Truman was slightly annoyed with the change in routine while were in California. Mike did a great job of tending to Truman needs, but there was no one to loudly arouse from slumber at dawn.
He’s now back on his routine and purrs with happiness.
Make That Move.
Back in my radio days in the 1990s we programmed a weekend of “The Top 500 dance songs of all time”. It turned out to be very popular and we received a lot of positive feedback from listeners on the promotion, but it wasn’t very easy to pull off in the small studio. We were playing music off CD at the time and a lot of the tracks were were looking for hadn’t been released on CD yet. Record company reps thought we were a little crazy for a Top 40 Rhythmic/Dance station to focus on “oldies” for an entire weekend, but ultimately it was a lot of fun. We ended up downloading a handful of tracks over Napster (and subsequently burned them to CD) and playing a bunch of vinyl I had found in the basement of the gay bar I DJ’d at at the time. I borrowed a couple of Technics MK1200 turntables from a DJ friend and wired them into the studio for the weekend. We ended up using a list from a now long-gone Los Angeles radio station (I think it was called Groove 100?) that we found on the a Geocities site; we took their top list and just played the 500 songs we could muster together in order. It took quite a few weeks to put this all together. I wish I had kept the list and I wish I had recorded the weekend because it was a lot of fun playing tracks outside of the usual music rotation. It was 1999 and I had modeled our station after “103.5 The New KTU” in New York, which improved ratings enough to garner enough revenue to make the station financials strong enough for the owners to sell the station for a hefty profit.
Anyway, one of the songs we had a really hard time finding but ultimately ended up being played from a vinyl copy was from 1981. “Make That Move” by Shalamar came after “Second Time Around” and has a similar vibe.
Here’s an abbreviated version from their appearance on “Dance Fever” with Denny Terio.
Recovery.
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.
Nostalgia.
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.
Round Two.
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.
Twilight World.
Don’t be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts, don’t give into the Twilight World.
I miss real music.
Drive.
This was the drive out on Wednesday.
The drive home was pretty much the same, though Apple Maps had us take I-10 all the way from Palm Springs, “Indio and other desert cities” to Tucson.
The drive was not unpleasant either way.
RIP Uhura.
Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols passed away yesterday. She was 89 years old.
She wanted to leave “Star Trek” after the first season, but a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. She later volunteered her time to NASA, promoting their programs in the name of diversity to encourage minority and female astronauts.
Thank you, Nichelle, for keeping us your captive audience for so many years.
Hidden Infrastructure.
One of the things that has always fascinated me about Walt Disney World is the way the Disney company hides the vast majority of its critical infrastructure. The Magic Kingdom is built on top of a complex system of corridors to manage the movement of cast members and goods and the like. There’s no power lines. It’s very rare to see a cast member going to or from work.
Disneyland doesn’t work that way.
Because it’s older, and Walt Disney World was built based on the lessons learned of Disneyland, mainly the importance of space, you see elements of Disney’s infrastructure all over Disneyland. This isn’t a bad thing, it just distracts from the ability to “escape the real world” and doesn’t accomplish that task as well as the Orlando property.
For example, there’s two circuits of 220K volt power lines bordering the Disneyland property, right behind many of the rides in Disney’s California Adventure. Disney does their best to hide them, but you can still see them.
I do appreciate that Disney tries to hide them behind some palm trees, though.
