La Nostra Avventura Italiana, 2022
What follows is an epic, old school breakdown of our Thanksgiving week trip to Italy. I spent almost all day Sunday working on it, so I hope it is coherent and interesting. I’ve broken it into sections so you can read in chunks or skip around as you like. Departure/Chicago The trip began a little ominously. I woke up feeling terrible last Saturday morning. All three girls had been sick over the previous few weeks, one with a stomach bug, but it seemed like I had avoided all their germs. But there I was, throwing up for the first time in years, unable to keep even bland food down, and…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 80
Chart Week: November 20, 1982 Song: “Heartbreaker” – Dionne Warwick Chart Position: #28, 7th week on the chart. Peaked at #10 for two weeks in January 1983. Dionne Warwick has had an amazing career. Hits upon hits, all kinds of notable and interesting personality quirks, a side-career that kept her in the public eye, becoming Twitter famous, and most recently the subject of a bizarre yet endearing Saturday Night Live parody. I bet most people probably think she’s a little nutty, but in the warmest possible sense of the word. I did not realize, until I heard this countdown, that her nuttiness went way back. Casey shared an anecdote about…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 79
Chart Week: November 23, 1985 Song: “Separate Lives” – Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin Chart Position: #3, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 the week of November 30. (Note: To tide you over during our Thanksgiving vacation, I’ve scheduled a couple posts to drop while we are away. I’m hoping all goes well and they appear on time and have the appropriate media files attached. If something goes wrong, please forgive me. I will correct upon our return.) As happens on occasion, this post is more about a story tangentially tied to the song than the song itself. On this week’s countdown, Casey shared an anecdote about Phil…
Friday Playlist
I’ve pretty casually mentioned a couple times that our family had a trip to Italy planned. The time for that trip has arrived. Tomorrow morning we will drive up to Chicago, hop on a flight to Paris, and hopefully end up in Rome by early afternoon Sunday. Over the next seven days we will be exploring Rome, Florence, and Venice. We have lots of cool stuff planned that I will, of course, tell you all about it after our return. When we booked the trip back in July, it felt like we had ages before we would leave. It’s hard to believe our departure is almost here. It’s a touch…
Kid Hoops: Denied
L’s team came up short in the City championship game Thursday. It was a tough, defensive matchup between two teams that knew what their opponent was trying to do. The difference was St O got to the basket more than we did, and hit a couple big threes to stretch out a lead on their way to a 30–20 win. It was 4–4 after one, and we were down 10–8 at halftime. L hit a 3 midway through the third to cut a four-point deficit to one, but St O countered with a 3 on the next possession which kicked off a 16–7 run over the remainder of the game…
Reader’s Notebook, 11/17/22
Five Decembers – James Kestrel I cheaped out when I bought my Kindle and got the one that has “special offers,” a euphemism for constant advertising on its sleep screen. All so I could save $50 or whatever. This book was often featured in those ads late last summer. I’ve found a lot of the books that Amazon pushes are crap, so I discounted it. Until I saw it land on a best mysteries of the year so far list. I’m glad I saw that list, because this was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. At its core it is a pretty standard murder mystery. A…
Jayhawk Talk: Winning Ugly Is Better Than Losing
Nothing like a (very) late game on a Tuesday night to get the real college hoops season started! First, although I got many texts asking this question, I should clarify that I did not go to the KU-Duke game last night. This is the first non-Covid Champions Classic game played in Indy I have not attended. The first two times friends came up with tickets and went with me. Four years ago I literally got the invite seven hours before game time. But, strangely, people don’t like traveling to Indianapolis on a random Tuesday in November unless absolutely necessary. So no ticket hookup. I checked tickets online a couple times…
Surviving, Advancing
Two down, one to go. L’s team won their CYO A League City basketball semifinal 35–20 Monday night. It wasn’t as easy as the final score makes it look, though. When she woke up Monday her left knee was still swollen and sore from whatever happened to it Saturday. She had already taped it up and was hobbling around when I came down for breakfast, saying it still hurt and was difficult to move. After school she seemed to be walking better. When she got in the car we had this conversation: “How does your knee feel?” “It’s not good.” “Think you can try to play tonight?” “I’m not going…
Weekend Notes
FNL Regional Friday in Indiana with teams fighting to make the final four in their respective classes. For the second time this year Cathedral traveled out west to Brownsburg, where they lost their only game of the season, 42–35, back in August. They trailed by 21 much of that game and only a furious, fourth quarter comeback made it close. The wind was blowing again Friday and that had a huge effect on the game. It also helped that both teams were dialed in on defense. Each side missed makable field goals in the first half because of the wind. Brownsburg capitalized on the CHS miss just before halftime and…
Friday Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1quRsxCGUaWzdgzIokpPlM?si=6f93b16705bd45ad “October Passed Me By” – girl in red DAMMIT! I meant to include this last week. I guess it still applies. “Honey” – Romero I just learned that this song is a couple years old, but it appears on Romero’s first full-length album that was just released, so it’s getting a second round of love from the music blogs. It’s a terrific little scorcher, and they are from Australia, so what’s not to like? “Cartoon Earthquake” – Blondshell You can blast Spotify for a lot of reasons, mostly for how little they pay artists. But they do make it easier than ever to access the music of new, upcoming…