It’s been a little over 10 years since I admitted that I finally understood people who cried when a famous person died. Two years later the death of a much lesser known singer completely floored me. Since then? No celeb death has had more than a momentary effect on me. As I began getting the texts from all directions Tuesday about Dolly Parton’s passing, though, something definitely moved within me.
Icarus 17 - Charles Cumming The latest entry in Cumming’s usually enjoyable BOX 88 series. In this one, his master spy Lachlan Kite has been asked by his former co-worker and one-time lover Martha to help find her son, Max, who has disappeared in Athens, Greece. Max is on the run with his girlfriend, who is fleeing multiple sets of hunters who they think to want to punish her for possessing a tape of Saudi hit men killing a dissident.
Another fairly boring weekend for most of our family, so today’s entry will focus on sports. Senior Pics OK, one big family event over the weekend. L had her senior picture session on Sunday. C came home for a couple hours to help her with her makeup. I was allowed to help carry things to the car but otherwise was kept out of the way. All seemed to go well, although apparently one of the groundskeepers at the location they were using tried to balk at them being on the grounds after they had closed for the day.
Going back-and-forth to Bloomington twice this week cut into my new music time. As I begin this, I anticipate it being a little lighter than usual, but we’ll see where the music takes us. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NCsqo5Grrh3oz2UJ4D8Kx?si=b0d98e03eb6b4a0f) “Marianne” - Fontaines D.C. New music from Fontaines D.C.? Hell yeah! It continues on the subtler and more melodic path their last album took them down. “Things Take Time” - Gang of Youths
Yesterday was moving day for C, thus the flip of the blog schedule and your Weekend Notes dropping on a Tuesday. The Flood of ’26 Well, things certainly got interesting here over the weekend on the weather tip. Our week of torrential downpours culminated with the White River flooding through Carmel and northern Indianapolis Saturday morning. All the water that had overwhelmed the White to our northeast was headed our way.
Chart Week: August 4, 1984 Song: “The Warrior” - Scandal featuring Patty Smyth Chart 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 out hit after hit for other acts.
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. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VWF8PMGYRSlYo3x8fw6OU?si=33a7d67615744890) “Rain” - The Beatles What 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 sump pump has been working pretty much non-stop, I’ve pumped off the pool cover more times than I can count, and it is raining again as I type this, with more rain expected through the weekend.
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 The Lion - John Wiswell This has been on my To Read list for several months.
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 of time with in our grade/middle school days, but have seen less-and-less in recent years.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EKTR0p52YxDs03Bprnh7W?si=72423cb62d8a4760) “All The Beauty” - Pete Yorn I 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 Cole When I read that Cole was based in Nashville, I was expecting something that was softer and gentler, closer to indie folk. I was NOT expecting a chugging, mid-90s-esque rocker like this.
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 touristy areas, where prices are automatically jacked up. But the baseline certainly is higher than home as well.
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 crime novels from Bruen before our time in Ireland. Even though we did not visit Galway, where all his books take place, I was still on the alert for some of his most notable characters to cross our path while in Dublin.
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 warnings dotting all of central Indiana. Our tornado sirens went off around 5:30 when radar indicated rotation near downtown Indy.
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 to watch but got sidetracked several evenings and never got around to them.
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! [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4i8F7Hyr7ohAIOBDkiQXLD?si=6b2905efecb646b5) “Dark Summer” - Ceremony Tom Breihan says that Ceremony are a “California underground institution.
S and I have been cautiously counting down the various financial milestones we are about to check off as parents. Earlier this month we had a mini celebration when we paid CHS tuition for the final time. This is also the last year we will be paying tuition for three kids. As a family that chose to send our kids to private school from K–12, we expect no sympathy for that part of our annual outlay.
It was nice to have a laid back weekend after several weeks of travel and other nonsense. Although a few of us spent time in the car. Unfortunately, I am still sick. Today will be day 14. I guess this is my punishment for going so long without being ill in any way. Last week I tried one batch of antibiotics we had lying around the house. When they didn’t work, our house doc called in a more potent round that I started Sunday.
I have a mega-glut of music after the past month’s travels. That means you will likely get extra-stuffed playlists for at least a few weeks as I work on clearing out that backlog. We’ll kick off this week with three new songs by bands that have been around since (at least) the early Nineties. Then some new songs from more current artists. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/20I8Mmd3wVIvfzOAp6CAEW?si=e7fd43d19998466f) “Keep Looping” - Sugar The latest release from Sugar 2.
Some words to wrap up the World Cup, which was unexpectedly delightful for most of the past month. Sunday’s final was a true snoozer. Poor Spain. The country that was never quite good enough has now won two of the last four World Cups. In each case, though, their opponent abandoned their typical attacks to slow the game down and try to beat the crap out of the Spaniards, hoping to either win 1–0 or get the game to PKs and steal it there.
Four years after our first family vacation to Europe, we again jetted across the pond last week, splitting it between London and Dublin. It was a pretty good trip, although there were two significant bummers and a couple other smaller disappointments that kept this from surpassing either Italy or Hawaii as our #1 ranked family vacation. London Our first stop was London. Last Saturday we flew from Indy to Chicago, then Chicago to Heathrow overnight.