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A Non-travel Catch-up
Celebrity Death Watch: Dick Biondi was a disc jockey who is claimed to be the first AM radio deejay to play several famous rock stars, including the Beatles. Sanjay Mitter was a control theory professor in the EECS department at MIT. Evelyn Boyd Granville was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university (specifically, Yale) and did important research on computing.
Frank Field was a TV meteorologist. Susan Love was a surgeon, best known for writing a book about breasts. George Tickner played guitar for Journey and Furious Bandersnatch. Judith Liebman was the only woman to become president of the Operations Research Society of America. Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. was the president of Yale University from 1986 to 1992 and later became the chairman of the Board of Trusties of the City University of New York. Tom Adam was a warlord in the Central African Republic. Carlin Glynn won a Tony award for performing in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. James Reston Jr. was a journalist, novelist, and playwright. Pamela Blair originated the role of Val in A Chorus Line, in which she sang the song “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.” Inga Swenson was an actress, best known for playing Gretchen Kraus on Benson. Alice K. Ladas wrote about the G-spot. Paul Reubens was an actor who played the role of Pee-wee Herman.
Sir Michael Boyd was a theatre director who oversaw the revitalization the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Walter Charles was a Broadway actor. Mark Margolis was a character actor best known for playing Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad. Boniface Alexandre was the provisional president of Haiti from 2004 to 2006. John Gosling played keyboards for The Kinks. William Friedkin directed several movies, including The French Connection and The Exorcist. Jerry Moss cofounded A&M Records. Renata Scotto was an operatic soprano, whose name I know only because of its frequent appearance in crossword puzzles. Al Quie was the governor of Minnesota from 1979 to 1983. Maxie Baughan was a football player. James Burke was the first manager of the Ranger program (which photographed the moon from space probes), making him a pioneer of America’s space program. John Warnock co-founded Adobe. Bob Feldman wrote the song “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Yevgeny Progozhin was a mercenary, who co-founded the Wagner Group. Pat Corrales was the first Major League Baseball manager of Mexican American descent. Joe the Plumber was a right wing political commentator. Don Sundqvist was the governor of Tennessee from 1995-2003.
Dennis Austin co-created Powerpoint, doing untold harm to business productivity. Gary Wright was a singer-songwriter, best known for “Dream Weaver.” Lisa Lyon was a bodybuilder and modeled for Robert Maplethorpe. Gita Mehta wrote interesting books about India. I remember reading Karma Cola and Snakes and Ladders many years ago. Billy Miller was a soap opera actor. Michael McGrath was a Tony-award winning actor.
Lowell Weicker was a senator from 1971-1989 and the governor of Connecticut from 1991-1995. He had been a Republican as a senator but formed a third party (“A Connecticut Party”) for his gubernatorial campaign. He held a number of apparently contradictory positions (e.g. having been on the board of directors of a tobacco lobby and of a non-ptisan health policy research organization). He was also one of the first Republicans to call for Richard Nixon’s resignation. Overall, one of the more interesting politicians of his time.
Alan Arkin was an actor, who received a number of awards for his roles in movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Argo, as well as having won a Tony award for his role in the play Enter Laughing.
Milan Kundera was a Czech novelist, most famous for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Kevin Mitnick was a computer hacker who later became a security consultant.
Tony Bennett was a singer of pop music and jazz. He is best known for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and is also notable for his late in life collaboration with Lady Gaga. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.
Randy Meisner was a waist and vocalist for The Eagles and Poco. He also wrote the song “Take It to the Limit.”
Sinead O’Connor was an Irish singer and songwriter, who was controversial for her political activism, most notably for tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest against abuse in the Catholic Church.
Sixto Rodriguez was a singer-songwriter, far better known in South Africa than in the U.S. There’s an excellent documentary about him, Searching for Sugar Man. Interestingly, Clarence Avant, who founded Sussex Records and may have cheated Rodriguez out of royalties, died just days after he did.
Robbie Robertson was the lead guitarist for The Band and wrote such songs as “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Tom Jones was the lyricist who collaborated with Harvey Schmidt on several musicals, including The Fantasticks, 110 in the Shade, and I Do, I Do. I’d had him on my ghoul pool list a few years ago, but not this year.
James L. Buckley was a U.S. Senator from New York from 1971-1977, elected as a member of the Conservative Party. He was the oldest living former senator at the time of his death. I had him on my ghoul pool list and he earned me 16 points.
Nick Hitchon was a physicist but the real reason anyone has heard of him was his participation in the 7 Up series of documentaries. He was on my ghoul pool list and got me 14 points.
