stroke, which I'm very sad about. 

Otherwise, we watched some baseball (Mariners swept the Astros, Orioles came from behind to beat the Diamondbacks), saw the new Maul episodes, and caught up on last night's Watson -- of course the show is getting really good right as it's canceled. Spring in my neighborhood; more tomorrow when hopefully I'll have working internet.

Greetings from Newton Square

Another quick post while watching the end of The Forsytes, mostly because it's only six episodes and I'd already watched three before deciding it was only worth finishing for completists (surely they aren't making another season of this -- I believe Netflix has The Forsyte Saga from the aughts and will see if the older one aggravates me less). 

I had a fairly quiet Friday -- it was much colder than Thursday, I walked fewer miles, and apart from getting boxes picked up, I mostly caught up on uploading photos, computer work, and the first episode of the new season of For All Mankind which is always excellent. Some of the architecture of the Newton Square-Piedmont neighborhoods downtown from yesterday:

Greetings from Clutter

Moving van came. House and garage are absolutely stuffed with boxes and half-assembled furniture, at least a couple of pieces of which will have to be replaced, hopefully at their expense. And you know how they promise that they'll reassemble anything they take apart? My experience of our last three moves with three different national moving companies says that's half-true at best. 

So don't expect to hear from me much for the next couple of weeks, particularly since I haven't figured out where my desktop computer is packed and my desk is in many pieces! At least the cats are speaking to me now that the movers are gone, and even while they were hiding in the shower, they ate when we brought up treats. Plus I half-watched The Masked Singer while sorting bookshelf pegs!

Greetings from Worcester

We spent President's Day not thinking about the president, which was the perfect way to celebrate it. Instead we spent a very long time at Spectrum setting up home internet and TV, had Impossible Burgers at Burger King across the snow-piled parking lot, stopped at Target for cat litter and other necessities, swung by what will be our home tomorrow to pick up a package that arrived early, came back to the hotel to feed the cats and watch the end of the Olympic pairs skating, then met Adam and Haley for dinner at Pho Sure. 

So a busy day but less stressful than yesterday, and the cats are sort of speaking to us again, though that may change in the morning when we move them to yet another new place with no hidey holes. 

Poem for Monday and Hike in the Rain

Mergansers 

By Lorine Niedecker

Mergansers

   fans

         on their heads

Thoughts on things

   fold unfold

         above the river beds 

-------- 

Rain again! My Monday morning was uneventful -- laundry, computer stuff, thought I had a problem with the drive that houses all my digital music but by evening it was sorted. After lunch, we went to get haircuts so we don't scare our families at Thanksgiving, and stopped at the other Safeway to grab a couple of things the central Redmond one didn't have. 

We saw the end of the Cowboys-Raiders game on Monday Night Football, ate dinner, then watched half of the first episode of The American Revolution, which is interesting and well-cast, though we took a break for Watson (medical money morality play) before we finished the episode. From hiking at Brightwater Park with guest mergansers on Saturday before the concert: