roseha

Just when you think it's over...my super was about to finish painting the bedroom after he encapsulated and painted over it after the flaking lead paint issue - and then I saw paint flaking in the closet. Which is full of stuff I will now have to remove and toss most or all of. Worse news, he will have to deal with the other closet there as well before repainting. More stuff to toss...sigh. I can't deal with the rest of the apartment - which also has paint issues but not nearly as bad - until I can go away for a while in May - but there will be so much de-cluttering and tossing ahead. Fortunately my record collection and stereo can go to a young relative who's into that stuff. Also fortunately I guess, I don't live in a house. Much as I would otherwise love to.

Very sad about Marianne Faithfull. I remember reading an interview with her not that long ago in which she described barely surviving Covid. Her obituary mentioned that she had gone through both a miscarriage and the lost of custody of her son. It occurred to me to wonder if any of this inspired the lyrics to Jagger and Richard's As Tears Go By.

I'm so happy for Madison Keys as well. She played such a brave and smart match, and it's great to see her win her first Slam. I don't know how the other women can stand Sablenka's screaming.

It was a huge problem in my family also. Good advice that I got from my therapist at the time was to have the doctor say you can't drive anymore. That way they can be mad at the doctor, not the family.

Madison Keys has upset Iga to make the final! The deciding 10 point tiebreak is on Youtube. Great to see her going for it, I really hope she takes the title, some 7 plus years after that USO against Sloane. Good luck to Maddie.

Speaking of hand creams, I just discovered Aquaphor, made by the Eucerin people. I ordered it because I spilled boiling water from my electric kettle on my left hand last week (the top fell off while I was making tea). I've been using the stuff for days and I guess it helps. It still looks somewhat red and is peeling but seems to be getting better but I'm still so annoyed at myself for letting it happen in the first place.

These past couple of days have been really cold in my building here in NYC (I'm in a pre-war coop built around 1927). The heat in my bedroom is okay but there's some kind of a draft coming from my kitchen window which I can feel in the living area and though I've put up a "thermal" window shade and put one of those draft "snakes" on the sill I can feel cold air walking around. I went down to our lobby to look for the super and had to leave after a few minutes. I told one of the doormen later that I don't know how they are standing it right now. It's supposed to get a little better tomorrow, I hope so. I will be going to a reception at the art club tomorrow but can always come and go when I want. I had my wellness visit with my doctor last week, and am so glad it wasn't this week! I do have a space heater made by Dreo that's sitting on a small wooden table next to my desk, I do turn it off at night though. It has the tip over safety feature. Meanwhile the falling paint in my bedroom turned into a major ordeal when I found out it contained lead (I guess from the older layers). My super has done the patching (he is certified) but still has to plaster and paint and we are going to replace the bed frame and put in a new mattress. He took away the carpet and will refinish the floor there which looks good at least. He is a really nice guy but of course a lot of other things come up that delay things and I am already working out mentally how to arrange fixing the rest of the apartment which is not as bad but will have to be done soon. He knows a contractor who works in the building and I will have to have them come to paint the living area and later work on the bathroom - only I can't be here for all that so will have to wait on it until I can go away starting maybe in May. It was so awful throwing out nearly everything from the bedroom but after all the paint chips and dust all over I had to. It does look better though at least but it was hard. The rest will need a major de-clutter also though he and all the staff are great about taking things away. Still I've been so preoccupied with all this that it's been hard to concentrate on everything else.

I'm annoyed at ESPN plus also. I subscribed to it just to watch matches during the slams, but they post such a random selection and leave out some of the most interesting. I'm a Musetti fan and wanted to watch him vs Shapo on replay but it was no where to be found. On my computer they listed the doubles with Hsieh su Wei and Jelena Ostopenko playing together (!!) but it was gone when I logged into my Roku. How much work would it take to add matches like these especially when they are on the larger courts?

I feel the same way! It's so bizarre that here in NYC we get polar vortex temperatures (and more on the way in the next 10 days apparently) but then we get rain. Rain, cold and dark is not fun in the winter. I know it's climate change plus Jet Stream but it's still annoying to me.

@TVbitch are you checking out Youtube? There are some extended highlights along with the press conferences. Just watched the end of Naomi Osaka's win over Muchova. Naomi has a brutal draw but she looks great. Hope she can go far this year. I don't like Patrick M. at all but maybe he is getting her to believe in herself which might be the most important thing for her at this point.

I saw They Shoot Horses in the theater also. I remember it vividly, and was very impressed with Jane Fonda's performance but I agree, it's not a film that is enjoyable to revisit.

Conan O'Brien's parents died this week within three days of each other. Thomas O’Brien, an epidemiologist, and Ruth O’Brien, a lawyer, juggled successful careers with raising six children, including the comedy star. Sad to hear sorry for Conan and his five siblings. I know there's a Youtube video about his mother's achievements along with comments from the family

@Dimity I just saw your post, sorry. I hope you have had the skin issue checked out because It sounds like what happened to me when I first got vasculitis, I had red marks all over my legs all of a sudden. I went to Urgent Care and a doctor there took a photo of it with his phone and went online to check that it was vasculitis. So I hope that's not the case but I'd suggest seeing a doctor so as to at least hopefully rule it out.

