Today in My History

2000:  AIDS Day
2001:  Pornography and Other Imponderables
2002:  Brown Paper Packages Tied up with Strings
2003:  Detours and Fears
2004:  Let There Be Peace on Earth
2005:  Looking for Christmas
2006:  A Christmas Meme
2007:  Cousins Night
2008:  Who Am I?
2009:  Unexpected Fun
2010:  Cold Turkey is a Bitch
2011:  The Lunch that Almost Wasn't
2012: Sunday Stealing

Bitter Hack
Updated: 11/30
Not in the Stars

Books Read in 2013
 Updated: 11/16
"A Town Like Alice"
"Ramona"

Most Recent on My

Magpie Journal

SUNDAY STEALING

9 December 2013

The I Amuse Myself Meme from FoxyDanish

01. What is something that you have lost recently?
One jade earring I bought in China two years ago.  I wore them all the time and one day, while I was working at the book store, I noticed that one of them was gone.   I searched everywhere at the store, but did not find it.  I miss it very much!

02. Do you own any self-help books?
Lots.  I was into the whole self-help book thing back in the 70s and bought lots of them, but none in the last 30 or 40 yrs.

03. Do you live near the sea or ocean?
The Pacific Ocean is about 80 miles from here.

04. Have you ever spent ages making/writing something on your computer when it suddenly crashed and you lost it all?
Nothing quite that bad, but I have lost shorter things--like journal entries, for example.

05. Do you enjoy food shopping?
No.  I hate it.  I've been doing it for more than 50 years and it's a chore that I do because I have to, but I don't enjoy it.  (On the other hand, I don't want to send Walt either because he won't buy those impulse purchases that are the only thing that make a trip like that fun.)  All that said, though, I do love going to Trader Joe's because it's generally all impulse buy -- and they give me good food samples to try.

06. What are you having for lunch?
Too early to tell, but it will end with mandarin oranges because we just got a crate of them.

07. Are you one of those people who can sleep through anything?
I'm a pretty sound sleeper, when I get to sleep, though I also occasionally have insomnia.

08. Do you like love letters?
I've never received one, so I don't know.

09. Have you ever received or written one?
I have written some in my day, but I don't remember ever receiving one.

10. How far does your nearest relative live?
My mother is in an Independent Living facility 5 minutes from my house, Ned and Marta live about 20 minutes away, in Sacramento.

11. Do you like velvet?
I love it.  Always have.

12. What kind of art do you like?
Definitely not modern.  The genre I like most is probably Impressionist. I'm a real VanGogh fan.

13. If you went to London, where would you go first?
I've been to London several times and have many favorite places, the top of the list being the Charing Cross Rd. area (yay, Foyles!) and the theaters of the West End.

14. If you had to pick one friend who is the most interesting, who would you pick?
Stephen Peithman, a friend from the Davis Comic Opera days who knows everything theater and pretty much everything everything.

15. Can you think of the meanest thing you have ever done/said to someone?
Revenge is a sweet thing.  I was writing a book about a theater company and wrote the absolute truth about an actor who had hurt me terribly.  Instead of whitewashing his idiosyncracies, I talked about them.  In print.  Published print. (He's dead now, so I can talk about it!)

16. What magazines do you read?
I'm not a big magazine reader.  The only magazines I read are what I pick up in medical offices while waiting for an appointment.  Frequently "Readers' Digest"  Oh, and I subscribe to the Food Network magazine, but mostly thumb through it; I don't really read it.

17. What/who has been on your mind today?
I've been looking at Christmas pictures of our grandchildren, so they are foremost in my mind this morning.

18. Would you be interested in ghost-hunting?
Oh I would love to.  I believe there are spirits and I am disappointed that I have never encountered any.  I can't understand the scare factor of spirits.   I think it would be fascinating.

For those who read yesterday's entry, this is the paragraph I ultimately inserted into my review of Santaland Diaries:

There is one unfortunate section of this play that bothered me a lot. It is Sedaris’ description of the day the special needs kids come to see Santa. It’s very funny and the audience laughed uproariously, but the playwright makes a lot of use of the "R-word," a word that can be very painful and offensive to parents of special needs kids. I tried imagining how the audience would have reacted if he had used the "N-word" instead and decided I could not let that pass without comment, as I know parents of special needs kids who are very upset about the common usage of that offensive word. It tainted, for me, what had been a very enjoyable comedy.

I sent it to Rob for approval and he said he thought I got it right.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Nothing says "Christmas" like the 49ers

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