Frank's 77th birthday

On November 10th, Frank turned 77. I had a few simple gifts for him to open in the morning. There were two front zip hoodies and two books. One book was Delivering For America: How The United States Postal Service Built a Nation about the 250 history of the postal service. The other book was Making Mary Poppins: The Sherman Brothers, Walt Disney, and the Creation of a Classic Film about the behind-the-scenes making of the Disney movie Mary Poppins.

During the day, Frank was serenaded by Robin, Isaiah, Jeremy, and Autumn via text message. Here is the Happy Birthday Quartet.

The iconic year of this particular birthday reminded me of a 60+ year old TV show 77 Sunset Strip. Per Wikipedia

77 Sunset Strip is an American private detective crime drama television series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith, Richard Long (from 1960 to 1961) and Edd Byrnes (billed as Edward Byrnes). Each episode was one hour long when aired with commercials. The series aired on ABC from October 10, 1958, to February 7, 1964.

I was only five to nine years old when it was on TV and I probably only heard the sound drifting upstairs when I was in bed. Perhaps I caught glimpses of it when I was older, but I particularly remember one of the characters, hair-combing Kookie. Even now, I cannot get the catchy opening song — complete with finger snapping — out of my head! Listen to 77 Sunset Strip here.

More dominant than an old TV show this birthday for Frank was the current TV show of Wheel of Fortune.  Frank and I had tickets to see a live performance of the show on the road at our local Bankhead Theatre. The stage was set up with a wheel, a bonus wheel, and the large puzzle board, of course. There was an equivalent of Ryan Seacrest (Pat Sajak) played by Mark L. Walberg and a Vanna White equivalent played by a woman selected at random from the audience. The woman was especially amusing because she was so short, she had to jump up to touch the letters on the highest row of the puzzle board.

There was an announcer and a strolling camera man. The announcer mingled with the audience to warm them up before the show began. That was where Frank had his claim to fame. Frank was picked to be interviewed. When asked where he was from, Frank replied proudly, "Washington, DC! And I don't mean Virginia or Maryland to that little state up in the northwest." When asked about his interests he  boasted about his over 1000 railroad cars in the garage and showed off his QUILTER'S HUSBAND shirt he was wearing. The camera view of the exchange was projected up on a large screen and I took a photo. Unfortunately I was holding my cell phone over my face but it really is me.

The set up and process of the show was well thought out. Five people were selected at random from the audience and brought up on stage to compete. A bonus puzzle with only some of the letters showing was posted and whoever figured it out first got one point. Whoever of the five accumulated three points first, went on to a final round in the second half of the show. The three winners from three groups of five comprised this final round where they actually spun the wheel and called letters. The pre-screening of the fifteen players from the first half assured the final round was a decent competition without any turkey players.

The second half mimicked the TV show more closely with calling letters, missing turns, or going bankrupt with spins of the wheel. There were money awards, on the order of $50's or $100's. Frank got a souvenir pen. We had a really good time and, after the show, posed for a photo op in the lobby in front of a publicity poster.

After the show, we celebrated with a pan of brownies. I had baked them earlier in the day and we had been snacking on them rather than waiting for a formal candle ceremony to dig in. We did keep up the traditional "make a wish and blow out the candles" eventually, though not with a particularly pristine receptacle for the candles. I wonder if the quality of the wish is compromised...? Even if so, the brownies were delicious anyway.

Ponder: My Friends

 My Friends ©2025 by Fredrik Backman is a story about the lives of four teenage friends who spent a summer of laughter together, despite the depressing home situation of each. Three are immortalized in a painting depicting three figures sitting on the edge of a pier, a painting which sells for an exorbitant sum of money. The painting was created by the fourth in their group. I was looking forward to enjoying this book since I read A Man Called Ove, also by Fredrick Bachman which I rated 5 stars in my 10/31/17 post reviewing it. Furthermore, 37800 readers on Amazon rated My Friends 4.6 stars and 253,400 readers on Goodreads rate it 4.4 stars. Despite these accolades, I was very disappointed in My Friends. I rate My Friends only 2 stars. To minimize the effort I put into the review for a book I rated so poorly, I present these AI summaries of the characters within. 

Louisa is the 17-year-old artist protagonist the novel, who is on the run from her foster home after her best friend, Fish, dies. She is creative, rebellious, and carries a postcard of a famous painting called "The One of the Sea," which becomes a central symbol of the book as she meets the reclusive artist behind it. The story intertwines her present-day journey with the past lives of the four teenagers who were the subjects of the painting.

The four teenagers associated with the painting:

• Joar is the group's "muscle and heart," a boy shaped by violence who is fiercely loyal to his friends
• Ted is one of four childhood friends who bond over art. He becomes a teacher, but his life takes a turn after an incident at school. He then becomes a friend and father figure to Louisa, a young artist, and is involved in the book's main storyline about art, friendship, and loss.
• Ali is a character who leaves the friend group because her father is in debt. She later becomes a skilled surfer; her story contributes to the themes of trauma and healing explored in the novel.
• The artist is the creator of the iconic painting "The One of the Sea". He is referred to "the artist" throughout and only near the end is his name revealed.

Scenes of laughter amidst teenage loyalty and bonding abound and are enjoyable. But the heart breaking situation of each of these characters seems to have an overriding air of dystopia for me. Violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, emotional abuse, bullying, and poverty to me were too pervasive to be neutralized by a summer's worth of escapist frivolity and mischief.

The book has two main timelines: present day Luisa, recently aging out of a foster home and the summer about twenty years ago shared by teenagers Joar, Ted, Ali and the artist. The two timelines intertwine as an adult Ted is telling Louis the story of that summer. The poignant theme of friendship and loyalty is to be commended, but I struggled with all the misfortunes above which these attributes were to rise. To me the glow of good triumphing over evil was buried under the darkness of the dystopian lives when those friends were not in each other's company. There were several twists in the book where the reader was led to believe something dire had occurred. The later revelation of the true situation made me feel the author was being cruel to the readers in misleading them.

I really forced myself to read the final third of this book. That says something for the author's skill in having me bond with the characters. I wanted to know how lives turned out, even though it was painful for me to doggedly persist in reading this novel to the very end. The psychological downers for me in My Friends seem in keeping with my erratic relationship with this author. I'd forgotten I had also read Anxious People by Fredrick Bachman and sadly rated it only 1 star in my 7/7/21 post reviewing it. Feeling angst when I read is not a desirable emotion for me. Feeling suspense is acceptable but not within a pervasive atmosphere of hopeless acceptance. Cope without hope is not read-worthy. 

 

★★☆☆☆ Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it

Ponder: The Life Impossible

The Life Impossible ©2025 is the second book I have read by Matt Haig. In my post for 7/6/21, I reviewed and rated Haig's Midnight Library ©2020 only two stars. But everybody deserves a second chance, right? Wrong! I also rate The Life Impossible only two stars, which for me, translates to, "Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it". So what were those redeeming features?

1. The main character of the story, Grace, is a retired math teacher in her seventies. The novel has several mathematical references and terms such as the Fibonacci sequence, positive and negative numbers, some calculus terms, etc. I could relate to Grace's age, retired status, and technical background.
   
   
2. I learned a new vocabulary term, anhedonia which is defined as the inability to experience pleasure from activities that were once enjoyable.
   
   
3. The premise was interesting and had promise. Grace was left a house on an island by Christina, a previous teaching colleague of hers. She lived alone and had no other ties so why not explore this option, adding an experiment to her now mundane life? And how did Christina die or did she just disappear or perhaps go into hiding?
   
   
4. There were passages that prompted deeper thought. This particular one resonated with me as I ponder my decluttering efforts. Here is one example passage from early on in the book:
   

   The word "era" entered my mind and did not leave. I thought about how you entered a new one [era]. ... How you need to create a distinct break with what has gone before. In geology it is often after an extinction, isn't it? The Mesozoic Era ended with the mass death of the dinosaurs via a meteor. I was wondering if I was starting a new era or if I was taking too much with me. This is the challenge of life, isn't it? Moving forward without annihilating what has gone before.

