Ternaugh

I'm looking forward to this coming soon from the WB Animation Department:

I'm sorry to hear that.

You can look at the menu but you just can't eat You can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat You can dip your foot in the pool but you can't have a swim You can feel the punishment but you can't commit the sin And you want her, and she wants you We want everyone And you want her, and she wants you No one, no one, no one ever is to blame You can build a mansion but you just can't live in You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win Some break the rules and live to count the cost The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost And you want her, and she wants you We want everyone And you want her, and she wants you No one, no one, no one ever is to blame You can see the summit but you can't reach it It's the last piece of the puzzle but you just can't make it fit Doctor says you're cured but you still feel the pain Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain And you want her, and she wants you We want everyone And you want her, and she wants you No one, no one, no one ever is to blame No one ever is to blame No one ever is to blame

General Zod: This "super-man" is nothing of the kind; I've discovered his weakness. Ursa: Yes? General Zod: He cares. He actually cares for these Earth people. Ursa: Like pets? General Zod: I suppose. Ursa: Sentimental idiot!

The fundamental sin of BvS for me was that it was frequently boring. I watched a streaming version of it on an airplane flight, and frequently checked the progress bar just to see how much of it was left. Near the halfway mark, I was sorely tempted to abandon it, and watch something more entertaining. As far as Man of Steel goes, it wasn't necessarily a bad movie, but it certainly wasn't a good one, either. I've seen it once, and I really don't need to see it again. Snyder put a little too much Ayn Rand into Superman for my tastes, but I haven't really been a fan of his, anyway.

I need to remember the day When we said goodbye for the very last time There was still so much to say But time came between us and quietly stole you away Let me remember the day We walk to the garden and sit for a while The hours are slipping away Still I try to hold them and freeze them in time So leave me believing we'll meet here again Promise me some kind of sign As each day turns into night I blow out the candle and turn down the sheet And now that you've risen so high I know that you watch over me as I sleep Always believing we'll meet up again Waiting for some kind of sign So now I remember the day When we said goodbye for the very last time But no one can take you away 'Cause here in my memories there's never a very last time Never a very last time...

Don't worry, folks. I've taken a bullet for the team and tried one of these. I'd actually rate it slightly better than a regular Whopper with Cheese, though I wouldn't go out of my way to get it.

When I was young My father told me just bad guys die, At the time just a little white lie. It was one of the first but it hurt me the most, And the truth stung like tears in my eyes; That even the good guys must die. There's no reasoning, no crimes, and I never knew why. Even now, it still makes me cry.

This is, of course, a picture of the Maestro conducting Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake".

"Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away" by Phil Collins.

"Burning Down the House" (5.1 mix) by the Talking Heads.

I always pictured palindromedary scat to be a lot like this:

Apparently, tunneling and the ability to create cubic scat.

I see Elvis all the time. Of course, I do live in Las Vegas.

Or awesome mutant wombat powers.

It'll double as a reservoir during the rainy season.

Dry forever the sun blinds off the whitewashed walls Unbelieving she looks up from the unswept floor You don't have to go you don't have to tell me All that talk of lofty causes wrapped in foolish pride That's a lie That you don't have to tell me I don't want to hear how wisdom walks beside you Or how God is inside you again No wire marks the border No fence or wall No town breaks this horizon Nothing at all Dust surrounds her the men go hungry for disaster All they leave behind are The old and useless and the broken That never will be mended I don't want to hear you're captured by the madness Of ideas long discredited from other people's minds They're all lies That you don't have to tell me All that comes of this is poverty and hardship Still you don't absorb a word I say But now there is a border A line of blood Now men patrol the border But they're dead Somewhere a bird is flying oh Somewhere the wind is sighing oh I hope it brings you comfort 'cause it's surely no good to me This wind blows me down and cuts me like a knife And now the darkness and coldness That freezes out illusion Restores the picture gives back the pieces And lays them on the empty floor I don't want to hear so you don't have to tell me How you rewrite history a little every day 'Till it's lies That you don't have to tell me I don't want to hear how good it really has been How wonderful the troubles we shared No I don't want to hear so you don't have to tell me I don't need your comfort I just need your company

Gaucho (5.1 mix) by Steely Dan.