I'm seeing family members on Wednesday before Thanksgiving but I will be alone Thursday so I intend to order some nice seasonal foods from Instacart, hopefully from Citarella, the afternoon before to heat up. I actually have not been to a Thanksgiving at all since before Covid. Two years ago one of us got Covid at the last minute and last year I was so sick from the medication I was taking for the vasculitis that I couldn't eat anything. Let's hope this time's the charm!

The whole recurring charge with cards is so aggravating that whenever I can I use Paypal for those charges. All I have to do is update my Paypal default card and things take care of themselves On a related note, I tried to buy a vintage camera from a merchant in the UK who I have found out has a reputation for being at best - well, disorganized. After not receiving the camera after nearly 3 weeks I emailed him and asked him to cancel the order and refund my credit card. Well, he promised to cancel if I wanted but it's been nearly a month and I've never been refunded. I've started a chargeback with Chase, the issuer, and even uploaded the email chain of my asking 3 times for the refund, but nothing has come of it. Maybe I'll be refunded by New Year's.

I haven't read the article (kind of want to avoid any spoilers) but the Tea Leoni character, and the way she was introduced, suggests they may be going for a kind of film noir flavor next year which might turn out to be way more interesting than Season Four.

I've never noticed the scent of any Dawn I have bought but the one I currently have and used to unclog the sink is a large blue one with the yellow baby duck that appears in their commercials (because it is apparently used to save birds caught in oil slicks).

I actually use a strainer all the time in both the bathroom sink and the tub so I don't think my issue is hair, I believe (and these are very old pipes) it's generally a problem with bar soap which I've read can re-solidify in the drain (another good argument for liquid hand soap). Apparently the blue dawn detergent is some kind of super emulsifier which is why it eventually works. I do use a lot of it if I have to, followed by hot water if necessary, but especially on a weekend it's such a relief when it finally works.

As a night owl type I agree @Dimity, though I have actually never met a fellow night owl who braggs about it! I have known early birds who like to brag. One of my oldest friends is definitely an early, she likes to get up maybe around 6 am to go to the gym (shudder). However we have no issue communicating, we just pick a time like noon or 12:30 to meet up fpr lunch.

I have a feeling the missing husband will turn out to be dead, but as we saw this season he could certainly appear in flashbacks!

Maybe this belongs in good news / bad news but I've had one apartment issue after another the last few days. The big one began some weeks ago when the unit above me - which was empty at the time - had a serious leak from the sink pipe at 6:30 am, it was so loud I could hear the water over my head in the bedroom. My super, who is a great guy, promptly went up to fix it and said my new bathroom fan (which had water dripping around it) would be all right. Fast forward a few weeks and there's a water stain on the bedroom ceiling on the side near the bathroom. He fixes the stain and seals it. Fast forward another few weeks, the ceiling paint in my bedroom starts falling down all over in large pieces, on the bed, on the floor, etc. Between my going away and his vacation it probably could have been caught sooner but whatever. Now his son who also works here has scraped it and is starting to re-plaster but...it's not their fault, he was ill yesterday and had to run the elevator Sunday... but I really feel this will take awhile. The paint was also old so....maybe it was bound to happen but I'd love for this to be over. Good news? I also had my bathroom sink clog up on the weekend. After a day of aggravation I finally used the hot water/blue Dawn dish detergent trick and after multiple attempts it's draining like a dream. Home remedies do work sometimes.

I don't know about now but we did play croquet in the back yard when I was growing up. I enjoyed it also. I was not very athletic but we did enjoy playing outside in those old days! My great-nephews and great-neice seem to be more into organized sports like soccer as far as I can tell.

Well I'm not sure how to summarize everything. Pros: it was a good ending, the explanation of the murder more or less made sense given dramatic license and all that. Loretta didn't die at the wedding - I had a feeling she wouldn't when the show started to tease about the possibility. I hadn't thought of a long distance marriage being possible but they can certainly write it in if there is only another season or two. The Westies are probably going to re-appear maybe? Richard Kind is always funny. Cons: I hated to see Lester dead. I wish they would leave open the idea of the victim not necessarily being a building regular (as in Season 3). And I was hoping that Sazz might be alive, no such luck. Jane Lynch did get a real chance to shine though especially in the finale. And maybe it was inevitable but this last ep just wasn't that much fun, especially with the re-enactment of Sazz' murder and then Jan killing Marshall on top, then Lester's gory death scene. Overall I really do hope next year they drop the celebrity guest stars, especially actors playing themselves. It created so much filler that really slowed the story down. Ron Howard was okay but the three actors in the movie took up so much time and I was sure they couldn't be involved under their own names. I guess we will never find out how Bev Melon knew about Sazz' playground/getaway? Edit: I knew I forgot something but the scene with Tea Leoni asking for their help looked so familiar, was it somehow quoting from a famous film noir or something like that?

Very sorry to hear about Teri Garr, although she had been public about her illness for some time. Yes she was hilarious in Young Frankenstein. She seemed to be everywhere, from being a dancer in Shindig I think it was to a bemused modern day young woman in a time traveling episode of Star Trek.

Congratulations @Cloud9Shopper! I used to work the front desk/answer the phone at a performing arts non-profit with a lot of public interaction so I know how stressful that kind of job can be. Great that you are moving on to something better and with less of that kind of stress.