The novel seemed as if the author was looking for opportunities to insert pithy phrases rahter than tell story. Disco dances, song titles, music groups were often listed throughout an entire paragraph to generate a feeling. Not knowing what many of them were left me bored, missing the sensation I was meant to feel, and merely skimming the paragraphs. The plot was random. I will admit the title was appropriate. Not to reveal any spoilers, but where else but in an impossible life on a unique island can you gather together, ecology rants, species preservation, dishonest politicians, greedy real estate developers, scuba diving, aliens, glowing light, other planets, mind reading, telekinesis, grief, guilt, gambling, goats, lobsters, snakes, cormorants, and flamingos? I will not be seeking out other books by this other, even with his accolade of being a New York Times best seller. For me The Life Impossible was

★★☆☆☆ Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it

SoCal Visit to Friends

Frank and I traveled to Southern California Tuesday, October 28th through Friday, October 31st to visit our friends John & Marita who had downsized about two years ago. They'd relocated from the town of Pleasanton, adjacent to our town of Livermore, to a smaller house in Laguna Niguel. Although we zoom with them every two weeks, we still knew we would enjoy a person-to-person get together. We UBER'd to the Oakland airport, a 28.43 mile trip which took 34 minutes. Security was not backed up and went as well as could be expected — except for a small glitch with me. I set off the metal detecters ...whah, whah, whah... !
 

Metal in your body, asked the agent?     No, that is my husband, not me.

Cell phone in the bin?     Yup, not the culprit. 

Could it be my underwire bra?     Not likely.

Anything in your pockets ma'am? I don't think so... Aha!

I thought these candy wrappers were cellophane, but apparently the foil from three of these little Werther's Original candies was enough to set off the system. Live and learn. Frank with his hip replacement filed through without any fuss. It was me with my candies that upset the apple cart. Of course one of my powder medications had to be pulled side and scanned, lest it be an explosive, but I was expecting that. It happens every time I travel.

After the excitement and once we were at our gate, we learned that our Southwest Airlines flight from OAK (Oakland) to SNA (Orange County) was only 75% full. We had the luxury of an empty seat between us for the 1½ hours of air time. 

Flight #4035 actually took off a bit early and we arrived early. Interesting enough, the UBER pickup point at SNA is on the third floor of the parking garage and into curbside. Within minutes we had a ride, though. Our UBER trip to our hotel from the airport was 21.41 miles and took 35 minutes. So far our trip was smooth sailing. Our timing had been lucky. Our driver told us that there had been a recent fatal motorcycle crash on the southbound 405 Freeway near Irvine Spectrum that very morning, resulted in lane closures and significant traffic delays. He said the route we would have taken earlier in the day had been closed for four hours. We were fortunate to have missed it.

Our hotel was the Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton, chosen for its proximity to John & Marita's home. We had a room with two queen beds. Room 336 was tucked away in inner corner of the hotel and we had an angled view of the pool. John joked that we had a room with an ocean view. I also picked this place because, beside the free breakfast, the lobby had a pantry where we could purchase snacks to take back to our room anytime. Yes, we did cave and get Tate's chocolate chip cookies and Lays potato chips each night.

John picked us up in his new all electric car and drove us to his house 4.5 miles and about 10 minutes away. Their small economy sized car accommodated Frank and me, our luggage, and Frank's rollator with ease. John and Marita had done a lot of updates to the one-story home. One update was a charging station in the garage for their all-electric car. Frank and I had no checked luggage this trip, only carry-ons. This jaunt was our first time traveling this light and it was great. Inside the one-story, three bedroom home was bright and airy with almost an entire wall of sliding doors out to the backyard. Marita had heated a HUGE Costco Chicken Pot Pie; as soon as we entered the house we inhaled the luscious aroma. HUGE is really big. That pot pie fed four adults for both Tuesday and Thursday nights. Marita had steamed a side of fresh broccoli to go with it each time. We sat and relaxed in pleasant conversation with no plan other than to relax and soak in each other's company.

