The bread was actually called Pain de Campagne which is a traditional round country bread that is a mealtime staple in French homes. The recipe was in one of Becky's recent additions to her collection of cookbooks America's Test Kitchen Bread Illustrated. It is a wonderful book full of amazing recipes. We regularly watch their show on one of the several cooking shows we get on Sling TV.
There are quite a few shows that I'm interested in watching when I have the time.
She has been watching several crime series on Brit Box including and probably a few more.
She also watched the Bleak House series from 1985
Later that year I received a gift package with a little book of photos. It was a collection of family portraits but of all our family members besides me posed in Betsy's house with their backs to the camera.
I came across the little photo book while clearing out a book shelf. I certainly hadn't looked at those back pictures in decades. I then posted them to our sibling phone text chat group with lots of funny responses including some "back" puns.
The other day I was enjoying listening to their Post Punk Chronicles CD collection. I hadn't played those CDs in many years although most of the songs on them I have scattered around on various mixes. The series of three volumes was released in 1999. I picked them up one after another right after they came out. I knew most of the songs on the albums but each volume had a few things for me to discover.
Going Underground contained a lot of songs with distortion and pop melody with some Teardrop Explodes, The Smiths, The Lyres, Iggy Pop, Billy Bragg, Gang of Four, The Soft Boys, Rain Parade, Swell Maps, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth, The Three O'Clock, The Go-Betweens, Green On Red, Throbbing Gristle, The Jam and Pere Ubu.
Scared to Dance felt a lot like early 80's underground college rock and included song by Heaven 17, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Stranglers, Iggy Pop, The Cult, Skids, Killing Joke, Medium Medium, The Pop Group, Magazine, Tuxedomoon, Japan, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and Pigbag.
Left of the Dial was probably a good introduction to the era of music for someone who was experiencing it for the first time and included music from R.E.M., Joy Division, Wire, Modern English, Comstat Angels, Thomas Dolby, Mission of Burma, New Order, The Chills, The Church, The Raincoats, The Dream Syndicate, The Passions, The Chameleons, Bill Nelson and The Cocteau Twins.
The series:
These two very old and falling apart cookbooks belonged to my mother-in-law Catherine Catanzaro Koenig, Becky remembers her mother using them when she was growing up. She can even remember her mom taping the book together.
The Italian Cookbook has a 1943 copyright and publishing date. The French Cookbook has a 1956 publishing date.
Logan Park was the closest and the place with the most opportunities. There were lots of the right kinds of trees with lots of low hanging strong branches. There was one area of the park where we spent a lot of time in the trees. I was probably in the age range of 9 to 13 at my prime tree climbing time. It was also a social thing with groups of us doing it together. A bunch of kids would climb the same tree and hang out for hours talking. It was mostly guys but a few girls too. One of the trees we spent a lot of time in was near a park fence and on the other side of the fence were people's backyards. I wonder what they thought of the group of kids in the tree all the time near their backyard and back of their house. Sometimes we sat there in the tree watching all the activities going on in the various backyards.
Another park activity we were doing at the time was rock climbing. I certainly don't mean what is considered "rock climbing" today but there were a lot of large rocks in our parks which we also loved to climb and hang our on. We often climbed the rocks at the Happy Hollow playground which was created out of an old quarry. There were some very steep rock climbing there... well, for kids. We spent a lot of time on those rocks overlooking the playing fields and basketball courts.
We also climbed the buttresses of the expressway bridge down in Fernhill Park near Roberts Ave and Wayne Junction. That was a little scary too.
Becky has been watching The Great British Pottery Throw Down and is well into the third season. She is also watching the Gilded Age series.
I've been watching more Sci-Fi type shows. I started out with Station Eleven which was one season and then Snowpiercer which was two seasons. I finished them both and looking forward to the series to continue. I recently started watching the new Ridley Scott series Raised by Wolves.
I would like to get back to finishing up Westworld and Lovecraft Country.
We have spoken with our financial advisor enough that we could actually joke about what we were doing but in reality it was all very serious as we discussed selling some of our mutual funds in particular Roth IRAs that we needed to do in order to get an income stream. Some people who spend a lot of time worrying about the stock market would have been freaking out to be doing the process and procedure that we needed to do at this particular time.
Well, we got it done and now we have some more money coming into our checking account monthly from one of the many funds associated with our retirement accounts. It's amazing that they create a financial plan that allows us to have money coming in monthly that should last us until the age of 95 each. If we pass before it's all gone then the money goes to our kids.
I'm happy to have made it to 70 so far as years ago I would have never expected to have lived this long yet alone into my 90's but now I have some hope that came with the grandchildren.
Now we just need to forget about the war and the potential effects on our retirement portfolio and live life.