It's kind of why the other candidates had problems with him in the primary. They were running political campaigns, and he was running a reality show.

I'm not sure if this should be in the Nice Happy thread, or here, which I guess describes a lot of life events. I'm back from Maine. Mom's apartment has been cleaned out, the mail set to forward to me, and the keys turned back in to the office. I had a wonderful chat with several of the folks there, from the director, through the administrators, to the maintenance people. All of them really liked her, and her sudden death touched each of them. I talked to the director again on Thursday, and he was inspired by our conversation about Mom to help a motorist in distress on the Interstate--a way of passing along Mom's belief of watching out for each other, helping those who need it. In that spirit, pretty much everything that could be used by someone in her apartment has been passed along--kitchen goods and non-perishable food to the senior council at the retirement community, her walker and cane to someone who could use it, a bunch of clothes and linens to Goodwill. Her window air conditioner will be cleaned up by the maintenance folks, and set up for someone in the community that wouldn't necessarily be able to afford one. I've taken a small amount of family documents (including my Dad's Army Air Corps certificate from 1943, something that I didn't even know still existed), and a few family photos, as well as some happy memories of times shared with her. I went over to my Aunt and Uncle's house on Thursday, and picked up a picture of Mom that used to hang on my Grand-mere's wall, as well as a few other documents. Sadly, my Aunt has been hard at work isolating my Uncle from his family, and Thursday was no exception. She had her kids and grandchildren around the kitchen table, and announced casually that there didn't seem to be enough chairs to seat me. I smiled, and said, "That's okay. I understand," while trying not say what I was thinking. My Mom was extremely intelligent with a quick wit, and a sometimes sharp tongue. I've learned to hold mine, as I did then, but I longed to say, "That's okay, I never really expected a seat at your table." I was only able to talk with my Uncle for a few minutes before other matters pulled him away. He asked if I might stop by Friday, and I said that I'd try. Friday afternoon, I completed closing out Mom's bank account and safe deposit box, and called my Aunt and Uncle's cell phone. It rang about 6 times before I was shuffled to a message that the voice mail wasn't set up. I tried again Saturday after I checked out of my hotel room, but the phone rang 5 times before the same message came. I tried the home phone number, and she answered, and explained in a flat, cold voice that it wasn't a good time to come over, because they were preparing to go to a meeting* in Augusta at 1 PM (it was about 11 AM then, Augusta is about 20 miles away by Interstate). I apologized for disturbing them, and asked her to relay my love to my Uncle. I didn't push; I doubt that she would have turned over the phone to him. It was with a sense of melancholy that I realized that the hurried conversation on Thursday will probably be the last time that I see him face-to-face. My Aunt has been systematically cutting my Uncle off from any family that he had, and, sadly, she's pretty much completed her mission. I had said my goodbyes to the other family members Thursday and Friday, and, for the most part, they seemed to have calmed down over the last few days. "The lamp" was still an issue (a Tiffany-style reproduction shade), but I'm pretty sure that it was broken some time ago. I offered to buy another lamp if it would make peace with everyone, and that has apparently ended the discussion without the person coming forward to take me up on the offer. I found out from my Mom's cousin's son that the morning that Mom passed he saw 5 crows across the street, watching everything quietly, and not moving from the spot. I figure that was the full extended family: the mother and father crows, junior and its mate, and the baby from last year. Friday morning, I was putting out the trash and found a weathered crow feather on the lawn, placed where I would see it (but not where they would leave gifts). I examined it, but returned it to its spot, as I think that it might be a remembrance for them. The place used to have a bunch of squirrels and birds that would visit and hang around, but this week, I've only seen one squirrel, a hummingbird, and a chickadee feeding at the next-door neighbor's feeders. And now, I'm back home, taking a short rest before returning to work tomorrow. It's funny, I usually have a song playing in my head just about all of the time. During this week, the default choices were "The Closing of the Year" from the Toys soundtrack ("If I cannot bring you comfort/Then at least I bring you hope"), and the Warren Zevon song, "Lawyers, Guns and Money" ("Send lawyers, guns, and money/The sh*t has hit the fan"). *Her AA family is "very important" to her.

