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.
After a busy week, things are finally slowing down enough to share some details from our Christmas celebrations. My in-laws came in from Florida last Wednesday. This is their second Christmas since going to Florida full-time, so Saturday my mother-in-law and the girls had their second annual baking day. They baked three kinds of cookies and a coffee cake for Christmas morning. S and I escaped to the gym and ran some errands, but it seems like fun was had.
Chart Week: December 22, 1984 Song: “The Belle of St. Mark” - Sheila E. Chart Position: #34, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #34 for three weeks over December and January. One last 1984 countdown to close out the year. And, holy crap, what a countdown it was! The summer of ’84 gets all the glory, but this week was pretty spectacular, too. “Like A Virgin,” “Out of Touch,” “Cool It Now,” “We Belong,” and “I Feel For You” in the Top 10.
Christmas vacation has begun. The girls had early dismissal yesterday and are now home for two-plus weeks of holiday bliss. Or hiding in their rooms staring at their devices. Christmas in 2018… As a self-anointed connoisseur of holiday music, I thought I would share some of my favorite songs that aren’t jam-packed into every other Christmas playlist you may have been subjected to over the last month. Most of these are songs that never get played on the radio.
’Tis the season for quick reads. So some blurbs about a few (mostly) slim pieces I’ve rolled through recently. Being Santa Claus - Sal Lizard with Jonathan Lane A memoir by a Christmas season Santa who does everything from standard mall Santa gigs, to private events at homes, to visiting sick kids in the hospital. It’s pretty saccharine, but Santa really shouldn’t be edgy and controversial, right? The Reservoir Tapes - Jon McGregor I read this not knowing it was a companion piece to a previous, larger novel by McGregor, Reservoir 13.
After about six weeks of hard work, here they are: my 22 favorite songs of 2018. Yeah, 22. Got a problem with that? I didn’t think so. I’ve provided both a Spotify playlist that goes from the end of the list to #1, and individual videos for each song. These posts are always hard to get right with all the embeds, so please be patient if it takes awhile to load.