Category Archives: TV

2026, animals, Family, Food, Mysteries, Nature, Travel, TV

Buckeyes

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We got to Columbus about 9:30 a.m. on a Friday morning and after picking up the rental car, we got to the hotel well before check-in time… in fact we were there before check-out time.   We knew this was a possibility so we left my phone number with the front desk and headed out.

Started with lunch at The Rusty Bucket.  Veggie burgers, fries and fried pickles.  Best fried pickles ever.  It was a gorgeous day and we sat near the big open windows so there was a great breeze.  Then we headed over for a hike to Indian Falls.  We walked quite a bit down of pathway before we realized that the little gurgling “rapids” we had passed earlier were the actual falls. Guess living so close to Minnehaha Falls, I had bigger expectations.  But it was pretty and we got to pet a few dogs along the way.

I know I mentioned Anthony Thomas Candies earlier; we found an Anthony Thomas Candy Shoppe outlet between the falls and our motel.  Anthony Thomas is a fourth-generation company that started as a Dairy Co-op in 1932 and following a couple of expansions, in 1952 they began making what is now their signature candy – the buckeye – peanut butter filling surrounded by milk chocolate.  They make 14 million buckeyes a year and are recognized by Ohio State University for the licensing of the candies.   We found a little box of what they call their “oops” – seconds.  Neither YA nor I could figure out what was wrong with them.  They were delicious – and cheaper!

Quick stop at a grocery store for a few bottles of pop/water for the fridge in our room and then headed back to the motel for our check-in.  Showers, lunch leftovers for dinner and we found Banana Ball on ESPN.  In a complete reversal of our usual roles, I am a BB fan, YA is not.  However she humored me.

Set our alarms to make sure we got up early enough for our adventure on Saturday.  Not bad for a travel day, no?

Do you have a candy that you would eat, even if it were an “oops”?

2026, Business, Computers, Technology, TV

Don’t Bug Me

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To say I have a love/hate relationship with my cable company is to overstate half of that equation.  After many many years of being disappointed by them (service, price, communications), I pretty much approach any interaction with them with trepidation. 

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail and then a couple of texts about upgrading my gateway.  Since I wasn’t even sure what that was, I ignored the texts.  Then a few days later, I got two more texts.  These day, I hardly click on any links that are sent to me…. way too many scammers… so last Thursday, I made a quick appointment and headed over to their store.  I wanted a straight answer about what this was, was it really necessary and the most important, if there was a cost attached.  I wanted a live person to look me in the face to give me the facts and then hand me their business card so I had their name. 

Turned about to be fairly easy.  Although they’re calling it an upgrade for me, it was clear that they are trying to get everybody on the same platform with the same connections/software so it will be easier/cheaper for them.  But since it wasn’t going to cost me anything, I said “OK”.  But before he went to get the new modem, he launched into a pitch for getting my mobile phone service.  This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this so I fended him off pretty swiftly.  I got the new modem, went home and set it up.  It went better than I expected.

Next morning, I had to take the old modem back; I got to the store at 10, their opening time.  A different young man waited on me.  I told him I wanted a receipt, since I don’t have much faith in their ability to keep track of whether I’ve returned equipment (previous bad experience).  He looked me up to get the receipt and then promptly headed down the mobile phone service path.  I cut him off and said I wasn’t interested and I had told my salesperson just yesterday that I wasn’t interested in “putting all my eggs in *_____*’s basket”.  He kept going so I had to amp up a bit.  I said “we’re still paying down our phones (not true) but even if we were not, I STILL wouldn’t give you all my mobile business.”  He did stop at that point.  Sigh.

In a perfect world, I won’t have to confront the dragon again for about a year but I’m thinking that I’ll wear a namebadge that says “Please don’t ask me about my mobile service.”

Have you had to handle any pushy salesfolks lately?

2026, Family, home, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Power Washing Premonition

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For quite some time, I avoided Hudson & Rex, a Canadian tv show about a cop and his partner, a beautiful German Shepherd Dog.  But I’ve gotten hooked; it shows on a couple of different cable stations so when I find it showing, I’m all in.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of those two stations plays a few ads A LOT.  One of those is about a power washer.  You know the kind where some guy says “after using this, I threw out my old power washer”.  Blah blah blah.  I mute it a fair amount.

