I got 2 tattoos while I was with him: one to remember him by and the other to remember us by. Just before I left for New York to start my career, he gave me this ‘Little My’ doll with two tattoos embroidered exactly where mine are. He said my personality reminded him of Little My, one of the characters from the Finnish book series and comic strip called ‘The Moomins’. As they say, a long-distance relationship never works out.
Last night we celebrated National Night Out on Ralph. Formerly known as the Ralphfest this potluck has been going on longer than we have lived here. About two dozen neighbors joined us the street, which had been blocked off for the party. We had a good time, but I did receive some bad news. Molly, our next-door neighbor is moving. She and her significant other have decided to join households, and they have chosen his house as the one to keep. It sounded like this would happen quickly. Leaving me wondering about next year’s lawn mowing season, since Molly and I share the same lawn guy, Araldo. This could make disappearing all next summer difficult.
Anne has joined another medical research study. Her previous study Seabird successfully developed a blood test that can detect the onset of Alzheimer’s. It is now FDA approved and is in regular clinical use. This new study Sunbird, a study to understand novel biomarkers in researching dementia, aims to make this detection more robust. Anne’s mother succumbed do dementia. She was never tested for Alzheimer’s, so we don’t know if any of these studies could be of some personal benefit or not to Anne. Still, it is for a good cause and as her study partner, we each got a t-shirt and I did not even have to be bled. 🙂
After the doctor we went out for lunch, because when the going gets tough, the tough go out for lunch. Since we were already in the CWE, after extricating our car from the hospital’s parking garage, we looked there. We ended up at the Wildflower Saloon. When we first moved to Missouri, a bar could not legally call itself a saloon. A leftover from Prohibition, but that has obviously changed. We both ordered their lunch special, grilled cheese sandwiches with lobster bisque. It was good. OBTW, Anne won her license plate game. She has been playing this same game since the beginning of summer. For the last couple of months all she needed was Delaware, which she got today. And as is her want, the last state that she gets to win a game also becomes the first state on the next game. That’s just how she rolls.
Our final stop on this 24-hour spree was the history museum. Formerly, the Missouri History Museum, it is being renamed the St. Louis History Museum. Last weekend, a new exhibit opened there, St. Louis at Bat—100 Moments in Baseball History. After this year’s rather lackluster Cardinal season, this exhibit is a breath of fresh air. It documents 175 years of baseball in town. Back to before the Civil War. Illustrated moments include many that I was not aware of: I knew that St. Louis had two major league baseball teams, but I did not know that at one time it actually had three; Rawlings the sporting goods company and current purveyor of all MLB balls is still headquartered in town; In a gesture towards woke, I was totally unaware of the depth and breadth of Saint Louis teams that served almost every community in town. There will be more about all this in the future. I have one small complaint though. At one of the hundred stations there were three buttons, when pressed would replay famous St. Louis play-by-play. Except the one that I most wanted to hear, Ozzie Smith’s walk off homer in Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS:
Last night, I rewatched the 2008 movie 10,000 BC. It a schlocky flic, but I have a soft spot for it. Not the least because of the consternation that it seems to engender in scientific-academic circles. Most of these complaints seem to revolve around the way that the movie plays fast and loose with the homo sapiens timeline. As the title suggests, this film purports to portray human life in the year 10,000 BC. However, it introduces numerous inventions, such as the pyramids, sailing ships, and iron tools that would not exist for thousands of years. Then there are the wooly mammoths employed to build said pyramids, saber tooth tigers as big as a pickup truck and terror birds (Phorusrhacids) that were long since extinct by 10,000 BC.
But you know who has relatively few complaints about these aspects of the movie? Creationists. They still want to quibble about the timeline. According to their calendar the earth was created in 4,000 BC. But they are willing to overlook the tacking on of over 6,000 years of prehistory because the movie doesn’t blaspheme and there is no swearing. “I mean evolution is not the Gospel. It’s just a theory. Right?”—As overheard in the Smithsonian’s hall of human origins.
