Howdy gentle readers. And speaking of reading, here's what I've finished since the previous blog post:
The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City by Kevin Baker (2024)
City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich (1986)
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (2024)
Good Bones: Glorious Relics from the Age of Reading by Brooke Allen (2025)
Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem (1994)
I can recommend all of the above. The first two are histories chock full of details. The Osman is a fun mystery written by an Englishman, first in a planned series. Good Bones is a collection of essays on mostly forgotten but significant-in-their-time writers. The Lethem novel is his debut, hard-boiled and humorous dystopian noir science fiction.
Also since last blogging, I've started taking three different drugs: for diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. I'm also supposed to be getting a topical ointment (cream?) for a toenail fungal infection, but there's currently a tussle over whether my insurance will pay for it. Colonoscopy, check! They found and completely removed three polyps, none of which had abnormalities. Re-do in five years. Later this week I'll get my first eye exam since 2022, and quite possibly new prescriptions for eyeglasses and contacts.
The blood pressure medicine works eerily fast. I took the first pill in the evening, and by noon the next day, my systolic number was down 20 points.
Our gas fireplace inserts got ordered two weeks ago, and now we're just waiting. We're hoping installation will happen within a month. Our kitties can't wait!
We've had a couple movie nights over the last two weekends, and we watched all-time faves Desperately Seeking Susan and Napoleon Dynamite.
Maybe that's enough for now. Thank you for reading.