Ponderings and Musings

I haven’t been out of the house since our return from Anaheim on Monday. I’m still feeling the effects of COVID; I’m doing my best to remain distant from everyone else in the family. I would feel awful if they got sick and so far everyone seems to be maintaining their health.

I’m feeling better than I did yesterday but nowhere near 100%. I haven’t had a fever, I’ve just felt run down and very winded climbing the stairs and basically ambulating around the house. I cough and sneeze a lot.

I would say my recovery is headed in the right direction. And that’s all I can hope for right now.

I like watching old sitcoms. I haven’t watched a lot of “Hazel” in my day. “Hazel” ran for five seasons in the early half of the 1960s, was based on a comic strip of the same name, and starred Shirley Booth in title character. I’ve seen episodes here and there and I watched one on YouTube earlier today. Hazel purposely lost a baking contest so the other woman, a widow, could take her son to the World’s Fair (the grand prize of the baking contest). It had all the charm of early 1960s sitcoms and it made me smile.

I got to poking around to see if I could find out a little bit more about Shirley Booth and I came across this interview with Dick Cavett. It took place in 1971, so Shirley was around 73 years old at the time. I found her to be a delight, so pleasant.

As I get older I tend to appreciate these interviews from days gone by more and more.

Yesterday morning, waking up at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel and readying ourselves for the ride home across the desert, I felt sniffly. I had a little post nasal drip and a bit of a headache. I took a couple Tylenol and we made our way home for the 450+ miles from Anaheim to Tucson. I went to bed rather early last night.

I didn’t get much sleep.

I woke up this morning feeling more of the same except a little more intense. Having just been away from work for four days, and since I work from home anyways, I dragged myself downstairs to my office and got to work. I took a couple more Tylenol. I checked my temperature as well, and it was within normal range (admittedly, slightly high for me at 98.1 DEG F, I usually clock in around 97 DEG F).

The sniffles have continued and I feel dragged out. On a whim I tested myself for COVID.

Yep, I have COVID again. No one else in the family is sick and Earl tested negative for COVID, so I’m staying away from everyone else. Apparently I didn’t mask up enough or the elevators were too crowded or someone breathed the wrong way on the Pirates of the Caribbean or something.

I don’t feel awful. I don’t feel as bad as the last time I had COVID. But I’m kind of bummed that’s I’m going through this again. I’m thankful for my original vaccine shots and two boosters since. It’s probably helping keep things under control.

The pandemic is not over. I know we like to believe it’s over, but it’s not. Be careful out there, act responsibly, and most importantly, get vaccinated. I’m probably not in the hospital tonight because of my vaccinations. I hope I get better soon.

Work has been incredibly busy again and I’ve been absolutely drained of energy at the end of the workday. Luckily, we have a mini-vacation coming up for the latter half of this week.

I am always fascinated by extra on television shows. If I’ve had a couple of drinks and start watching old sitcoms, I’ll see an extra doing their thing in the background and start to wonder about who they are. How did the end up as an extra? Did they get their big break and end up front and center on the stage? Are they a friend of the casting director or the producer or something?

The handsome gentlemen seen in this screen capture appears in the fifth season episode of “Designing Women” called “Miss Trial”. He’s one of the jurors being abused by Julia who has been sequestered with the other jurors on a trial after being reported by Charlene to the judge for not doing what she was suppose to do as a juror.

Admittedly, the guy garnered my attention because he’s quite attractive, even by my standards back in 1990.

I searched IMDB but didn’t find out a thing about him. He’s not listed in the “all cast and crew” section so I don’t know who he is. But as a favor to this unknown background extra I posted his photo on IMDB. Maybe someone will provide a name someday.

I think part of my interest in these background extras comes from my days in high school theatre when I would end up in the chorus or one of Mame’s random party guests while singing “It’s Today” or something. Light the candles, fill the punchbowl, throw confetti, it’s today!

Now that SCOTUS has ruled that teachers can lead classrooms in prayer, does that include Islamic practices? Wiccan practices? Jewish practices? Will those students of non-Christian faith be allowed the same amount of time and attention so they can pray in front of the school? Classes are going to get very long if teachers start a prayer and then need to address the diversity in their classroom. I can barely sit through anything Canadian being done in both English and French. I guess the students will need to skip study hall or something. For the record, I have absolutely no problem with your relationship with your beliefs or your faith. I have my own relationship with my faith and quite frankly it’s none of your business. If you find comfort in prayer, yes, absolutely pray. I never learned that it had to be done in front of everyone to get the message through.

I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.

It seems nearly 11 years later, Facebook and other marketing mechanisms have figured out that my Dad died in 2011. I didn’t get any “buy this for Father’s Day!” marketing notifications during this gift giving season, in fact, I didn’t really remember it was Father’s Day until personal tributes and photos and the like started appearing on Facebook at the beginning of the weekend.

If Dad was still alive, I’d probably take him up in an airplane with me in the left seat and him in the right seat and we’d talk about us both being pilots and we’d have big grins on our faces.

I never got to do that.

I still maintain that a good chunk of my moral foundation I learned as a kid came from the “Shazam/Isis Hour”! I paid very close attention when JoAnna Cameron spoke directly to the camera as Isis. These little lessons at the end of every episode, and their counterparts after “Shazam!”, definitely lent to who I am today.