SamR’s week in review (#992)

Topics/tags: Autobiographical

As I noted a few months ago, when Youngest went off to college in a land far, far away and Eldest went off to graduate school in the opposite direction, I began a habit of writing a weekly week in review to share with my family and encouraged them to do the same. I had thought that I would post those as musings but, well, things didn’t happen as planned. That is, although I wrote weekly reports, I didn’t post them. But perhaps it’s time to start again. Here’s a slightly edited version of this week’s report, which I sent to my family yesterday. When I send them to my family, I call them DadR’s week in review, but for my readers, they’ll just be SamR’s week in review.

Another week that flew by.

Water aerobics was good this week. On Wednesday morning, there were only two of us there, so we got to do a lot of work with motion, doing exercises from deep end to shallow end and back again. Jumping jacks in the shallow end were bad for my ankles, but that’s probably to be expected. Wednesday afternoon’s session with Holly didn’t feel as intense as the prior week but it was nice exercising with mom. Thursday morning we had five people and I enjoyed it. My watch claims that I’m burning tons of calories. I don’t know whether or not that’s accurate. My joints still aren’t great and I have to pay more attention to my diet.

Like mom, I was disappointed in Jesus Christ, Superstar. I have most of the album of the film memorized; it was on my regular playlist when I was a kid. It’s probably where I learned about Christianity. I even recall discussing it in junior high and realizing that I knew more than some Christians about this stuff (e.g., that the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene were different people). Anyway, back to the show. The set was kind of boring. I’m not sure if they were trying to hearken back to the stage they used in the early 1970s, but it did not have the design flair I’ve seen in most recent shows. I thought the actor who played JC’s voice was mediocre at best.

Like mom, I enjoyed seeing Middle dive this weekend. I liked seeing him place first on the three-meter board. I enjoyed seeing him attempt some fairly hard dives; I think I counted three with two-and-a-half flips (or, as I think of them, N05 dives). I was sorry to see that Teammate didn’t make his dive with three-and-a-half flips.

Computers are causing difficulty in my life. My laptop’s keyboard is dying; the e key works only intermittently, usually stopping each time I move the computer from place to place. The drive that was dying toward the end of break is no longer recognized by my computer and I don’t have the energy to send it back. They’re moving my Web site and it is not going smoothly. There were other things, too, but I can’t remember them. Oh, even though I met with ITS to get a new laptop about four months ago, there was a mix-up and it never got ordered. But there’s a positive result from that: Apple no longer makes 15" laptops, so I’m getting one of the new 16" ones. I hear they’ve fixed the problem with the keyboard, going back to the old scissor switches from butterfly switches. ITS even acknowledged that I probably need 32GB of RAM. Happy Dad!

I’ve been trying and failing to get reading done this week. I was hoping to finish The Starless Sea before I chose a reading. But enough time had passed that it seemed best to just pick it and hope for the best. Mom thinks it’s strange, but I really like the imagery. I never did get to read the new Seanan McGuire book.

Mom and I finished watching Hellcats this week [1]. The show went downhill as the season went on. As mom said, I can see why it didn’t get renewed. I tried to get mom to watch Sex Education, but she didn’t find it as funny as I did [2]. We also watched another episode of Legacies (and yes, we’ll re-watch if folks want to see it as a family). I’m not sure what’s up next.

I’m still musing. Today’s [3] was insanely long (5000+ words). It was just one of those days that I kept writing. I probably need an editor. (Ooh! I’ll add that to this musing.)

I recall feeling really blah a day or two this week. Maybe Friday after Jon’s meet? I can’t recall. But I seem to be doing okay now.

I’m looking forward to starting class next week. I have Ralph’s Craft of Creative Nonfiction on Tuesday and Justin’s Digital Media Design on Wednesday. I’m missing Ralph’s class on Thursday. Friday, I’m helping to run a Faculty/Staff Friday on Belonging.

Mom and I are supposed to go to a show with Friend on Thursday. We’re not sure we can make it. I may go see Andrew Yang on Monday night [4]. I may go to the Jazz Band Potato Bar on Friday night.

I feel like I’m missing one or two things. I’ll probably remember immediately after I send this [5]. Oh well, that’s how it goes.

Love you all! [6]

[1] Yeah, we watch some mediocre TV.

[2] Correction: She enjoyed it, but didn’t want to force me to watch it again. I don’t mind having it on while I’m doing other work, which is generally how I watch TV these days.

[3] Yesterday’s, from the perspective of this posting.

[4] Nope, too busy to make it.

[5] Nope, I didn’t.

[6] That message is for my family. I love some of my readers, but I don’t even know all of you.

Version 1.0 of 2020-01-19.