Staying Home

It's been 14 days since I have been out. Fourteen days since my last physical contact with a person other than my wife. It's been 14 days since I last worked at my volunteering at the Stonewall Jackson House. It's been two weeks since I have driven a car - the Saturn to be specific. I've been out of the house five times - twice each of the past two Wednesdays to take the trash can to the curb in the morning and recover it in the evening. Each of those "trips" take about 45 seconds. The sixth time was longer - I took a 25-minute walk last Friday around the neighborhood. That's it - 28 minutes of outside exposure!

Now I can't blame the coronavirus on this completely. I could go out and walk more. I could drive around the neighborhood or go get a drive-thru coffee down the road. I could even drive to Subway or MacDonald's or some other fast-food place to get lunch instead of eating my homemade sandwich. I could. Yes, I could. It's just that I don't want to. I've lost my motivation to go outside. But that is not the worst of it.

I'm beginning to lose my motivation to read and write. I'm currently reading six books more or less. I say that because I haven't reached that spot in any of them that I normally do in my reading that one grabs me and I rush to finish it. Then I will continue to read the other five until another gets to that "rush to the end" spot. I'll keep on doing this until I have two left and then I replenish the reading pile back to 5 or 6 books again. As I said, I've not reached that point and don't feel like reading many times at all.

As far as writing is concerned, you easily see when I last posted. There were many times I said to myself, "Self, you need to write about _______ . But I didn't. I am hoping that by writing this post that it break up the log jam, or brain freeze, or whatever it is that is preventing me from doing what I normally love to do.

Well, what do I do all day if I don't what I normally love to do? I watch a lot of CNN about the coronavirus. I sleep a lot during the day because I don't sleep well at night. I play games on my phone -usually Sudoku and a crossword daily. I visit the social apps I belong to like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Probably too much sleeping and social apping. The Sudoku and crosswords keep my brain sharp.

Well, I've done it as my granddaughter likes to say. I wrote today. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Anthony Price

You may not have ever heard of Anthony Price. I had not heard of him until one day in the late 80's - he was still writing then I later found out - when I happened to come across a couple of his books in the Mysterious Book Store when it was in the west side of midtown NYC.

I picked up his first one, "The Labyrinth Makers", and his fifth, "Other Paths to Glory". I was instantly hooked. The series, eventually 19 in all, was about a British spy organization much like the real MI5. It featured an agent, David Audley, with a deep knowledge of history as well as being a very good spy. Audley was in each book, but oftentimes he was secondary to others. But he always played a significant part in the climax or conclusion. At least in the 11 books I was able to collect.

  I still look for his books whenever I go to a used bookstore, but to date have not been able to find any of the remaining eight books. He wrote like the spy genre of the day, but one peculiarity I found when I read him was that he wrote less about describing the scenes around the characters; only the minimum to get a picture for the reader. He spent most of his writing efforts on what the characters were thinking and what they thought the other characters were thinking. At first, I had trouble following the storylines but soon was able to understand where the story was going.

Price got his start in writing for a local newspaper and once was given the chance to interview a man who had written a book but was not having any success getting it reviewed. Price did the interview; the man gave him the book to read; Price read it and gave it a very good writ-up. The man let him read the drafts of his second and third books of the series as well. It was a very lucky day for J.R.R. Tolkien.

Anthony Price was born in 1928 and died in 2019. I missed his obituary.

Christmas Ornaments 2

I am trying to finish up my Christmas ornaments posts before I run out of Januarys.

Here are three porcelain hearts we had made for three of our cats who we had from 1998 to 2014: Sherman (d.2010), Smokey (d.2014), and Max (d.2010). 

 


In the center picture above, you can see the Scottish piper from our 1996 trip to Scotland.
We bought the Hamish one on our 2006 trip:

Here are a few from our 1998 trip to the Southwest (The Poderosa); 2009 to the Northwest (the Sea Lions Cave in Oregon), and a sand dollar from the 2015 Outer Banks trip: 

 

There are many, many more but I will leave them for next year since the tree was taken down over two weeks ago.

Christmas Ornaments 1

The (artificial) Christmas tree will be coming down in a few days. We left it up later than normal because we put it up late. I like this fake tree better than any we have had before. It's a 7-ft tree and narrow. Our others -I think this is only our second - were about the same height but fat. I can't remember when we began with artificial trees, but I believe it was when we were in Scotland (PA).

I decided this year to take some pictures of some of our tree decorations. I got the idea from Far Side of Fifty's blog. We have so many it will take me a few posts and I still did not take pics of them all. Here is the tree this year.

My wife would buy ornaments whenever we traveled. Two of these were from a trip to Nashville a couple of years ago when we visited our middle daughter. The Hershey candy bar was when we took our two youngest daughters to visit both the plant and the park about 25 years ago.

 

The elves were the original shelf elves. They were my mother's mothers. (we called her Little Gram since she was only five feet tall. Our other grandmother, Big Gram, was six-foot.)

This was the Cape Hatares lighthouse from the Outer Banks in North Carolina, where we went for our 25th wedding anniversary.

These are two from the Stonewall Jackson House: his house and TJ himself.

                                    

 


More later when the tree comes down.

An Accident and Other Things

Today I lost my favorite whisky crystal glass. It got cracked when it slid into the kitchen sink when drying another item. Fortunately, it didn't break and go into the garbage disposal. Here is a picture of the last time I used it just a few days ago.

I bought it when we went to Scotland in 1996, almost 23 years ago. It was from Dalwhinnie, the first distillery we visited. If you look closely you will see the name "Dalwhinnie" spelled backward on the other side of the glass. I only my single malt whiskys from this glass. Now I have to choose a replacement. I have several, but none quite as good.

I took out a very interesting book about Shakespeare from the library this week. It's about a jubilee that was organized and took place in September 1769, in Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was born and lived off and on when he wasn't in London. The author writes a little like they talked and wrote back then. Not completely, but just enough to make it an interesting read. Reading the flyleaf, it says that rain washed out most of the festivities. 

I'm three quarters the way through Armageddon. I only read it late at night before I go to bed. It is very much as I remember it. I am just about to the beginning of the Berlin Airlift. I last read it in 1967 when I stationed in Fulda, Germany.

Happy New Year!

Well, another year, another decade. It just seems like yesterday that I was sitting in bed (with the flu) watching Peter Jennings and the world stepped into 2000, all hoping that Y2K didn't come crashing down around our Internet heads. I watched as each time zone celebrated the new year, the new decade, and can I say, the new century (there was and is still some argument as to whether it's actually 2001)? In any case, tempis fugit, as Caesar said I believe my Latin is correct).

Last evening was spent as we normally spend New Year's Eve, or at least for the last twenty-some years. We have a seafood dinner - lobster, shrimp, scallops crab; this year we saved the lobster for Valentine's Day. Then we watch our usual movie for this day - When Harry Met Sally. If you have seen the movie then you know it is a movie for New Year's Eve. We love it and have watched it every year - except 2000 - since the early nineties.

I finished my 64th book of the year earlier in the day. About average for me; more than last year. I'll probably be writing more about my reading in the next few days so I'll leave it there for now.

As far as resolutions are concerned, I was reading one of my very favorite blogs this morning,  "Far Side of Fifty", on Blogspot, and she uses just a one-word resolution each year. She says it seems to work. I think I am going to try it. Now I just need to choose the right word that will cover so many areas I need to cover.

Anyhow, Happy New Year and let's get on with it!
     

Another Year Free

Today was my yearly trip to my urologist. I've had yearly visits for two years. Before that were more frequent visits for treatment of bladder cancer. I was diagnosed on February 2011, and had two biopsies/surgeries in the following month; March 2nd and 30th. The reason I had two was because of the location of the cancer. Anyhow, all of it was removed - it had just begun to adhere to the bladder wall and was not difficult to remove. 

After that, I had a series of treatments via a catheter into my bladder for six weeks every three months. I would get a serum, BCG, which contained live tuberculosis germs (?). My white cells would then rush to the bladder to attack the TB and would attack the cancer as well. 

I did this treatment for six years with longer and longer intervals between treatments after year three. In between my treatments I was scoped to see if the cancer was gone, and then I remained clear. That was what I had today. 

Again I was clear. All in all, a good day.