Imagine my surprise when a box was delivered yesterday and I came downstairs to find YA assembling a little power washer.  It isn’t the power washer from tv (thank goodness); she bought it with award credits from the merchandise side of her company’s business.  No money actually changed hands.

She had it out yesterday afternoon, doing the side of the garage and the driveway where we had all the mulch piled up for the last couple of weeks.  I guess it works pretty well; she informed me of a couple of other projects she is thinking about. 

I’m glad she likes to take on these kinds of projects because it would never have occurred to me but I am a little spooked that the tv seemed to predict the power washer entering our lives.

Any cleaning projects lately?

2026, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Bingeing Vera

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The British drama Vera starring Brenda Blethyn ran for 14 seasons and I watched every episode from beginning to end in the last five days of my BritBox holiday subscription.  Binge-watching has its drawbacks and it’s with what you notice because you’re seeing it quickly in succession.  Here’s what I found:

Backstory.  You’ve heard me say that I don’t like it when the main character has so much back story that it takes episode after episode to unpack it.  It’s a bit easier when you’re bingeing because the episodes come one after the other; it’s not as drawn-out but still.  You never really do figure out her clearly dysfunctional childhood story. 

Team Development.  She says repeatedly that her family are her colleagues but those colleagues must get whiplash as she alternates between thanking them for good work and then excoriating them for not getting the job done.  She can be really mean.  And if anyone barks back, she goes deadly quiet and puts them “in their place”.    In 14 seasons Vera rejects almost all overtures by these colleagues, from not wanting to be a godmother to never going out for drinks with the team.  Once she had dinner with her sergeant’s family – just once.  She doesn’t seem to know anything about her team and their lives outside the office despite years of working together.

Repeat dialog.  What are we missing?  We’re missing something.  Something is missing.  This dialog usually happens about ¾ the way through each episode.  Every episode.  I suppose if you weren’t binge watching, you might not notice this.

Lying.  Every single person who is interviewed by Vera and her team lies.  All of them.  Not just the murderer, not just the shady person who has motive but isn’t the killer, not just the neighbor down the street who heard the shots… all of them.  Usually by the end, they have all recanted their lies.  It makes you wonder if there is something in the water in the UK.

Perry Mason theory of killer identification.  Decades ago, my dad and I came up with this theory —  any character who is on screen or has dialog more than three times, but doesn’t really have any strong tie to the story usually turns out to be the murderer.  And you can’t usually figure out the motive ahead of time.  My dad and I would shout out who we thought it was and IF you could come up with any sort of close motive, you got extra credit for that.   Anyway, that leads to my Vera theory of killer identification.  There is almost always one main motive path: corrupt financial business, past returning to bite you in the butt, blackmail… all the regulars.  But you can throw most of these out; all the time spent tracking all this down is wasted because the murderer is almost always someone very close to the victim, not connected to that motive and it’s almost never pre-meditated.  The son, the daughter, the mother, the father, the wife, the husband, even the best friend.  And just like those Perry Mason shows, you won’t always get the motive until the very end.  Vera has a very annoying habit of looking at something given to her by her team (usually a piece of paper or something on a pad) and charging off without letting us, the audience, know what has just been discovered.

Anyway, I’m making it sound like I didn’t like the series or the characters.  I actually did.  In fact, in the second to the last episode, one of her team (Kenny) got clobbered and I thought for sure he was done for and I got really upset.  SPOILER ALERT… Kenny survives the attack but we don’t know that until the next episode.  The jury is still out whether I would have enjoyed it more or less if I had been watching it weekly for years rather than watching 14 seasons in five days! Guess we’ll never know.

Any series you’ve been enjoying lately?  Bingeing or not?

2026, books, Family, holidays, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

BritBox vs. Libby

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For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:

Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31.  I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.

Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun.  When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked.  I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do.  When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash.  I laughed and laughed.

I launched the two-month gift on February 1st.  I took the book counter photo yesterday morning.  Not one book added since January 31.  That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift.  Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile.   I’ll stop here.  So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.  

It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like.  Heaven knows there are enough available.  I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.

Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading.  Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!

Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?

2026, books, Movies, TV

Tired….

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I’m that proverbial early bird.  Not sure it’s ever gotten me any early worms.  It’s pretty rare that I can stay asleep longer than 5 or 5:30, although occasionally in the winter when it’s dark later in the morning, I can manage a little bit longer.  In the summer, once the sun starts heading into the sky, I’m done for.

