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I actually wear a wind up Timex watch that I bought probably on Ebay. It must be from the 60s. I got so tired of watch batteries dying and not being able to replace them, and I don't have a smart watch. I have an Android phone, in fact I have two but I really prefer having a watch to look at. It bugs me that public places rarely seem to have clocks on the wall anymore. I lose scissors too. I've come up with a lot of alternate ways of opeing package. Pushpins. Ballpoint pen tips. Whatever sometimes.

I feel like such a dope to have missed the 90 plus percent eclipse here in NYC that I have half a mind to think of something like this. I don't know how seriously, but half seriously maybe. I was going to go to Ireland in June but I am having a serious balance problem right now and I don't see myself making it at the moment. I could get a credit on the flight and maybe use it for 2026 to go somewhere in Europe for the next eclipse. Although much as I enjoy Ireland it tends to get a *lot* of clouds. Still it might be an extra reason to go somewhere...

I only knew about the limited window for buying Forever Stamps because there was a post about it on my Instagram feed. Must have been an ad because I don't follow the USPS! So anyway when I was on their site to schedule a pickup to send some pictures to a family member, I decided to buy 3 sets of 20 Forever Stamps. I wonder if/when I will ever use them up! I rarely ever send checks, I keep a separate small account for people who insist on them. I don't really want everyone to see checks from my regular account - I had someone misplace a check once and had to get a new account with a new number so I'd rather not go through that again. That said I do prefer dealing with the USPS rather than FedEx or UPS when it comes to pickup. I can schedule a pickup with them when they come to my (doorman) building every day, which is way easier than the hoops the other services put you though. Since I am having a lot of mobility issues currently that helps a lot.

Wonderful photos, thanks everyone! I wish I had known that NYC was going to get a partial eclipse, somehow all the talk I had heard was only about the path of totality. Last night I figured I would use some kind of a makeshift pinhole (I used a "pinhole lens cap" I had bought from an ebay seller for one of my cameras) and hold it over a white plastic sheet to see if I could see anything since I had no glasses for the eclipse. It kind of worked except that the little crescent image I saw was barely visible. Well, I tried :) It was interesting to see all the people gathered around staring up at it though.

I just watched a great match between Naomi and Elina Svitoina in Miami. Naomi looks great! Looks like she is back folks after only I think 6 tournaments? Her game was amazing but she actually looks more relaxed as well. At one point when she was called for a slight time delay she actually showed a little bit of a goofy grin. Things really looking up it seems. Svitolina is making a fine comeback as well. Touching to see Monfils sneaking in at the end to see the outcome.

Here's the official trailer, I guess this is a new one I laughed out loud several times. Looking forward to this.

Thanks @Mittengirl, I just checked in to see if this show was coming back. It's the only thing I watch on Acorn currently now that Vera has moved over to Britbox, so I will keep my subscription for the time being.

I just watched the replay of the Mixed Doubles final, congratulations to that creative genius Hsieh-Su Wei on her 7th major title. For anyone who hasn't seen it and has ESPN plus, i recommend the replay. She is something else to watch. Hope she will be able to take the women's doubles as well. By the way I recognized Paul McNamee her coach and former Aussie doubles champ in her box. Yes I'm old. Hoping for two good singles finals. As far as the women go I'm not a Sabalenka fan so will be rooting for Zheng.

Maybe if you email the photo to yourself you will find that it automatically shrinks? I sometimes see that happening when I share photos of mine by email with my family.

RIP Melanie, I really liked Candles in the Rain. Not only Melanie, but Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, has died as well.   I can still remember hearing their teenage angst records on the AM radio way back in the day. Not just Leader of the Pack but Remember, and I Can Never Go Home Anymore. RIP Melanie and Mary.

That seems to be standard for Tuna Melts in my local NYC diners. I order them from Gemini Diner who make a very good one though I ask for rye bread and Swiss cheese and usually save about 2/3 of the tuna to make wraps with it for the following two nights.

The whole Secret Santa brought back an old office memory to me. A *long* time ago I was working as a legal proofreader and we had a Secret Santa draw. I was stiffed. By a very gossipy typist. The irony? We had drawn each other. I did get her something. As far as I remember, that let to Secret Santa being discontinued there!

@oliviabenson can you return those headphones? I've never used the bluetooth kind but it sounds like they are defective.

I just saw the State Farm ad where Jimmy Fallon pops up out of nowhere. It took me a couple of views to think what? I admit I'm not a fan but isn't he all over TV enough already?

So very sorry for Stephen, I just saw the headline and was so scared. Thankful for the care he is getting.

