Thanks All Round

It’s been a good week.  The rest of the country has been uncomfortably hot, but until yesterday it was raining most days in my little town, and I sometimes felt sad without reason.  I chose to live at the geographic edge of a rain forest.  It would be silly to expect it to be drier.  Perhaps I’m still adjusting to not living in the artificial oasis of El Lay.  Unlike the Midwest, where I spent my first 27 years, it doesn’t get seriously cold for long here.  It’s just damp at times.  The upside is seeing 50 shades of green wherever I go.  I am so thankful to be surrounded by all this living color.

The Happiness Engineers here at WordPress.com helped me solve my problems commenting, so I’ll soon be back pestering all my favorite bloggers with new reactions and feedback.  An angel named Karen A. suggested something I hadn’t thought of.  I was using auto-update for my OS and browsers for convenience.  I had a ton of installed extensions and plug-ins that I hardly ever (maybe never) used.  Some of them were in conflict with the WP.com interface.  Thanks, Karen!

The Urgent Care where I work was closed, so Mary and I took the dog to the park, where they were continuing the Festival of Fiddle Tunes.  It was sunny, and we walked around listening to thrilling, energetic folk music.  We met our friends’ four year-old granddaughter, who was visiting for the holiday.  The girl has that perfect kid smile, like a row of Chiclets.  I introduced her to Spice, and together we walked the dog around the pier of the Marine Science Center. How wonderful it is to be able to interact with a young child.  Thanks, guys!

We chose to be cautious about being out at night, in case Spice would be afraid of fireworks.  Though we could hear a lot of kabooms in the neighborhood, she barely woke up and didn’t whine.  I’m grateful for each new week with our superdog.  She’s halfway through training!  Through a lot of exercises using kibble rewards for proper behavior, Spice has learned not to lunge toward the cats.  My gray foundling, Dixie, is 14.  She’s a nice old lady, and doesn’t appreciate being jumped at.  She wants to sleep in chairs, undisturbed.  I’m so lucky to have these companion animals in our home.

The day ended with more music.  Back when I was a sound editor I worked on the restoration of the 1972 film version of 1776, which might be called Declaration of Independence – The Musical.  It was a big hit on Broadway when I was in high school, and I knew the songs by heart.  President Nixon was a pal of the film’s producer (Jack L. Warner), and asked to have certain “politically rude” songs and dialog, the parts dissing conservatives, removed.  Warner demanded that the negatives of these censored parts also be destroyed, but the editor removed and stored them instead.  We had the original elements and unmixed music tracks to work with, thanks to someone who disobeyed his boss for the right reasons.  TCM showed our restored version (in 5.1 surround WOO-HOO), and I sang along lustily, amusing both dog and wife.

Independence Day is over.  Now, to work on interdependence!