Bob Barker hosted The Price is Right for many many many years. He was an advocate for animals, but was also a serial sexual abuser. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 15 points.
Bill Richardson was the governor of New Mexico from 2003-2011. He was my choice in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but was out of it by the time things got to Virginia. In recent years, he played a major role in freeing political prisoners. He was a diplomat in the truest sense of the word.
Jimmy Buffett was that rare musician who almost everyone liked. I was fortunate enough to see him perform live once. He was also an entertaining writer and an excellent businessman. Have a margarita in his memory.
Steve Harwell was the lead singer for Smash Mouth. I’d seen a news story that he was on his death bed and did a quick ghoul pool substitution, giving me a whopping 32 points and putting me (briefly, alas) at the top of the score board.
Fernando Botero was a painter and sculptor. He’s best known for his work depicting fat people and fat cats. I think I first encountered one of his sculptures in Yerevan, Armenia and saw several more of his artworks in Barcelona.
Non-Celebrity Death Watch:I caught up on the monthly newsletter from my former employer. The obituaries from the past few months included a few people I knew fairly well - Bob Leatherman, Jim Gidney, Les DeLong (who I worked with on an INCOSE committee several years ago) and, most significantly, Roberta Gleiter. Roberta was a powerful voice for women in engineering and was, in fact, the President of the Society of Women Engineers around 2000ish. After that, she founded the Global Institute for Technology and Engineering. She and I worked together for several years and she was always a pleasure to hang out with. I’ll miss her.
Errands: I had a lot of catching up to do at home. This was a mixture of boring and frustrating and stressful. For example, I had to renew the registration for my car. This was actually easy to do on-line, but that didn’t stop me from having a minor panic attack the day before it was due because I couldn’t remember that I’d actually done it.
Renewing my driver’s license was more of a hassle. I had to go to my eye doctor to get the vision test because I always have trouble with the machines. If I’d been smart, I’d have realized I could renew a full year before the license expired, which would have been right after I got new glasses. Anyway, I am good to drive, but I will have to have cataract surgery in the coming months. This is not a surprise. There’s a part of me that is looking forward to it.
The catch is that I’m in the process of transitioning to medicare. This is more complicated than it should be, for a number of reasons. The bottom line is that I should have started the process two months before my 65th birthday, rather than a week before. And coordinating things with the retiree medical people from my company is also stressful. They had previously told me that they would send me something 60 days before my eligibility, but, no, they just called me with incomplete information. And then I had trouble with the social security website and ended up having to call them. That meant spending ages on hold, followed by a lengthy phone conversation, which only resulted in a phone appointment which is this Friday. Oy. Now, it looks like I’ve gotten a bill from the people who handle the payment processing, but it doesn’t recognize that I’d been using their autopay option. I may have to actually call them, which is annoying.
My other source of stress was that I found an envelope relating to my real estate property taxes, but couldn’t find the actual tax statement. So I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t pay them already. Why, yes, this motivates me to clean off my dining room table. And my sofa. And the other places that mail I may not have dealt with accumulates. Ah, wait. It was due in late July and I just verified that I paid it before I went to Ireland.
Some Socializing: I went out to dinner one night with a few people from FlyerTalk. NightHawk in Pentagon City has decent food and beer, but an annoying interface to their ordering system. At least, I was able to pull up the menu on my iPhone, which a couple of people couldn’t. It was also kind of noisy. But it was good to get out and it’s always fun to talk about travel.
It had been a long time since I’d been to that part of town, but I ended up over there again less than a week later. A college friend was in town and we went out to dinner at Lebanese Taverna. All of the food we got was good and I was even able to take some home to have for lunch the next day. It was good to catch up with him and talk about what various people we knew back in the day were up to.
I’d also gone to a movie with Cindy. And gone to knitting group. And to an on-line story swap. And to one of my genealogy groups, one of my book clubs, and my Grimm folk tales discussion group.
Baseball: Somewhat on the spur of the moment, I drove down to Fredericksburg to see the Fredericksburg Nationals (the Single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals) get slaughtered by the Lynchburg Hillcats. The ballpark is a huge improvement over the one the Potomac Nationals used in Woodbridge, though the concessions were so-so. Also, I tried their special beer, the Slugging’ Gus blackberry blonde ale, but I didn’t much like it. I stayed down there overnight.
Two Things I Will Write About Separately: LoserFest was in Philadelphia this year and is worth its own entry. And I went to a (virtual) organizing event, which may prove useful in the decluttering (and associated de-stressing).
Happy 5784: Finally, this past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. I ended up going to zoom services, because I felt a little under the weather. That’s not very satisfying, but I just couldn’t get myself moving.
