Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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A Rainy Tuesday

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It’s a gray and rainy day here. Tonight, the temperatures are going to plummet and I may have to face reality – never easy – and let my porch plants go. There are too many 18 degree nights coming up for me to continue to cover them. It seems colder here than it usually is in early November. I hope that isn’t an ill omen for the coming winter.

I spent hours and hours yesterday trying to figure out my photo editing dilemma. Too involved to explain, but at the end of the day, I had a newer version of Lightroom and I succumbed to Adobe’s (the creator) required new subscription servic. Even though I owned my version of LR outright, having paid for it years ago, it is no longer supported by Adobe (which means they leave us no choice) and Apple is also going to stop supporting apps that have 32 bits rather than 64 bits. Just in case you think I know what that means, I don’t. I only know I got a warning from Apple the other day saying it would soon be impossible to use on my computer. And then I screwed up royally on something else to do with editing which made for a lot of hassles. I had to make the decision whether to upgrade to something that would eventually not work or bite the bullet and upgrade to a better solution now. Oh, and I upgraded to the wrong plan, had to cancel it, and then subscribe to the right plan. This took up most of the day.

Oy.

At the end of the day I was sore from hunching over my keyboard.

Don is still under the weather. On Sunday, when we went to the bookstore, he was feeling better. Yesterday and today, he feels worse. Chest colds are such a pain in the tush. Or more aptly, the head and chest.

I’m currently reading Gaudy Night  by Dorothy L. Sayers. For some reason, I’ve never read any Sayers, even though I’ve always known about her and well remember watching the BBC/PBS series from 1987 about Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey. It starred Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, both of whom were wonderful. Years later, I had the chance to meet Petherbridge (such a lovely man) and see Harriet Walter on stage in London. And – in life’s strange twists – Walter eventually ended up marrying Guy Paul, a friend of ours who was the original Grinch in the stage production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which premiered at the Old Globe Theater (and also starred my husband.)

As always, it’s a small world.

Back to the book…it’s wonderful! What a stylish writer Sayers was! I’m deep into it and am enjoying it very much.

I’m also about to start a nonfiction memoir that I will be reviewing next week: Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood  by Maureen Stanton.

There’s a lot on my plate including a couple of days of coaching in the next few weeks. I have to do some prep work.

Happy Tuesday.

Back in the Blogging Saddle

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I’m back. I called my internet provider on Tuesday and the tech said that the signals coming from our modem were very weak and he scheduled an appointment with another tech yesterday afternoon.

In the meantime, the modem was in and out all morning long yesterday, so each time I started to write a post, the wifi/modem would go out. I finally gave up, posted on IG that we had internet problems, and hoped you all would check there. If I can’t post and I can get to my IG account, I’ll always let you know what’s going on.

The tech arrived, couldn’t find anything wrong with the modem (though we agreed that it’s probably time for a new router) and he went outside and checked the cable going into our house and then drove down to the road and climbed a huge ladder. At one point I heard voices and realized my neighbor was out there talking to him. I ran outside to chat with her and, sure enough, they were having problems, as well. Then, as I was headed back inside, my other neighbor walked down her driveway and talked to the tech. Clearly, it was a neighborhood thing – which the tech confirmed. He found out there had been a crew working all morning elsewhere in the neighborhood and everything looks okay now. A day or so before I called them, I noticed them working at another neighbor’s house. So it’s been ongoing for a week or so. More info than you really needed, but there you go.

Leaves and more leaves. Today it’s supposed to be a bit windy…so more leaves. But it’s awfully pretty out there.

I’ve started reading Gaudy Night  by Dorothy L. Sayers. I’m not too far into the book yet, because my time has been taken up by wifi/internet. But I like it so far. Oh, forgot to say, yesterday’s impending visit by the tech necessitated a major desk cleanup by my husband because that’s where the modem and router are. I had been gently asking him to clean up his part of the office for quite some time – to no avail. It was a MESS of stacks of paper, photos, mail, files, memorabilia from the run of Escape to Margaritaville, camera stuff, etc. With a deadline, Don had no choice but to go through everything with a ruthless hand. Huzzah! It looks much better now.

I’ve never seen the limelight hydrangeas look as spectacular as they do this year. That color is so intense! Gorgeous.

We’re into Season 2 of Goliath  on Amazon Prime. We really love it. I’m partial to Billy Bob Thornton, who is one of the most honest actors I’ve ever seen. Not a false move. And Tony Award winner Nina Arianda, his costar, is the same. She is simply wonderful. (Don’s crazy about her.)

I just finished Paris to the Moon  by Adam Gopnick, a series of essays he wrote for The New Yorker, when he and his family lived in Paris 20 years ago. I recommend it highly if you’re at all interested in Paris, Parisians and the differences in our cultures. Gopnick still writes for The New Yorker and I’ve been a fan for a long time.

A reminder that I’ve disabled my comment reply plugin, so you’ll need to check back if you want to read my reply and the comments of your fellow readers. Thank you!

Okay. Glad to be back!

Happy Thursday.

 

Flowers and a Little Housekeeping

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Late summer garden. It’s sort of a mess, though I did do some weeding the other day. Truth is, it’s so hot and humid this week that I couldn’t weed if I tried. I just turned the A/C on at 9:30 this morning, which is far earlier than usual.

Tomorrow I leave for Las Vegas, quite early in the morning. So I won’t be posting. I’ll try to post while I’m there. If I can’t, I’ll be posting on Instagram. If you don’t have an IG account, you can come to the blog and click on the Instagram link on the right sidebar and it will take you to my account.

I know I’ve said this before, but I have to say it again because it still keeps happening. For those of you who get my blog post via email, please understand that if you ‘reply’ via that post, I am unable to respond. Those posts are sent via a special email address that is just for the posts. Not for correspondence. I’ve had people get upset with me about that in the past, even though I remind everyone about this at least 3 or 4 times a year. Go figure.

If you want to write me, come to the blog. You can click on the title of the post in the email version and it will take you to the blog. Personally, I’d rather  you did that as clicking on the blog gives me the ad income necessary to support this blog. (You get it for free, but it isn’t free for me.) Once you get here, go to the top of the right sidebar and you’ll see an envelope icon. Click on it. An email form will appear.

Easy.

I say this because a reader wrote me the other day via the email blog post asking how she could find the post I wrote about Bookmobiles. Again…the sidebar. There is a box on the sidebar that says ‘Search.’ Type in ‘Bookmobile’ and it should come up. There may be more than one post referencing them, just look for the post that has Bookmobile in the title.

Okay. Here’s a picture of Don and me taken by one of my former students last week.

It’s a bit blurry, but at this point in my life, blurry is a blessing, you know? Anyway, we like it.

I’m a lucky girl having that man as my life partner.

I’ll see you when I see you – in the next couple of days, most likely.

Happy Tuesday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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