Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: June 2019

  • Moonwalk One

    Okay, this will be my last post regarding the CNN Apollo 11 documentary I first saw earlier this year that I’m so crazy about. I did a little more research on the “lost” footage. Here’s what evidently happened. A film crew shot a lot of film – high quality 70mm film – for a movie…

  • Today I Learned

    I just got the Mini back from the Dobbs Tire shop, where somehow the cheap inspection was parlayed up to $800 worth of repairs. The next day, I was tooling down the road and my Flat Tire indicator came on. The one that looks like a butt. I took the car back to the shop,…

  • Gate

    The last few days our back gate has been opened during the night. I usually assume it’s the neighbor child retrieving a ball, and then not closing the gate because it’s a lot harder to close than to open. But I’ve been paying closer attention, and unless the child has been playing ball in the…

  • Opera Prep: Changing the Tempo

    On an average day I take 15 minutes to get ready for work, 25 if I’m washing and drying my (scant) hair. This was not the schedule I took while getting ready for the opera. The opera season is over now, but every Saturday before the opera, I would take an entire day relaxing and…

  • Painting

    Two nights ago I painted downstairs for about hour. After that, while I was cleaning up the oil paints, I picked up the soda I’d ignored, took a swig, and felt something shift on my head. I suddenly remembered that on the way downstairs, my hands were pretty full with some painting supplies, so when…

  • Coronation of Poppea

    Have you ever seen a performance of Taming of the Shrew, and when Kate gives her big speech on obedience at the end, and she turns and winks, and you think, “well, that makes it more palatable, but you know that’s not true to the original.” I felt that way about The Coronation of Poppea,…

  • Radio and Rain

    Last Friday afternoon I had an errand to run. I checked the weather report and rain was not expected, no doubt because it wasn’t the weekend yet. During the ten-minute drive, I thought I heard on the radio that bad weather might be moving in, but I dismissed it because I only half-listen to the…

  • Radio

    Thursday morning I heard on the radio, “blah blah something parking lot blah Bennington blah officer shooting.” “What was that?” I thought, “I drive on Bennington on the way to work.” I reached for the device that lets me rewind the radio but I couldn’t find it because it DOESN’T EXIST even though there’s one…

  • Rain 2019

    It is officially summer, and the end of a very wet spring. In my area it rained every weekend in spring, with one evidently forgettable exception. The garden is lush, but so are the weeds, and I can’t get out to pull them because of the rain. I sound pouty to you, don’t I? No.…

  • No One Cares What I Had for Dinner Before the Opera

    It feels like it’s been years since I had a nice dinner out. “Nice” defined as not a chain, but instead inventive, devoted to modern-day food — which frankly can be an expensive risk. So, with apologies to my husband who treated me to a nice steak dinner at a chain the night before, I…