checking in

Sep. 25th, 2025 11:05 pm
kareila: (sketchy)
[personal profile] kareila
September is almost over and I don't know that I have all that much to show for it, although I have stayed busy.

Progress on the old house continues, but not as quickly as one would hope. We had to switch from homeowners' insurance to renters' insurance since the building is unoccupied, and the property tax exemption is about to expire. But the trim replacement on all of the first floor windows that we decided was necessary (and long overdue) is just about done, and I finally finished removing all the trimmed branches from the back yard. (That was rate-limited to the two trash bags per week that would fit in with the rest of our garbage, because the city discontinued their yard waste pickup service.)

Symphony chorus rehearsals started back up a couple of weeks ago. I did get permission from the chorus manager to sing with the altos for the Beethoven Ninth, which I requested for two reasons: one, to save my voice from all the high A's, and two, to give me something to LEARN in a season that consists mostly of the Ninth, the Messiah, and Carmina Burana, all of which I have sung multiple times - as a soprano.

But actually, we do also get to perform a new thing, or so I found out this week. It's called "A Time for Jubilee" and the composer is Nkeiru Okoye, a black woman only a few years older than I am. That's scheduled for the end of February.

Connor is still feeling positive about school. He had his first CS exam on Tuesday and his first big English assignment was due today. The only class he doesn't seem to be thrilled with is his "introduction to student life" seminar, which is understandable. So far I haven't had to sit around campus waiting on him for more than a couple of hours at a time.

I have one more book to go before I'm caught up on the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I've also finally started the Earthsea books, and I'm rereading the sixth Old Man's War book to refresh my memory before getting the newest one, which I'm hoping will arrive at the library next week.

The baseball season ends on Sunday and the Red Sox still haven't locked up a wild card spot for the playoffs. It's going to be a chaotic weekend in the American League for every contender except Seattle. As for the Dodgers, they clinched the NL West today and their pitching rotation is finally in good shape, although their bullpen is still looking shaky. But I'd love to see them manage to pull off the World Series repeat, if only to give people one less reason to talk about the Yankees.

How not to be efficient

Sep. 21st, 2025 10:09 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
Eat a snack consisting of pretzels and water from a water bottle. Neglect to finish chewing and swallowing before sucking down some water. Have your cheek pulled in between your teeth as you continue chewing the remaining pretzel and masticate your cheek.

Ouch.

Action #14, plus blort

Sep. 17th, 2025 09:46 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
I went to stand on the street corner in front of the UU church in town, along with 16 other souls, holding signs. This is a weekly thing, from 5-6 on Wednesdays. Usually I have square dancing at a time that would make this inconvenient, so when it was canceled this week, and Ken was away, Valerie and I decided to go. It seemed like there was a smaller percentage of cars with positive honking than at previous events. I didn't see any middle fingers, though. Maybe the drivers are getting tired of us.

In other non-news, summer seems to be at a close. There was a ton of waterskiing in August. It's nice that we didn't have a big cyanobacteria bloom. In June the lake management committee had alum poured along the lake bottom to hopefully keep it at bay, and it appears to of work. There was a big flap about it, because people were like "we will all die of aluminum poisoning" even though the amount that you get is really small, and that's if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do and sit on the lake bottom and keep organic material from feeding the algae.

I did ski last weekend, but weekday skiing might be done with, mostly due to lack of personnel, because the neighbor, who is a schoolteacher, is back at work, and random guests are gone, and it's starting to get dark early enough that "after dinner ski" doesn't make any sense. Plus Ken's knee is bugging him so he's not really skiing.

The boat starter has been behaving better, perhaps Ken taking it apart and putting it back together was helpful. Sometimes it still craps out, but not often enough to be able to take it to the shop and say "fix it" because they will not be able to reproduce the problem.

