Syllabus #204

 A Day Late and a Dollar Short, or, the title of my next memoir.

Coming to you on a Monday instead of a customary Sunday, because, surprise, I'm religious now and I needed to take yesterday off to worship the lord.  

Jay kay.  I can't even claim to be sacrilegious because up until five minutes ago I thought it was sac-religious, and I thought it just meant those people who are really passionate about taking their own bags to the grocery store.  You know, because some weirdos call it a sack?  Bless their hearts. 

None of this is true!  I just wasn't home all weekend.  We dropped the N, added a superfluous silent e, and spent the weekend in Asheville.  We spent the weekend with one of Andy's good friends and his girlfriend, who showed us a great time in West Asheville (which is like the East Nashville of Asheville, but, hot take, is better/grittier/crunchier).  We went white water rafting on the French Broad, where we probably didn't get e. coli, but just to be on the safe side, we Dresden Fire Bombed our insides with hot chicken afterwards.  Of course.  

Leaves Nashville, immediately seeks hot chicken

They actually had Quorn ChiQin* tendies, so I was able to get in on the action, too.  I ordered the second hottest spice level and the guy at the counter asked me if I knew what I was getting into.  I told him we are from Nashville and it's not my first hot chicken rodeo.  They really pasted the spice rub on like they were spackling a hole in the wall, perhaps to punish me for my arrogance.  If they did, jokes on them, because it was delicious and damn, it was fire in every sense of the word.

*I get that you can't just spell it 'chicken' because everyone will be confused, but that is the most offensive bastardization of the spelling I have yet to witness.

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Beige flags.  God I must be throwing up beige flags every minute of every day.  I get the sentiment, but beige is not the color I would have chosen to illustrate the concept.  Weird, non-threatening behaviors are what make people interesting!  What about a neon green flag, or a high-viz orange flag?  Or a tie-dyed flag?  If you're jumping into the dating pool to find a khaki-wearing normie with no endearingly strange predilections, you should probably just seek an arranged marriage with someone whose mommy still irons and folds their undies.

Analog Reading:

Finished Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait.  I liked it!  I was skeptical going in, as I had read a couple reviews by readers who found it boring.  There were some very slow parts, and it's true that not a lot of action happened, but it was psychologically interesting and the world-building was compelling.  The twist ending made it all worthwhile!  You think you know how the book is going to end from the first few pages in, and you think  you're just working backwards to find out how and why it ends that way.  Hold onto your butts, people, it's not gonna be quite what you think.

Now reading the highly anticipated Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby.  It is nothing less than hilarious, as usual.  Even her essay about her unironic love of Dave Matthews had me lol'ing, and I can't friggin stand Dave Matthews.  

Also reading Stephen King's novella collection, Different Seasons, which contains Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method.  The first three have all obviously been adapted for the screen - The Body became the movie Stand by Me.  So far I've read the first story and part of the 2nd, and they are just so so good.  The movie version of Shawshank is so faithful in tone and content to the original text.  I feel like I need to watch it again because it's been well over a decade and I think before I read the novella, I was conflating parts of Shawshank with elements of Slingblade, which, really, couldn't be more different outside of being set inside a prison and starting with the letter S.