NO News is Good News

Laura's 21st Birthday Surprise 1983

This week while rearranging things I found the cassette container which contained the cassette tape I made for Laura for her 21st birthday.  It brought back a lot of memories.  So, I listened to it again.  I had made that over winter break and brought it back to Swarthmore. It contains a lot of good songs from my albums plus some I borrowed from the library.

A Side

Birthday - The Beatles -  The Beatles (White Album) (1968) Couldn't have a birthday tape without this
Lady from the USA - Bram Tchaikovsky - Strange Man, Changed Man (1979)
California Girls - The Beach Boys - Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (1965)
It's A Beautiful Day - The Beach Boys (1979)  Probably from the Ten Years of Harmony compilation.

Alone Again Or - Love - Forever Changes  (1967)
Without You - Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson (1971)
Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
My Best Friend - Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
You're My Best Friend - Queen - A Night at the Opera (1975)
And if I had access to A Day at the Races at the time, I would have finished this section with Queen's Somebody to Love.

A Girl Like You -The Rascals (1967) From Time-Peace
If Sugar Was As Sweet As You - Rockpile - Seconds of Pleasure (1980)
Heart - Rockpile - Seconds of Pleasure (1980)
You Ain't Nothin' But Fine - Rockpile - Seconds of Pleasure (1980)
(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear - Elvis Presley  (1957)
Love Is a Beautiful Thing -The Rascals (1968) From Time-Peace
Lovin' You - The Lovin' Spoonful (1966 )

B Side

Tonight - The Move - Split Ends (1971)
Tonight - The Raspberries (1973 )
Ecstasy - The Raspberries  (1973)
Squeeze Box - The Who - The Who by Numbers (1975)
Angel Fingers (A Teen Ballad) -Wizzard (1973)
Good Lovin' - The Rascals (1966) From Time-Peace
Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys - Smiley Smile (1967)

David Watts - The Kinks -  Something Else by The Kinks (1967)
Do You Believe in Magic - The Lovin' Spoonful (1965 )
I'm a Believer - The Monkees - More of the Monkees (1967 )
Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)
Let the Good Times Roll - Harry Nilsson  - Nilsson Schmilsson (1971)
Girl of My Dreams  - Bram Tchaikovsky - Strange Man, Changed Man (1979)
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks -  Something Else by The Kinks (1967)  I was compelled to include this song.
Better Things - The Kinks -  Give the People What They Want (1981)

Labels: family

Tote of the Week - National Zoo

When renewing our Friends of the National Zoo membership, we were told that by bringing in the upper part of the letter on our next visit we can get a new tote bag.  It has been a long time since we have successfully visited the Zoo, but we made it in this time I picked up the tote bag.

We went this time for Zoo Lights.  It was nominally members week for Zoo Lights, which meant that members could get free parking on site this week instead of paying $25, which is what it will be all the other weeks of the event.  As it turned out, when we arrived the parking lot was full.  We managed to find parking on the street about 0.7 miles away and then walked there.

The light displays were very impressive, especially the new animal lanterns. My photo album of our trip is on FB.

I think the last time we tried to go the Zoo was August 8, 2017 and on that date as well the parking lot was full and we just continued on to DC and visited some memorials.

It has been an even longer time since we actually saw some animals at the zoo.  We will have to try again someday.

Labels: family, tote bag of the week

Mug of the Week - Father's Day 2013

I received this from Alan and Rachel in 2013 for Father's Day. It is a great compilation of photos of them over the years until then.  A few of the photos a falling down, but it just great and brings back loads of memories.

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week - WYST

I went to Worldcon on August 15 and was back to work on the the 23rd.  Since those two weeks were partials, I didn't change mugs until the 27th.  Before that I was using my Sunny Afternoon mug.  I wrote about that on August 29, 2016.

We used to be members of the Maryland Science Center. They had a Halloween Costume Contest during that time and Laura went to great effort to make herself and myself costumes.  One of the prizes one of the year was 2 WYST mugs.  I don't think we ever listened to that Baltimore station and it doesn't exist as such anymore (and hasn't since August 1991).  WERQ now has that frequency.

The handle of one of the mugs broke as I brought it into work one day and the bag hit the door into work.  We tried to glue it back on and that worked for a while until someone put a hot tea in it and it fell off and the mug shattered on the floor.  So, we just have this remaining mug.

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week - Ballenberg

I first wrote about this on August 15, 2016.  I believe I linked to a photo I had taken, but it appears some Facebook photo links expire.  This was part of a great family vacation.  I have a link to the photo album for that visit when I first wrote about it,

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week - Pittsburgh

Alan bought this mug for me during one of his visits to Pittsburgh to visit his cousins.  It is a pretty cool fancy mug. 

Strangely enough on July 13, I went to the major league baseball All-Star Game fan fest in DC and there was a Roberto Clemente display there. My album from the fan fest is here.  I had a great time at the fan fest. 

