Sunday Stealing Archives - Page 15 of 26

I’ve come to realize… Sunday Stealing

fire

This week’s Sunday Stealing is what I’ve come to realize…, maybe because we’re in the midst od Ramadan, Passover, and Holy week.

1. I’ve come to realize that my chest size…

Really? It’s not anything I spent much time thinking about except as part of the general “I still need to lose weight.”

2. I’ve come to realize that my job(s) …

I’m SO glad I no longer have it. That said, if it had been as flexible as it became due to the pandemic, it probably would not have irritated me so much over the final four years.

3. I’ve come to realize that when I’m driving …

I’m probably breaking the law because I haven’t even had a driver’s permit since 1988.

4. I’ve come to realize that I need…

A lot of Roger time is required, listening to music, reading newspapers, blogging, getting rid of the excessive amount of email, and generally chilling out.

5. I’ve come to realize that I have lost…

My ability to always remember the correct noun is slipping. I’ve referred to my retirement account as my credit union and possibly vice versa. Hey, they’re both money entities. You know what I mean, right?

6. I’ve come to realize that I hate it when …

Scammers, schemers, and hucksters try to call me, spoofing a local phone number and even a real name. I’ve gotten many calls from “Hi, this is your electric company,” without identifying the entity.

7. I’ve come to realize that if I’m drunk …

I should go home because I will need to go to sleep soon.

8. I’ve come to realize that money …

It does not define a person’s value. I’ve known that for a long while.

Heroic

9. I’ve come to realize that certain people …

Some of them are pretty cool. A story this week featured two City of Albany sanitation workers helping people escape from a massive blaze that destroyed four Grand Street buildings early Wednesday morning. “The fire broke out in a building… around 1:52 a.m., and it took city firefighters four hours to bring the flames under control… The pair began kicking in doors, trying to wake residents to the danger they faced. When the two men got there, no one from the buildings had evacuated.”

10. I’ve come to realize that I’ll always …

Listen to music. (Currently, Ella Fitzgerald and Roy Orbison, whose birthdays are this month.)

11. I’ve come to realize that my sibling …

They seem to like me.

12. I’ve come to realize that my mom …

She was more complicated than I gave her credit for when she was alive.

13. I’ve come to realize that my cell phone …

It’s both the bane of my existence and utterly necessary, less for me than for others who want to text me. Two-step authentication, e.g.

14. I’ve come to realize that when I woke up this morning …

I actually slept through the night. That almost NEVER happens!

15. I’ve come to realize that last night before I went to sleep …

I must go to bed before falling asleep in my office chair. I wake up with a backache, which has happened thrice this calendar year and never before.

Sunday Stealing:Tuesday 4

summer vacation

Whatever Tuesday 4 is – Ruby Tuesday?- Sunday Stealing is stealing.

1. Are you currently reading a book you’d like to tell us about? Maybe a TV program you can recommend to us?

I’ve circled back to The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green (no relation). I bought it when it first came out, signed by the author, but then I got distracted. Fortunately, it’s a compilation, so each essay, even as it reflects how John’s mind works and how he pays attention to his surroundings, stands independently.

I suppose the only newish TV show I could recommend is Abbott Elementary, in its second season. It’s a comedy about an elementary school in a poor section of Philadelphia, PA.

2. Are you a Jane Austen fan? So many seem to be. If you are, what is your favorite book, and who is your favorite character? If you aren’t a fan, is there an author you especially like to read? Favorite character, etc.

I tend to read mostly non-fiction, but I don’t have a favorite author, though it was Russell Baker.

However, I have seen quite a few movies based on Jane Austen books, such as Clueless (1995), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Pride and Prejudice (2005), and Emma (2020).

3. How do you spend your time during the day? Do you set apart time to read, watch TV, and study?

Wordle, Dordle, Quordle, Octordle, blogging, working on things for my church and the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library. I don’t have a designated time to read.

My wife and I tend to watch the recorded NBC Nightly News after dinner. I view JEOPARDY and try to tackle the recorded but not watched episodes of several shows, mostly the CBS news programs Saturday Morning, Sunday Morning, and 60 Minutes, plus Finding Your Roots on PBS.

I never change?

4. Have your beliefs changed in your lifetime?

Of COURSE! Everything from the nature of God to my understanding of science. How could they not?

5. What are your interests and hobbies? Reading? Writing? Collecting?

Genealogy. I have some coins I’ve collected but have not been diligent about it. I listen to music, and I have a lot of it.

6 How much time a week/day/month do you devote to your interests?

I have no idea. For one thing, I tend to tackle things in chunks of periods based on the running time of my CDs. So I’ll work on my word games and start my blog. Then I need to change it up, so I wash the dishes or clean the kitchen counter. Next album, I’ll check my email and return to the blog post. When I have set events- Bible study, book review events, doctors’ appointments, trips, that’ll affect things.