I was going to be going to a family get together today for Thanksgiving but canceled on Monday because my vasculitis has returned and between my feet being swollen and having some kind of stomach ache (maybe due to the medications, maybe not) I didn't feel it made sense to go to a holiday that is centered around eating. A lot. This is the 4th time in a row I've missed Thanksgiving with family, the first 2 were due to Covid precautions, then last year one of us got Covid. I am just going to sleep late and try not to stress so feel okay with that. Hope you all have a nice one!

@shapeshifter your images look lovely. My only experience recently is with a company called Presto Photo, I made a small square soft cover book of some of my photographs with them two years ago. It would cost about $15 to make it again (it was 20 pages). I liked the print quality although mine were black and white so I don't know about doing color.

In regard to Irish food, I have visited Ireland twice the last two years - Donegal and Galway, and what I love the most is the Irish Brown Bread and the Seafood Chowder, neither of which I can get here in the US. I believe the brown bread uses a different kind of wheat flour than ours? And seafood chowder is so wonderful but no one around here seems to think it's worth the bother of making it. The one other place I've been that consistently has it seems to be Newfoundland, perhaps the idea came with their Irish immigrants. There seems to be an Irish bar every few blocks in Manhattan but you seem to more likely to see nachos on the menu than the food I liked in Ireland! Of course they have good fish and chips which you can get here, but I should add that their scones are so much better than the hard sugary ones they have in NY. I agree though that I don't remember anyone in my family having a recipe handed down from Ireland, though my grandmother who was born there lived on a farm in the Midwest, so far away in every sense.

Thanks so much @Rinaldo for the alert for Man's Castle. I saw that film ages ago, it must have been in a revival house, and I still remember it vividly. I am a big fan of Frank Borzage.

I see people have been commenting on the new setting for the Noir Alley intros/outros. I always watch "Ask Eddie" on Youtube, and in the latest installment he explained that it is indeed a cost cutting move by TCM. However Eddie will now be filming at a local bar that he is a fan of, whose owners have agreed to let him film there on their night off. He does admit that he's at least happy about not having to travel to film the segments anymore!

Congratulations @PRgal! I hope your book will be a great success. Maybe I missed it but how did you arrange working with the illustrator? Did you already know each other?

I've seen one of Clara Bow's sound films and in my opinion her voice fits her screen character *perfectly*. She actually was very successful in the sound era until she walked away due to burnout and personal problems. Interestingly she hated making sound films because she could not move naturally as she had in the past due to the placement of the early microphones on the sound stages. Colleen Moore also made an early sound film, the fine film The Power and the Glory with Spencer Tracy. She also had a voice that was fine for her. She chose to retire as well.

It's funny reading the Halloween comments here. When I was growing up a long time ago (I am 70 now) it was just going down the street in whatever costume you got or made up and getting candy. To my mind it wasn't associated with anything truly horrible or bloody in any scary sense at all. Maybe the addition of so much horror movie promotion is the result of cable/streaming TV making it so much easier to watch these things on cue. I think maybe the shift to Halloween parties started in the 1970s or 80s around the time of the Tylenol poisoning scare (not sure if that was local to the NY area or widespread). I know I've mentioned this before, but when I saw Psycho in college, that made me realize that my tolerance for horror/blood/gore on screen is just about zero. Maybe in a silent or other old film where things are generally more suggested than shown I could manage it. But anything from the 60s on I definitely will avoid.

My latest peeve is getting texts that are image only. I have never been a fan of texting anyway, if you want to reach me, call or send an email. But I have reached the point where any automatic image only text (which I can't see or tell who it's from) will get automatically deleted by me. I don't know if it's an ad or what but out it goes.

I had a nice time reading threads on this board so I'll add something. When I was in my early 20s I came to New York to go to Parsons School of Design. I had a painting teacher, I specifically remember his watercolor class. Anyway he went out of his way to encourage me, and was a really fine painter in his own right. He painted lovely landscapes set in the Delaware Water Gap, where he would spend his time when not teaching. The last time I saw him was at one of his gallery shows. He passed away at age 53 some years ago. However I saw his work listed on an email ad from an auction service and it suddenly occurred to me that I could afford to buy one of his works. A few weeks ago two of his landscapes came up for sale, a large oil and a smaller gouache. I bid on the gouache. It was $250 and I won it. It's now hanging in my apartment. I feel very happy about having it though in a way a little sad, partly that it only went for $250, but more that he's not around and I'm not in touch with anyone from school to tell about it. But still am happy about it. I felt he was a very positive influence on me.