We were to enjoy their home and hospitality Tuesday evening followed by Wednesday/Thursday days. The covered back patio extend about 20 feet or so and then the yard transitioned to a steep incline, beautifully landscaped and extending far up the hill. We basked in the sunny, balmy, temperate weather outside as we sat on that patio. As we were relaxing in quiet conversation and catching up, I spotted a coyote meandering along the ridge line of the neighbor's yard. As he was winding his way downhill, we watched in subdued wonder. We did agree though, that if he got too much closer we would go indoors; but we did not have to. 

One consequence of all those lovely hills was that cellphone reception was tricky. We would need to alter settings on our cell phones to accept calls via Wi-Fi. After a fair amount of Googling, John finally found detailed instructions on setting this configuration for our iPhone 16s. Apparently there was a radio button acknowledging our acceptance of some random "terms"; the button was sufficiently small and camouflaged that we missed clicking it multiple times. That's OK. Solving the problem was part of Wednesday afternoon's "entertainment" for a bunch of nerds. Marita had gone to a knitting class so this cell phone exercise kept us amused in her absence. We also watched a movie.

We purposely chose a movie we'd all seen so that talking during it would not be a problem. I had recalled getting an email noting that The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie was going away from Prime on October 31st. Afterwards, although you probably could stream it from elsewhere, you would have to pay to rent to watch. Streaming the 2015 movie The Man from U.N.C.L.E., rated 7.2 on IMDb, was every bit as enjoyable to me as the first and second times I have watched it. Snatching a few zzzz's during the movie worked out well for John, Frank, and me at various points throughout. We joked that we thought when Marita returned we should stage a scene with all three of us napping while the TV blared something obnoxious. The proposal was an appealing idea, but we did not deploy it.

Another movie we watched, this time with Marita, was the 2010 movie Knight and Day rated 6.3 on IMDb but really enjoyable. John told us you don't have to follow the plot. The plot is just a vehicle to get you from one action scene to another with no need to understand or anticipate. He was right. Knight and Day, starring Cruise and Cameron Diaz, was a fun, tongue-in-cheek romp, with non-stop action that avoided being gorily violent. Knight and Day was also pleasantly sprinkled with a little risqué sexiness.

Our son, Dan, happened to be in the area for business and he was able to get together with John & Marita and Frank & me for dinner Wednesday night. Since Dan used to live in the area, he suggested a good Mexican restaurant Avila's El Ranchito in Foothill Ranch, CA. The food was very, very good. Dan's personality is such that he was able to fit right in with our group of four; the conversation and laughing were pretty non-stop.

Dan ordered a large margarita not realizing just how LARGE, "large" really was. Seeing it next to his sunglasses for calibration, that margarita was pretty much close to the size of Dan's head! After dinner Dan drove us back to our hotel before going to his. We had the opportunity for a brief visit with him during the half-hour drive to our hotel. Seeing him during this trip was a happy happenstance.

On Thursday we played some games. Our version of Rummikub has six additional bonus joker tiles beyond the standard version. I brought those tiles with me so we could add them in and use them in our own Chambers-personalized 2-D rules for crossword type Rummikub. This version with the bonus jokers is available exclusively from Target. We played SEQUENCE in person as the game was designed. Every other week we play with John & Marita over a zoom call with a specially marked playing board and double the number of card decks. Frank wants it pointed out that when we played SKYJO, he came in first.

While the chicken pot pie was warming in the oven we put together a 300-piece version of a Charles Wysocki puzzle named Mr. Swallowbark, a broom maker. After dinner we sat around and chatted a bit more before we said our goodbyes and John drove us back to our hotel. Our in-person visit was fantastic. It was an enjoyable cherry on top of the treat of having zoom calls every other Monday with awesome friends.

