Ready to go back to bed

[bill_schubert]

Part of it is the rain and return of dreary winter weather, I'm sure.  Part of it is the high mold content which is one of my allergy triggers.  And part of it is for two nights I've not slept well.  Absolutely no reason, just woke up after three hours of sleep and couldn't go back to sleep.

Fitbit agrees with me although it is impressed at how much I walked this week.

I just got back from walking Zoe and I'm ready for a nap.  It is 9:20. If I go back to bed this early it is more like extending my sleep from the night.

There is nothing I have to do today.  Maybe go by the store and pick up dinner.  Or send Dana and go back to bed.  

The grass is too wet to cut but with all the rain it will be ready as soon as it dries out.

We received our house appraisal yesterday.  The appraisal it exactly 10% more than last year.  That is the maximum increase allowed by law in the state.  We get a senior discount but our final bill will also go up 10%.  That will likely happen every year until the state thinks they have reached the market value of the house (which will be another 8 years or so).  Basically another $50/month.  Drip, drip, drip.

I did go to REI yesterday as well as InStep so I've got some Prolific time ahead of me to make up about $100 of that trip.  I don't much mind.  I can do about $15 a day and make it back pretty quickly.  I bought two sun shirts with hoods to wear while working with the dogs and while playing pickleball.  And bought a replacement pair of sketchers, the ones that advertise you can just step into them.  Perfect for me.  Replaced the interior with a good pair of orthotics and bought some arch support socks to wear playing pickleball.  I could have bought more old person stuff but it would have been hard.

I started an English procedural mystery by Joy Ellis titled Their Lost Daughters.  Free on Audible and number one in a series.  So far it is good.  Not riveting but has potential.  She does not hold back from English idioms so even with my extensive vocab I'm having a hard time with some of the lingo.  Learning a foreign language is always a little challenging.

We're only halfway through the Midsummer Murders series.  It is mindless and occasionally not very good but mindless is OK and it is nice to have a long series we agree on without having to look every day. 

Comments

[msconduct]

Midsomer Murders? Cool, an opportunity to name drop AND brag about my Emmies all in one comment! (Actually I'm disappointed in myself. I normally try and work the Emmies into the first ten minutes of conversation. But better late than never.)

So yeah, I know (or more accurately, have met) Caroline Graham, the author of the book series the phenomenally successful TV series is based on. There are only seven books in the series, but so far there have been 23 seasons of TV series and they're still going strong.

Back in the late 90s. my now-business partner, then writing partner were writing comedy for British TV and radio (and we also sold some comedy sketch material into Europe). In the interest of furthering our careers we applied for and were successful at getting into a workshop the BBC was holding in London for comedy writers. Most of the people there were young and groovy, as that's who usually writes comedy. But there was also an older woman there, and that turned out to be Caroline. The TV series was a few seasons in, and her agent wanted her to try some new writing avenues. She'd written a sitcom, but wasn't having much luck pitching it, which is why she attended the workshop.

The hilarious thing is that although Caroline is far far more successful a writer than I'll ever be, at that particular time it was us who were the comedy writing stars, because we'd written some material for a sketch show that was moderately popular with the public but was the critics' darling. As a result, the two seasons we wrote for (amongst many other writers) were nominated for BAFTAs, won a Golden Rose at the Montreux Comedy Awards, and won two International Emmies*. Despite this, we were still really only minnows on the comedy scene, but Caroline was keen to hear our advice about her sitcom. It was really pretty bizarre. Our advice clearly wasn't worth much, because she never did get a sitcom on screen. Now she's 91 and no doubt fabulously wealthy from the royalties on the TV series, as well as the books. Good for her, she was lovely.

*Although winning Emmies sounds impressive, it really wasn't. I'd never even heard of International Emmies before that. And it's not like I have the statuette in my living room: it goes to the producer, not the writing team. I'm entitled to a fancy certificate, but I don't even have that, as the production house has to arrange it for you, and when you're hoping people will give you work, you don't like to annoy them by asking for favours. It sounds good though and it did open some doors for us.

[bill_schubert]

And created a wonderful story. That is great. I am humbled to be in the presence of comedy royalty.

[msconduct]

I should think so.