February 2005 Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Boat Bound!Since it looks like the weather is clearing, the whale watch boats are poised to re-enter the seas. I’m planning on going out on Friday from Redondo Beach with my mother to see what’s out there. I’m not going to be working the boat, I haven’t been able to get booked on a boat for a while since I’ve been sick. That’s okay, since I won’t be docenting, I’ll be able to take up space at the front of the boat and get some fantabulous shots and give a personal narrative about whale biology to my mom. POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:03 pm Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Couch ReportWell, one of the things about being sick is that I have watched more movies on TV in the past three days than I think I have in three years. Here’s a little rundown and some recommendations: The Lady Eve - Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Directed and written by Preston Sturges. Great comedy caper where Barbara is from a family of card sharps and she fleeces Henry Fonda on a cruise ship and then goes back again to break his heart. Surprisingly sexy for 1941. The Man Who Knew Too Much - James Stewart and Doris Day. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A classic. James & Doris are traveling in Northern Africa when they are mistaken for spies and their son is kidnapped. They chase the kidnappers to London where they try to piece together why their son is being held. Nicely crafted and intimate, more lighthearted than most other Hitchcock movies. Lover Come Back - Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall. Directed by Delbert Mann. Screwball farce. Doris & Rock work for rival ad agencies. Rock attempts to seduce Doris in order to keep her from getting a spurious advertising client. Doris displays a collection of impossibly ugly hats in this movie but the interplay between them all is marvelous. The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer - Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. Directed by Irving G. Reis. Teenaged Shirley gets a crush on a painter, Cary, and Myrna, a judge, sentences him to date her until she looses interest. Not terribly inspired. But I love Cary Grant. Gambit - Michael Caine and Shirley McClaine. Directed by Ronald Neame. Michael hires Shirley to help him gain access to a rich art collectors apartment as she looks exactly like the collector’s dead wife. It’s an interesting caper, but the relationship part of it fell a little flat. Midnight Lace - Rex Harrison, Doris Day and Myrna Loy. Directed by David Miller. Doris is an American married to a British businessman when she starts getting threatening phone calls and everyone thinks she’s making it up to get attention from her husband. Nice twists. Doris screams and is off her rocker most of the movie, kind of helpless and all that, but I found it nicely done. Mrs. Dalloway - Vanessa Redgrave, Natscha McElhone, Michael Kitchen and Alan Cox. Adaptation of Virgina Woolf novel directed by Marleen Gorris. Nicely done though a little ponderous tale of Mrs. Dalloway throwing a party. I saw The Hours when it came out and like it as well. Of all of these, I’ve only seen The Lady Eve before and The Man Who Knew Too Much. I’m glad that TCM was so cooperative to put on good movies to distract me for a few days. I’m going to try to go to the office tomorrow. My mother arrives tomorrow evening for a 10 day stay. POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:39 pm Tuesday, February 15, 2005
SickGah! I’m sick as a dog. It started on Friday night with a sore throat. Saturday I woke up with a tight chest and cough. But we carried on throughout the day with our plans. A visit to Orange County to have lunch with the in-laws. A stop at the mall to finally use a gift certificate from Christmas. Then a little time at home and some dinner. Later we stepped out to a local bar to for a little blogger get-together. Later that night I had a slight fever and by morning it was a sure fever. Good that my doctor has Sunday morning hours so I went off to see here. A course of antibiotics, a new inhaler for my asthma, some cough suppressant and I was off to get better. Fevers persisted Sunday and Monday with brief respites from some ibuprofen. Today I’m doing a bit better, but still a low grade fever. And of course there’s the cough. I’ve been trying my best not to, since I tore those intercostals last year with the same bronchitis difficulty. So I just feel like I’m drowning all the time. Hopefully I caught early enough and it’ll just be one course of antibiotics this time. Still, no going to work tomorrow since I’m still running a fever. Mom had a rule, no going out for 24 hours after a fever breaks. POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:52 pm Friday, February 11, 2005
pUPdateJust in case anyone was wondering about Becky, she’s doing great. We’ve got her on vitamin K for her clotting problem (whatever the cause) and a little med for her thyroid. I have her the last of the steroids this morning so I’m hoping by the end of the weekend she’ll stop being so damn food obsessed. We’re off to the vet again on Tuesday for another checkup, but she seems well on the way, if not already recovered. POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:12 pm Gobs of GmailI went through all the trouble of getting rid of about 25 gmail invites earlier this week only to find out that I have 50 more. I’m not sure what my compulsion is to give them away. I think I feel that way about all useful things that I have no use for. I wonder if gmail tracks these things - who gives away how many invites and who they give them to? And if you looked at it it would be a huge radiating graphy thing (I don’t know what that’d be called, that shape where each point would have lines radiating and the ends of those would radiate further). Like the transmission graph of some veneral disease or something. Anyway, not that I’ve compared gmail to vd, do you want one? POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:08 pm Thursday, February 10, 2005
