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Mar. 14th, 2026 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHello, it's been a nice and quiet Saturday. Temperatures in the mid to high forties and low fifties. Jacket and sweatshirt weather. Wore sweats for most of the day. Niece sent me a University of Montana sweatshirt for my birthday. I had bought myself the HOKA training/walking shoes (although not from the link provided) rec'd by the PT. Which I wore yesterday and took a twenty minute walk around the block and to MetFresh today. (I know I should probably order groceries? But I find I buy less and I'm more frugal if I go to the grocery store - plus exercise, since I don't own or drive a car and walk everywhere, well outside of using the subway.)
Also clear blue sky with a scant trace of cloud cover. But alas no flowers or greenery anywhere, unlike I'd found, albeit briefly, in Battery Park earlier in the week. (Green grass, and one bush. Spring! I thought. But alas, no, still winter.) So, aching for flowers and greenery - I purchased more cut flowers from the grocery store. Red Roses, and a bunch of purple and reddish purple flowers that I do not know the names of - one's a purple globe, the others look like various versions of purple and red baby's breath. I'd buy an actual plant - but I have a dreadful black thumb and kill them. The green thumb skipped me and landed on my brother. I have a black thumb. I can kill a cactus. And fake plants - I associate with dust.
**
I did a few walks earlier in the week - when it was still warm outside, before we slid kicking and screaming back into winter. The first was up the pier to check out the cherry blossom festival (or the fake cherry blossom festival) on Pier 15. (It only it actually looked like that? It doesn't. Ah, the wonders of photo-shop and AI.) The second was around Battery City Park - the grass was actually green with flowers, purple flowers sprouting from a patch in the middle of it - helped no doubt by the fact that it was sealed off from people and dogs - and only geese, birds, insects and squirrels could frolic in the enclosure. People and dogs can do a lot of damage. Want to grow grass? Keep dogs and people away from it.
I also saw a green bush. And I thought - ah spring. Then it was in the thirties and forties the next day, and felt like 29 degrees, and I thought, no, still winter. Dang it.
The bush has green buds on it - but you have to enlarge the picture to see it. Also we now have an open pier that you can walk along to see the Statue of Liberty. When the Tall Boats Conference happens in July - that entire walkway should be open - so people can walk along and look at boats in the New York harbor.
The second walk was admittedly more productive than the first. I got stopped along the way by a Statue of Liberty Ticket Ferry scammer who was attempting to tell me that I was going the wrong way to the Statue of Liberty Ferry. I ignored him.
**
Mother interrupted this entry with a phone call - to regale me with news from my brother. I rarely talk to him myself - and honestly, don't need to, she tells me everything he's doing, his daughter is doing, and his wife doing - his friends are doing - and various and sundry family members whether I want this information or not. (Well in snatches, she doesn't remember half of it - and it's the stuff that I'm usually curious about that she doesn't remember, while the stuff I was happier not knowing - she does).
Mother: Apparently your brother turned off his water before he left for Hawaii..and came back to discover there was a leak in the shower on the second floor (it's the first floor, the master bedroom is below it, and there's a third floor under the roof). He discovered its the mixer.
Me: the mixer?
Mother: that mixes the hot and cold water, and it needs to be fixed. And since its impossible to get a plumber over the weekend - or at all, up there, he did it himself. Took him a while to figure out it was the mixer.
ME: I didn't know a mixer existed.
Mother: neither did he. He also has a leak in his radiated heat system in the floor.
ME: A leak? Is it water run or something?
Mother: Yes, it's run with water. So he had to fix that.
Me: How do you fix that?
Mother: He told me but I can't remember any of it - it's convoluted. You'd have to ask him. (Seriously not worth the trouble. I'm not that curious.)
***
Mother: Oh, apparently, Canada passed a new law - if you have a relative - any relative that was born in Canada, then you can apply for citizenship. (Actually I think Ireland has a similar law, which I may look into in the not too distant future.)
Me: That's not really new.
Mother: He said it was or they just found out about it. And apparently your sisinlaw has a distant relative born in Canada that she discovered and has decided to apply for dual citizenship in Canada, which means your brother can get it through her along with your niece.
I've decided to start calling my sisterinlaw and brother Nepo babies.
Mother: And your niece flew to California to go camping with her boyfriend. They were going to do it in Death Valley - which is beautiful this time of year - because it's all in bloom - but with the heat wave - it's way too hot now, and your brother thinks all the flowers are probably scorched.
Me: It's hot everywhere but where I am. Everyone across the country is complaining of the heat. A friend in San Diego is complaining of heat advisories and having to stay in. While in NYC it's cold and we have the radiators on, because it's in the 30s, 40s, and low 50s. It did make it up to 80 on Tuesday in Central Park, but then it slid down again.