The next morning, Frank and I took an UBER to the airport. Our UBER driver for our return to the airport on Friday told us that he himself had been stuck in that backup for 1½ hours with a passenger. We learned that the UBER stated fare remains the stated fare, and there is no adjustment for traffic delays no matter how extensive. Our curbside drop off at SNA went smoothly and we got to our gate in plenty of time. I expected there to be lots of costumes since we were traveling on Halloween. There were a fair number of folks dressed in black and orange, but there were very few costumes. Our stewardess wore ghost earrings. One last perk of this trip... our flight had 23 empty seats so once again Frank and I had a vacant seat between us. SWA Flight 4274 also took off early and landed early! The travel gods continued to smile on us, even all the way back to our home in Livermore. The 28 mile, 52 minute UBER ride was also uneventful. Glad we went and also glad to be home!

Some Like It Hot

Saturday, October 25th, Frank and I went to a matinee performance of the musical Some Like It Hot at the Center for Performing Arts in San Jose. Our outing went smoothly without any of the ticket confusion we experienced when we went to & Juliet — twice! We got the theatre early enough to pose at the posters beforehand when the crowds had not yet accumulated.

Once inside, we enjoyed our programs. However, unlike my usual custom, I did not take any photos of the stage. It was gray curtains, nothing exciting.

Since we are season patrons, we had our regular Seats 43 and 45, in Row 12, pretty close but somewhat offset from center. Our only mishap with this show was that at intermission Frank and I went to restrooms in separate locations. Waiting for each other at different locations before joining each other to re-enter the theatre together, we barely got into our seats as the lights were dimming for the second act. Whew! All that rushing around. However our fast- paced scurrying was nothing compared to the antics of the second act. Actors were running back and forth in all directions, in and out of multiple free-standing doors leading who knows where, changing costumes at the wink of an eye, and doing about faces at the drop of a hat.

The show was pretty fast paced with men dressed as women, gangsters disguised in various ways, and the ambiance of a Prohibition era of the 20's/30's. We loved the phenomenal dancing with lots of precision syncopated tap dancing, large portions of it in group unison. The singing was loud and boisterous, but alas, we understood very few of the words. We got the gist however and enjoyed the enthusiasm if not the enunciation. We need to figure out if the sound issue is because of our age and hearing or because of seat location. Never the less, these outings are well worth our effort, time, and money — money only if we buy the tickets just once.

Ponder: The Listeners

The Listeners ©2025 by Maggie Stiefvater was the selection this month for the Good Books club at my local library. It is set in West Virginia in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during WWII. A very luxurious hotel is asked told to house diplomats from enemy countries as a holding type detention camp. Staff must serve the very people who may possibly responsible for the death or maiming of their loved ones. It is a powder keg type situation.

Maintaining the luxuries and handling the tempers is the hotel manager June. Establishing and handling the security of the hotel is Special Agent Tucker with two other G-men. Both June and Agent Tucker  rise from humble beginnings, and yet each is quite capable of navigating the complexities of luxury, wealth, and tact. The cast of characters is large, and many of them have more than one name, so following along requires concentration; it was not an easy read for me. Plus the author's style is one of creating suspense via confusion, rather than via intricacies of plot. The premise was good. The characters were multidimensional. The setting was bizarre. An enjoyable plot twist near the end made me pleased I had stuck with the book. 

Intertwined throughout there was an air of fantasy flowing waters from springs at the hotel that seem to have healing or hurting powers. The water made me think of the plant Audrey II from musical Little Shop of Horrors and its insistence to "Feed me." Another idiosyncracy of the hotel was the abundance of live snails that abounded. The hotel had turned the (gross?) presence of the snails into a namesake signature, incorporating carvings of snails into pillars, on fountains, and along railings throughout. After reading the book I was curious about this snail oddity. Apparently, snails are very prevalent in West Virginia due to its climate and eco system. I even found a book published on this very snail topic. 

There are currently 168 native land snail species confirmed from West Virginia, 11 of which are endemic (more than any neighboring state). Eighteen species are restricted to the borders of West Virginia and Virginia along the Ridge and Valley region.

If you would like a slow, closeup visual of snail activity, in addition to the book, check out this YouTube video.

There are more than 150 kinds of land snails in the “Wild and Wonderful” state, ranging from the size of a quarter to the size of a pinhead.

