Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: March 2020

  • Circuit Breakers

    I’ve had a job in the financial industry for over a dozen years, and on Monday I finally got to see what it looks like when stocks plummet so hard that trading halts. (Trading might have halted in the past 12 years, but I never saw it.) I flipped on the news when I saw…

  • Marked Safe from Coronavirus in St. Louis

    Well, Saint Louis has its first case of Covid-19. Evidently a twenty-year-old woman from the fancy St. Louis suburb of Ladue visited Italy, flew back, took the Amtrak back from Chicago, and is testing positive. I am not concerned for my own health. This woman could live in the Yukon for all it’s going to…

  • Re-writing the Novel: Chapter 2

    I rewrote most of the problems in Chapter 1 even before I got the teacher’s notes. (My four-way conversation was tedious.) There’s too much “the loud man said,” and “said the man in the aisle.” I’ve got dialect that can identify one person, but I can’t use the trick of having Person B say Person…

  • Celebrity Hat: Resurrection

    Back in the day, nine years ago, we went to the Kentucky Derby. For a few months I prepared for the derby by making an ornate hat. It only took a few months make the hat. It was well received at the Derby, and in fact, so well received that it earned the name Celebrity…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 3/5

    This was the lamp last week: …and here’s the lamp this week. Ugh – the lampshade is tilted and it’s really evident I manipulated the photo and I didn’t change all the perspective. Plus I need to add the red to the tulips. I’m taking it easy on the small piece. This is the first…

  • Gary Adds to His Device Collection

    This week Gary added two items to his vast collection of objects he will never use. I assume that I am meant to use them. This is perplexing because these objects have no purpose in our home. Item One: The Fancy Dyson Ball Vacuum If you look at our basement stairs you will see every…

  • Re-Writing The Novel: Chapter 1

    I haven’t tried to write fiction since my college short-story writing class in 1981. And now I’m in this I novel-writing class, rewriting Jerry’s novel. I ended up ditching what Jerry had in Chapter 1 except for three sentences, so the rest was on me. I kind of enjoyed plotting out the beginning and the…

  • Young College Man of the Week

    Well, last week at the college campus, I met a young man who was concerned an elderly woman (me) was out in the cold, and this week I met another young man. I thought he was Matt, the youngest man in my class, and I thought he was heading for my building, so I waved…

  • Shen Yun

    If you live in St. Louis and watch either CNN or MSNBC you have seen the ubiquitous commercials for the Shen Yun dance troupe. All you gain from the commercial is that they are a Chinese, they leap, they wear flowing costumes and seem to be adored by a variety of breathless individuals who work…