Well, I've tried to write this post about 3 times a few days ago, but the hotel Wi-Fi kept eating it.... I watched BvS on the plane ride up to Maine. Lots of stuff happened, many a sequel was set up, key comic book panels were shown to apparently give deep meaningful moments, and almost no one looked like they were having any fun doing it. I found myself frequently checking the progress bar on the video, wondering when they'd get to the point, or whether I'd be better off doing something else for the remainder of the flight. Simply said, they managed to make superheroes boring. I did enjoy some of it. I'm firmly convinced that there's the seed of a really great detective/spy movie hiding in there with Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince that I'd have paid money to see, but it was sadly over too soon. The banter between Alfred and Batman was enjoyable, and I'm still looking forward to more Wonder Woman. I'm probably not going to see Suicide Squad until it hits video/Netflix. I'm not really invested with the characters, but I understand if others like it.

Gewing, I'm sorry that you're going through that.For this year, my work eliminated the 80/20 PPO for a high deductible monstrosity like you mention. I'm lucky, though, because they also had an HMO that I could switch to. My regular doctor's not on the HMO list, however, so we have made other arrangements for office visits.

Today would have been Mom's 76th birthday. I celebrated by eating a rare steak and a rich dessert (that I shouldn't have), and tipping the server $20 on a $25 order. The day's actually been pretty good. I'm almost done with sorting through Mom's stuff, I dropped off her cable box to the company, and called up her telephone company to cancel service. The cable box owes the estate $11, which they'll send as a check, and the phone company will send a final bill to me (which will be probably 10x that, knowing the phone company). I haven't had to deal with any relatives today, so that's a bonus. I've mentioned before that Mom used to feed the animals around her house, including a family of crows. I hadn't seen any of them for the last couple of days, until today. One of the crows was keeping a lookout in a tree across the street, and as I went out to check her mailbox, I heard a call from it that I always associated with when I'd feed them, or when I'd put the trash out during previous visits. On the way back from the mailbox, two other crows arrived, and all were visible on the lawn watching me, and keeping an eye on her house. we looked at each other (at a distance), and then they all quietly took flight. I have no doubt that they know she isn't there, and I almost took it to be paying respects.

So, it seems that a police officer was the one who walked Mom's set of keys to her apartment to the office on Friday--after they called for backup to deal with my relatives who were in the apartment at the time. They then almost got trespassed from the office for bad behavior trying to get the keys back. Back on Friday, I was juggling the various calls to and from relatives, work assignments, arranging with HR and my boss's boss for bereavement and leave of absence, and occasionally trying to look up tickets for the flight. I ended up having my session time out a couple of times from inactivity (locking your computer and coming back 30 or 40 minutes later will do that), but the last time, the site just didn't want to pull up results. So I gave up, and decided to buy the tickets later on Priceline. Later arrives, and I start configuring everything. Basically, my choices are always American Airlines (post-merger) and Delta. I prefer Delta because the seat pitch on the smaller jet is terrible on American, and generally the level of amenities was a little higher. The "let us get the lowest price" deal came up American. Well, so be it, Delta's site was the one that gave me the timeouts before. Yesterday was my travel day, and I got up really early for my flight, and looked at a news site, only to see that Delta's computers decided that they wanted a vacation, and there were massive delays and cancelations. I had never been so happy that my tickets were with American Airlines in my life. Even though I told one of my relatives that I'd call when I got settled in the hotel, I received a call on my cell as I was waiting at the light to turn into the driveway. I explained that I was going to go down the following morning, and get the keys, and call them sometime afterward. So far, so good. This morning, I met Mom's medical technician, who was going to do a few things around the apartment to help me out, and to turn in her set of keys to me so that I could return them to the office later in the week. That meant, of course, that I get a call about an hour later asking "what is she doing there?" (They've obviously driven by and seen her car). I've had enough of this crap, and calmly stated, "Right now, she's cleaning out the toilet." My relative then starts to go into a tirade about the medical technician, and I demonstrated, at an extended volume, my knowledge of colorful metaphors and their application in expressing displeasure. That got a response of "and I want my lamp back!" before she hung up. I waited for several minutes before calling back and informing her that she is welcome to any lamp in the house, as I don't really know which is hers. I've been reinvited to dinner tonight, and I'm about to leave right after I finish this to go there. There are not enough words to express my joy at having dinner with them tonight (though a few colorful metaphors might do).