Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 128
Chart Week: August 4, 1984Song: “The Warrior” – Scandal featuring Patty SmythChart Position: #33, sixth week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for two weeks in September. Who were the biggest songwriters of the Eighties? I’m not talking about Prince, Lionel Richie, etc, multi-platinum artists who wrote their own music. No, I’m talking about the songwriters for hire who cranked…
Friday Playlist
Songs about rain, three local/regional tracks, and despite Pumpkin Spice items beginning to show up in the grocery store this week, we keep the summer songs rolling. “Rain” – The BeatlesWhat a week! We’ve been lucky that the truly Biblical rains have been well to the east of us: one area got 17” of rain in about 48 hours! Our…
Reader’s Notebook, 8/12/26
I’m spending my morning in a dentist’s waiting room while C gets the first of two crowns. What a way to wrap up her summer! With time to kill I figured I’d go ahead and do my next RN entry based on a single book. Fortunately it gave me a lot to think about and then share with you. Wearing…
Weekend Notes
Our boring weekends got a little more boring over the one just completed. No college visits. Thick humidity rolling in contributed to that quite a bit. I bet I can still crank out 1000+ words about the last three days. We had friends over during the day Saturday for a pool gathering. These are two families we spent a lot…
Friday Playlist
“All The Beauty” – Pete YornI like it better when Yorn makes B+ versions of his best songs than when he goes off on odd tangents. This is one of those good ones. “MMA” Hannah ColeWhen I read that Cole was based in Nashville, I was expecting something that was softer and gentler, closer to indie folk. I was NOT…
More European Vacation Notes
I’ve been sitting on several leftover notes from our European vacation. At this point I doubt I’m going to remember anything interesting or important so seems like time to finally purge them from the notebook. Good grief, Europe is expensive! I know this isn’t a news flash or anything. It didn’t help that we were staying in bougie places, in…
Reader’s Notebook, 8/4/26
Well, July was quite the reading month. I knocked out nine books. NINE BOOKS!!! Three were rather slight things I loaded onto the Kindle for our trip that I won’t bother to include here. This entry includes five of those July books and then the first book of August. Headstone, Purgatory, Green Hell – Ken Bruen Three more gritty, grimy…
Weekend Notes
Another weekend that, honestly, not much exciting happened in our lives. Most of the weekend was dreary, from Friday evening until late Sunday afternoon. We got a decent downpour overnight into Saturday morning, enough that the pool cover pump was completely submerged when I tossed it out Saturday morning. Later in the day we got absolutely pounded, with flash flood…
July Media
This is not as heavy as I thought it would be a few weeks ago. I didn’t watch nearly as many movies on our flights to/from Europe as I expected to. I had tickets to see The Odyssey last week, but a family snafu nixed that. Finally, I was lazy last week. I had a couple other movies lined up…
Friday Playlist
For the second-straight week I am putting this together and scheduling it on Thursday evening, as I will be out of the house early Friday. Two throw back songs from the mid–90s mixed in with the new stuff, a tribute to a lost troubadour, and a summer classic to round it all out. Happy weekend to all! “Dark Summer” –…