I’m retired. I don’t punch a clock.

7. Do you share your interests with anyone?

Genealogy with my sisters. Book review with those folks. Choir with the choir. In the words of Yul Brynner, “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

8. Tell us why you enjoy your hobbies, pastimes, or interests.

They bring me joy, especially choir and blogging.

9. What emotions and feelings does summer conjure up for you?

I’m not primarily a summer guy. As a kid, it was baseball or softball at Ansco Park, trips to Eldridge Park in Elmira, Corning Glass Works, and visiting my mother’s aunt Charlotte.

10. What’s summer weather like in your neck of the woods?

Variable. While it doesn’t usually get above 90F, it can be hot. Or unexpectedly not.

11. Got some special summer meals you and your family enjoy?

Other than corn on the cob, not really.

Vacation

12. What do you enjoy doing in summer? Sports, trips… Do you go on vacation?

My mother-in-law’s kin has had a family reunion each summer near Binghamton, NY, for the last three-quarters of a century except for COVID and a year during WWII. Our nuclear family had extended vacations on the way to and from the Olin international reunions in 2011 (Ontario) and 2016 (Ohio). I wrote about my favorite vacations last year.

13. Did your parents have things better than you today?

Absolutely not. Because my mother was much fairer than my father, they were perceived as an interracial couple, which they were not. As a result, they could not find a place to rent in their hometown, and they lived in a rental property owned by my maternal grandmother for over two decades after they married.

14. What time period would you rather live in… or are you okay with today?

On the one hand, advances in technology. On the other, climate change. It’s difficult to peg a specifically better period. I don’t romanticize the past. IDK.

15. What changes would you make for our time to make it nicer/better to live in?

The improvement in freedom, even in ostensibly free nations.

Sunday Stealing: YouTube entry

sports, cilantro

This week’s Sunday Stealing is called YouTube. “This came from a YouTube entry that no longer exists.”

1. Working on anything exciting lately?

Our daughter is having her birthday soon, and we’re planning a trip for her and two of her best friends.

2. What was the highlight of the day today?

Seeing my oldest college friend and maybe their significant other.

3. What is your favorite thing to do on the weekends?

Singing in the church choir.

4. What are your favorite restaurants?

I’m pretty catholic. Italian, Indian, breakfast food, a burger joint, whatever, as long as I’m not cooking it.

Ballgames

5. Do you follow any sports?

I used to follow them far more than I do now. For instance, this past year, I saw no regular season games during the National Football League. Yet I watched all the playoff games I recorded because I can fast forward during instant replay, challenge flags, and halftime.

I vaguely follow Major League Baseball, but nowhere near what I did from the 1960s until 2010. Once, I had hundreds of baseball cards from which I could cite various statistics.

Here’s a specific example. Eight National Basketball Association players have scored 70 or more points in a game: Wilt Chamberlain (six times between 1961 and 1963), Elgin Baylor (1960), David Thompson (1978), David Robinson (1994), Kobe Bryant (2006), Devin Booker (2017), Donovan Mitchell (2023), and Damian Lillard (2023). I know precisely who the first five are, but I have no idea about the last three.

The only current players I know are Steph Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo (who I saw on 60 Minutes!) Also, a handful of former Oklahoma Thunder players, James Harden and Russell Westbrook, only because my late blogger buddy Dustbury used to write about the games.

What did FDR say again?

6. What is your biggest fear?

Dementia, I suppose.

7. What is your biggest regret?

As I’ve answered before, I have experienced many regrettable things. But I’ve learned from all of them eventually, or so I believe.

8. When you were growing up, what was your dream job?

A defense attorney. That is until I took a pre-law course in college.

9. Do you say ‘sherbet’ or ‘sherbert’?

When I’m awake, sherbet. When I’m half asleep, sherbert.

What WAS that?

10. Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

Almost certainly, there are things I’ve seen and experienced that I cannot explain, from serious deja vu to specifically answered prayers to speaking in tongues once to something that broke the glasses that were on my face but did no harm to me, that defied reason.

11. What is your favorite food at a cocktail party?

In terms of taste, cheese, and crackers. In terms of controlling calories, fruit, such as grapes.

12. Who is a book character most like you?

This is a total cheat because it’s a real person, but Roger Ebert, specifically in his autobiography Life Itself Itself. He describes himself with warts and all. I relate to warts especially.

13. Do you read reviews before you go to the movies?

Enough to know if it’s generally favorably received but not enough to know anything about the plot details.

14. How do you feel about cilantro?

I have no feeling whatsoever about cilantro. My wife, on the other hand, really loves it. She thinks it enhances the flavor of chili we had recently. Since I was unaware it contained the seasoning, I have no basis for comparison.

15. Have you ever cried in public?

Sure. At work, more than once. It is reasonably often at funerals, though it may not be as apparent to an observer as it is to me.

