A quiet grin and a twinkle

Are people thinking they clicked on to the wrong blog? Hey, you, over there! Seen Ocean lately? Yeah, same old, same old… No no, really, check it out today: the post title is: a quiet grin and a twinkle.

So it’s been pretty much that kind of a 24 hours, what can I say.

In anticipation of my leaving Madison tomorrow, I got things done today – that in itself deserves a ten minute standing ovation, because it has been rare this summer for me to get things done.

True, the show that y’all had me watch with you tonight was sort of kind of sad, rather than funny (sorry! okay okay, I’ll give it another chance! I understand the subtleties, I do, but it was still sad*), and there were storms in the morning and bills had to be paid -- all ready ingredients for a curl-up-and-sob moment.

But I’m sifting and sorting through the hours and they come out on balance in this direction: ahhhhh (rather than ohhhhh).

(Not a small part of it has to do with the fact that tomorrow I will be with my daughters out on the east coast.)

I also did head out to check on the apartment that will be my home in just a few weeks. I think they are making progress! I do! Like, the sink is in, the spotlight lamps are dangling from the old beamed ceiling, the graffiti on the outside has been (pretty much) blasted away.

Tobacco lofts. That’s the name of the place. Me and tobacco, tobacco and I. A funny and clever combination. Yeah.

enter this way

lofty inside


* The Comeback

this day's storms

What a difference a cloud (in one's day) makes… For example:


before noon ... and after noon

Where a highly competent individual who has managed complicated moves and even changes in citizenship cannot figure out how to set the AC in her house

Because I am away from the house at times when it is sometimes opened up for a real estate tour, I need to not only keep it immaculate (bummer! though it never fails to impress anyone dropping by – so clean! – they say, at once telling me that they themselves live in slovenly rat holes because it is not that off the charts tidy). I also need to keep it cool.

As I am continuing with My Summer Without Air Conditioning and Without Car, I do not normally resort to tampering with their mechanical configurations and idiosyncrasies. I basically ignore them and they ignore me right back.

So when I finally was forced to preset the AC timer so that it would miraculously flip on and spread its icy nets over the cavernous expanse of the house in my absence, I was surprised that it made no sense. It is a new timer, put in just a handful of month ago. I set the day. The hour. The temperature. And when the day and the hour come around, it automatically, out of spite I guess, flips up to 85 and stays there.

Normally I would not even notice. 85, 75 – what’s the diff. So long as it is not 65, I am happy. But people touring the place may think that it is a tad on the overheated side. And I definitely want to place them in the buying mode, not the frying mode.

Incompetence, especially my own, bothers me. I like to believe that if thrown out into a lion’s den I will figure out a way to cope with the onslaught of big fangs and sharp claws. Someone recently told me that I do well with new things and places. They are right. The fact that I cannot deal with a new thermostat control is, therefore, so irritating that I swear it will prove to be the proverbial straw. If you next find me moronically sitting in a corner, chewing on a shirtsleeve and singing nursery rhymes over and over you’ll know why. It was Mr. AC, in the parlor, with a control panel.

...blackbird has spoken like the first bird

It is so late… So late that it is no longer Tonya's birthday;

contemplating

Time to make even more changes.

Let’s begin with a new photo for the sidebar. Ann,

skeptical


did you take this one of the Ocean author?


with a latte...

Thanks.