***
Mother: And oh, your brother said that his wife found someone with your father's name who was Welsh in the Carolinas -
Me: Do you have any idea how many people have the same name as my father? Or for that matter our last name?
Sometimes I think loneliness is a blessing and I should just embrace it? People can be annoying?
***
Television
* Scarpetta This is the series starring Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Simon Baker, and Bobbie Carnvale (along with his son) adapted from the Patricia Cornwall - Kay Scarpetta mysteries - which I read in the 1990s and early 00s, and now have only vague memories of. I honestly don't remember them at all, just the characters names, and vaguely their relationships with each other? I don't remember the FBI agent, or the sister, just the cop Marino and Kay. That means, I can be fairly open-minded about the series, and won't be comparing it to the books at all. And I didn't. I honestly can't remember much if anything at all about the books - and I read most of them.
Patricia Cornwall served as a consultant on the series, and it has a woman showrunner and director.
I want to like it? But there's something off about it? It's really kind of busy and noisy? I think I want to calm it down a little or cut some of it out? Also, Jamie Lee Curtis is...annoying. Her performance as Scarpetta's wacky older sister Dottie is a parody of her performance in the Bear. It's jarring and cringe inducing. Also a wee bit too theatrical.
But that's not the only problem? The whole thing is kind of jarring? It jumps around a lot from past to present, from flashbacks to the killings, and it has a lot going on. And it's all thrust into the viewers face - subtle it's not.
I don't know if I'll stick with it or not? It's a serial killer detective procedural - and I'm not a fan of serial killer procedurals. I got burned out on those in the early 00s. The setup is Scarpetta goes back to work at the police department as chief of forensics, and ends up working on a case that echoes a case from early on in her career - not only that - it's the case the made her career. Marino is married to her sister, and her husband has rejoined the FBI. The killer brutally kills women, then stages them to be found by the police.
It's gotten mixed reviews? The professional critics seem to like it, but the audience really doesn't.
* Grantchester - this is on Netflix and PBS Passport. I like it better than Scarpetta. It's a historical mystery series featuring a young jazz loving Vicar who solves murder mysteries in his parish with a local homicide detective during the 1950s. The Vicar is a former solider who served in the WWII and is struggling to get past it.
* The Pitt - still enjoying this, although it seems a bit subdued from last year, not sure why. I think the characters are a little less on edge - or the characters that are on edge, aren't the principal characters so it's less apparent? Not sure. It's not a bad thing, just a tonal shift.
* Count of Monte Cristo - almost done. It's subdued as well, and very understated. I'm hesistant to rec too heavily? I'm enjoying it - because I kind of want understated and restrained and subdued at the moment. I'm appreciating it. I don't why. Maybe I'm tired of the noise that seems to surround me constantly? All the ads, all the marketing, all the noise...I want subdued?
This may explain why Scarpetta isn't working for me, but the Pitt, Grantchester, and Monte Cristo are? I'm apparently in the mood for a more realistic touch and a less frenetic high gloss one?
Off to bed.
Also clear blue sky with a scant trace of cloud cover. But alas no flowers or greenery anywhere, unlike I'd found, albeit briefly, in Battery Park earlier in the week. (Green grass, and one bush. Spring! I thought. But alas, no, still winter.) So, aching for flowers and greenery - I purchased more cut flowers from the grocery store. Red Roses, and a bunch of purple and reddish purple flowers that I do not know the names of - one's a purple globe, the others look like various versions of purple and red baby's breath. I'd buy an actual plant - but I have a dreadful black thumb and kill them. The green thumb skipped me and landed on my brother. I have a black thumb. I can kill a cactus. And fake plants - I associate with dust.
**
I did a few walks earlier in the week - when it was still warm outside, before we slid kicking and screaming back into winter. The first was up the pier to check out the cherry blossom festival (or the fake cherry blossom festival) on Pier 15. (It only it actually looked like that? It doesn't. Ah, the wonders of photo-shop and AI.) The second was around Battery City Park - the grass was actually green with flowers, purple flowers sprouting from a patch in the middle of it - helped no doubt by the fact that it was sealed off from people and dogs - and only geese, birds, insects and squirrels could frolic in the enclosure. People and dogs can do a lot of damage. Want to grow grass? Keep dogs and people away from it.
I also saw a green bush. And I thought - ah spring. Then it was in the thirties and forties the next day, and felt like 29 degrees, and I thought, no, still winter. Dang it.
