I was *supposed* to go shopping with my dear friend Jackie yesterday, but I was a weenie and I bailed. I felt somewhat guilty about it--she had, after all, made time for me during her weekend. It's not as if I was doing anything important yesterday. The most exciting thing I did was walk up Solano with Frank, to get some coffee at Peet's.
You might think (or at least, *I* would think) that during my "good" week, I'd be eager to get things done, to take advantage of not feeling nauseous or crampy or just generally icky. And Saturday morning, we ran quite a few errands and accomplished a lot. But I'm finding that during my so-called good days, I want nothing more than to laze around, enjoying the fact that I don't feel like crap. For example, I really had planned to get some laundry done yesterday. A modest ambition, right? Did any laundry get done? Absolutely none. Ah well. That's what the "is it clean or is it dirty" clothing pile is for, right? :-)
During our walk yesterday, Frank and I stopped at Five Star Video to get our week's worth of Columbo DVDs. We've always been big Columbo fans, and we have found these DVDs to be pretty wonderful for chemo recovery. We've seen almost all of them, but we can't always remember whodunit, and it's always fun to watch Columbo trip up the "smarter than thou" murderer. And the ones we haven't seen are interesting (and you can sort of see why they're not in constant rotation with the others).
Spielberg and Jonathan Demme both directed episodes. And Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, LA Law, and NYPD Blue) was an occasional writer. And the actors! It's so much fun to watch Roddy McDowall play an entitled nephew who rigs a cigar box to blow up in his uncle's limo (thus paving the way for him to run the family chemical empire).
And what can one say about Peter Falk? He's just brilliant, that's all. We're still in Season One, so we're enjoying watching the evolution of the idiosyncrasies that we have attached to his character over the years. In the first couple episodes, he drank bourbon. By the fifth episode, no more drinking. In the first season, his cigar is always lit, but we know that later, it never is. He talks about his wife, the famous-by-her-absence Mrs. Columbo, from the get-go. But the dog (named "Dog") doesn't show up till later.
If you've not seen Columbo in a while (or <gasp!> you've never seen it), rent some episodes from your local DVD shop the next time you're feeling under the weather. It's perfect sick-time viewing.
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OMG--Columbo! You're so right. I was watching those episodes after my hospitalizations almost 20 years ago, when they were still being shown as reruns in syndication. My two all-time favorite villains were Johnny Cash, basically playing himself, and Donald Pleasance (of "Halloween" fame; he was Michael Moore's shrink) as a California vintner. I didn't know you could rent them by season. BTW, my other "sick-time" favorite is listening to early Garrison Keillor tapes, esp. the Lake Wobegon stories. Let me know if you want them, and I'll give them to Liz or Steph at Thanksgiving to bring to you.
Oh yes! I know those episodes. Johnny crashes his plane (with Ida Lupino playing his wife, and some other young woman). And the Donald Pleasance one is wonderful, with Julie Harris as the secretary who wants to be more than that. Another fave? Ruth Gordon as the mystery writer who does in her niece's husband (she blames him for her niece's death).
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