Lots of Little Things (Weeknotes
Happenings
🛂 We received our new passports. I’d heard rumors that it was taking months, including one firsthand source, but we got ours back in less than three weeks! Now we’re good to go until 2034.
📚 I sold a load of books to Half Price Books. Didn’t get much for them, but at least I know that most of them will eventually find new homes.
📱 I took my iPhone 13 Pro in to the local repair shop to have the camera and battery replaced. The telephoto camera had an annoying artifact that I just couldn’t live with any more. The battery wasn’t really due to be replaced, but it was down to 83% capacity and I figured I’d deal with that too while they had the thing cracked open. I reckon I can get a couple more years out of it now.
📸 I created an account on Retro, a “friends-only photo journal” app. Thanks to Jedda for bringing this one to my attention. It looks interesting, but I’m not sure it’s something I need since I’m sort of doing this with Flickr and my photo blog already—although admittedly these are public not private. I’ll continue to play with it a bit and we’ll see. It might come in handy at some point in the future.
🏡 I helped move our oldest daughter back home from university this weekend. She’ll be living at home while she attends law school starting next month. It’ll be nice to have her around again.
🦨 We had a ghastly start to our Sunday. I was up early and let the doggo outside as usual. There I was, minding my own business and drinking my coffee, when the smell of skunk wafted in through the open window. I called out to the doggo and sure enough, he’d been skunked. Again. So we had to give him a bath at too-early-in-the-damn-morning o’clock. Fortunately, we were armed with the skunk-b-gone goo so it was relatively light work.
🌵 I gave my tiny Giant Saguaro a name. His name is Scooter. He is the living mascot represented by my very cool Hey Hey Momo avatar.
Random Thoughts
🍒 Alex KR1ST posted in support of STEAM, a study of Arts in addition to Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths. It got me thinking that while I agree with this sentiment 100%, I’m not really fond of the STEAM acronym itself. It implies a level of importance that is a mere one quarter of the combined STEM disciplines. In my mind arts and maths are foundational and on equal footing. Scientific or engineering disciplines are then layered on top of that. And why is the word “Technology” even in there? Is that just technology competency? If so, that’s table stakes these days. I propose that SAM (Science, Arts, and Maths) would be a better acronym.
Blog Stuff
🆕 Recap of new posts this week
- Eight Books that have had a lasting impact
- My Apple Music Playlists from the last ten years
- All the Cameras I’ve ever owned
- I Repotted by Tiny Giant Saguaro
📝 Inspired by the clean look and feel of blogs on Micro.blog and Bear, I’ve lately been on a mission to simplify. This blog now uses only one template. All three of my blogs are using a common stylesheet and fonts now too. Much simpler to maintain this way.
🧻 In other blogging news, I’ve apparently made the cut for this list, a new blog directory by Jedda and Lou. I was surprised and happy to have been selected in the first round!
Reading
- The SBL Study Bible Progress: about 3%
Watching
🐻 The Bear S3E03 (“Doors”) was exhausting to watch. And after watching S3E04 (“Violet”) I'm thinking this is how the whole season is going to be.
📺 I didn’t last a full week on the ad-supported tier of Hulu. I couldn’t take it any more and upgraded Saturday. No more commercials!
💰 - After watching episodes 9 and 10 of Loot I’m going to need to find something else light and fun to watch. Which is partly why...
🌀 I'm excited for the new Time Bandits series coming next week to Apple TV+. I saw the Terry Gilliam film version back in 1981. I had no idea back then who Terry Gilliam was or what his brand of humor was, but the movie made a big impression on me and I've always had a soft spot for it. Can't wait to see what Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and company do with this adaptation.
- Sydney Pollack has made some great films. Tootsie. The Firm.
- Maybe this is one of them.
- But, no it isn’t. It’s full of great actors who just can’t salvage this film from the clutches of a really cheesy story. The basic plot is pretty solid, but there are some serious problems.
- Why is John Houseman in this movie?! He is so grossly out of place in this movie! It’s like he accidentally knocked on the wrong stage door or something.
- The pornographic soundtrack! I love Dave Grusin, but this is too much to bear.
- Bad movie + Meh on the enjoyment scale = 5 out of 10 stars.
- How is this 82% on Rotten Tomatoes?
See you all next week. May you not be visited by a skunk.