I’m on a Boston-bound Amtrak Acela train that was two hours late leaving Penn Station in NYC. Before I say anything about meeting Prue Bury, read this, because it’s about Prue’s dear, old friends the O’Neals, who Prue is staying with right now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/garden/05apthorp.html
I have been in unit 11L of the Apthorp, and unit 11K appears to be undergoing renovations, so presumably it will soon have occupants. [To see who moved in, click here.]
I’m borrowing this from a post I did two years ago.
Cartoon by Charles M. Schulz, 1957
Recommended: Johnny’s Luncheonette, just off of the notorious Heartbreak Hill, along the course of the Boston Marathon, in Newton Centre. We took Eric there tonight for dinner.
My son wanted a small refrigerator in his dorm room. A freezer compartment was neither needed, nor wanted. Another consideration was compressor noise. I took a chance on Haier’s NuCool, which technically is a cooler, and not a refrigerator, because it doesn’t have a compressor. The NuCool uses thermoelectric cooling, which has limited effectiveness compared to conventional refrigerators that circulate a coolant.
At home, with an ambient temperature of 68 degrees, the NuCool did fine, and even went below 37 degrees, according to a thermometer I had placed inside. But in the dorm, without air conditioning, where the room temp was over 80, the NuCool managed only 50 degrees. This morning it was in the safe region on the thermometer, but considering NuCool’s inability to maintain a constant temperature, my inclination is to return it to Target and buy Haier’s conventional cube fridge.
Follow-up: The NuCool is a success, assuming it holds up. It seems to manage a 40-degree difference in temperature, and when it was up to 50 the room was probably 90. Since then it’s held at 35 degrees, even with the thermostat turned down a notch.
This morning I was on the porch stretching out, listening to NPR, when the radio suddenly shut off. A fraction of a second later I heard a BOOM from up the street.
Denro says my lack of appreciation for Mitch Miller is due to the fact that his recording of The Yellow Rose of Texas was #1 in September, 1955, the week that I was born. Well, it’s true, I would have preferred anything else, even The Ballad of Davy Crockett!
The first video has the original Mitch Miller recording of The Yellow Rose of Texas…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Lakexqqqc
… and the second has Stan Freberg’s parody of Mitch. Both are taken from 78 rpm records posted by fave YouTube member 45s4FR.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-By0vBrzDE
The Yellow Rose of Texas was written in 1858, and Texas has certainly changed since then, so let’s update things a bit, with this pair of TV commercials, made by an old friend of mine, for a restaurant chain called Cotton Patch Cafe. The first one has a straight-forward ZZ Top-style boogie…
…and I love the second spot, featuring music of epic proportions to go with the food of epic portions!
