Have I mentioned my issues with our gas, water, and sewer utility before? Well, I’m about to!
These people suck. Seriously.
Here’s a list of the issues we’ve gone through with them over the past eight months.
First, our builder did not drop any grass seed until the week that the water line was supposed to be connected. They had a firm date from the utility - this was the week we reached a deal to buy the house - and leveled the torn up ground and then covered it with seed.
It’s been a rough few musical days, another time when we have been reminded that painful music is sometimes a product of truly painful lives.
On Wednesday The New York Times ran a story in which several women accused Ryan Adams of abusive behavior. Phoebe Bridgers and Adams’ ex-wife Mandy Moore both went on record about their relationships with Adams and the pain he inflicted upon them. Worst, the article suggested than he engaged in a highly inappropriate, on-line relationship with a musician that began when the girl was only 14.
A couple smaller things smashed into one post today.
First, there’s just too much information out there. I know this is, like, a devastatingly deep and original opinion, but that’s why I have a blog, people.
Wait, I’m not talking about the general flood of information we swim through each day. I’m talking about the maddening process of trying to buy pretty much anything.
Example: our printer is dying. So I go on the webzzz to do some research on what garbage printer we should buy for the next 18–24 months.
Chart Week: February 12, 1983 Song: “Down Under” - Men at Work Chart Position: #1, 15th week on the chart. Spent four non-consecutive weeks at #1 in January and February.
If you’ve paid very close attention to my music posts over the years, you may recall that I kicked around a project in which I would find the best single weekly top 10 of the 1980s. A couple summers back I spent a few nights scrolling through top 10s and marking down my favorites as I watched Royals games.
A pretty solid Monday evening of hoops.
It began with S and I trekking down to Banker’s Life Fieldhouse to watch the Pacers take on the Charlotte Hornets. We were lucky enough to be invited by the CEO of her hospital, and were sitting in the company suite. We took along one of S’s med school pals and his wife, who are great company but who we sadly do not see often enough.
This time of year I enjoy rolling through the sports channels and stopping at NBCSN or one of the Fox channels to watch some winter sport for 15–20 minutes. If I find downhill skiing, I’ll watch for an hour. It’s such a badass sport and I’m thrilled I get a chance to see it more than just during the Olympics.
Saturday I caught the men’s World Cup race. Sunday I caught the women’s, which just happened to by Lindsey Vonn’s last race before she retires.
Our era of good music continues.
open.spotify.com/user/224a…
“Cosmic Cave” - Ex Hex. This is a hell of a fun rave-up that really should make everyone who hears it jump around like a maniac.
“Harmony Hall” - Vampire Weekend. Everything has a backlash, especially in music. If you’re too smart, too clever, or too-anything, there will be a backlash. VW’s last two albums have been two of the best reviewed disks of their respective years.
It is the first kid sick day of the calendar year; C is home with a stomach issue.
Adding to the fun is my back continues to trouble me. It’s not all the way out the way it was on New Year’s Day, but something I’ve done to it has got me on a heavy regimen of ibuprofen and heating pads. Getting old sucks.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the Jayhawks…
Good grief that was a garbage Super Bowl. The game sucked. The result sucked. Most of the commercials sucked. The halftime show sucked.[1] Just a garbage night all around.
It made me feel bad for being so neutral in the AFC title game. Then again, rooting hard for the Chiefs two weeks ago just would have pissed me off when they blew it then. And surely Sean Payton and Drew Brees could have handled the Patriots bullshit better than Sean McVay and Jared Goff did.
This was our winteriest week of the season. Two days with sub-zero temperatures and windchills 20-30 degrees colder than that. Today is supposed to be the beginning of a major warm-up, but we woke to 4” of snow and a two-hour school delay. (Update: School was cancelled for the day about five minutes after I posted this.) So I thought the Spotify tunes should stick to a weather theme, with two new songs and two classics.
Like the rest of my readers who live in the Midwest, we’ve been hammered by Arctic temperatures for the last 36 hours. Which has led to some controversy.
On Monday our school principal sent out an email stating that assuming the roads were in good shape and the school’s furnace, water, and electricity were functioning normally, he would plan on having school on Wednesday and Thursday. Which made sense: we’re a no-bus school and kids get dropped off within 50 feet of the front door.
November Road - Lou Berney As with Tana French, I returned to another author that I read last November who gave me immense reading pleasure. Expectations for this one were cranked up a little, not just because I enjoyed his The Long and Faraway Gone so much but because of the historical event this book is anchored to: the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
It would be wrong to say this book is about the Kennedy assassination.
I’m on nephew duty the next couple days so I’ll go ahead and post this late on a Sunday to kick off the week.
Chart Week: January 28, 1984 Song: “Let the Music Play” - Shannon Chart Position: #18, 12th week on the chart. Peaked at #8 the week of February 25. Reached #1 on the US Dance Club Songs chart.
It’s been over a month without a Reaching for the Stars entry.
The music continues to flow. It’s been a really good stretch of both single and full length releases. So I’m going to pump the list up a little this week to make sure I’m sharing the new stuff in a timely matter. Hopefully the extra tunes will warm your day a little.
open.spotify.com/user/224a…
“Jeremy” - Muncie Girls. Two curveballs on this song: first, the band isn’t a bunch of Ball State alums and it is not a Pearl Jam cover.
Let’s talk hoops for a few minutes.
Yeah, I know I said I was drastically reducing my expectations for KU after Udoka Azubuike was lost for the season. But, still, that loss to West Virginia last Saturday was fucking stupid. It put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Seriously, it’s been awhile since I’ve been that angry after a loss.
