Saturday, May 28, 2016

Tonight's Read

Tonight's read.  Popped up in some listicle or another.  Originated in a Clickhole list, as near as I am willing to search it out.

I dig that.

Wilmore is originally from Murfreesboro, by the way.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Happy birthday, Thomas!

This is Thomas.

He is my nephew.

He explained to me, in great detail, the workings of the Jurassic World tablet game he plays on his grandfather's tablet.  He is also on Level 50 of Angry Birds Transformers. (This is farther than I am).

He is 6 today.

He is endlessly impressive.  He is ceaselessly funny.  He's a goofball.  I like him.

Happy birthday to my nephew.

I got him Legos, because I'd kinda like to play with the Legos, too.

Them's the shakes.  But you play with the Legos all you want.  I'll always be there.

Maybe even for the Minecraft.  I don't pretend to understand.  But you run with it.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Random Thoughts

Discouraging week at work.  Long hours.  Little thanks.  Going home exhausted at the end of a day.  Working 9 out of 10 coming back from vacation.  Half of them 11+ hours.

Tired.

Shorthanded.

Working six days.

I'll put in 60, 65 hours this week.

I'm not sure why.

It makes me incredibly grateful for those people who do come in on a daily basis, and bust ass.  I'm thankful for them.

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I finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit this week.  Strong stuff.  I wish this one had been around when I was in Dr. Himebaugh's Media History class.  That one was one of my favorites of my college career, but the one thing it never seemed to hit just right was the impact of the media--its role in changing things.  I never got a real glimpse of the Yellow journalists, of the muckrakers, at least in terms of the world they lived in.  This does an excellent job.

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Started a re-read of Geek Love....a listening of it this time.  I was given a copy to read by a co-worker several years back.  I was reading it to try to have conversation material with somebody I was crushing on at the time.  I read it, and was astounded by it.  I found later that my crush had abandoned her attempt.  Katherine Dunn passed away recently.  I wanted to give this one another run through.

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Surprise!

I got to surprise Shyam tonight.  It's been a ridiculously busy couple of months for them down at the business.  She's been swamped.  It slipped by her that one of her favorite artists was going to play in Knoxville tonight.   It did not slip by me, I am pleased to say.  I was able to get ahold of a presale password by being that guy who goes "anybody got the presale password?"  Found some fifth row tickets to see this lady:



I kept the surprise for several weeks.  I was kinda afraid she'd get wind of it somehow, from Twitter or a family member.  Then, a couple weeks ago, we went to the same venue Lucinda Williams played at tonight to see Kevin Smith.  I didn't see any "Coming Soon" featuring Lucinda, so my secret was safe...until they started a rundown of coming events at the Bijou.  I was floundering for a way to distract her, when an usher did that for me perfectly, leading somebody to the seats right next to ours, as they announced that Lucinda would be there on May 4.

"Did you catch that?" I asked, a pratfall in verbal form.  Cool as a fucking cucumber, me.

She had not.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  And the surprise held until we drove up to the Bijou tonight.

We enjoyed the show.  Lucinda plays a good show.  Rocks out.

Like I said, Shyam's had a busy few weeks.  She said this was a nice surprise and a reset for her.

Today was a good day, campers.