TV

5 Things — Distractions

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Dr. Tanya, over at Salted Caramel, has this prompt called “5 Things,” where she asks us to list five things about a particular topic. For this week’s topic, she wants to know what five things distract us from blogging.

Tanya said that she began the draft for this post way back in August 2022. And if she had posted it back then, my answers would be very different than they are today, since the first five months of 2023 have been a whole different ballgame for me personally.

Prior to this past January, the most significant injury I had was when I tore my Achilles tendon in my right ankle while playing basketball and had to have surgery to repair the tendon. I remember the pain of the injury and having my leg in a cast for six weeks after the surgery and having use to crutches and even a few weeks of physical therapy after the cast was removed. But even with all that, I was back at work and doing fine within a week of the surgery.

Of course, I was 30 years younger then than I am now, but five months ago I fractured my hip and had emergency partial hip replacement surgery. I was shocked at how that drained my energy. I continued to post a little, but way less than usual because I just didn’t have the energy. And even today, I still don’t have the same energy I had before the accident.

So distraction number 1 is a lack of energy.

Distraction number 2 is going to physical therapy three times a week and spending at least two hours each day at home doing my rehab exercises.

Distraction number 3 is watching TV, especially when we watch a streaming channel like Netflix, which often releases a whole series season on a single date. I’ll start out watch the first episode and eight hours later I realize that I watched the entire season in one sitting. Now I have wait 18 to 24 months for season two. And by the time that comes out I will have completely forgotten what happened in the first season and have to binge watch that all over again.

Distraction number 4 is sleeping. If I didn’t have to sleep at night and occasionally take a nap or two during the day, I’d be able to have more time to dedicate to blogging.

Distraction number 5 is spending quality time with our dog, who hates to be ignored and demands a lot of attention.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — January 13th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 13th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on January 13, 2018.

A Look Back at Static

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How many of you are old enough to remember seeing static on your television screen? That is often what you saw if you turned on the TV after the stations had signed off for the night or before they signed on in the morning. (Yes, kiddies, there was a time many, many years ago when TV channels weren’t 24×7.)

Or, seeing static on your TV screen meant that you needed to get your ass up and out of your easy chair or off the sofa, walk over to the TV, and fiddle with the rabbit ears until a viewable image appeared.

Remember rabbit ears?

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And then there were those times when you were at home or in your car trying to tune into your favorite AM radio station and all you could get was static, no matter how frantically you turned the knob in search of some familiar music.

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Of course, this reminds me of the Steely Dan song “FM (No Static At All).”

And finally, how many times were you on the phone and heard crackling or hissing noises and had to say to the person on the other end of the line, “Let me call you back. There’s too much static.”

And that, my friends, is all I have to say about static today.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “static.”

Share Your World — 08/29/2022

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Share Your World

Di, at Pensitivity101, continues to serve as our host for Share Your World while Melanie, at Sparks from a Combustible Mind, continues her recuperation.

1. Which of the following could you do without? TV, Computer, Mobile Phone.

I definitely could not do without my mobile phone. I can watch TV shows and movies on it, so I could get by without a TV. And there’s not that much that I do on my computer that I can’t also do on my mobile phone.

2. Do you have a lot of old photographs in a box, or did you put them in albums?

We have tons of old photos in boxes in the closet of our guest room. None are in albums. Of course, pretty much all of the photos I’ve taken over the past 15 years (at least) are digital and are stored either on my laptop’s hard drive, on my iPhone, or in the iPhone cloud (iCloud), which backs up virtually everything on my iPhone.

3. What was the first thing you bought for yourself when you started work?

I have absolutely no idea. Possibly some comic books or five baseball cards that came packaged with a piece of stale bubblegum.

4. What is the biggest thing you have bought that did not require finance?

I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

Gratitude

My Last Photo — May ‘22

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Brian, aka Bushboy, posted his monthly Last on the Card prompt, where he asks us to…

  • Post the last photo from your camera’s SD card or the last photo from your phone taken in May.
  • No editing — who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like, or the subject matter didn’t cooperate?
  • No explanations needed — just the photo will do.
  • Create a pingback to Brian’s post or link in the comments.
  • Tag “The Last Photo.”

So here’s the last photo I took on my iPhone in May.

This error message showed up on my TV screen yesterday afternoon while my wife and I were streaming a show on Discovery+. I took this photo on my iPhone so that I could have it handy while following the step-by-step instructions. It worked, and a few minutes later, the show we were watching was back on.

Sandman Wants to Know

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Sandman, over at The Jazzocracy, posed four interesting questions today and I thought it might be fun to take a moment or two to answer them.

Do you believe in Ghosts and/or a Spirit World?

Sandman prefaced his own answer to this question by writing, “Now some of you might expect that this will be a simple yes or no answer, but I don’t think it is.” Well, I disagree with Sandman. I think it is a simple yes or no question. And the answer is “no.”

I don’t believe that God exists except in the minds and imaginations of men and women. I don’t believe there is an afterlife, or in heaven or hell. I believe that when we die, we no longer exist in any way, shape, or form. So given that, I can’t possibly believe in ghosts or in a spirit world. You should all feel free to believe whatever floats your boat, but for me, the answer is an emphatic “no.”

Who is your favorite literary Detective?

My favorite literary detective is Fred Morrisey. What’s that? You never heard of him? Allow me to introduce you to the crack detective, Fred Morrisey. Go to the top of my blog and, in the Search bar, type in “Morrisey.”

Should a film or TV adaption of a book deviate from the source material? Why?

It would be nice if a film or TV adaptation could stay true to the source book. However, especially when it comes to movies, which often have to try to cram a 400+ page book into less than two hours on the big screen, compromises must be made. It might be easier for a multi-episode TV series, where the book’s material can be spread over four, eight, or more episodes, to not have to significantly pare down the original material.

The other issue I have with movie and TV adaptations is when they deviate in character or venue from what I saw in my mind’s eye when I read the book. That can be a bit off-putting.

Would you ‘video’ yourself and your partner?

I have to admit that back in the day, when we lived in New Jersey and our kids were very young, my wife and I would occasionally take long weekend trips to the Pocanos in Pennsylvania, home to a number of so-called “romantic getaway” resorts.

And I will also admit that I would pack up my clunky VHS camera and when we got to our room, I would mount the camera on a tripod, press record, and video tape our “romantic getaway.”

It was fun, but once our kids got old enough to figure out how to insert a VHS tape into our video tape deck, we destroyed those tapes. But the memories linger to this day.