Over the years we have really gotten into alternative tree toppers, and this year’s is some sort of Pokeymans, I don’t know which kind. But the tree is up. There have been years when we haven’t bothered; I don’t think we had one last year, and three cats in the house means that we’ve forgone ornaments for pretty much the entire time we’ve lived here. Also, yes, that’s an artificial tree, because people who bring real trees into their houses for Christmas are lunatics, and yes, I’ll die on that hill.
The lights are controlled by an app, and do all sorts of fun stuff, only some of which looks like it’ll trigger epileptic seizures if we leave it running for too long. They’re pretty though.
Anyway.
I had to give up on a John Irving book this weekend, which I find immensely frustrating. I’ve read nearly all of his work, excepting only his nonfiction and … maybe? a short story collection that I’m not sure actually exists? But I’ve read all of his novels, at least, or I had, up until The Last Chairlift came out. Irving has always been an author who really, really liked his repeating tropes over his body of work, but this book– his first in seven years– reads more like a parody of a John Irving book than it does an actual John Irving book– as if someone much less skilled than him read all his stuff and then tried to write a book in his voice. It took me a week to get through the first three hundred pages out of like 870 or something, I didn’t care at all about what was going on, and then I hit the part where the POV character (who is, of course, another writer) started including long segments of his screenplays in the text of the novel, and that was where I decided I had to be done. The worst thing is this may very well be Irving’s last novel; he’s 81 and if it took him seven years to write this one, I don’t see another coming out anytime soon.
On to a Kevin Hearne book, which isn’t much shorter and I’ll probably finish in three or four days. The Seven Kennings series has been great so far and I suspect he’ll stick the ending.
I expect my current feeling of general contentment to last until roughly fourth hour tomorrow, but for now I am in a pretty good place. We had Third Thanksgiving today with my wife’s side of the family, and that cousin of hers who makes the cheesy tater tot casserole was there, and we brought home like four pounds of cheesy tater tot casserole, so we are absolutely calling today a success. It’s not quite 8:00 and I have finished my lesson planning for tomorrow, I took care of a few minor projects around the house and I read like six books over the last five days, plus I finished Blasphemous II.
I’m going to call this a pretty well-spent break, I think. My wife and son both have tomorrow off as well, so I expect to get home and find half of the wallpaper in the house missing. How was your holiday?
Lots to do today: some recording, some putting-together of furniture, moving around other furniture, some minor bits of shopping, every item of clothing I own has been washed in the last couple of days and needs to be put away, four days of lesson planning (lucky for me, I got caught up on my grading before leaving work on Friday,) a loose plan for the weeks between now and ILEARN because I feel like as soon as I actually internalize when ILEARN is it’s going to start causing panic attacks and I need my numbers to look good so I probably ought to start getting ready, and whatever the hell else it occurs to me to do to procrastinate about starting all of that. Also eating, showering, and the various other tasks necessary to keep my shambling mass vertical and non-odoriferous.
Also I think I’ve decided it might be time to redo the look of the site. I like this one a lot but I’ve been using it for a couple of years at least and it’s time to freshen things up a bit.
What are you doing with your Presidents’ Day? (Probably nothing, I realize this. It’s a dumb holiday.)
I went out and braved the cold— the snow kind of fizzled in our neck of the woods; we got barely an inch– to buy eggnog this afternoon, which probably counts as the single most festive thing I’ve ever done. I also bought lemonade, generally considered more of a summer drink, but what the hell, I’m a rebel.
Have I recommended Andor yet? You should watch Andor. And if you’re celebrating today or tomorrow, I hope you have a lovely day, and if you don’t, I hope you have a lovely day anyway. I’ll likely post at some point but don’t expect anything too fancy.
I straight-up forgot to post yesterday; I’m no longer remotely as pressed about posting every day as I used to be, but I do like it when I actively decide to not post on a given day rather than forgetting. But yesterday was nutso busy and I just forgot. I assume y’all have already forgiven me, if you even noticed.
And today I’m out of town, at my brother’s place in the Chicago suburbs, what we used to call North Northytown back when I lived in Chicago. We are watching football and my son is starting to agitate about heading to the hotel now that his cousin is in bed for the night. One way or another I wasn’t about to skip the night after forgetting. More tomorrow. We’re going to the Lego store on the way home and my goal is to get out without spending $500. We’ll see if I make it.
I’m also going to keep telling the internet to send me birthday money until it actually happens. C’mon, one of y’all take the hit. Somebody out there has to have more money than sense. 🙂
I have spent my birthday recording a Platinum Trophy Guide for Return of the Obra Dinn and reading. It is hotter– or at least more humid– than Satan’s asscrack outside and I just dispatched my wife to Long John Silver’s for dinner, mostly because neither of us feels like cooking and the boy has been begging for it lately. It occurs to me that on a day like today working at Long John Silver’s might literally be the worst job in existence, so I apologize to those poor fryer-burnt bastards for anything they’ve experienced today. It has, truth be told, been a fairly regular day, which … well, 46 ain’t exactly a milestone year. 45 went pretty well, at least personally, even if the entire world went to hell. In an ideal world this next year is as good for me mentally and physically as last year was for me financially.
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