This is not a problem unless I have too many late nights.  Usually I’m not a night owl  but….

I’m binging Brokenwood these days, so one night in the last week, I was  up until midnight watching the last of the DVDs that I had from the library.  Another night this week, I stayed up too late watching some Peter Davison Dr Who episodes (the DVD was due the next day).   A third night I was getting close to the end of Inside a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz.  It wasn’t really a page-turner (4 stars) but I really wanted to see if the author was going to wrap it up with anything more surprising than she had already presented (spoiler alert – she didn’t). 

No regrets about any of these nights but since sleeping in doesn’t happen so I am dragging a little bit the last couple of days.  Nothing too serious and after a few more regular nights, I’ll be back to my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed morning gal.  Unless I find something else compelling that keeps me up……

What’s worth it to you to lose some sleep?  Last thing that kept you up past your usual bedtime?

2026, Fantasy, Mysteries, Technology, TV

Keeping Track

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I didn’t have a big to-do list yesterday.  Normally when this occurs, I fill in with other little tasks around the house or I plant myself in my studio but for some reason sitting on the sofa and watching tv.  Three episodes of Perry Mason and then a handful of Columbo.

I’ve seen them all repeatedly.  I know who the murderer is in every Perry Mason and, of course, you know who the murderer is on Columbo from the get-go.  Since I don’t have to spend any mental energy on figuring out the mystery, I can while away the time looking at small details and wondering at how the world has changed.

Yesterday what stood out the most was that no matter where Perry or Columbo happen to be, somebody can always get ahold of them.  Perry is interviewing a suspect; the phone rings and it’s for him.  Columbo is at his dog’s obedience academy; the phone rings and it’s for him.  It happened all the time.

Now Perry had Della to call him however the calls weren’t always from her and quite a bit of the time she was with him.  Was there a whiteboard with all of Perry’s stops left in his outer office?  For many years, there was Gertie who took calls.  Maybe she was letting folks know where Perry was?

But Columbo?  He was always portrayed as such a loose cannon – if there was some administrative assistant somewhere back at headquarters, it was a highly kept secret.  Did he really leave the phone number of the dog obedience academy with someone somewhere?

It made me think about the scene in Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam in which Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts are leaving Woody’s apartment:

Dick:
I’ll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I’ll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I’ll be at 752-0420; and then I’ll be home, at 621-4598. Yeah, right George, bye-bye.

Linda:
There’s a phone booth on the corner. You want me to run downstairs and get the number? You’ll be passing it.

Obviously these days detectives and lawyers are never without their cell phones, so the whiteboards with everyone’s every move and destination are not longer necessary.  Of course, now that I think about it – they probably hadn’t been invented yet?

Do you have a whiteboard?  Whiteboard equivalent?  What do you use it for?

2026, books, Business, Fantasy, Mysteries, TV

The Doctor

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When I was in the bookstore, I was offered a “new” position in Store #1 (Southdale).  My title was Associate Manager, a title that didn’t exist anywhere else in the bookstore world at that point.  This fancy title meant that I had more responsibility, more work but no more power than any average employee.  And certainly not a lot more money.  But the one thing that I was promised was the doing this job would mean that when it came time for me to become a store manager, I would be able to skip the traditional small “starter” store, but would jump right away to a medium store. 

If you live in the Twin Cities, if you ever visited the store over in Sun Ray Mall (not there any longer), you’ll know that they lied to me.  There were only a few stores smaller than Sun Ray at the time.  However, the Associate Manager job was such a pain in the patoot that I didn’t argue when they offered me the teeny store – off I went.

I’ve mentioned the teeniest because despite it’s small size, it had the largest Dr. Who section in the Twin Cities – seven full shelves in the corner so basically its own section.  A couple of times a week, someone would come in the front door and ask “Dr. Who?”.  We sold A LOT of the little mass market editions.  Some of them were books based on episodes and many were other Dr. Who fiction.  Written by many different authors.

That was over 30 years ago, only half way through what is now a 60-year legacy and still going strong.  Even though we had cornered the Dr. Who market at the time, it didn’t interest me much.  As time has passed, I’ve watched just a few episodes and a couple of years ago I did read the very first book. 

