Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: November 2020

  • Review: Poirot

    Poirot, Episode One: Charming! Delightful! Poirot, Final Episode: Oh, my god, what happened? Somewhere in season seven, this show took a hard turn. One moment we were figuratively tooling along with Captain Hastings in the English countryside, then the tires squealed and we were in a dark city alley heading toward family abuse and forced…

  • When I Heard

    I think I was watching CNN, and they had just preached a lesson on how everyone needed to be patient while waiting for the results, because there are rules about how to call an election. Then some field reporter refreshed her phone numerous times, and the news desk began talking about how we needed to…

  • 2000 Recount Retrospective

    This seems so quaint now. But you know what the difference is? Bush and Gore were both adults, though under stress they both reverted to sulky, snippy adolescents. In December of 2000 I felt that I would take either one of them just to get it over with. Twenty years later we are watching a…

  • When Does the Yard Sign Come Down?

    I can’t remember when we took down the yard sign four years ago. Perhaps I took it down on the way in to the polls Election Tuesday. I was so confident Hilary would win. Right now it is 6:30 in Thursday night, and few, if any, of the states that were Too Close To Call…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 11/5

    This week the sunflowers went from this : … to this finished product. Accurate yet still pretty loose. I’m pretty pleased. Those are tiny changes. Tiny. Thistle values and a tiny green stripe in the upper right.This is the original. The daisy went from this: … to this hideous mess: This was the original. Once…

  • Election Update

    Gary bounced into my room at four a.m., chanting “Vote! Vote! Vote!” We got there early and still we weren’t the first. We were very close to the front of the line. Behind us the line stretched through the lot and down the lane to the main road. We waited in line from 4:45 to…

  • Conflict

    For the past four years I have regretted that I didn’t hear the 2016 election night results from Rachel Maddow or from Stephen Colbert. Instead we got the grim news reported grimly from CNN. That in itself is odd, because Gary follows MSNBC, and he controls the remote for political shows. Perhaps we heard preliminary…

  • Harding

    Our department has taken pains to keep our team United during the pandemic. They’ve invested some time in allowing us an hour of purely social time every week, usually revolving around a theme. One week the theme was family heirlooms. I brought out my family mandolin and family photo, and mentioned my great-great-uncle being the…

  • Critters

    I was painting in the basement when I heard a scrabbling noise. It came from the top of the basement wall. Then I heard some some soft grunting. “GARY GET DOWN HERE THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE BASEMENT.” (faintly, from upstairs) “Do I need my bat?” “NO JUST GET DOWN HERE,” because seriously, can you…