I needed a good pair of boots for walking around the neighborhood in winter and for the occasional times we have gone somewhere the past couple of pandemic years. Maybe I'm thinking we will start going out again soon. Just idle speculation.
Becky ordered me a pair of boots online. It took two attempts. The first one arrived from Macy's (I think) and I tried them on. They were 8 1/2, my usual size, but tight and I felt squeezed in. We sent them back.
This was the first time I had ever got new boots by mail. I've always went to a store and took my time trying on different boots to find something that fit me well. They were usually 8 1/2 but occasionally I would need a size 9. Next Becky ordered me a pair of size 9 black Timberlands from Zappos. They came and fit perfectly and comfortably. They looked great too. I wore them around the house a couple of times to make sure they were the ones to keep and then wore them on our walks.
Last night I wore the boots when we went out to Halwalls for Becky's art show closing reception. The black boots looked good with the black jeans and black leather jacket. They were also very comfortable standing around in a gallery for a couple of hours.
Becky met a lot of the other artists for the first time. I spent a lot of time talking with people I hadn't seen or had conversations with in seemingly a couple of years. People that I used to regularly see at art openings. It felt good to be our socializing with a couple of beers but it was exhausting too.
Out front there are still some snow banks where the snow has been piled there from weeks of shoveling but overall it looks good.
This was also the first time I had no desire to watch any of the opening or closing ceremonies. I just didn't want to watch all the Chinese propaganda. Norway won the most medals followed by Germany and China. I never got to see any of the men's hockey games. Covid-19 hung over the games and caused many restrictions. The figure skating controversies cast a dark cloud over the Olympics.
The television ratings for this Olympics were the lowest in the history of televising the Olympics. Ever. I was not surprised.
The next Summer Games will be in Paris in 2024 and the next Winter Games will be in Milan in 2026. Hopefully things will be better.
This can came from the Community Pack variety collection that Becky brought home for me recently.
Also in the photo there are also three CDs from the Rhino Postpunk Chronicles collection released in 1999. I'm looking forward to giving them a spin.
Today she baked a wonderful winter loaf from a recipe out of A Bake for All Seasons from the Great British Baking Show that Sean and Ashley gave her for Christmas. It was a Paul Hollywood recipe from the show and in the book is called Winter No-Knead Loaf.
It's amazing that the most protected woman in the world can come down with Covid and at the age of 95 too. If she can survive than anyone without major health issues can seemingly get the disease and recover. Other members of the royal family have tested positive for the virus in recent days.
Although Becky and I are certainly not watchers of the English royals we have enjoyed watching the television series The Crown and have admired Queen Elizabeth. Hopefully she can get through this.
It's been a little over five years now that we have both been retired and there are times when it is hard to imagine what our lives were like before the big change. In the past we would have been avidly looking forward to a three day weekend because of a holiday on Monday like today. The kids would be off from school and we would need to have some plans for the day or at least be prepared. Not anymore.
It has been especially different not only being retired but also this ongoing pandemic experience where everything seems mixed up and out of sorts. Even something simple like planning to go out to dinner doesn't seem to work now.
Somewhere along the way the holiday became a celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday which was February 12th. Then it became a holiday for all presidents.
The photo here of Mount Rushmore reminds me that trump wanted his face carved into the mountain which he thought was "a good idea".
There was a great article in Pitchfork that explained the development of the Auto-Tune software and it's inventor. It was a software package that would enable anyone to sing in tune and math was used to create vocal pitch correction to overcome bad singing. Over the years the software has become a voice processing plug-in for digital music products.
I cringe when I here that vocal effect in a song by almost anyone. I stopped listening to Top 40 pop music long ago and the auto-tuning of music has certainly increased my distain for the sound of radio. All vocals on today's radio are complex processed manipulations of the human voice with the soul completely wiped out. It would be nice for people going back to actually singing. At one point in 2010 Time magazine listed Auto-Tune as one of the top 50 worst inventions of the modern era. LOL. Auto-tune use is not real singing. It also sounds very dated.
There has been manipulation of sound ever since recording music was created and one could argue that double tracking, reverb, phasing, echo, and amplification is not really different from using Auto-Tune. Well, they can argue all they want but for me I'll pass on singers using that music software and would love to see someone just sing into a mic without all that fake voice processing.
With all that said... I do think there is a time and place in the music creative process for using Auto-Tune judiciously to create certain effects but overall it has been used to the extreme to eliminate the soul and blues elements out of popular music. I may be showing my age here but to me it's not rock 'n' roll.
Pitchfork article from 2018... How Auto-Tune Revolutionized the Sound of Popular Music. Very pro Auto-Tune.
I'm looking forward to listening to his other two earlier albums tomorrow.
But it also made me want to wash it down with a nice pilsner or lager.
