Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: November 2019

  • A Return to An Outstanding Question From 2006

    You know, if you just hang on, all the nagging questions (Deep Throat, Kenneth and his frequency) will be answered. Well, thirteen years after 2006, an answer has arrived for the question posed in this post: why is there a reference to “Scary Ghost Stories” in The Christmas Song? There’ll be scary ghost stories And…

  • Gary’s Comment

    Gary complains sometimes that I don’t respond often enough when he’s speaking to me. There’s a certain amount of “oh” and “um-hmm” he requires. (No actual words, that’s interrupting, can’t have that.) The last time he demanded to know that I was listening, I responded sarcastically with an overly loud and animated “UM-HMM,” which prompted…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 11/28/2019

    This week the dog and pitcher went from this: to this: I knew there would be contrast problems with this. I like the pitcher even less now, if that’s possible. The dog bank’s still okay, though. What’s left is the background– all cast shadows, my least favorite thing. and, happy Thanksgiving!

  • Christmas Decor

    Christmas decorations at my house take five minutes to put up. Outside: plug in the robot reindeer on the porch, put the wreath on the mailbox. Inside: put the non-robot reindeer by the window, hang the tree. Last year it looked like this. (For a moment, anyway.) This year the inside is just too cluttered…

  • Review: The Good Liar

    We didn’t expect to see this one. Dr. Sleep was on the docket, but it didn’t start until 9 at night. If you haven’t seen any of the commercials for The Good Liar, you are better off, and if you intend to see it, avoid the commercials. I feel I will appreciate Helen Mirren as…

  • The Novel: Chapter 25

    I know. Chapter 25. The first chapters are numbered 1, 2, 25, 7. Chronologically, chapter 25 occurs before chapter 1. It’s out of place in the narrative. Most of it is a lesson on how an oil rig works. Five solid pages are devoted to a description of a 90-second oil strike. The main character…

  • In Which It Takes Me Entirely Too Many Years to Reach an Obvious Solution

    In the past three years I have knocked off forty pounds (vegetables/low fat protein, one starch a day), gained back twenty (I added back one additional starch), then lost thirty (eat anything I want except starch) for a total of fifty pounds. I saw 189.3 the last time I weighed myself: it was a happy…

  • Heart

    I spoke this morning with a young woman who got her college degree in Korea, then decided she wanted to get her Masters in the US, then she got two Masters degrees and a job here. I can’t even begin to imagine doing the reverse: starting a life in Korea. I only have enough heart…

  • This Year’s Christmas Ornament 2019

    Every Christmas we both buy an ornament to memorialize the past year. Toilets and raccoons, alpacas and armadillos, tornadoes, cheetahs, Eiffel towers and poodles for the year we went to Paris, a guitar for the year I took up the guitar, wine bottles for the year we took up wine. This year’s only memorable activity?…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 11/21/2019

    This week the dog and Pitcher went from this: to this: It only has brown, white and black in it (even the ‘pink’ pitcher is brown and white). I was pleased with the dog, so I stopped. I need to stop looking at the real-life pitcher and tyring to interpret it. Instead I need to…