Labels: family, mug of the week, sports

Mug of the Week - Father's Day Gift from Rachel

I wrote about this mug back on October 6, 2003.  I briefly described it at the time.  It was a few years old back then. As can be seen it is from a design-a-mug kit. 

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week - Swarthmore Class of 2017

This week I used this Swarthmore College mug.  Alan received this mug when he visited Swarthmore when he was visiting college in 2012 or 2013.  Had he gone to Swarthmore, he would have been part of their class of 2017.  Instead he went to Colby College in Maine. 

He is now at graduate school at the University of Iowa. 

The phoenix is one of the symbols of Swarthmore and the school newspaper is The Phoenix. 

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week - Washington Redskins

This week I brought in this Washington Redskins mug that used to be at my parents' house in Connecticut.  I don't recall just whose mug it was.  Our family followed both the Redskins and the Colts. I now follow both the Redskins and the Ravens, though when they are playing each other I prefer the Ravens.  My father was a big fan of the Redskins and I remember him telling me some tales in the past about Sammy Baugh, who was one of the great Redskins players of my father's youth.

Labels: family, mug of the week, sports

Desktop of the Week - Doctor Who - Extremis

This week I used the Stuart Manning retro poster for the 6th episode of the 10th series of Doctor Who - Extremis.  This was quite a different sort of episode.  Most of the episode was inside a computer simulation introducing the bad guys of the next two episodes.  The Doctor is trying to cope with the blindness that occurred during the events of Oxygen.  This poses the question of what would you do if you discovered that you were in a computer simulation?

Events in the simulation are contrasted with a flashback telling us just why the Doctor has been guarding a mysterious vault for many years and just who is inside it.

(I watched the episode again with my son, Alan, and he had some comments about the depiction of CERN there: He says they should have said "Restaurant 1" instead of cafeteria. Also, there are ~11,000 people there. A good imitation, but no place he knows looks like the sets in the show.

The BBC Fact File is here.

Podcasts I listened to about the episode:
Verity!
Don't Blink  (I gave this episode of Doctor Who a rating of 9 out of 10 Shadow Tests on the Don't Blink Facebook page)
Radio Free Skaro

Labels: desktop, Doctor Who, family, TV

Mug of the Week - Dubrovnik

This week I am using another mug from our trip to Europe. I got this on our stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia.  I have a whole bunch of photos from the trip on Facebook here. We had a great time on the trip. One of the highlights was walking the city walls of Dubrovnik.

Labels: family, mug of the week

Mug of the Week

Ending this week and using next week this mug I bought in Kotor, Montenegro. We had a fun time. My photos from our day at Kotor are here on Facebook.

Labels: family, mug of the week

My Father's Birthday

Today is my father's birthday. Here is where I posted what I said and links to what others said at his remembrance. To the right is a picture he or my mother sent to me in 2007. I am wearing on his shirts today.

Labels: family

Blizzard and Power Outage

The blizzard hit hard here with about 17 inches Friday to Saturday and 1 to 3 more inches or so on Saturday. I have photos on facebook here (from Saturday) and here (mostly from Sunday). It wasn't all that bad until about 12:35 when the power went out. I raced down the stairs to get BGE's phone number to report the outage. Unfortunately, I slipped on a stair and did something to my left leg. It doesn't bend very well and has been in pain since then. Clearing snow has been even harder than usual. All three of us went to work today and we cleared enough room to get the Prizm out and maybe the Prius as well.

We nominally have the temperature set to 72 degrees while we are home. It was 70 degrees by 1:50 PM, 66 degrees by 4:57 PM, 64 degrees by 6:45 PM and this morning it was down to 52 degrees inside the house. At 5:10 PM I called BGE to see what the progress on restoring power was. At that time they said 34,000 were without service. At 6:40 PM it was 29,000; at 10:10 PM it was 21,000; at 3 AM it was 17,500; and 1 PM today it was 15,000. At that time they estimated we would have our power back by 3:30 PM. It came back at 3:15 PM.

Without power yesterday afternoon we made do with playing a few games of Settlers of Catan.

Labels: family

Happy Birthday Alan!

Labels: family

Mug of the Week - Emerson College Dad

My first new mug in a while. Rachel bought me this for Christmas. I'm drinking out of it this week at work.

Labels: family, mug of the week

Sleeping in Light

I just watched the Babylon 5 episode "Sleeping in Light." I'd been thinking about watching it for the past month, not quite knowing how it would affect me. It was powerful, but good to see. Lots of memories. The comment about the Sunday drive brought back a lot of memories of my father driving us around at times. It originally aired November 25, 1998 and I remember watching it with a group. Very, very powerful.