This book was an odd combination of characters, nature, and fantasy, making it a truly creative novel to explore, but one that may not be to the taste of some readers. I do not regret reading it, but I will not be seeking out other works by Maggie Stiefvater. On Amazon, The Listeners was rated 4 stars, with only 50% of the readers giving it 5 stars. Although it got high literary ratings, per the book club discussion, I rate The Listeners three stars.

★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time

& Juliet

Frank and I are season ticket holders to the Broadway San Jose musical season. I had heard & Juliet was good but, since I thought it was outside the selections in our ticket package, I would need to buy us two seats as a separate purchase, which I did. We went to the Saturday, October 11th matinee performance. 

At the entry, as the usher scanned the tickets on my iPhone for Frank and me, he said "Only two?" Yikes? I had four tickets on my phone. They are not cheap. He pointed me toward the information desk to figure out what had happened. Apparently, Broadway San Jose sends out a reminder email to sell more ticket packages later in the season. As the season continues, there are fewer shows in the package. I possibly read a later email in which & Juliet was missing and bought us two tickets. There are no refunds. Perhaps they could exchange those two tickets for another performance of the show? While staff was looking into that, Frank and I went in to the show. We had our customary seats in row 12, which have a fairly close but not quite straight on view of the stage.

We enjoyed the show a great deal. The actors were energetic; the bickering exchanges between Ann Hathaway and her husband William Shakespeare were humorous. It was fun to see Juliet in the what-if context of today's attitudes where women strive to be independent and seek out their own dreams, rather than feeling obligated to follow the desires of their husband. The staging was colorful and surprisingly not what one would expect in the Shakespearean times or the Globe theatre. The music was upbeat throughout, the harmonies tight and pleasing. According to Wikipedia

& Juliet is a 2019 jukebox musical. ... In the plot, Anne Hathaway negotiates with her husband, William Shakespeare, to change the ending to Romeo and Juliet so that Juliet does not kill herself. (A jukebox musical is a stage musical or musical film in which a majority of the songs are well-known, pre-existing popular music songs, rather than original music composed for the musical.)

The music was parodies or re-sung melodies of the Boy Bands or other artists of that era. The boy band names that came back to me from the era were *NSYNC, Boyz II Men, The Backstreet Boys, and New Kids on the Block, all popular when my kids were in middle school and high school, a little before and after the 1990's. An entertainment article in Good Housekeeping names twenty boy bands and where they are now. The musical spoofed the familiar sounds and dress of that time and brought back pleasant memories to me. I may not have known the specific songs but the gist of the overall tone was undeniable.

So what about those two extra, non-refundable tickets? We were allowed to exchange them for two tickets the next afternoon. Our Sunday, Oct 12th tickets were in the balcony. As soon as we got home we dialed a list of friends offering to give away two tickets. There were no takers. The notice was too short (the next day) and the number of candidates to phone was depressingly few.

 
The next day I decided to take Alex. I did not have parking pre-arranged, and I did not want to chance where I could get a space and how far away it might be for Alex and me to walk. Frank's suggestion, which I took, was to drive to Alex's home and take an Uber to the theatre. Alex seemed a bit befuddled getting into a strange car with me but I played iPhone music for him during the ride and he was content, even happy. The driver dropped us right at the entrance door. It was so easy peasy.

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons... Alex LOVED the show. He took great joy in thumbing through a program. Our seats had a great view from the balcony and the seats had a steep enough angle that we saw clearly over the heads of other theatre goers. Upbeat and peppy, the music also had a lot of harmonizing which almost alway causes Alex to clap.

Alex and I were there early enough to see some of the pre-show on stage antics of setting up. Photos were allowed then but not during the show. Alex stayed intently engaged the entire first act. We took a walk break at intermission and Alex got enough wigglies out, he was a polite theatre goer for the second act, as well. I had to intervene and tone down his clapping and exuberant fist pumping occcasionally, but overall I was so glad I'd brought him.

An Uber came quickly, picking us up right outside the theatre, taking us back to Alex's home. I drove myself back to Livermore. I was tired. After all, the day before had also been an energetic outing for me. Ignoring the cost for the Uber, offset somewhat by no parking fees, my mistake with those two extra tickets turned out to be a happy happenstance.