Post-Thanksgiving Greetings

Another Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone and now...on to Christmas! I've been enjoying having a long holiday weekend and a few days off from my day job. I hope everyone has a chance to relax a little over this holiday weekend (it it's a holiday weekend for you). 

My new book, Not Sweet Enough, will be coming out soon. (More on that later.) I'm glad to finally have this one finished up because it took me far too long to get it together and I have no one but myself to blame for that.

In other news, I'm annoyed that I don't have a Showtime/Paramount + subscription so I can't watch the Fellow Travelers series with Matt Bomer. I saw the first episode via a free preview on Tubi, but that's it. I read the book some time ago and saw a stage-play version of the book also here in Chicago and both were very good. I understand the Showtime series is not sticking to the story in the book, which largely takes place in the 1950s. I'm hoping Comcast gives me a free weekend of Showtime over the Christmas holiday so I can binge watch the series since it should be wrapped up before then. I've read that Showtime/Paramount + are showing one episode per week. I refuse to pay for one more streaming service or cable upgrade unless I drop something else. My cable bill went up $50 recently and I didn't get anything new. I have cable on one TV and no premium channels. I have a bundle with my landline and internet service also through my cable provider, but the $50 jump in price is ridiculous. I think my Prime subscription will be the next to go. They haven't been showing anything I want to see lately. Netflix either. They're both sucking at the moment.

 

Killers of the Flower Moon

I finally went to see Killers of the Flower Moon over the weekend. I read the book earlier this year and had been wanting to see the movie ever since I saw a trailer for it some months ago. The movie was great. Say what you want about Leonardo DiCaprio's personal life, but that guy can act. I read recently that he's 48 years old and that surprised me. I didn't realize he was almost 50...and dating 20-year-olds. Huh. Anyway, back to the movie. Even though Leo is playing a character who, at the start of the book, is much younger, I was able to forget about that because the acting was so good. He and Lily Gladstone work very well together in the film. DeNiro is also good but, geez, that guy is so old and small now. Maybe he's always been small, but he looked tiny in the movie. My only complaint (and it's a big one) has to do with the running time of the film. Clocking in at 3.5 hours (with no intermission) is too long. I made sure to use the restroom twice before the film even started (when I got to the theater and again during the previews) and I didn't drink anything during the movie, but in the last 45 minutes, I had to go. I managed to make it through the entire movie without having to dip out, but it was a struggle. The movie started at 10:45 am at my local theater (well, the previews ran until around 11:10) and I didn't walk out of the theater until 2:30 pm! Half of my Saturday was spent in the movie theater! Scorsese (who shows up in the movie also near the end) really should have had an intermissing about 2 hours in. People have to pee, Marty!!! I told a co-worker of mine today that waiting for this to stream would probably be a better option for those who can't hold it (or who don't mind running out and missing a little of the movie so they can tinkle). 

Before reading David Grann's book on the Osage murders, I had no idea about any of this, but I wasn't surprised by any of it either. If there's money to be taken, particularly from a group that has been exploited for years (and, frankly, is still being exploited like Native Americans), someone's going to try and take it. If oil had never been found on Osage land, none of this mess probably would have happened. Greed kills. 

Fix It!

I read a lot of articles about how people (particularly young people) can't afford to own homes because they're just too expensive. Between the high housing prices, skyrocketing interest rates, and downpayment funds, it's hard to buy a home now. As someone who didn't buy my own place until I was middle-aged, I totally understand what younger folks are going through. Home ownership used to attainable for working people and it still is in some places, but far too many people are priced out of the market. My own home isn't a house, it's a co-op. I couldn't afford a house in the area where I chose to live outside of Chicago, so I bought an older two-bedroom, one-bath co-op that was affordable for me. One of the things I love about being a homeowner is that I can get things fixed on my schedule. Yes, I have to pay, but at least if something breaks, I don't have to call a landlord or management company and wait for them to get back to me about repairs. My sister, who's a renter, went the entire past weekend with no hot water because her janky apartment management company kept putting her off about when they'd send someone over to repair her hot water tank. That's ridiculous. She finally ended up calling the gas company today and they sent someone out who fixed the problem. The apartment complex totally fell down on the job.

The last place where I lived as a renter was a condo owned by a nice old lady. She was great as a landlord until it came time for her to fix things that were broken. She wasn't so great with getting things repaired in a timely manner or at all. My sister and I (who shared the condo) couldn't use the dishwasher the entire time we lived there because it leaked and the landlord wouldn't fix it. Instead, the landlord told us not to use the dishwasher. She never disclosed before we moved in that the dishwasher didn't work right. We found out the hard way when we tried to use it and it leaked all over the floor. The landlord never explained why she woudldn't get the dishwasher fixed. Maybe she was too cheap to hire a repair man. On top of that, we had electrical problems in the unit and the power went out in our kitchen one day. There was some kind of power failure in half of the condo. Thankfully, when the fridge went out, I had recently purchased my co-op (but I hadn't moved in yet), so my sister and I were able to move our food from the condo to the fridge in my place until the problem was fixed. At least we didn't lose any groceries! But the landlord dragged her feet on getting the electrical problem fixed. I hate waiting on someone else to fix things for me. I need to be on my own timetable. My own dishwasher leaked a couple of years ago during the heart of Covid, but I was able to get a repairman out to my place and he fixed it. I didn't have to spend months or years without a dishwasher, just a week. 

Not having a dishwasher is a minor inconvenience, I know, but it's still an inconvenience when you're paying for something and you expect to be able to use it. No one wants to live in a place with broken appliances, a janky electrical system, and no hot water!