It is, at present, Seventeen below. In my studio, it is 127 above. I'd be happy with something in between.
Let's see. What was today?
Woke early, and made that little calculation: okay, six hours and 25 minutes of sleep. Enough? Organs joints and head, sound off. Dog is up and wants his food.
And frankly, so do I. The good thing about having the same breakfast every morning is that you know for certain you’re going to like it, because you liked it yesterday. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll have it tomorrow. (The creek at the bottom of the street is where the Cree are camped, and if it rises, I expect they would move north towards my position, but I believe we’re past the point of hostilities now.) I start the coffee, crack an egg, liquify a bit of butter, pour the egg into the pan while I microwave a slice of bacon left over from Saturday and chop the jalapeño. Some cheese, a flip of the spatula, and we have the daily omelette.
Omelette, tasty omelette. Omelette, filled with lots of cheese.
What is that? Ah - Alouette. Was it rephrased for a commercial, with the line filled with lots of meat, or did we add that as kids to mess with it, as with the Batman-smells rewrite of Jingle Bells? If it was an ad, Alouette would’ve been replaced with the product name. But what? The world may never know.
Read the Apple News App. It is an adequate source, but lacking in local. Since I cancelled the local paper, I have to look elsewhere, or just pick up the paper at the office. Where the paper is made. I reject all headlines that follow the formula “He went to the office expecting to get the paper. Then this happened.” It is a pestilence. I read the London Times and the Telegraph columnists; I scan Google News. The omelette is done. Make another cup of coffee.
Work for half an hour. Upload the daily updates, polish the Substack, deal with Dreamweaver giving me a Background File Activity dialogue box that must be dismissed every five minutes. It started doing that again for some reason. Google the matter, find an Adobe help page that says the issue has been resolved. The thread is from 2017. Wonder anew what I will do when I can no longer rely on this creaky old program. Quit? I don’t know. I’ve done a lot. Maybe I’ve done enough.
Shower while listening to a Rest is History podcast about a famous Polish war bear. Turns out I walked past his monument in Edinburgh last summer, which seems like a million years ago. Strew some kibble on the floor to keep Birch occupied, and go to work. Massive traffic jam on outbound. Good thing I'm heading in.
Holiday, so meters are free. I park close and pop right into the warm skyway. Except it isn’t warm; it doesn’t feel warm at all. You can see your breath. If there were subtitles they would read {indistinct classical music] since I can’t tell what piece is playing. I mentioned that the passage between the 333 and Ameriprise has changed its playlist from 80s - meaning, “My Angel is a Centerfold” once a week - to classical. I’m fine with that. A daily challenge.
Elevator to office. The office is dark. My entire wing of the paper is unoccupied.
Once at my desk, I leave it, because I must make coffee. I make a pot upstairs, bring the cup down to my desk, and commence writing. At 11:30 I microwave a small divot of hamburger for lunch, and follow it with a delightful piece of al dente licorice. The day runs on rails, my friends. It really runs on rails.
Except that whatever I am writing is different. Would it be better to have a morning that has no structure or order, but always write the same thing?
After a brief and cold consultation with the small cigar, it’s back to work, then the gym at 12:20. Just the weights. The music is contemporary, and the lowlights are “You Really Got Me” by Van Halen, an a ska version of “Take On Me,” neither of which compels me to push myself beyond heretofore unbroken boundaries. Shower - the water usually is hot on demand, but takes a full minute to get warm today. I should tell Colt Luger, my inside guy who’s part of the facilities crew.
Now that I think about it, I have one friend at the office. A couple others with whom I chat from time to time. Mostly I talk to Building People - the aforementioned Colt (so named not for his resemblance to the “F is for Family” character but just because he has such a 70s vibe, ‘stache-wise, and in general Miller Lite background character appearance. Smart guy), Leslie the Janitress, Frank the Pizza Mogul, Matt the Trainer, and of course Ishmael (really) over at 333. I’d miss them all more than anyone at work.