One to Ten Sunday Stealing

observant

This week’s Sunday Stealing is One to Ten.

One song that describes my life.

I’m trying to pick a song I haven’t discussed recently. From Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years album is a tune called Have A Good Time, which I used to play every March 8 for about two decades. The lyrics begin:

Yesterday, it was my birthdayI hung one more year on the lineI should be depressedMy life’s a messBut I’m having a good time

Two things I wish I had more of in my life

Money, though I’d give most of it away, and time.

Three ways I relax

Getting a massage, listening to music, taking a nap

Four of my best accomplishments

Blogging for nearly 18 years, winning on JEOPARDY, figuring out some genealogical puzzles, and working long enough so that my wife’s health insurance is paid for until she’s 65 and my daughter’s until she’s 26

Five things I am looking forward to

Visiting Vermont again, reading several books, attending Jagged Little Pill, attending Ain’t Too Proud, going to a concert

Six things I am grateful for

My wife, my daughter, my sisters, my friends, living in a walkable neighborhood, and my house (despite its flaws, but don’t tell it I said so)

Seven Deadly Sins

Seven facts about me

I met former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1973, I introduced Rod Serling at a high school assembly in 1970, I’m much more likely to remember numbers than words, I was born on a Saturday, I’ve never been off North America, I’m the oldest of three children, and I know all of the two-letter postal abbreviations for the 50 states

Eight things I can see from where I am sitting

Lots of books, several Hess trucks, photos of my wife and daughter, my inhaler (which I haven’t needed lately), an empty diet cherry Pepsi bottle, a file cabinet that had been spray-painted blue, the radiator, a lamp

Nine words I would use to describe myself

Intelligent, cautious, opinionated, political, musical, curious, melancholy, considerate, observant

Ten little things that make me happy

Watching kids read, barbershop quartet harmony, people holding the door for others, kittens, missing all of the red lights when going to church, getting JEOPARDY questions correct when all three players fail to ring in, fixing something mechanical (not generally my strong suit), people shoveling their walks after a snowstorm, listening to Italian even though I do not understand it, a clean kitchen counter

Sunday Stealing: Extraordinary PenPals

adrenaline rush

This Sunday Stealing edition is PenPals, Part 2, stolen from the League of Extraordinary PenPals.

1. Do you make new friends easily?

I don’t think so. Acquaintances who may become friends down the road, perhaps. But almost all of my friends I’ve known for decades.

2..Which podcasts do you like at the moment?

I only listen to three. Coverville: Brian Ibbott plays new renditions of previously recorded songs. Hollywood and Levine by Ken Levine, an Emmy-winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. AmeriNZ by Arthur Schenck, a gay American-born New Zealander.

3. One thing that immediately makes your day better

Music. I play a LOT of music. Currently, it’s people whose birthdays are in March, such as Aretha Franklin, Elton John, and James Taylor. Also, LOTS of soundtracks in honor of the Oscars.

4. What app do you use most?

The Capital District Transportation Authority’s Navigator tells me when the next bus is coming.

5. The friends who would have your back no matter what

The ones I’ve mentioned in the last three months: Carol, Karen, Mark, Bill, Fred, and a few others.

6. What is something you’ll never do again?

So many things… I’ll say get married. (Note: I like being married.)

7. Something you practice often

The intentionality of kindness. A movie I saw two years ago called The Antidote spoke to this.

Better than drugs

8. What gives you an adrenaline rush?

I repeat myself when under stress. I repeat myself when under stress. I

repeat myself… It’s music. This week, I was commenting on how the bassline of Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart by the Supremes moves me. Or how The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel breaks my heart.

My choir is practicing Worthy Is The Lamb That Was Slain, the last piece from Handel’s Messiah. We began working on it in March 2020, and then we didn’t perform it for some reason.

9. How well do you do in social situations?

I fake it well, I gather. Our dermatologist told my wife this week that I was “full of personality” from when I was there a couple of months ago.

10. Are you a light sleeper or a deep sleeper?

Definitely light.

11. Do you get stage fright?

Yes.

A small tribe

12. Which family members are you closest to?

Well, my family is small. There are two nieces on the Green side, two sisters, one daughter, and one spouse. My parents are deceased, and they had no siblings, so I never had any first cousins.

13. How was your February?

Exhausting. Although I’ve said for years that I wasn’t in charge of my church’s Black History Month, I suppose I was. I called a meeting in October for ideas, several of which sounded promising, but only one panned out. I scurried around finding events for three classes of Adult Education.

14. What is your favorite candle scent?

I have no idea.

15. One book that you would recommend as a “must read”?

I don’t believe in a “must read, ” an album people must listen to, or a movie folks must watch. It’s too prescriptive for my sensibilities. Besides, it depends on the individual I’m recommending to.