Syllabus #111

Holy crap.  This is some real life Hatchet type of stuff.  You had me at 'fell two miles to earth and landed in a tree and was basically fine' but you LOST me at 'workers poured gasoline on her open wounds to flush out the maggots.'  Has this been made into a movie?  Apparently it was made into a terrible Italian movie in the 70s, and a Werner Herzog documentary in the late 90s, but this has indie film starring Saoirse Ronan all over it.

Hold. up. WHAT.  I HAVE QUESTIONS, I DEMAND ANSWERS AND I SIMPLY CANNOT WAIT UNTIL JULY 21.  Why have you done this to us, Netflix?

Oof, the travel industry right now 

Putting this here as a gift to future me - the best wines at Trade Joes, according to a TikTok Sommelier (which is not a sentence I ever expected to type).

I technically have 3 jobs right now, and I like them all well enough.  Some days are better than others, but I've never had a job so bad (and I've had a few take legal action-level-terrible jobs) that I've considered putting my body in or near a Taco Bell sink.  I hope gaming for Twitch offers him fabulous insurance because I suspect he will need it to recover from whatever flesh-eating microbes went straight up his anus after that cannonball.  Although, also, like the main point of the article, "We’d be a healthier, happier country in the coming years if public policy makes sure more people can make like Steve and cannonball toward their bliss."

Analog Reading:

Finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.  I never wanted it to end, even though by the end many of the characters were dead.  What a beautiful and, dare I say, moving story.  Not that I wanted to keep reading about wonderful people dying horrible deaths on an AIDS ward, but like, I wanted the story to continue, with these people hanging on, until better medicine came along and they could have another shot at life.  It's a crime that after all these years there still isn't a cure.

Plodding along through Bill Bryson's The Body.  It's very interesting but I find that I only enjoy reading small chunks at a time and then I'm ready to switch to reading something else.

Just started The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  It's a big adjustment in tone compared to the previous two books I've read, so I'm easing into it and haven't formed an opinion yet.

Syllabus #110

My editor is a real micromanager

The Mare of Easttown writers really put in the work.  When Jean Smart called someone a 'smacked ass' twice in one episode I wondered if that could really be a Philly-specific phrase.  Doesn't everyone say that?  Apparently not.

I love this!  Also, re:  the Secret Service - the 'casual guy' incognito outfits might have been more effective here if they had sprung for some leather.  

Making this peach icebox cake today!  I have to send Andy back to the store to replace the bottle of Andre I bought specifically for this recipe, which he promptly consumed like some kind of sorority girl.  Like, bruh, don't you know that's the cheapest, grossest prosecco there is?  Maybe he just thought it had his name on it so it was for him?  I have no idea.  Those ΔΔΔ are so entitled.

Are you burned out?  Are you feeling like the human equivalent of a cigarette butt tossed in the gutter?  

I am fully on team No Scales In Gyms.  Like, why would you step on a scale, fully clothed and in view of others?  I don't weigh myself every day, but when I do, it's first thing in the morning, fully naked, and only after a really good poop, and never the week before my period because I'm always constipated and bloated.  So basically only on special occasions.  

I'm sorry, what metrics did you consult?  Did y'all just throw numbered darts at a map to make this list?  Could this be that traffic violations just aren't enforced, and lots of accidents don't get submitted to insurance because it's either a hit-and-run situation or both parties don't want to report it?  If I didn't wait fully 5 seconds to go when the light turns green and I'm the first in line at an intersection, I would have been t-boned so many times on these streets.  

Analog Reading:

Still plugging away at The Body by Bill Bryson and The Great Believers by Rebekka Makkai.  Something about having two jobs even though it's summer break is really cramping my reading style.

Syllabus #109

If being obsessed with my cats is wrong, I don't wanna be right

I'm not sure which is more disconcerting - the idea of putting my bare genitals on a bike seat, or the feeling of my unfettered boobs flopping over every bump in the road.  

Nay.  Hard nay.  Also, neigh, because I've seen horses with more stylish footwear.

Why DO cats get the zoomies after they poop?  

Insightful read about the festering wound that is the HATWRKS lady, and what it says about Nashville writ large.  

Analog Reading:

Finished How to Be a Family by Dan Kois.  It made me want to put it all in storage and move to another country immediately.  Maybe someday.

Also finished Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.  This made me hungry and very sad, and also impressed with the writer's resilience and self-reflection.

Just started The Body by Bill Bryson.

Syllabus #108

This past week we dropped the N, threw in a superfluous e, and spent a couple days in Asheville with the family to celebrate a couple milestone birthdays (the celebrants of which may prefer that I not reveal the age).  Some of us rode in a Lyft for the first time since last March; some of us experienced rideshare apps for the first time ever.  

It was cute.  

Don't you need to call somebody?  

How do they know where to pick us up?  

Aren't you going to pay them?  

And to the driver:  We'll probably be calling you again tomorrow if we need another ride downtown.

That's not how it works.  That's not how any of this works!  

What else happened while I was sleeping in a haunted hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald used to ogle girlies and drink a case of beer a day while Zelda was locked up in a nearby institution?

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Even the company that uses a logo of a marsupial sucking its own D condemns anti-semitisim.  

Going out without a mask feels like the dream where you find yourself giving a presentation at work without pants on.  Or maybe it feels like that moment where everyone agrees to go skinny dipping and we all look at one another like, "Are we really doing this...okay let's go!" and then at the last minute, two people break the social contract and keep their underwear on.  It also feels a little like a fuck you to people who are still wearing masks, like, "I got my vax so smell ya later, suckers."  Are those people still masking because they haven't been vaccinated yet, and if not, FTLOG why?  Or are they immune-compromised or live with people who can't or won't be vaccinated?  Are they just virtue signaling?

I'm a little jealous of all the Wawa coffee Kate Winslet appears to consume throughout the 7 episodes of Mare of Easttown.  I have two episodes left to watch, and the vague suggestion of a final shocking twist is tearing me up inside.  Who murdered the durdur??  

I was in Kroger the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend and everyone around me was filling their carts with cases of various carbonated alcoholic bevvies.  Three Chads rolled past with a cart full of White Claw and one of them said to the others, "Alright, this is a good start.  Ok, now let's look for the Pedialyte."  Like, I guess that's a gift to Future You, but I like to go out on the assumption that I am an adult human woman with self control who will alternate alcohol and water and properly line my stomach with carbohydrates and also stop after 3 drinks because that is the fatal bridge over the gorge of eternal peril for my liver, which does not know the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.  98% of the time, that works for me.  The other 2% of the time, though, man I would kill to have had Past Me purchase a Pedialyte or seven for Hungover Me.

Analog Reading:

Finished Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard.  I need to seek out more of her work.

Reading How to Be a Family by Dan Kois, a book about a family of 4 who leaves their Arlington, VA home to live abroad for one year in search of better ways to find a work-life balance.  They spend 3 months each in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and Hays, Kansas (not technically abroad but I would imagine living in small town Kansas feels like an entire other planet compared to the other locales).