A Tree Falls in South Pasadena

Wow, she does exaggerate. What happened was a delivery van clipped the low hanging branch of our pine tree. This was bound to happen. Why our landlord or the city doesn't do preventive cutting on these trees, I'll never know. I goofed on this picture. Adrian's car was right under that branch. It wasn't hurt. The branch is so long that it hung over his tall Jeep. Kinda slowed down traffic, which was great.

The city responded so quickly. We had a cop out front within half an hour. He closed the street. The saw truck arrived about ten minutes later. The tree branch is still out there, cut up, lying at the curb. We'll see how long that takes.

I met the neighbor from apartment 2. Yes, I've lived here 9 years. Your point is what? He's Gordon, just retired from Sears. Has lived in that apartment for 40 years. Wow. He also confirmed that the apartment complex was built in 1949. I was thinking '50's. Pretty close. I just had one art deco element to go on. I also found out that our loud neighbor, Manuel, bugs him too. His car radio drives me crazy. Gordon told me that he does the same thing with his house music. I am so lucky to have very quiet next door neighbors.

I've started a new needlepoint. This one is a picture of a Parisian Bistro. You can see that after a few days I've almost completed a window. There is a lot more to do. This means that I've been doing a lot of listening. I've finished 2.5 books since I started.

I re-read Six Days of the Condor. Yes, six days. They shortened the story to three days when they made the movie to fit better with Robert Redford's image. Why leave him hanging out in the cold for six days? I remembered really liking this story thirty years ago. It's less complex than I like now, but was still pretty exciting. The author does a short segment at the beginning, telling about writing the book and the transition to the movie.

I also read Deadheads by Reginald Hill. This was very good. It's part of a mystery series set in Yorkshire. I like the detectives, Daziel (pronounced DL) and Pasco, and the plot is really good. You sort of know what's happening, but not really and the ending is very good.

I'm currently listening to The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin. This is the follow up to Mistress of the Art of Death, set in the time of Richard II. The heroine is sort of a one woman CSI for the Middle Ages. Fun. Audible had a half price sale on books or I'd be dead in the water. This needlepoint is going to take a long time. See how little it looks on that big piece of fabric?

Just remember how it was hard to see a cat when I started my last needlepoint. He eventually grew into a real cat surrounded by a library of books. It just takes time.

Maybe it will be done before I fly back to Virginia for two months, starting mid-June. I decided to do some summer temp work at Booz Allen. Let's hope it all works out as planned.

Little Missy Is Not All That

This is written with mixed feelings. I had a job for a week and they did not like my work. At least, that's what I assume. Nobody ever told me why I wasn't working a second week on this assignment. The job was filling out forms and putting packages together for people who had left / were leaving the firm. Mind-numbingly boring work. Lower paying work. But it was work.

Was I too slow? Was I too inaccurate? Don't know. Ms. Linsay wrote me an email and told me that I wouldn't be returning. Can't wait for Monday to say I'm sorry. But deep down, I'm pretty happy. That was a miserable job with a pack of 20 somethings. Kind of depressing, but I think I'll get over it.

I've heard about this series about Inspector Dalziel. This is the first book I've read about him and it's about his death - The Death of Dalziel. Let me tell you one of the true joys of listening to books; I now know his name is pronounced DL. Forget every letter inbetween. He's a cop in Yorkshire and his right hand guy is Peter Pascoe, who solves this mystery. It was a good introduction to the series.

American Lightning is supposed to be about the crime of the century. It's a very good book, but I wouldn't give the crime that elevated stature. The story is about a lot of Americans living in the 1910s. During that period anachrists blew up The Times building. I'd read a book about this 40 years ago by Adela Rogers St. Johns. Her father was Earl Rogers. So here are all the noted people in this book:

• Harrison Gray Otis - publisher of The Times. Reactionary. Swindler. Helped bring water to LA so he could sell it.
• Harry Chandler - his son-in-law. Business man, slightly less money-grubby than Mr. Otis. Their building was blown up because of their anti-union stance in a time of high militancy in the labor movement.
• D. W. Griffith - Biograph Pictures director. Not sure why all this about early movies was in the book. Movies went from one reelers to full length movies during this time. Mary Pickford and the Gish sisters are in the book; D.W.'s womanizing is here. But really, not that relevant.
• Clarence Darrow - Defended the bombers. This was interesting, before the Scopes' Trial. He was trying to move from good causes to more lucretive trials. He was tried for tampering with a witness during the trial. Earl Rodgers defended him - to a point. Then he defended himself.
• Billy Burns - Burns Detective Agency. He tracked and found the bombers.

And I won't tell you who the doers were. This was an enjoyable book. I think Ms. Rogers' biography, The Honeycomb, told about the bombing a bit more thoroughly, but it's hard to remember after 40 years.