This week I've had a weird health issue, which is that on Monday and Tuesday evening I had a mild fever, but I felt really fine in the morning. Maybe the ibuprofen was still in effect. Today it was a lot later in the day before I started to feel bad, and I'm just feeling vaguely mediocre as opposed to actually bad. I run low normally, so 98.6 is a fever for me, but even I'm hard-pressed to say that 98.1 is a fever, which was tonight's reading. I'm coughing a little bit. I took a nucleic Covid test Monday and it was negative.

I would [bike] a thousand miles...

Sep. 16th, 2025 07:36 pm
[personal profile] lehser
Around this time last year, we got back from a bike trip in northern Scotland (amazing, kinda rainy, rather chilly). Coincidentally, my 16-year-old carpool had died at the beginning of the month. And I realized that if I'd been (e-)biking 15-25 miles/day in hilly northern Scotland, I could bike ~8 miles each way to work. And that I can do public transit on days that biking doesn't work for whatever reason.

At that point, I'd had my e-bike for about 8 years, and there were somewhere between 750 and 800 miles on it. Today I hit 1820. I mostly skipped the really rainy days (turns out there's more traffic around here, and I trust it way less) and the really seriously icy days (turns out they don't shovel the paths by the river all that well between Christian Herter Park and the next bridge), and some days when I had stuff going on after work or just didn't feel like it.

It's a fairly minimal accomplishment, but I'm pretty pleased.

77th Emmy Awards

Sep. 14th, 2025 07:17 pm
dougo: (TV)
[personal profile] dougo

Just like last year, I've managed to watch at least one episode of every show nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, including the specific episodes nominated in the writing and directing categories (but not counting the reality/variety categories). Once again I don't have enough time left before the ceremony tonight to write up my opinions of each show, but here are my rankings in each category from most to least favorite. (These are not predictions, just how I would fill out my ballot if I were in the Television Academy.) I've indicated how many episodes I've watched of each show; for the ones with no indication, I watched the full season. (For multiple-season shows that were new to me, I watched the pilot episode first. In the case of Somebody Somewhere, I watched the first and last episodes of the series, since the finale was nominated for Outstanding Writing, so it felt like I was on Alan Sepinwall's Too Long; Didn't Watch podcast!)

Outstanding Comedy Series

  1. The Bear (FX)
  2. The Studio (Apple TV+) - 5 episodes
  3. Hacks (HBO Max) - 4 episodes
  4. Abbott Elementary (ABC) - 8 episodes
  5. Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
  6. Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
  7. Shrinking (Apple TV+)
  8. What We Do in the Shadows (FX) - 2 episodes

While none of these shows were home runs (and not the best season for any of the returning shows), they were all worth watching, and it's honestly hard to rank them.

Outstanding Drama Series

  1. Andor (Disney+)
  2. Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
  3. Severance (Apple TV+)
  4. The Pitt (HBO Max) - 4 episodes
  5. The White Lotus (HBO)
  6. The Diplomat (Netflix) - 1 episode
  7. Paradise (Hulu) - 2 episodes
  8. The Last of Us (HBO) - 1 episode

While I ranked Severance over Andor in my best TV of 2022 list, it was a very close call. After their second seasons, though, I'm ready to call Andor the clear winner, and the clear leader for best show of the decade. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it's going to win, but you should all watch it! Even if you hate Star Wars!

Everyone says episode 7 of Paradise is the one to watch, but I haven't gotten there yet. Looking forward to it, but from what I hear, the rest of the season is unlikely to change my rating. And I think the same goes for episode 2 of The Last of Us, but I already was lukewarm on season 1 (ranking 49th in my best TV of 2023 list), so you shouldn't be too surprised to see it ranked last here.

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

  1. The Penguin (HBO)
  2. Adolescence (Netflix)
  3. Black Mirror (Netflix) - 2 episodes
  4. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)
  5. Dying for Sex (FX) - 6 episodes

All worthy shows, and while Dying for Sex didn't totally land for me, I can see its appeal for many others. I was skeptical about Monsters but after episode 5 I understood why it was nominated, and it's worth watching the show just to see how it gets to that. I regret not getting around to the other Black Mirror episodes, but the first two felt a little lower than average compared to past seasons.

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