A couple of weeks ago I read something on FB that commented that Dr. #5 (Peter Davison) is the father-in-law of Dr. #10 (David Tennant).  Not sure why but that seems like a funny happenstance.  So I decided I might learn a bit more about the whole Dr. Who universe.  I’ve started with a series that was made about 10 years ago.  There is one DVD per doctor with a 30-minute overview and interviews covering the doctor, the companions and what made them special and different.  Then there is one episode, sometimes the first of that particular doctor, sometimes one of the most iconic.    

There have been 14 different Dr. Who actors, although some folks count 15 because David Tennant came back.  However clocking in with a whooping 892 episodes filmed so far, this is not a rabbit hole I’m going to jump down.  I’ll watch the rest of the series.  Maybe in the future I’ll watch a few more here and there – particularly David Tennant and Peter Davison, both of whom I already liked from other roles.  I don’t think I’ll need a spreadsheet!

Is there any science fiction you like?  A Dr. Who fan?  Star Wars?  Star Trek?  Firefly?  Avengers?

2025, Art, Media, Movies, Theatre, TV

Diane Ladd 1935-2025

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I saw the sad news that Diane Ladd passed away yesterday – she was 89.  

She began acting at the age of 18 and just retired 3 years ago; her last roles were in Gigi & Nate and Isle of Hope.  When she first came to my attention was the year I graduated high school, when she appeared in Chinatown and then Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.  Both great performances and she was nominated for a Golden Globe, Academy Award and a BAFTA – winning the BAFTA. 

One of my favorite of her performances was as Etta, the sister-in-law of Theresa Turner in Black Widow.  It wasn’t a huge part but she really made her cool but nasty character sizzle on the screen.  The header photo is the best one I can find of her in that role.

I also really liked Rambling Rose in which she plays a southern woman who battles to keep a younger teenager from going under the knife unnecessarily.  Here’s a good clip from that:

I also remember a really nice part she played in a Columbo episode.  She’s a wheelchair bound woman whose husband kills her mother.  She wears pretty, diaphanous dresses and appears fragile, but turns out to be a strong and kind woman.  It’s one of my favorite Columbo episodes. 

Her part in Alice didn’t do much for me.  Of course, the I didn’t care the the show BEFORE she stepped in, but trying to shoehorn her into the role that Flo had vacated didn’t seem to work all that well.  But she was popular and did win a Golden Globe for her work.

Most of the news stories today have “mother of Laura Dern” in their titles.  It’s a shame because I don’t think that’s her big claim to fame.  She had a long, diverse and entertaining career; that’s what the headlines should be!

Have you seen Diane Ladd in anything?  Do you have a favorite?

2025, books, Fantasy, Media, Movies, TV

All For One….

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When we talked about esoteric knowledge the other day, I would not have said that The Three Musketeers was a particular interest of mine.  Then I stumbled upon a tv series from 2014-2016, a British production.  Binge-watching is a perfect occupation when you’re nursing a knee. 

This particular series is a little darker than I like, but I realize that I’ve seen quite a few of the musketeer movies over the years, so it’s intriguing to see this one.  The production values are quite good – costumes and dialog seem more realistic than a lot of historical dramas.  Of course, there seems to be at least one nubile young woman each episode who manages to fall for one of the musketeers in just a day or so.  Then there’s the fact that all of the musketeers except D’Artagnan (the only character played by an actor who I recognize – Santiago Cabrera) have old, unhealed loved tragedies in their past.  Athos in particular can’t seem to get over his.

And it’s VERY violent.  I find myself listening more than watching every now and then.  I’m not surprised that there were only three seasons.  I’m about half way through the second season and I’m starting to wonder if Paris is going to run out of population, so many people get murdered each episode.  Last night I actually muted it for about five minutes while Captain Treville was getting operated on.  (Thank goodness I live in an age with anesthetic.)  It’s another show that I can’t watch up until bedtime or I have dreams that are much too intense.

As I’ve been watching the show, it occurs to me that I can’t remember if I ever READ The Three Musketeers.  All the comparisons that I’m making in my mind may be from other movies/series I’ve seen.  And there is still the one big question of why Dumas titled his tome The Three Musketeers when there are clearly four of them?  Maybe the book explains this?  So I put it on hold at the library.  I’ll let you know!

Did you have a play sword as a kid?  Ever taken fencing or shooting lessons?