I've worked with computers long enough to know the sound of a hard drive and that was certainly it. Actually I had been expecting it for some time because I've had that iPod since 1995. Twenty-six years is a long time to have a working electronic device and I knew I was on borrowed time.
I really did love this iPod and it has always been reliable. It was a 80 GB classic. I used it all the time for many different situations. I always had it full of music to full capacity and usually with a mix of albums and playlists. Recently I had it loaded only with my mega mixes. I was playing those mixes every evening in the basement while riding the exercise bike. I would also sometimes attach the iPod to the main first floor stereo to play throughout the house. Plenty of times I would attach it to the stereo boombox CD player in the backyard sunroom. Late summer I bought a Bluetooth speaker with an aux input that I used with the iPod. I had a couple of portable speaker systems that charged and played my iPod. I would take one of them on vacation every year. Of course I had earplugs and would play my iPod when out taking walks by myself over the years. That was a lot of use for more than 25 years.
I've already started looking for something to replace it. I liked a high capacity 128GB Sony MP3 player but it was about $300. There seem to be a lot more inexpensive options available from a lot of no-name electronic companies. New players seem to have more options these days including Bluetooth compatibility. They all have expandable storage. I think that in a few days I will have a new MP3 player.
Update: 1/27/22
I plugged the iPod into a charger and let it sit for about a week while I researched alternative mp3 players and behold it resurrected itself. Suddenly it was working fine. We'll see how that goes.
Update: 1/27/23
My iPod is still working fine and I'm using it several times a week.
In 1976 Becky moved in with me on Seymour Street and I think I picked up that book later that year or maybe early 77. She used it a lot over the years and her copy was well worn and falling apart with pages going everywhere.
A new updated and expanded edition was published in 1997 and I got a hardbound copy of it for Becky's birthday in 2002. I inscribed a happy birthday to her on the inside cover.
Some of Becky's favorite recipes over the years from the book included the hot and sour soup and applesauce cake.
Sometimes those winds whip past our door as we're leaving the house in winter and stuns us with the cold while blowing the storm door against the side of the house. That is what is was like today. I was out front and also in the back and it was cold but sunny. It didn't feel too bad but when I walked back to the side door it suddenly got much colder and windier. It was intense.
The cold wind there also freezes the melting ice and snow from the roof that drips down in the alley between the houses. We often get gigantic icicles on the roof that drip down into the walkway which gets covered with ice. I use a lot of ice melt along that path and this year I've used much more than normal. It can be dangerous to walk on the ice there sometimes but I work hard to keep it clear.
Then it started to snow. And then there was some thundersnow this morning which I hadn't heard in a long time.
By eight this morning the snow had stopped and we had a couple of more inches on the ground. It's still windy and now we have blue skies and blowing snow.
And the birds are enjoying the feeder. The juncos, finches and chickadees are particularly having a great time with the cardinals looking on. We really do enjoy watching the birds at the feeder and it's a beautiful Saturday morning.
After awhile the hawk flew off and everything went back to normal.
I've never seen either of the Tom Cruise starring Reacher films. I just was never interested in them. I've also never read any of Lee Child's novels. This first season of the series is based on Child's debut novel Killing Floor from 1997. I briefly thought about reading it but there was quite a waiting list for access to the library's e-book.
The book is Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne which I just started reading again.
Yesterday I walked over to the mail box on Parkside Avenue and it was painfully cold and windy too. Today Becky and I took a walk and although it was somewhat windy it was much milder. There were still some streets that had ice and snow on the sidewalks of people who have neglected their property this past few weeks. Probably mostly rentals but certainly not always.
It was 54 degrees this afternoon but there is still snow everywhere. I think we need at least another day of these temperatures plus some good sunshine. I also took down the xmas lights from the porch today and it's supposed to rain tonight and then all day tomorrow. Maybe that will wash away some of that dirty snow.
They were both and still are big Star Wars fans and they continue to keep up with all the new movies and streaming series.
Well, we don't have a VHS player so we might as well get rid of this and Becky thinks she may get something for this set on eBay. Not much because there are so many of these sets out there but they are worth something.
I really can't keep track of how many Star Wars movies and television series are out there these days. I should ask Katie because I'm sure she knows. I was thinking of subscribing to the Disney Plus package to catch up on some of those new series like The Mandalorian and the Boba Fett series.
Each time a new film came in out I was excited to go and see it. The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and then The Return of the Jedi in 1983. Katie and Sean became fascinated with the Star Wars movies in the mid to late 90's which is when I got this VHS collection. I would later buy them again in DVD.
Then the second trilogy came out between 1999 and 2005. I think it was around 2012 when Lucas sold all the rights to the Star Wars franchise to Disney and then came still another trilogy. Now the Disney channel is running lots of animated Star Wars shows and the mentioned above live action series.
