March 2, 2014

  • Chronicling

    What I'd LOVE to do today is sit back and watch to see if Rory McIlroy wins the Honda Classic (Tiger Woods is almost in the hunt, but he'd need to shoot like a 62 and hope Rory can't break par.  Not likely) and then watch the Academy Awards in their entirety (and OMG could I even get the day off tomorrow so I can sleep late?  Dream on) but, since one of my three full-time jobs (down from five; I'm through with political campaigns and Xanga is no longer a full-time job) is keeping up with darling wife Barbara, I feel compelled to chronicle the last several days.

    You see, my normal routine is to enjoy a hectic weekend with Barbara, doing this and that and this and that, and then going back to work on Monday to rest up.

    Alas, work is no longer restful (stay tuned for what I say later about Friday as in two days ago Friday) so I'm feeling even more harried than usual.

    So let's start this chronicle with the fact that Barbara took Thursday off of work and asked me to do the same (not really a problem since my NEW work schedule has me off on Thursdays and working MTW_F) so that we could take a river tour out of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (check), have lunch at the HBOI cafe (check), hurry home for a nap so that we could go to a lecture about Black Holes and why they're important (check), let the wine and hors d'oeuvres at the Black Holes lecture serve as dinner so that we could scurry back to Harbor Branch for yet another lecture -- this by the scientists who are working on the archaeological dig right here in Vero Beach, where the oldest human fossil bones have been discovered (we call him Vero Man but it could be Vero Woman) (check) and if you're paying attention you know we went right from Black Hole to Brown Hole.

    Kind of in a hurry to get home Thursday night after all of that because I had to get up early to get to work on Friday where -- the big event of the day was two visitors being stuck in an elevator betwen floors for about an hour and it's a long long story why it took so long for the tech from the elevator company to get to the hospital to get the couple out of the elevator and Tom's boss waited until close to quitting time before demanding a full written account of the event (as if I hadn't already put enough on our daily log to cover the event thoroughly) and would you believe?  After five minutes of mad typing every single one of my couple of hundred words disappeared from the screen without a reason.  So I tried again, switching from Word Pad to email -- and the same damn thing happened.  All my work vanished into the ether.  So I rushed down to the big boss's office and he wasn't even there but his secretary was so I dictated from memory what I'd typed earlier and she was able to get it into the files without HER computer crashing.

    That's another long long story, why the cheapskates where I work have such lousy computers.  I'll get fired if I say what I'm thinking.

    So that was Friday.  Oh, about five minutes after I got home (close to an hour late, because of the computer problem), Barbara wanted me to go to some Zora Neale Hurston dinner and I begged off and stayed home and relaxed because Saturday would be a big day.

    Right.  No rest.  Ever.

    Saturday we showed up at a Mardi Gras celebration where our friend Sybil Gage would be singing and while the pictures haven't shown up on Facebook yet, I believe they will.  I'm the "Bob Lipton" with the big dog and the little baby for an avatar.

    So we were there from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. and it took an hour to get home and now it's Sunday and I get to watch a LITTLE golf before going to Rita's house for dinner, followed by a concert given by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and so I'm TAPING the Academy Awards for later in the week.

    I'm anxious to see Cate Blanchett and Jared Leto win Best Actress and Supporting Actor awards.  I feel good about those predictions but my personal favorites for Best Actor and Supporting Actress are Chiwetel Ejiafor and Julia Roberts and I'm predicting the winners will be Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lawrence, respectively.   This is definitely the most outstanding year for motion pictures in my lifetime.  I've seen eight of the nine nominated for Best Movie (all but "Her") and they're all magnificent.  And just about all of the nominated acting performances, and THEY were all magnificent.  It's a shame there have to be "losers" at the Academy Awards.  They're all winners in my book.

    Best picture's a real tossup.  "12 Years a Slave" is my fave by an eyelash over "American Hustle" and I'm predicting, again by an eyelash, the reverse of those two.  In other words, I predict "American Hustle" will win for Best Picture.  "Gravity" is considered to be one of the three front-runners with the two I mentioned.  It was an amazing accomplishment, but I rank "Gravity" below the other two for greatness.

Comments (4)

  • The young kid Luke Guthrie who played yesterday and will play again today with Tiger is from Quincy. We are all so proud of him.
    Hope you get to watch the entire Oscar program. I will be tuned in to PBS to watch Downton Abbey. Since I don't watch too many movies or go to the movie theatre, I don't know the movies that are being singled out.
    Hope you can sleep in tomorrow.

  • I never could get interested in the Oscars....
    Nor, Academy Awards, Nor the Grammy's....I'm just so out of there, when they're being televised.....

  • It has been a great year in film!
    It was nice to see Blanchett and Leto win. Also, McConaughey. I was hoping Streep would win for August: Oasage County. I got to see several of the nominated films...hope to see some more of them on DVD.

    I hope you had a great weekend!
    HUGS!!! :-)

  • Did you watch Tiger walking away because of pain in his lower back? I didn't see that, but Luke said that he came over and shook his hand and apologized. Luke had to finish it all by himself. Too bad that he didn't keep his earlier lead.
    You lead a very busy life Bob.

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment