Title’s not more descriptive because I’ve been just chugging through ‘normal life’, and that’s wonderful. So nice not to have a huge project hanging over my head. Work (which is fine), life maintenance (which is fine), orchestral rehearsals (which are fun!), lining up fall holiday plans.

I’m tackling little projects which have been sitting on the back burner, like finding a new web host so I can upload and point to all my old HTML files. toastpoint.com is 30 years old now, amazing. At some point I should get caught up on website technology. It does irritate me that although I do like WordPress as a blog host (and which acts as the ‘base camp’ for toastpoint.com), it doesn’t let me just point to a file directory and upload stuff. And Google Sites, where ericpetersonmusic.com lives, completely hosed the lightly maintained, but low-traffic website I had there. I would like to rebuild it, except it’s very much a case of ‘a music website is easy to put up and so you should have one’ rather than ‘you will get more opportunities if you have a music website’. So no rush.

OK, so some topics.

House and Home

I am in the market for a new microwave oven. Mine works fine as a microwave, but omits nasty odors when you use it as a convection oven or a broiler. (This was an issue even when C was alive, and I think he just used other tools for those functions.) Doing a little research, I find they recommend you replace your microwave oven after about 10 years, and this one was boughten when we reno’d the kitchen in 2003. OK, so… I’m looking for one that does what this one does (microwave, convection, broiling) plus air frying. I’m trying to be a leetle more thorough about research than I usually am, since I’m more prone to making a quick decision and then finding out the appliance doesn’t fit or whatever. But that should happen soon. No rush – again, the microwave didn’t just break, it’s been like this for years.

My grandfather clock is now stopping on its own, even when it’s wound. I’m sure it just needs a basic oiling/maintenance, but the manual recommends you get it serviced. According to my web research, there’s only one place in the city that’s ‘official’ for this type of clock, and they have yet to respond to the email I sent last week. I guess I should call them. No rush on this, except I find I miss the chiming.

I’ve also realized that as much as I love my recliner, I don’t think it’s doing good things for my back. Susan pointed out that it may be more about ‘it’s old and tired’ (the recliner, I mean, not my back, although…) rather than ‘it’s a recliner’, but I think I’m going to replace it with a Comfy Chair that’s not a recliner. So I need to stop in at Raymour & Flanagan the next time that’s convenient. No rush there either.

TV and Stuff

I did watch the Emmys last night, and was delighted that The Pitt and Adolescence took all those awards (and Hacks, too). I wrapped up some series recently, and took on some new ones, so this is my rotation right now:

• Wednesday season 2
• Northern Exposure (finishing up season 4)
• Department Q (this is great, and takes place in Edinburgh, a favorite city)
• Ballard (more Bosch universe)
• Andor (very slowly. I get how good it is, but I find it hard to follow)
• This is Us (late to the party, I know)
• Poker Face season 2. Such great guest stars, but Natasha Lyonne’s character tends to irritate me.
• I might rewatch Bunheads, now that it’s available on Prime, and it sounds like Somebody Somewhere is really worth it.

I have a long list (really, like on a spreadsheet) of other shows to pick up eventually. There is so much good TV-format content.

Movies, too. Prompted by our December visit to San Simeon, I rewatched Citizen Kane. So good. I do find it amusing that his second wife, the ‘opera singer’, isn’t actually a bad singer like, say, Florence Foster Jenkins, she’s just a mediocre amateur who gets unwillingly thrust in the spotlight. She’s always on pitch and meter, it’s just kind of blah.

I also have been watching, over several nights, North by Northwest. I’m sure I’ve seen at least some of it before, but maybe have never watched it from beginning to end. Lots of great “New York in 1959” cinematography, and great performances, too. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Eva Marie Saint in anything major, but a little research shows that she won an Oscar for On the Waterfront, a movie I’ve never seen, but own on DVD. So maybe that will be next.

I also have a long list of movies I’ve noted to watch, but nothing on the list has been tickling my fancy, except some horror stuff. Maybe I’ll start Spooky October a couple of weeks early. Speaking of which, the new movie of The Long Walk is getting excellent reviews.

The book, of course, is one of the four “Bachman Books” that Stephen King published under his pseudonym. And when I read it, many years ago, it freaked me the fuck out and gave me nightmares. Which is to say it’s excellent and I don’t know if I can actually watch it as a movie. Like Pet Sematary – that’s been turned into a movie twice and I don’t know if I’ll ever watch either one. Not Stephen King’s best book, but probably his scariest.

Which brings me to…

Books

In the ‘vegetables’ category – books I read because I feel I should, not because they make me happy – I finished White Fragility and am now on White Rage. White Fragility, although excellent, was definitely ‘vegetables’ – White Rage is a lot better read, but is, in fact, enraging. I had no idea of the post-Civil War history where the governments simply reinstated slavery under different names. No wonder there’s a battle now about teaching that stuff in schools.

For fun, I’ve been doing my usual mix of gay romance, straight romance, thriller, Terry Pratchett and a random book or too – all on the Kindle and I rotate through them as I like. But I really got caught up in an old series of Kaje Harper‘s that I hadn’t read before. Life Lessons – an out gay high school English teacher gets involved with a very closeted cop in 2010’s Minneapolis. There’s a fair amount of ‘police story’ plot, which is good, but I was very much driven by ‘how is this going to resolve?’. Clearly, the cop is going to come out of the closet, but why is he so closeted (it is explained) and what will be the upshot? It was gripping and entertaining and I ripped through all four books, plus extras, in about three days. So…

One funny thing – I actually am fairly familiar with the Twin Cities, having been there many times on business trips and worked with locals for years. One thing I noticed about the stories is there wasn’t a lot of local flavor (they never take their kids to the State Fair, for instance). But at one point, KH references a particular bookstore on a particular corner and I knew exactly where that was and what she was talking about, had driven past it a million times (and visited it at least once). So that made me happy.

So, also, I listen to audiobooks as an alternative to podcasts, and since most of my podcasts are politics and politics are so ugly right now, I’ve been leaning on them more. I tend to use audiobooks to reread books I’ve already read, and had decided to revisit KJ Charles’s Doomsday books. So I finished the first one, perfectly pleasant, and decided to roll straight into the second one (which, again, I’d already read). And this weekend I got so caught up in the second one I couldn’t stop listening to it. Like, had to sit down with some knitting so I could keep listening. So… yeah, if you like British historical stories of dudes falling in love, especially when there’s a huge class difference and an undercurrent of skullduggery, both these books are highly recommended. Well, all her books are highly recommended.

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Loving this weather. Let’s go have another great week!