I also called my brother, mostly to make sure he’s still alive. Let’s just say he is continuing his usual patterns of driving me crazy. Which is not something I will write about publicly.
Frank Field was a TV meteorologist. Susan Love was a surgeon, best known for writing a book about breasts. George Tickner played guitar for Journey and Furious Bandersnatch. Judith Liebman was the only woman to become president of the Operations Research Society of America. Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. was the president of Yale University from 1986 to 1992 and later became the chairman of the Board of Trusties of the City University of New York. Tom Adam was a warlord in the Central African Republic. Carlin Glynn won a Tony award for performing in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. James Reston Jr. was a journalist, novelist, and playwright. Pamela Blair originated the role of Val in A Chorus Line, in which she sang the song “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.” Inga Swenson was an actress, best known for playing Gretchen Kraus on Benson. Alice K. Ladas wrote about the G-spot. Paul Reubens was an actor who played the role of Pee-wee Herman.
Sir Michael Boyd was a theatre director who oversaw the revitalization the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Walter Charles was a Broadway actor. Mark Margolis was a character actor best known for playing Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad. Boniface Alexandre was the provisional president of Haiti from 2004 to 2006. John Gosling played keyboards for The Kinks. William Friedkin directed several movies, including The French Connection and The Exorcist. Jerry Moss cofounded A&M Records. Renata Scotto was an operatic soprano, whose name I know only because of its frequent appearance in crossword puzzles. Al Quie was the governor of Minnesota from 1979 to 1983. Maxie Baughan was a football player. James Burke was the first manager of the Ranger program (which photographed the moon from space probes), making him a pioneer of America’s space program. John Warnock co-founded Adobe. Bob Feldman wrote the song “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Yevgeny Progozhin was a mercenary, who co-founded the Wagner Group. Pat Corrales was the first Major League Baseball manager of Mexican American descent. Joe the Plumber was a right wing political commentator. Don Sundqvist was the governor of Tennessee from 1995-2003.
Dennis Austin co-created Powerpoint, doing untold harm to business productivity. Gary Wright was a singer-songwriter, best known for “Dream Weaver.” Lisa Lyon was a bodybuilder and modeled for Robert Maplethorpe. Gita Mehta wrote interesting books about India. I remember reading Karma Cola and Snakes and Ladders many years ago. Billy Miller was a soap opera actor. Michael McGrath was a Tony-award winning actor.
Lowell Weicker was a senator from 1971-1989 and the governor of Connecticut from 1991-1995. He had been a Republican as a senator but formed a third party (“A Connecticut Party”) for his gubernatorial campaign. He held a number of apparently contradictory positions (e.g. having been on the board of directors of a tobacco lobby and of a non-ptisan health policy research organization). He was also one of the first Republicans to call for Richard Nixon’s resignation. Overall, one of the more interesting politicians of his time.
Alan Arkin was an actor, who received a number of awards for his roles in movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Argo, as well as having won a Tony award for his role in the play Enter Laughing.
Milan Kundera was a Czech novelist, most famous for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Kevin Mitnick was a computer hacker who later became a security consultant.
Tony Bennett was a singer of pop music and jazz. He is best known for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and is also notable for his late in life collaboration with Lady Gaga. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.
Randy Meisner was a waist and vocalist for The Eagles and Poco. He also wrote the song “Take It to the Limit.”
Sinead O’Connor was an Irish singer and songwriter, who was controversial for her political activism, most notably for tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest against abuse in the Catholic Church.
Sixto Rodriguez was a singer-songwriter, far better known in South Africa than in the U.S. There’s an excellent documentary about him, Searching for Sugar Man. Interestingly, Clarence Avant, who founded Sussex Records and may have cheated Rodriguez out of royalties, died just days after he did.
Robbie Robertson was the lead guitarist for The Band and wrote such songs as “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Tom Jones was the lyricist who collaborated with Harvey Schmidt on several musicals, including The Fantasticks, 110 in the Shade, and I Do, I Do. I’d had him on my ghoul pool list a few years ago, but not this year.
James L. Buckley was a U.S. Senator from New York from 1971-1977, elected as a member of the Conservative Party. He was the oldest living former senator at the time of his death. I had him on my ghoul pool list and he earned me 16 points.
Nick Hitchon was a physicist but the real reason anyone has heard of him was his participation in the 7 Up series of documentaries. He was on my ghoul pool list and got me 14 points.
Bob Barker hosted The Price is Right for many many many years. He was an advocate for animals, but was also a serial sexual abuser. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 15 points.