And now I have time to plan for Adrian's arrival next Thursday. Hurray!! We are going to the North Carolina shores next week.

Finding a Balance

Finding a balance in my life is very difficult. I love to have quiet time, like the nearly two weeks at the beginning of August. But money is an issue. Surprise. So I worry when I don't have a lot of work booked on my calendar. It always feels like I will never work again. I worked for Gary again this week. But then there was nothing on the horizon.

But, joy of joys, my Kelly rep whose job it is to keep those jobs rolling in got back from maternity leave last Friday. She is so good for me. I told her how her replacement did nothing for any of the Kelly temps. Big virtual tears. So happy she is back. I just got a two week assignment. That means I will work for 3 weeks in August. That is exactly how I like it. That is balance. The best part is that Adrian is coming at the end of those two weeks. Yes, that is a perfect balance.

Finished a book by a new author, The Garden of Evil. I think it was on sale at Audible. It's kind of my new mystery genre - Italian detectives. This one takes place in Rome and involves art big time. The focus is about serial killers and Caravaggio. I enjoyed the complex characters and the insight into the art of Caravaggio. I could almost see the paintings. Fortunately, the violence was not as graphic as the art descriptions.

I've Been Working

Let me just start with this Oldie But Goodie picture of Suresh and Fred. Even though the arrival of Suresh and Teena signaled the beginning of the end of our tightly knit group, they became very dear to us. It also signaled the beginning of a whole new life for me. A trip to India? Who would have thought of that a year before this picture was taken. Fred is still at The Times and I think that his life has not changed all that much. He is still programming quietly at his desk. I know the people who used to rely on his help have missed him. He was wonderfully soothing. Do those folks in Orlando do what Fred did? 

I am in the middle of a four week temp assignment. The woman I'm helping has been overwhelmed by work and I haven't helped her main problem. The first week she gave me a couple of mind-numbing jobs that took the week to complete.  One job was to enter all the contacts from her boss's old contact list into Outlook. Seems the boss just brought a hard copy with her, not a computer file. I listened to a book while I did this. I know, so unprofessional. But I was in an office with 95 pages of names. I found that I couldn't listen to anything that I really wanted to hear, or rather, remember what I was reading. So instead I listened to one of the Cat Who books, The Cat Who Wasn't There. I think this was the perfect book for entering contacts by. In other words, I just remember there was a cat in it and a man with a mustache. Perfect 

She went in to work on Saturday to get her act together and make a list of projects for me to complete. I am looking forward to going into work tomorrow. The second week was mind-numbing. I browsed the Internet a lot and wrote emails to friends. That is not as much fun as it might sound.


I have been reading other books in the past two weeks. Some I'd started long before and just decided that it was time to wrap it up. One of thease was Dead I Well May Be. I think this took a long time because it is very violent. It is about a young man from Ireland who enters the US illegally and leads a life of crime. Two things made this enjoyable. First, he is a very smart kid who reads a lot of interesting stuff. He is surrounded by people who are less clever than he and his interactions with them are enjoyable. Second, the reader has a wonderful Irish accent. I keep hearing "we'uns" in my head. I would listen to this book again, just for the joy of hearing the way Irish people talk. Fortunately, the author has written more books, so I will not have to relive this violence.

Another book I finished recently is Ghost. This was a pretty funny book, even though the author didn't suspect that it would be. The author used to work for the government in the Counter terrorism unit. He was not a spy. He was one of those guys who read the stacks of paper that comes into our government to be analyzed. He does get to leave the office now and again, but he is not a field agent by any stretch of the imagination. And his writing is very pedestrian. Someone told him he should use descriptive words, so he identifies every object he sees by brand name. If I cared, I would know the make of his watch, shoes, notebook, pen and cell phone. But I really didn't care. This one was not bad enough to throw across a room, it wasn't hateful. Just B O R I N G. 

 

Jack Reacher is never boring. This book, The Enemy, is a prequel. He is still in the military and from this we know why he hits the road to be the prototypical loner. Lee Child writes about a lot of events that don't move the plot, but help us to understand Reacher better. That could have been distracting, but as a fan I liked that. Funny, I hadn't thought about this being called The Enemy. I guess it refers to the old line "I've met the enemey and he is us." Reacher does have an issue in the book trying to figure out who the real bad guys are and why. I liked it.

And now the Civil War is truely over. Battle Cry of Freedom is an excellent book. That's not just my opinion. It did win the Pulitzer Prize, after all. McPherson starts with a long ramp up to the war, explaining all the factors that were involved with the disagreements between the North and the South. He covers much of the same information that I had read in The Waking Giant. Only this is better written. Points like the super-religiosity of the era are not belabored. But you can see how this whole fundamentalist streak has plagued us for more than a century. Battles are mentioned but not written about in the detail of the Foote books. That is actually a good thing. My suggestion is that you read this book if you want to know about that period.