The bush has green buds on it - but you have to enlarge the picture to see it. Also we now have an open pier that you can walk along to see the Statue of Liberty. When the Tall Boats Conference happens in July - that entire walkway should be open - so people can walk along and look at boats in the New York harbor.
The second walk was admittedly more productive than the first. I got stopped along the way by a Statue of Liberty Ticket Ferry scammer who was attempting to tell me that I was going the wrong way to the Statue of Liberty Ferry. I ignored him.
**
Mother interrupted this entry with a phone call - to regale me with news from my brother. I rarely talk to him myself - and honestly, don't need to, she tells me everything he's doing, his daughter is doing, and his wife doing - his friends are doing - and various and sundry family members whether I want this information or not. (Well in snatches, she doesn't remember half of it - and it's the stuff that I'm usually curious about that she doesn't remember, while the stuff I was happier not knowing - she does).
Mother: Apparently your brother turned off his water before he left for Hawaii..and came back to discover there was a leak in the shower on the second floor (it's the first floor, the master bedroom is below it, and there's a third floor under the roof). He discovered its the mixer.
Me: the mixer?
Mother: that mixes the hot and cold water, and it needs to be fixed. And since its impossible to get a plumber over the weekend - or at all, up there, he did it himself. Took him a while to figure out it was the mixer.
ME: I didn't know a mixer existed.
Mother: neither did he. He also has a leak in his radiated heat system in the floor.
ME: A leak? Is it water run or something?
Mother: Yes, it's run with water. So he had to fix that.
Me: How do you fix that?
Mother: He told me but I can't remember any of it - it's convoluted. You'd have to ask him. (Seriously not worth the trouble. I'm not that curious.)
***
Mother: Oh, apparently, Canada passed a new law - if you have a relative - any relative that was born in Canada, then you can apply for citizenship. (Actually I think Ireland has a similar law, which I may look into in the not too distant future.)
Me: That's not really new.
Mother: He said it was or they just found out about it. And apparently your sisinlaw has a distant relative born in Canada that she discovered and has decided to apply for dual citizenship in Canada, which means your brother can get it through her along with your niece.
I've decided to start calling my sisterinlaw and brother Nepo babies.
Mother: And your niece flew to California to go camping with her boyfriend. They were going to do it in Death Valley - which is beautiful this time of year - because it's all in bloom - but with the heat wave - it's way too hot now, and your brother thinks all the flowers are probably scorched.
Me: It's hot everywhere but where I am. Everyone across the country is complaining of the heat. A friend in San Diego is complaining of heat advisories and having to stay in. While in NYC it's cold and we have the radiators on, because it's in the 30s, 40s, and low 50s. It did make it up to 80 on Tuesday in Central Park, but then it slid down again.
***
Mother: And oh, your brother said that his wife found someone with your father's name who was Welsh in the Carolinas -
Me: Do you have any idea how many people have the same name as my father? Or for that matter our last name?
Sometimes I think loneliness is a blessing and I should just embrace it? People can be annoying?
***
Television
* Scarpetta This is the series starring Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Simon Baker, and Bobbie Carnvale (along with his son) adapted from the Patricia Cornwall - Kay Scarpetta mysteries - which I read in the 1990s and early 00s, and now have only vague memories of. I honestly don't remember them at all, just the characters names, and vaguely their relationships with each other? I don't remember the FBI agent, or the sister, just the cop Marino and Kay. That means, I can be fairly open-minded about the series, and won't be comparing it to the books at all. And I didn't. I honestly can't remember much if anything at all about the books - and I read most of them.
Patricia Cornwall served as a consultant on the series, and it has a woman showrunner and director.
I want to like it? But there's something off about it? It's really kind of busy and noisy? I think I want to calm it down a little or cut some of it out? Also, Jamie Lee Curtis is...annoying. Her performance as Scarpetta's wacky older sister Dottie is a parody of her performance in the Bear. It's jarring and cringe inducing. Also a wee bit too theatrical.
But that's not the only problem? The whole thing is kind of jarring? It jumps around a lot from past to present, from flashbacks to the killings, and it has a lot going on. And it's all thrust into the viewers face - subtle it's not.
I don't know if I'll stick with it or not? It's a serial killer detective procedural - and I'm not a fan of serial killer procedurals. I got burned out on those in the early 00s. The setup is Scarpetta goes back to work at the police department as chief of forensics, and ends up working on a case that echoes a case from early on in her career - not only that - it's the case the made her career. Marino is married to her sister, and her husband has rejoined the FBI. The killer brutally kills women, then stages them to be found by the police.
It's gotten mixed reviews? The professional critics seem to like it, but the audience really doesn't.