Bill Richardson was the governor of New Mexico from 2003-2011. He was my choice in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but was out of it by the time things got to Virginia. In recent years, he played a major role in freeing political prisoners. He was a diplomat in the truest sense of the word.
Jimmy Buffett was that rare musician who almost everyone liked. I was fortunate enough to see him perform live once. He was also an entertaining writer and an excellent businessman. Have a margarita in his memory.
Steve Harwell was the lead singer for Smash Mouth. I’d seen a news story that he was on his death bed and did a quick ghoul pool substitution, giving me a whopping 32 points and putting me (briefly, alas) at the top of the score board.
Fernando Botero was a painter and sculptor. He’s best known for his work depicting fat people and fat cats. I think I first encountered one of his sculptures in Yerevan, Armenia and saw several more of his artworks in Barcelona.
Non-Celebrity Death Watch:I caught up on the monthly newsletter from my former employer. The obituaries from the past few months included a few people I knew fairly well - Bob Leatherman, Jim Gidney, Les DeLong (who I worked with on an INCOSE committee several years ago) and, most significantly, Roberta Gleiter. Roberta was a powerful voice for women in engineering and was, in fact, the President of the Society of Women Engineers around 2000ish. After that, she founded the Global Institute for Technology and Engineering. She and I worked together for several years and she was always a pleasure to hang out with. I’ll miss her.
Errands: I had a lot of catching up to do at home. This was a mixture of boring and frustrating and stressful. For example, I had to renew the registration for my car. This was actually easy to do on-line, but that didn’t stop me from having a minor panic attack the day before it was due because I couldn’t remember that I’d actually done it.
Renewing my driver’s license was more of a hassle. I had to go to my eye doctor to get the vision test because I always have trouble with the machines. If I’d been smart, I’d have realized I could renew a full year before the license expired, which would have been right after I got new glasses. Anyway, I am good to drive, but I will have to have cataract surgery in the coming months. This is not a surprise. There’s a part of me that is looking forward to it.
The catch is that I’m in the process of transitioning to medicare. This is more complicated than it should be, for a number of reasons. The bottom line is that I should have started the process two months before my 65th birthday, rather than a week before. And coordinating things with the retiree medical people from my company is also stressful. They had previously told me that they would send me something 60 days before my eligibility, but, no, they just called me with incomplete information. And then I had trouble with the social security website and ended up having to call them. That meant spending ages on hold, followed by a lengthy phone conversation, which only resulted in a phone appointment which is this Friday. Oy. Now, it looks like I’ve gotten a bill from the people who handle the payment processing, but it doesn’t recognize that I’d been using their autopay option. I may have to actually call them, which is annoying.
My other source of stress was that I found an envelope relating to my real estate property taxes, but couldn’t find the actual tax statement. So I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t pay them already. Why, yes, this motivates me to clean off my dining room table. And my sofa. And the other places that mail I may not have dealt with accumulates. Ah, wait. It was due in late July and I just verified that I paid it before I went to Ireland.
Some Socializing: I went out to dinner one night with a few people from FlyerTalk. NightHawk in Pentagon City has decent food and beer, but an annoying interface to their ordering system. At least, I was able to pull up the menu on my iPhone, which a couple of people couldn’t. It was also kind of noisy. But it was good to get out and it’s always fun to talk about travel.
It had been a long time since I’d been to that part of town, but I ended up over there again less than a week later. A college friend was in town and we went out to dinner at Lebanese Taverna. All of the food we got was good and I was even able to take some home to have for lunch the next day. It was good to catch up with him and talk about what various people we knew back in the day were up to.
I’d also gone to a movie with Cindy. And gone to knitting group. And to an on-line story swap. And to one of my genealogy groups, one of my book clubs, and my Grimm folk tales discussion group.
Baseball: Somewhat on the spur of the moment, I drove down to Fredericksburg to see the Fredericksburg Nationals (the Single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals) get slaughtered by the Lynchburg Hillcats. The ballpark is a huge improvement over the one the Potomac Nationals used in Woodbridge, though the concessions were so-so. Also, I tried their special beer, the Slugging’ Gus blackberry blonde ale, but I didn’t much like it. I stayed down there overnight.
Two Things I Will Write About Separately: LoserFest was in Philadelphia this year and is worth its own entry. And I went to a (virtual) organizing event, which may prove useful in the decluttering (and associated de-stressing).
Happy 5784: Finally, this past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. I ended up going to zoom services, because I felt a little under the weather. That’s not very satisfying, but I just couldn’t get myself moving.
I also called my brother, mostly to make sure he’s still alive. Let’s just say he is continuing his usual patterns of driving me crazy. Which is not something I will write about publicly.