Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 59
Chart Week: July 12, 1986 Song: “If She Knew What She Wants” – The Bangles Chart Position: #29, 10th week on the chart. This was the song’s peak; it fell out of the Top 40 the next week. I recall being in love with a lot of unattainable women in the summer of 1986. There was Heather Thomas, whose poster…
Reader’s Notebook, 7/20/21
The Alice Network – Kate Quinn A friend gave me this book awhile back, but I left it in my bookshelf for months before finally cracking it open. When I did, S told me she had read it on one of our vacations and loved it. We don’t read a lot of the same books, so I was both excited…
Weekend Notes
Another relaxing and laid-back weekend. Friday we wrapped up the rainiest week of a rainy summer by, yep, having more rain. By the time the storms stopped Saturday morning we were at six inches of rain through the first 15 days of the month. Which seems like a lot. The good news is I haven’t had to water the yard…
Emergency Vid
RIP to the Diabolical B-I-Z.
Friday Links
I’m going to resurrect an old feature of the blog: sharing some of my favorite things I’ve read over the past week on Fridays. This will be an occasion feature, so don’t count on entry every week. And some weeks it might be loaded with cool stuff and others, like this week, only have one or two items in it.…
Friday Playlist
This week a focus on new songs by (mostly) long-established artists. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1NcunvPiPLtGOAlgYAd3q7?si=5162366ab0a94dd0 “Galacticana” – Strand of Oaks Oh hell yes, new music from Timothy Showalter! And it sounds great! And one critic has said the album this comes from is the finest of his career! It comes out October 1 for those of you who track such things. “Living in…
ASG, 2021
Ahhh, the All-Star Game! The mid-summer moment when we set aside our differences and come together as Americans to celebrate our once-and-always National Pastime. Well, except for this year, which was ruined by the forces that want to keep us apart, that want us to continue arguing about manufactured wedge issues to distract us from the true damage being done…
Summer of Freedom
I realized yesterday that this has been, and should continue to be, a pretty boring summer. Sure, we’ve had a few gatherings to take advantage of the pool and the new pool house. We’re trying to schedule a few more but as kids get older, it gets harder and harder to pin a group of families down to a single…
Friday Playlist
The new music has been, thankfully, piling up again. So let’s go deep this week with an extra-packed playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zJa8rdvchL1SxNPyb6OlM?si=ace9b79327764b5d “House Burn Down” – King Princess Being pessimistic about your life shouldn’t sound this good. “Lockdown” – The Wind Ups Maybe it’s just me, but I hear a lot of the Ramones in this track. “Why Don’t You Touch Me”…
Early July Sports Notes
KU Hoops It would be nice to say a dizzying three months of roster flux at Kansas came to an end Tuesday when Ochai Agbaji and Remy Martin both announced they were pulling their names from the NBA draft list and would be playing as Jayhawks in the coming season. But given how crazy college hoops is at the moment,…