* Grantchester - this is on Netflix and PBS Passport. I like it better than Scarpetta. It's a historical mystery series featuring a young jazz loving Vicar who solves murder mysteries in his parish with a local homicide detective during the 1950s. The Vicar is a former solider who served in the WWII and is struggling to get past it.
* The Pitt - still enjoying this, although it seems a bit subdued from last year, not sure why. I think the characters are a little less on edge - or the characters that are on edge, aren't the principal characters so it's less apparent? Not sure. It's not a bad thing, just a tonal shift.
* Count of Monte Cristo - almost done. It's subdued as well, and very understated. I'm hesistant to rec too heavily? I'm enjoying it - because I kind of want understated and restrained and subdued at the moment. I'm appreciating it. I don't why. Maybe I'm tired of the noise that seems to surround me constantly? All the ads, all the marketing, all the noise...I want subdued?
This may explain why Scarpetta isn't working for me, but the Pitt, Grantchester, and Monte Cristo are? I'm apparently in the mood for a more realistic touch and a less frenetic high gloss one?
Off to bed.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 10:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 12:31 pm (UTC)I've not read the Guardian review (I think that's the UK review you read? Someone else mentioned it elsewhere.) But a lot of other reviewers seemed to like it? It got a 69 + in favor score on Rotten Tomatoes, it was the audience/viewers that hated it. Which is really interesting and kind of odd. The Guardian was apparently an outlier?
ETA: read the reviews now. The Guardian saw it as a dire mess, NY Times saw it as a mixed bag agreeing mostly with the Guardian, but loved Curtis and Kidman's chemistry. Roger Ebert saw it as a mixed bag that failed to provide enough darkness in the main character to be truly interesting.
But Variety loved it.
None of them really agreed with each other - and it's as if each saw different shows. I agree with The Guardian and the NY Times, but with the additional comment - that Jamie Lee Curtis was unwatchable in it - and she's far too prominent for me to continue with it.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 03:10 pm (UTC)I remember the Kay Scarpetta books vaguely, like you. I read a lot of them, but only remember bits and pieces. I'd say I remember the 'bare bones', but think that was the title of one? (IDK, and I'm not going to look it up, but it amused me).
I'm curious about the show.
I have PBS because I donated and have been watching Grantchester on and off for a couple of months now. I like the jazz vicar better than the motorcycle vicar who comes after - but only in hindsight. And I am intrigued by Count of Monte Cristo but haven't watched it yet.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 03:15 pm (UTC)I've been watching Grantchester, too. One of the local PBS stations ran the first four seasons and a bit of season five. I do like it. But I don't want to pay to see the rest. If my library has the DVDs, and they'll actually play...
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 04:15 pm (UTC)Also, I don’t believe that’s correct about the Canadian law. I think it’s just a parent or grandparent.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 04:16 pm (UTC)Yeah, unless one has looked they don't know. I grew up thinking I was the only one with my first name(very common) and last name (quite rare). Back when, in the stone age, when I first got on line, I was shocked to find there are several of us. Granted most of them are, in fact, distant relatives, but none I've met! One of them even owns (my first name and last name) dot.com.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 04:31 pm (UTC)There's over 500 people on FB with my full name alone. In NYC? At least a 100. In my organization? At least five, with all sorts of variations. My father's name is even more popular than mine.
It's relatively easy to find someone with the same name as my father. And everyone in my family knows that.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 04:55 pm (UTC)https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyjsemotiuk/2026/03/09/canada-expands-citizenship-by-descent-you-may-already-qualify/
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 05:06 pm (UTC)Counte of Monte Cristo - I enjoyed, it's understated and subtle, not over the top or histronic in any way - which makes it more powerful in my opinion? And less clear cut. It's not that clear at the end that Edmond Dantes did the wrong thing by seeking revenge. You could argue it either way. It's satisfying, without being patronizing, and leaves the viewer with questions.
I don't know, I've always had problems finding shoes. Now, I'm getting them online - since it is becoming impossible to find shoe stores that have my size. But that poses issues as well.
I'm kind of playing blind? Not that I could tell is shoes were a perfect fit in a store either most of the time.
I remember the Kay Scarpetta books vaguely, like you. I read a lot of them, but only remember bits and pieces. I'd say I remember the 'bare bones', but think that was the title of one? (IDK, and I'm not going to look it up, but it amused me).
I'm curious about the show.
Same on all counts. I only vaguely remember Kay having a sister? And I thought Kay married Pete Marino, but I also forgot Kay had a sister. Curiosity got me to watch the first episode.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 06:28 pm (UTC)I understand what you're saying about Monte Cristo. A show can be the right one at the right time.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-15 10:23 pm (UTC)There's also a minor folk musician who shares my name.