Hey Hey Hey Ordinary Thursday. Really Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Sunday Furnaceday.

I guess it's fitting that we spent a good part of "Thanksgiving" weekend in virtual Canada, where Thursday was just, well, the day before the weekend. We never left the house the whole day except me and the dog for walkies, or opened the door for anything other than our last holiday delivery of the newspaper. Eleanor did spend a good part of the day cooking, but not a feast for us. She returned to a purple sweet potato soup recipe that she made a few months ago and was quite the hit with many friends who got it delivered. That was our evening meal, accompanied by two Republic of Doyle episodes, starting with "Two Jakes and a Baby."

Speaking of the Republic, we learned of and mourned the loss of a Southern North America music legend on Friday: Stephen Sondheim, who passed on a true Black Friday. It was odd, because we'd just looked up whether he was still alive the previous weekend after watching the Lin-Manuel Miranda adaptation of Jonathan Larson's Tick...Tick....Boom. Sondheim is portrayed in it as a major character and co-wrote one of the original one-man show's songs with Larson.  I jokingly wondered how The Former Guy's health is these days, but then I came upon this review of the Sondheim revival that just opened off-Broadway a week before the composer's death: of Assassins, the 1990 musical he wrote the songs for to accompany tales of Presidential shooters from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley Junior. In trying to find a video of that play, I came upon this link, to a one-time stream of the original cast's 30th anniversary reunion earlier this year- including Victor Garber, Godspell’s original Jesus and Jake Doyle’s least favourite mystery author;)

We then continued the Canadiana when Netflix delivered a film titled Stories We Tell. It's a documentary that's essentially its own making-of, conceived by Toronto actress Sarah Polley who we'd seen in a few other films we caught up with this year.  It is mostly narrated by her father Michael Polley, whose voice sounded even more familiar. He turned out to be the actor who played Frank, and the rollicking piano, in the opening credits of each of the seasons of Slings and Arrows. (Sarah also appeared in several S&A episodes as well with her dad, and we' ve also discovered she directed a film titled Away from Her, with Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis, and Gordon Pinsent. Bringing the weekend full circle, Pinsent was the longtime portrayer of Maurice Becker in Doyle, including "Mirror Mirror," the second of the Series 3 episodes we'd just watched.)

O, Canada, you incestuous cast, you,....  (and there be spoilers along similar lines in many online references to her and the documentary, so watch it before looking much up.)

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Small Business Saturday brought another tale.... of a better mystery author than  Garber's "Garrison Steele."

My high school has turned out to be quite the fount of artistic talent. At least one respected Broadway playwright from the class a year before me, a stage magician, numerous musicians, and a serial killer with a prison art collection (sorry, no link for him;). It's the printed page that has produced the most, and I am friends with several who I knew growing up or have met since- but none longer or more prolific than Clea Simon.  Her latest novel came out earlier this fall, and I decided it would be a fitting birthday present to myself.

So it was, three weekends ago, I'd hoped to pick it up from a local bookseller. No such luck, so she suggested I order from a local-to-her shop in Massachusetts where she'd autographed copies.

I did so, and opened and then checked my account with the store, watching as it progressed- from Ready to Pull, Ready to Ring Up, and finally, as of 11/18, Payment Accepted-

which, yesterday morning, was where it remained, and so I self-righteously complained....

Just in time for it to show up at my office that very afternoon when the mail arrived. Followed, seconds later, by an email from the store apologizing for the delay. 

I replied and apologized right back, for being so impatient and not even bothering to check anything else in my email for the "your order has shipped, look, here's even the tracking number!" that they sent five days earlier.

It's still worth the wait to support an independent business over a big box or no box establishment whenever I can. That's why I asked the author that if she happened to see my emailer over there, to thank him in person for putting up with a Karen of a different gender, and being prompt and kind with the customer who, this time as usual, wasn't always right;)

Meanwhile, I got about a third of the way past this last night after we finished with Sarah-



- and yew kin, too, here if you want it autographed or there if speed is more your thing. I'm not even suggesting Bezos the Clown for the latter, since a Prime CD of theirs hasn't even shipped and we can't get the autorip until it does.

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Today, so far: once again, haven't left the house, not even for walkies. We both futzed with computer things, I chopped a bunch of vegables for various recipes, and we discovered that our new furnace has Bluetooth.

There's no obvious switch or signal to turn it on or off, much less disable it entirely, and there's at least a hint that it's needed for communication with the central air compressor outside. Still, it's disquieting to have something potentially hackable that's that dangerous....

especially if we were to say, Alexa, play "Burning Down the House."

Not gonna worry. Blowin' stuff up is more a Republic of Doyle thing.