Labels: family

Desktop of the Week - Dad at Sports Legends

From Baltimore 2009-01-24

This week I went to my January 24 visit to Baltimore photo album and picked out a picture of my Dad standing in the Sports Legends museum at Camden Yards. We had a good trip to Baltimore that day with Uncle Larry joining us as well.

Labels: desktop, family

Talking About My Father

I can't completely reproduce what I said about my father at the Memorial Service on Sunday as I just had a list of things and talked about him off the top of my head. Still, I will attempt to recreate some of it. I might add some new remarks that come to me while writing here.

I wrote down a few things about my father over the past few days. I'll start with Baltimore which was always important to him. There was a love for the Baltimore Colts. He also showed his love of Baltimore by sharing the Barry Levinson films with us - Diner, Avalon, and others. He took me to see the Baltimore Orioles in Yankee Stadium when they were the best team in baseball.

There is also Washington DC and his tales of the Redskins of old and his love of them as we grew up. Speaking of growing up, just as Robert mentioned, he would take us on trips to places that he called a "New Dimension in Retailing." I'll always remember that phrase. Another phrase that comes to mind is when we lived in Maryland we would go on trips "House Hunting."

His love of books was most brought out by his sharing Flatland with us. This also helped inspire a love of mathematics in me. He introduced me to Swarthmore College, where I met my wife Laura.

His love of storytelling was brought out by sharing The News From Lake Wobegon from A Prairie Home Companion. We'd often listen to it on Saturday evenings.

[In another post I put down what I wrote on the Daily Show and Colbert Report Facebook pages. What I said at this point in the Memorial Service is similar to that, but slightly different and I think goes like the following:]
He always watched the evening news. He would sit down in his chair after work with his martini and watch it. Then after that News we would usually watch the 7 PM News at dinner. He continued to do so after retirement. In recent years his routine included watching The Daily Show at 7 PM and The Colbert Report at 7:30 PM. I independently also watched these. These shows brought a great deal of delight to him. While visiting with him in September I could see how much enjoyed the shows. Friday night while watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report I could just "see" him sitting in his chair watching along with me.

He had a love of movies. He brought the whole family to see Blazing Saddles. That was hilarious and I could see him laughing uproariously. I remember him taking us to see 2001: A Space Odyssey on rerelease at the Darien Theater. We would watch the James Bond movies whenever they were on television. (He also had the soundtrack album on LP that had many of the themes to the James Bond movies and I remember fondly listening to that many times. I remember him pointed out the track "Red Eyed Rats".) I remember him introducing The Prisoner to me when that was shown on PBS.

I was into Monty Python before he was. (It was my Grandma Rosie who took me to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) He grew to enjoy Monty Python and bought their albums. He asked me to get him figures of characters from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as gifts.

As a family we would play Hearts. Dad would always have a special delight went he "went to the Moon" in the game.

Robert already talked about his love of music. Some music I remember was his delight in introducing us to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP back in Maryland. He enjoyed The Doors, the Who. (I remember him introducing The Who's rock opera Tommy to us.) He introduced the Moody Blues to us with Days of Future Passed and This Is the Moody Blues.

I'd like to read to you the first two verses of Days by the Kinks' Ray Davies

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that lights on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.

-------------------------

Robert's speech is here
My cousin Jason's speech is here
and Dad's cousin Aileen's is here

Jason refers to an article my Dad sent to the Financial Times. I wrote briefly about that on December 22, 2003. Here is an image of the letter.

Photos from last weekend at my parents' house and the memorial service are here.

Labels: family

He Brought Me the Moody Blues

Here is a tribute to my father that I sent into the Lost Chords mailing list on November 20.

I was looking at my father's CDs this evening and saw Strange Times there (just like in the past I used to look at his LPs on the shelf and saw many Moody Blues albums). I can't remember whether I bought it for him or just convinced him to get it for himself. I do remember him extolling the virtues of Days of Future Passed and This Is the Moody Blues in my youth. He really was quite impressive praising them back then. He loved classical music a lot more than rock, but The Moody Blues brought us all together. They were important to all of us.

Until a few months ago it had been quite a good year for my parents. They had a good 50th anniversary, went on a cruise and everything was going quite well. Then illness hit and he some jaundice. After a stent was put in he was almost back to normal. Or so it seemed. I had a great trip here in September and it looked like things might turn around. Then he got some breathing problems right before his first chemo treatment. Still, my mother said that he had one of his best nights since he started chemo on Wednesday night. Everything went so fast on Thursday. My mother called while we were eating dinner. We really did need to leave when we did that evening to make it here in time. We brought along my aunt. He wasn't all that responsive in the hospital, but we were told he could tell we were there. Rachel came down on the train from Boston. She and Alan were really great with him during the night.

I didn't mention my father's illness over here but some of you knew from other conversations. Thanks for all your good wishes. My father died at 9:20 AM this morning from complications related to pancreatic cancer. He brought me the Moody Blues.

Neil

Labels: family