My Perfect Roll of Life SaversI don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the ad campaign that Lifesavers had back in the eighties. “Lifesavers, a part of living.” Lifesavers and their ad campaigns have changed. I don’t know what their current advertising is, but I’ll tell you their product is bugging me. They changed the five flavor roll. Okay, maybe that’s old news. I don’t buy them that often. The current five flavor roll contains the following flavors:
The old flavors were:
If I could design my own roll, it would contain the following:
But I guess change is part of life. They always mess with things that are perfectly fine. They did it with froot loops. Used to be you could go into a store and buy a piece of furniture and then five years later go in there again and buy the same thing again. Now everything changes with the times. What is the world coming to that we can’t just be happy with lemon lifesavers? POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:28 pm Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Fan Mail!Late last fall a few bits of my one published play came out in two anthologies. I still haven’t been paid for this (note to self - send note to publisher). But I digress. On Friday I got a fan note. Really. Here’s the best part:
Whee! I have to remember to write more fan letters. I imagine everyone needs to hear stuff like that on a regular basis. POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:25 pm Sunday, February 06, 2005
Superbowl PredictionI’m sure you never expected such a thing from me. And of course it’s not what you expected. I predict that within the next five years the superbowl pre-game coverage will include a red-carpet-style arrivals. That’s right, people will arrive for the skyboxes, the various sports stars and celebrities and they’ll be asked what they’re wearing and they’ll say “Nike” or “Champion” or “from that guy in the parking lot.” POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:02 am Thursday, February 03, 2005
The Wrong ManI kept seeing these headlines for the past two days: Stewart to Star in ‘Apprentice’ Spin-Off I don’t watch The Apprentice, I don’t care much for reality TV but I was actually excited to hear that Jon Stewart might head a spin-off of the Donald Trump show. Now that’s a reality show I’d actually audition for! Alas, it’s Martha Stewart. Pfft! POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:37 pm Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Car Crash (software that is)The thing about being an early adopter of new technology is that you’re a bit of a guinea pig. My 2004 Toyota Prius (I call her Dyna) had a software malfunction yesterday while I was driving to my whale watch class. The system threw up an alert on all screens with alerts a’beeping. It continued to function, but just didn’t want me to continue driving. What happened isn’t clear. I was driving along, actually getting pretty good mileage with my tank total (about 90 miles on the tank so far) at about 53 MPG. My battery was fully charged with all green bars and even though I was driving on battery the full indicator didn’t change for at least a minute. I thought it odd, but then again I was getting an infinite amount of miles per gallon and when driving in rush hour traffice it’s like winning the game. The traffic was moving, at about 25-40 MPH. I was going 38 when the system started its warning. The car was driveable, in fact besides the lights, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the car. I was in the far left lane and I immediately put on my signal to merge off the freeway. The fellow next to me did not immediately oblige so I put on my hazards and everyone let me off. I made it to the Exposition Blvd. offramp and parked myself in the LAPD Internal Affairs office parking lot. I called Toyota’s roadside assistance and they said they’d tow my car to the closest dealer, which happened to be Carson where I bought the car. In retrospect I should have insisted that they take it to Hollywood Toyota where I last had it serviced, and of course the closest location to my home. I talked to the service guys this morning and they can’t figure out why the car was giving me the errors and said that it’s driveable and I can come get it. They called Toyota’s helpline for additional guidance and have not heard back from them yet. So I’m going to leave the car with them until they know why it did that. There’s another brake light wiring recall on it right now anyway that I needed to have done and they needed to order the part. I’ll just figure out how to get to and from work the next couple days and it’ll all be okay. POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:38 pm |
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During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.
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