Leave work. Skyway music: "Venus," by Holst. I slow my walk to hear it.
After work I go to Lundsenbyerly’s to pick up a few dinner items. I realize I haven’t had hash in decades. Why? What’s keeping me from frying up some hash and putting it on the egg? Why, nothing. I am a free man with pockets-a’jingle, so I toss it in the cart. The Japaleno pizza is on sale, deeply so, and I consider having it as a midweek treat. After all, there’s nothing really pizzaesque about it. I could just say it was an unwrapped burrito ironed flat. In the cart. I buy more jalapeños, because the scale here can detect two. At Cub, which I hate, the scale cannot detect two, and I have to call someone over. They lose a lot of my business because of this.
Home to walk Birch. He does not want to wear his jacket. He drags me around the block at record speed. I give him his late-afternoon post-walk snack, and then it is time for a nap. The blower on the ceramic space heater provides the necessary white noise, and I am chin-deep in Lethe in minutes.
Dinner was a continuation of my pledge not to go full bachelor while Wife is away, and gorge on black-plastic-tray microwaveable entrees. I make some pasta, cook some sausages, and use a small can of tomato sauce I got at Lund’s. By yourself you feel wasteful opening a whole bottle. It’s actually very good, and the meal is deemed a success by me, and Birch, who gets sausage ends. Then I get to work writing the latest installment of the ‘zine I write for Daughter. Odds and ends and thoughts and pictures and QR codes to videos on YouTube. Treadmill at 9:15, thirty minutes of scanning the news on X, and then I start wife’s car to make sure it still works so I can trade it in. Oil smoke galore. I had the garage door open and I’m three floors up and I can smell it an hour later. Hope it gets me to dealership on Wednesday.
Which brings us up to now. TV Time. I’ve earned it! But it’s too cold downstairs, so I think I’ll just stay up in the studio. It's warm up here. Almost done with tbe day. Sleep soon, then it's . . . Alouette. Filled with lots of hash.
As I've mentioned before to the exasperation of everyone, one of the pleasures of old anthology shows is the remarkable cast of actors, some of whom were just getting going, some of whom were star material, some who were on the way out, and some who would occupy a middle-tier between fame and familiarity for their entire TV career.
They were married for 52 years.
Get this:
Cronyn, one of five children, was born in London, Ontario, Canada. His father, Hume Blake Cronyn Sr., was a businessman and a Member of Parliament for London (after whom the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory at Western University, then known as The University of Western Ontario and asteroid (12050) Humecronyn are named)
Wha
Humecronyn is a mid-sized asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the main portion of the asteroid belt. NASA JPL has not classified Humecronyn as potentially hazardous because its orbit does not bring it close to Earth.
Humecronyn orbits the sun every 1,820 days (4.98 years), coming as close as 2.66 AU and reaching as far as 3.16 AU from the sun. Humecronyn is about 6.9 kilometers in diameter, making it larger than 99% of asteroids, comparable in size to the San Francisco Bay.
So we could be wiped out by Humr Cronyn's dad's space rock. It's big enough. Also:
His mother, Frances Amelia (née Labatt)
Yes, her dad ran the brewery, and was the grandfather of an actor who did an episode of Star Trek TNG.
I wonder how many people saw these guys and had the dimmest flicker of recognition. Some actors people might not know . . . but they did.
The fellow on the right - I think - is Craig MacDonnell. Some of the names of the recurring voices of radio I can never quite remember. I do know that he was the main character in an X-minus One episode called "The Stars are Styx," which I remember because of its last line. "They forget that Charon was more than a boatman. He was an executioner." Well . . . no? He wasn't? Anyway, the credits at the end have Craig MacDonnell as the first actor.
He doesn't appear in any Alfred Hitchcock Presents list of actors, but there he is. The reason I say people didn't know him, but they did, was because he was one of those second-tier voices who did a lot of work, but was instantly recognizable.
I wonder how many people thought hey that's a radio voice, I know that guy. Well, no, I don't, but he's known to me.
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