The Lost Symbol - A Novel

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, 2009. This is the third novel in the Robert Langdon series. I read the first two books in the series about twenty years ago... The Da Vinci Code, 2003 first in April 2004 and then Angels & Demons, 2000 in June 2004. So why read the third book now. I saw that the sixth book in the series was just published this past Fall and then I found the Da Vinci Code on a book shelf recently. It reminded me of those early books and I saw that the third one was available at the library to download the e-book. I got it right away and then I read it in six days. 

I got to say I had mixed feelings about this novel. In some ways I just kept reading and couldn't put it down for long periods of time but I was also constantly being disappointed by almost gibberish story telling. I think I got through the book so fast because I was skipping and skimming paragraphs which I don't usually do very much with books that I'm reading... and enjoying. 

When I looked back GoodReads at those first two books I saw that I gave both of those book 3 star reviews which means I had a problem with them. I also never wrote anything about them either.

So there are three more books in this Robert Langdon series and I don't think I will bother with them. This guy seems to write the same book over and over again but not in a good way.

Foggy Day... and Night

We had a foggy day today and then it was a foggy night too. We don't have very many foggy days. I think that may be because of the nearby lake and the wind coming off it. We just don't see very much fog and especially during the winter. I can't remember the last time.

Growing up in the Philadelphia area we always had lots of fog throughout the year. Also down the shore and up in the Pocono Mountains. Most of the time it didn't matter to me but then when I started driving it did. That was after the family moved to Harleysville in the Fall of 1968. Suddenly I was driving back and forth between Germantown and Harleysville to see my friends. That is when I really discovered the problem of the fog. There was lots of it on the road out to the country and I was constantly having to deal with it... very carefully. That went on regularly all the next year and then I was gone. In the Navy.

And the Navy was a whole other experience of fog. First I saw some strange fog out in San Diego and then it was the new experience of the fog at sea. 

Later I would again experience that fog driving from Germantown to Harleysville when I moved back to the city after getting out of the Navy and visited my mom. I liked it better when she moved down to Chestnut Hill and I stopped doing that drive in the fog. 

Then we moved to Buffalo and said goodbye to the fog. Well, even the fog we did very occasionally got in Buffalo was nothing like that fog on the Pennsylvania roads or out at sea.

Sandwich and...

For dinner tonight we decided to just make turkey sandwiches for ourselves on that great French peasant bread. Becky also wanted to make some salad and also some guacamole from one of those fresh avocados we had. Chips and guac. Sounds good. We also had some leftover home fried potatoes to use up so we heated them too.

Suddenly we had a feast and everything was delicious. 

Robert Duvall RIP

I was sad to hear that the actor Robert Duvall passed away today and then surprised to hear that he was 95 years old.

He was in so many of the films I loved over the years. He was also in a lot of TV shows early in my life when I didn't know him or who he was or who he would turn out to be later on but apparently I probably saw him a lot on so many shows in the early to mid 1960's.

Shows like The Outer Limits, Route 66, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Combat!, The Untouchables, The F.B.I. and many more. And then he was in that classic miniseries I loved from 1989... Lonesome Dove.

The films of his that really made an impression on me as a young person were these and so many more...

• To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962
• Bullitt, 1968
• True Grit, 1969
• M*A*S*H*, 1970
• THX 1138, 1971
• The Godfather, 1972
• Joe Kidd, 1972
• The Conversation, 1974
• The Godfather Part II, 1974
• The Killer Elite, 1975
• The Eagle Has Landed, 1976
• The Seven-Percent-Solution
• Network, 1976
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978
• Apocalypse Now, 1979
• True Confessions, 1981
• The Natural, 1984

And the list would keep on going.

NBA All Star Game 2026

I've always enjoyed watching the annual NBA All Star game between the East and the West conferences and having grown up with the Phila. Sixers I naturally rooted for the East. I went to a lot of games during the Wilt Chamberlain Sixer years 1965-1968 and especially loved going to games when they played the Boston Celtics with Bill Russell on the court with Wilt. 

However, this year was something uniquely different with the all star game. It was the NBA's 75th anniversary so they created a different format to celebrate. They shifted to a 3 team mini tournament featuring four 12 minute games. Two of the teams, "Stars" and "Stipes" were made up of US born players and the third team, "World", was made up of international players. The players all played for some significant prize money.

I watched several games and it was some fun and very different. The international players lost both their games to the two US teams but they were close. The final game of the Stars over the Stripes was a blowout.

Overall it was a fun evening of NBA basketball.

Pasta Fasul

Becky made a Pasta Fasul dinner tonight. So called Peasant Food. 

It was very good. Pasta, beans and pancetta. And some very good cheese springled on top. 

And then we had some of that wonderful Heidelberg French Peasant bread with it too. 

Becky made enough of this soup that we will have some significant leftovers for the next couple of days... another dinner and probably a lunch for me too.

Dinner @ Coles with Brian

This evening Becky and I went out to dinner with our old friend and neighbor Brian at Coles. His wife Anne had to back out because of a medical procedure done to their dog who she didn't want to leave home. So after our dinner at Coles we stopped at Brian's house down the street where Anne had made a desert for us... peanut butter cookies. We hung out there for another hour or so and had a nice time.

Our dinner at Coles was wonderful as usual. I had their delicious Sheppard's Pie. Becky had their Buffalo Wrap and Brian had their Chicken Bruschetta sandwich. Brian and I had their black and tan Guinness and Southern Tier Pumpking... the Drunken Pumpkin which as become my regular pint at Coles. It wasn't on the menu this time and it looked like it was going to be reverted back to a seasonal Fall brew but they made them for me and Brian. I also had a St. Fatty's Irish Red Ale by Fat Head Brewery. Very tasty.

It was a cold Thursday night. I was surprised how quiet Coles was tonight.

Pizza & Salad

Some frozen pizza and a homemade salad. The pizza was a Rao's Pizza and was actually quite good... for a store bought frozen pizza. I liked the crispy crust and their sauce.

Becky's salad was wonderful and very tasty. A nice easy dinner.

The second picture is the salad before mixed on the plate.

The Clockwork Man - A Science Fiction Novel

The Clockwork Man by E. V. Odle, 1923. Finished this crazy thought provoking science fiction novel last night. It's considered to be the first cyborg novel written in 1923. It was a very strange story of some 8,000 years in the future when the male gender becomes indistinguishable from machine or what we now call AI allows people to pass through time and space. Then a malfunction sends this "clockwork man" stumbling back to 1923 England to pop up in the middle of a cricket game. 

This is the second book I've recently read in the series of very early 20th century proto-science fiction published by MIT Press in their self-described Radium Age of underappreciated forgotten classics from 1900-1935. 

New Tankless Hot Water Heater

Today we had a new tankless hot water heater installed. It took a little over 6 hours with two guys working. It was a lot of work and they had to rerun pipes in different patterns and also had to drill through the side of the house for the exhaust pipes. It as a very noisy job but they got it done.

He said it would take a day or so for everything to settle in.