Weekend accomplishments
Saturday was Silent Book Club again, which seemed weird because I'm fairly certain it hasn't been a month since June's. It was the 1 year anniversary and there was a brunch before the meeting, so probably it had to do with that. (I briefly considered going before deciding I didn't have time.) So I went to the grocery store right after breakfast; came back and put away groceries and cleaned up the kitchen; and had just enough time to take everything off my dresser and dust before going back out.
I was sitting at the same table as a young man (the same guy who told me I should read Three-Body Problem a few meetings back) who was reading The Kite Runner and we got to talking for a few minutes because I told him that part of it is set in my hometown; we always had a large Afghan population going back to the Soviet occupation and people sometimes call the oldest section of downtown "Little Kabul".
I got home about a quarter to 5:00, I just had time before supper to put on a load of towels and finish watching Silo, which I had started that week. David made pulled pork sandwiches with leftover roast from the night before, and after supper I started watching The Black Widower on HBO. It's about Thomas Randolph, whose wives keep turning up dead, in what has to be the biggest case of "Him? Really??" I've ever seen. He's... not an attractive man, in *any* sense of the word, I have no idea why women keep marrying him. (I wish I could say "And now they won't", but unfortunately being in prison has never seemed to stop shitheads determined to ruin some naive woman's life.) There was a Dateline series about him a year or two ago so it wasn't new information, but I wanted something I only needed to half pay attention to because I was determined to finish the music box orrery.
It took 3 nights of working about 2 hours each. I really took my time though, being sure to sand each piece and wax all the parts that enmeshed with other parts. It was actually easier than the printing press, it didn't have any wiring or springs. It had a lot of gears that had to line up just right so everything would rotate correctly, that was the only somewhat difficult part.
Sunday I made cinnamon rolls (the Pillsbury tube kind) in the waffle iron for breakfast, just for the heck of it. I made a whipped maple cinnamon butter to put on them. I finished The Widower, changed/washed the bed sheets, made pineapple shakes and put them in the freezer to semi-freeze into soft serve ice cream. I did some dinner prep, boiled some eggs for lunches, and made lunch. I had a couple leftover hardboiled eggs from last week that I made egg salad with, but that wasn't enough for 2 sandwiches. So I made avocado toast and put the egg salad on top, which was a pretty good combo.
I had some wine and finished Emma Cline's The Guest. I didn't like it as much as The Girls. It wasn't terrible, and I liked what it had to say about how most of us are increasingly becoming like, just bit players in the lives of billionaires. But Cline seems to specialize in the genre of "dirtbags wandering around doing dirtbag shit", and while I guess it's... something that we're starting to get novels in this genre where the dirtbags in question aren't always young white men, it's just not my thing. The Girls was also about female dirtbags, but they were Manson Girls, so it felt like it had more of a point. (Cline never says that's who she's writing about, but it's very obvious from context clues.)
I started reading The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers. My father really liked McCullers, he once told me she was the only southern writer he really admired and that The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was one of the 3 greatest English-language novels written in the 20th century. (The other 2 were Ulysses and The Pillars of the Earth.)
Dinner was pretzel-crusted pork sliders with a homemade mayo/relish/horseradish sauce, and sweet potato fries. Rouse's only sells pork tenderloins 2 to a package, so I have several pork cutlets left. David will probably do something with them for supper tonight.
I was sitting at the same table as a young man (the same guy who told me I should read Three-Body Problem a few meetings back) who was reading The Kite Runner and we got to talking for a few minutes because I told him that part of it is set in my hometown; we always had a large Afghan population going back to the Soviet occupation and people sometimes call the oldest section of downtown "Little Kabul".
I got home about a quarter to 5:00, I just had time before supper to put on a load of towels and finish watching Silo, which I had started that week. David made pulled pork sandwiches with leftover roast from the night before, and after supper I started watching The Black Widower on HBO. It's about Thomas Randolph, whose wives keep turning up dead, in what has to be the biggest case of "Him? Really??" I've ever seen. He's... not an attractive man, in *any* sense of the word, I have no idea why women keep marrying him. (I wish I could say "And now they won't", but unfortunately being in prison has never seemed to stop shitheads determined to ruin some naive woman's life.) There was a Dateline series about him a year or two ago so it wasn't new information, but I wanted something I only needed to half pay attention to because I was determined to finish the music box orrery.
Click to viewIt took 3 nights of working about 2 hours each. I really took my time though, being sure to sand each piece and wax all the parts that enmeshed with other parts. It was actually easier than the printing press, it didn't have any wiring or springs. It had a lot of gears that had to line up just right so everything would rotate correctly, that was the only somewhat difficult part.
Sunday I made cinnamon rolls (the Pillsbury tube kind) in the waffle iron for breakfast, just for the heck of it. I made a whipped maple cinnamon butter to put on them. I finished The Widower, changed/washed the bed sheets, made pineapple shakes and put them in the freezer to semi-freeze into soft serve ice cream. I did some dinner prep, boiled some eggs for lunches, and made lunch. I had a couple leftover hardboiled eggs from last week that I made egg salad with, but that wasn't enough for 2 sandwiches. So I made avocado toast and put the egg salad on top, which was a pretty good combo.
I had some wine and finished Emma Cline's The Guest. I didn't like it as much as The Girls. It wasn't terrible, and I liked what it had to say about how most of us are increasingly becoming like, just bit players in the lives of billionaires. But Cline seems to specialize in the genre of "dirtbags wandering around doing dirtbag shit", and while I guess it's... something that we're starting to get novels in this genre where the dirtbags in question aren't always young white men, it's just not my thing. The Girls was also about female dirtbags, but they were Manson Girls, so it felt like it had more of a point. (Cline never says that's who she's writing about, but it's very obvious from context clues.)
I started reading The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers. My father really liked McCullers, he once told me she was the only southern writer he really admired and that The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was one of the 3 greatest English-language novels written in the 20th century. (The other 2 were Ulysses and The Pillars of the Earth.)
Dinner was pretzel-crusted pork sliders with a homemade mayo/relish/horseradish sauce, and sweet potato fries. Rouse's only sells pork tenderloins 2 to a package, so I have several pork cutlets left. David will probably do something with them for supper tonight.