Where to start?

It has been quite a busy week, so I will start where I last left off and work my way through. I had started this post last Friday, writing about the New York Times crossword puzzle from Thursday.

31 Across Clue:

Highest-paid TV star of 2014, by far (9 letters)

31 Across Answer:

JUDGEJUDY

I was incredulous so I googled and found that Judge Judy is far and away the highest paid person on television, according to TV Guide's fifth annual list. Judge Judy Sheindlin gets paid $47 million per year to negotiate petty disputes on the daytime show that bears her name.

Then I learned something else surprising: "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart is the second highest paid TV star, although he lags far behind Sheindlin at $25-30 million per year. Stewart apparently attracts a young, professional demographic that is sought by advertisers, and is the top-paid star of night-time television.

These figures simply boggle the mind.

We drove up to Sharon on Thursday morning and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner: all the traditional dishes prepared and served beautifully by our daughters and sons-in-law. 

We had a delicious and enjoyable Friday evening dinner with Dina and family who had also invited a young family who are relatively new to Sharon. On Sabbath day, Joshua and Ella joined us for lunch while their parents and little sister went over to friends who have younger children. Since we were just preparing that one meal, we were able to relax and see a movie Friday afternoon.

We chose “The Theory of Everything,” which was playing on The Lux Level at the nearby Showcase Cinema. I was not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. The film was interesting and quite heartwarming, perfect end-of-year fare. This biographical film tells the story of Steven Hawking, a brilliant scientist who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a motor neuron disorder) in his early twenties. Given two years to live, he completed his doctorate and married a fellow graduate student (in European literature) with whom he had three children. The film is based on Jane Hawking’s memoir, “Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.”

We were not familiar with the cast, which included Felicity Jones as Jane and Eddie Redmayne as Stephen. The two roles presented interesting challenges. For Mr. Redmayne, the physical limitations provided special challenges. The only part of his body over which he had any control was his eyes, which had to embody all of his emotions.

  

Ultimately, Stephen’s illness tested Jane’s resourcefulness, pulling her away from her own work and causing her much stress and worry. The movie is poignant and honest in showing how Jane and Stephen’s marriage leaves both of them exhausted and unfulfilled. Their marriage amazingly survived this unfathomable stress for thirty years, and Stephen is still alive at the age of 72.

Sabbath had been an exhausting day. We stayed at the Kiddush (refreshments) quite a while after morning services, socializing with friends. Usually I try to find someplace to sit but I stood for quite a while. Then we had the Joshua and Ella with us all afternoon, and Ella stayed on with us for a while after Sabbath ended. She was watching something on TV and I had gotten up to find a recipe I was planning to prepare on Sunday. I am still not sure just what happened, but the next thing I knew I was on the floor. I quickly noticed blood was dripping, and it turned out that I had gashed my lip. Barry helped me get settled with some ice and took Ella home. The bleeding just did not want to stop, and we debated going to a local emergency room but decided it was too late and too cold to venture out, so I continued icing it, put my pillow in a large plastic bag with an old towel on top, and tried to get some sleep. Fortunately, my lip stopped bleeding but we still thought it might be a good idea to go to urgent care on Sunday morning to have it looked at. The doctor there told me that I did exactly the right thing icing it, and since the cut was on the inside of my lip it could not be sutured. It is still healing, and I would not be surprised if someone were to ask me how the other guy looks! I have since discovered quite a bit of stiffness in and bruising on my right arm, which I must have used to try to catch myself.

What is funny is that we do not often stay for Kiddush. The room tends to be very crowded and stuffy, and I have had some breathing difficulties there. But for whatever reason, everything seemed fine this week. It is not a mistake I will make again soon. This is an activity best left to the younger folk.

Looking forward now…Bob Dylan is in New York this week doing some shows at The Beacon Theater. It is a long story, but we ended up with tickets for two of the shows, the one least night and the one tonight. We had no intention of going to both, and tonight’s seats were the better ones, so we decided to sell last night’s. We put them onto a site called StubHub. We were not looking to make money on them, but we started at a high price just to see how it would go. We lowered it a couple of times and then about a week ago we realized that, if we wanted to sell them, we needed to price them as low or lower than the others for sale in that section at that moment. Once we did that, they sold very quickly. We even made some money, although I plan to donate it to charity because that was not the point. However, it became a sort of game, with Barry going on every couple of hours yesterday to see how the remaining tickets were going. Once the concert time (8:00 pm) had passed, all remaining tickets were removed from the site. The truth is that Dylan did not seem to be quite the draw we expected him to be. So we should be pleased we were able to sell the tickets at all.

I will report back on Dylan. Meanwhile, stay warm and dry and be well.

Love,

Rebecca