The General Situation

Stag Party

At the farmers' market....

Farmer: How are you today?
Me: Not bad, thanks. And you?
Farmer: I'm completely housetrained and socially acceptable!
Me: Are you really the best judge of that?

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I passed the last "Jeopardy!" test and participated in a final tryout, which involved playing a mock game via Zoom, clicking on a pen and answering when called upon. I think the point was less about what we know, and more about how we perform under stress; we spent more time doing game-show banter than playing. The whole thing was taped, which means that if anyone chooses to, they'll see the look on my face when I noticed that one contestant had propped up Alex Trebek's recent memoir behind her. Anyway, now I'm in a pool of a couple thousand contestants, and over the next 18 months, about 20 percent of us will end up on the show. After that, we can choose to try out again.

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I assumed the noise outside the window was a hiker, but it was a stag. It stood still for the longest time, looking at me but also as if it was posing—a spray of grass was caught in its antlers, like a Philip Treacy hat in a John Galliano show.

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Mom: The other day, I asked A-L-E-X-A to play Prince.
Me: Did you enjoy it?
Mom: Not really.
Me: Why did you do that?
Mom: I wanted to feel closer to my children.

I didn't bother recommending the "super deluxe" reissue of Prince's main masterpiece, Sign o' the Times; it's eight discs' worth of material that's mainly for us fans. The highlight so far for me is the 10-minute "Highly Explosive" version of "La, La, La, He, He, Hee," a throwaway B-side that he gave a full, funky workout.

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Maintenance on the house continues: termite and dry rot repairs, then tenting, then the roofers come back to assess the damage done by the tenting, and so on. The landscaping, at least, is perfect—or it was till we found out about a broken pipe and valve.... We probably won't move in till December.

Cotswold Cottage

As I mentioned back in May, I murdered the "Jeopardy!" test available online to people in this area—the questions answers whatever were deep in my wheelhouse. So I wasn't surprised to get an email about a follow-up audition (also online). I wavered a bit before accepting the invitation, knowing that the whole thing would stress me out, and what were the odds that they'd ask the right questions answers stuff again?

The Zoom call got off to a rocky start, because when you say "audition," I'm naturally going to imagine Emma Stone in La La Land, where the spotlight is on me and my performance. Instead, this was a group call, which I only realized after a bit of babbling. As for the test itself, it was 50 questions done in a separate browser window, with eight seconds to respond. You don't have to reply in the form of a question, but you do have to type—and ideally spell correctly—meaning longer responses were more troublesome. We were all being recorded as we took the test, so the producers could make sure we weren't cheating. What they got from me was a lot of furious typing before the question was even done being read—I was in the zone—and then staring straight ahead trying to look telegenic. I know I missed three, and I made educated guesses on three or four more, but I felt good about the rest. Crossword puzzles may end up being useful after all.

We'll hear in a few weeks.

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Adam and I have bought a house, and the goal this time is to keep it. Technically, it's not ours yet: we've released contingencies, which means that if we back out before closing on September 15, the sellers get to keep the deposit. In the meantime, we're getting to work organizing the many necessary repairs—new HVAC ducting, new roof, pest remediation (including tenting for termites), and so on.

If you've visited us at the house we've been renting, you might be surprised at how different this one is. Technically there are two bedrooms, but it's really more of a one-bedroom, which is why we'll eventually need to do the addition that the current owner had designed but never started. The house is old and tiny and really cute, in Montecito not far from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but a world away from their house in terms of style. Although it does have an English name....

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I rather enjoyed the movie An Easy Girl (an unfortunate translation of Une Fille Facile), but then I have a weakness for French films. It's streaming on Netflix, which defaults to English dubbing. Turn that crap off.

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It's that time again.