Why the change in attitude? Because West Virginia only showed the mildest of interest in winning that game for the first 37 minutes, because slightly smarter play over that stretch would have put the game out of reach, and because KU had a complete meltdown in the closing three minutes to hand the game to the Mountaineers.
Our holiday weekend was both busy and lazy.
We watched one of our two year old nephews from Friday night through Monday morning. He’s a really good kid - smart and funny and loves being with the girls - but you do kind of forget how exhausting that phase of life is. The repeated questions. The bizarre mood changes. The out of nowhere finickiness when eating. The failure to grasp basic logic.
Conference championship weekend.
That doesn’t get me fired up the way it used to. Although I came back to the NFL a little this season, I would still label myself as a casual fan at best. A far cry from when I was a kid and I was super into everything about the NFL. I watched The NFL Today each Sunday, made sure I caught the halftime highlights on Monday Night Football, and could likely tell you several important facts about the third place team in each division.
The music finally hit this week. There has been a steady flow of new tracks all week. There are at least five new albums out today that I am interested in (Sharon Van Etten, Deerhunter, Maggie Rogers, The Twilight Sad, and Steve Gunn) along with a couple others I’d like to get to. We’ll start to see that flood of new tracks hit the playlist next week. Although I am excited that the first 2019 song I’m crazy about is in this week’s selections.
A new reading year comes with a bit of a change. I still have my Carmel library card, which should be good for several more years.[1] Just before Christmas L and I finally went over to the Indianapolis public library branch that is about a mile away to get cards there.
Our local library is very small. But you can request books from any IPL location and they will show up at our branch in a few days.
A busy and fun weekend around our house.
Saturday C and I headed out at 7:00 am for her first preseason volleyball tournament. At that point in the day we had about 2” of snow. The roads were not great, but not terrible either. It helped that no one was out on them, other than parents going to volleyball tournaments. We were at one of two volleyball facilities that back up to each other.
I should probably lock in some kind of prediction for tomorrow’s game between the Colts and Chiefs.
I’ve watched zero minutes of the Chiefs this year, so I only know what I’ve read about them. But that’s been plenty. They spent much of the season being the most talked about and exciting team in the NFL. For all the nervousness among some Chiefs fans about their playoff history against the Colts, KC is a 5.
open.spotify.com/user/224a…
“Seventeen” - Sharon Van Etten. Still no new albums worth getting excited about. But next week is the first big push of new disks, including Sharon Van Etten’s newest. Of the early singles she’s released from it, this is my favorite. I love it’s rough edges and long, slow build.
“Sunday Driver” - The Raconteurs. The Raconteurs are back! Two lead singles from an untitled new album with no release date hit last week.
I guess I spoke too soon. One more quick piece of clean-up from 2018.
Here are three excellent articles I read in the last month that I think are worth sharing.
First, a pretty amazing story about a crazy-ass endurance race, and the woman who competes with men to win the damn thing.
Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Takes On The World’s Most Sadistic Endurance Race
In theory the race sounds easy: run a 4+ mile loop through the woods on a Tennessee farm every hour.
The kids are back at school, so time for one more piece of 2018 wrap up.
I finished my reading year with two more excellent books, one of which was a big a change-of-pace for me.
The Flight Attendant - Chris Bohjalian I put several books that I saw on Best of 18 lists on hold at the library, and this was the first to become available. Man, is it a humdinger of a read!
It is the last day of Christmas vacation in our house. It might hit 50 for the third-straight day, but no one seems real interested in getting outside and doing something. Probably has something to do with me telling everyone their rooms need to be cleaned up before anything else gets done today, and no one is moving all that quickly to start cleaning. C does have a volleyball practice in a bit, but other than that looks like one, final, lazy day to wrap up two-plus weeks of them.
Is it Friday already? Time for the first playlist of the year, then!
open.spotify.com/user/224a…
“Blue” - Thyla. This is kind of a perfect January song. Lyrically, it is dark and depressing, the singer complaining constantly about being “blue, blue, blue, blue, bluuuuuueeee.” Yet the music is driving and powerful as if it is pushing her through those January blues to the warmer months beyond.
“I Wonder” - Mike Krol featuring Allison Crutchfield.
A new Big 12 basketball season has begun. In a very strange first night of the year, there were three road wins. The only team to win at home? The Mighty Jayhawks of Kansas.
When the balls were first rolled out back in November, consensus was KU would have no problem rolling to their 15th-straight Big 12 title. Kansas State and West Virginia might challenge a little, but KU was supposed to be just too good to be caught.
Happy New Year! Hope your celebrations were safe, happy, and the headaches/stomaches that resulted have passed.
Our New Year’s Eve went well. The Pacers game was good. Well, other than spending 15 minutes to travel three blocks right before our parking garage. Not sure what the hell was going on but traffic was a nightmare. The Pacers won by 8, the girls seemed to enjoy it, and our seats were decent.
The always interesting final music stats post of the year. This year’s - or last year’s more properly - December numbers are even more out of whack than in the past thanks to our addition of the Sonos speaker to our household. In fact, December threw off the entire year’s numbers.
December 2018
Bing Crosby - 210 Frank Sinatra - 103 Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - 66 Ella Fitzgerald - 64 Darlene Love - 45 So I subtract the Holiday tunes and my wife’s music and we’re left with some odd numbers for an odd year.
Here we are, another calendar year about to end.
2018 was a wacky, wild year for us.
There were a ton of kid sports: volleyball, basketball, kickball, cross country, soccer, cheer.
There was our first family trip beyond the US borders for spring break in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
There was our first family visit to the ER, when C had a mystery issue in June that, thankfully, has never recurred.