November 29, 2019
Dear Everyone:
I begin by hoping that everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving.
“Jeannie” came to my place and we sat around eating junk food and
watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on my television.
Eventually, we dined on filet mignon and twice-baked potatoes,
with green beans for a garnish and apple pie for dessert.
In the meantime, “Marshall” hunkered down in Fresno, avoiding the deadly
valley fog. We’ll be seeing
plenty of each other next weekend in Tucson.
As I understand it, “Richard” gave an invitation to spend
Thanksgiving at his place in Arizona.
But we all agreed that it made much better sense to wait until
the week after Thanksgiving to get together.
After all, with the exception of “Jeannie”, we’re all retired
now, unfettered by work hours, and can move about the country when it
suits us, instead of enduring the mass of travelers rushing to and fro
when it suits their respective employers.
So that’s that.
In the meantime… I have a
new kick: Audible books.
It all began a couple of months ago when I was getting ready for
cataract surgery. The eye
surgeon, in one of many, many prerecorded videos, advised total
relaxation after the actual procedure.
No watching TV. No
working/playing on the computer (that includes eBay!)
No reading. Just lie
back and keep your eyes closed for the rest of the day.
Listen to a “book on tape”.
Of course, the doctor was dating himself.
No one listens to tapes anymore.
But I discovered that the Android tablet that I had acquired some
months ago already had the application to download and listen to audio
books.
Needless to say, after a few hours I had little need to listen to the
first book until the next eye surgery four weeks later.
Again, a few hours was all that was needed.
Then came one of those days when every channel seemed glued to some
interminable Congressional hearing.
Hour after hour of Representatives intoning the virtues of their
respective sides, in discourses thinly disguised as a “question” with a
pre-ordained “answer”.
The exception, of course, was the Ambassador to the European Union, who
cheerfully blurted out, “Yes.
There was a quid pro quo.
Everyone was in the loop.”
So I pulled out the tablet and listened to The Secret Garden
while performing my daily physical therapy exercises.
The exercises, in total, take about an hour.
Each day, I listened to an hour of the book, much as I had back
in the Third Grade, when Sister Mary Fill-In-Blank first introduced us
to the magical story.
In time, the House of Representatives concluded their inquisition and
all the news channels went back to their normal reiterations of the same
news hour after hour. At
about the same time, I came to the very satisfying end of the book.
I could have gone back to listening to the news every day, pausing my
exercises long enough to either mute, unmute, the TV when the commercial
breaks began and ended. But
I had found I rather liked listening to the written word instead.
So I downloaded another book, which I happen to have read at least a
half-dozen times over the years.
This way, there are no surprises, requiring going back to the
beginning of the chapter to try and figure out what just happened; no
sudden twists; no reintroduction of a character last mentioned a hundred
pages ago.
I know the story quite well, a novel loosely based on the Arthurian
Legend. I won’t say that I
actually look forward to the daily exercises, but I do look forward to
the hourly narration.
So far, I have eluded the Audible “Book Club” which keeps sending me
messages extolling the “virtues” of joining them.
“Get your next book for X% off!”
And so on…
No thanks. I made that
mistake many decades ago, when I was still in college, with the “Record
of the Month” scam.
Programming Note: As
mentioned above, we will all be flying off to Tucson next Thursday for a
long weekend to celebrate our own Thanksgiving with “Richard” and
“Marge”. So no Letter next
week.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |