The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin This was my spring break book, the final in Cronin’s super virus/vampire trilogy. In this book, thought it took him a long time to get going, offering a lot of background in the first half or so. Some of the background, that which centered on the life of Tim Fanning and how he came to be Patient Zero in the outbreak, was quite good.
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Breath In, Breath Out” - Melody’s Echo Chamber. Such good news that Melody Prochet is returning this summer after suffering serious injuries in an accident last year. Her new album was all recorded and set for release before her accident but was delayed pending her recovery. Glad that she is back. “AZ” - Now, Now. Mother Nature keeps pushing spring back. It might, MIGHT, be up in the 80s here next week.
I suppose I’ll finally take my head out of the sand, hold my breath, and write about KU’s name coming up in the most recent FBI indictments related to shoe companies, college hoops, and recruiting. Over spring break I was only mildly tuned in to news of any kind. At the end of the day, while the family was taking turns getting showered and ready for dinner, I would check Twitter and scroll back just an hour or so to make sure I didn’t miss anything big.
Lazy ass. That’s what I’ve been. Well, to be fair to myself, we do have a couple potentially large projects in the planning stages that have dominated my attention of late. Should they proceed, I shall share them here at a future date. But I’ve also just been lazy. Freaking weak-ass weather isn’t helping either. We got the boat in the water last weekend. All went well in every aspect of that process.
A week away means there’s a glut of music to share, so I’ll expand this a little bit this week. Oh, and there’s an absolute monster track that appeared last night that will wrap this up. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Cali” - Ride. Ride’s comeback album, Weather Diaries, was released nearly a year ago now. At the time I was a little more enamored with Slowdive’s comeback disk. This song popped up in my Discover playlist recently and I’ve fallen in love with it.
It’s been a weird week, trying to get back in the swing of things after our vacation. The weather hasn’t helped, with the cold mornings robbing me of motivation to do much of anything. I have a couple posts mentally prepared but just can’t sit down long enough to bash them out. So I guess I’ll share some links. My main man John N. sent me this link, to an excerpt from Chris Nashawaty’s upcoming book about the making of Caddyshack.
I’ve finally made my way through my RSS reader, which collected over 1800 articles while we were gone. In that glut, I found a few items that can very loosely be connected, as all are about one kind of loss or another. First, Lindsey Buckingham announced he was leaving Fleetwood Mac again. I had to wonder why this was such big news in the music press. Sure, Fleetwood Mac is one of the biggest bands of all time and a summer tour will probably draw way more people than my 10 favorite current bands combined.
We left cold, snowy Indiana for a week in the warmth and sun of Mexico. It was, almost completely, an excellent trip. Our home for the week was the Paradisus La Esmerelda resort in Playa del Carmen, about 45 minutes south of Cancun. Our flight down was without incident, we navigated the hour-long line that was Mexican immigration, gathered our bags, and found our transport agent, a man holding a sign with our family’s name on it.
It’s been a busy week around these parts. First, crazy ass weather. Sunday night/Monday morning we had our fourth snowstorm in the past two weeks. This time we got somewhere between 3–4” of snow. We received almost as much snow in those two weeks than we had gotten all of this winter before then and last winter combined. Weird. We followed that up Tuesday with ridiculous rains. Some areas got 5” of rain.
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Twisted Highway” - Erika Wennerstrom. While her excellent band Heartless Bastards takes a break, Wennerstrom decided to record a solo album on a whim. If this, the first single, is any indication, there will be no loss of quality compared to her work with HB. “Gauntlet in the Sun” - Ricky Lewis. I feel like my general music tastes have not changed that much. I’ve been locked into alt/indie rock for over 20 years now.
Chart Week: March 26, 1983 Song: “Little Red Corvette” - Prince Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #6 for two weeks in May. A few weeks back I heard Prince’s first Top 40 hit, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and wondered when the first time I ever heard a Prince song was. “Lover” reached #11 in 1979, and the radio stations my parents listened to at the time were likely to have had it in their rotations.
The Kremlin’s Candidate - Jason Matthews Interesting timing, with this coming out right around the same time as the movie adaptation of Red Sparrow, the first book in the trilogy it completes. Matthews has been lauded by folks who know a lot more than me as an author who can combine good spy novel plot with offering realistic tradecraft, something he allegedly knows a lot about since he spent most of his adult life in the CIA.
There’s something to be said for losing in the Final Four in blowout fashion to a team that breaks a couple NCAA records along the way. To start off, you’re already happy your team made the Final Four. Even more so if you beat arguably the most talented team in the tournament, a team that you’ve hated for over 30 years. The fact the blowout started about a minute into the game helps a lot, too.
Some week. We’ve had a stomach bug run through the house. There’s been plenty of middle-of-the-night puking and I’ve had a sick kid home three different days. As I mentioned yesterday, the weather has been strange, careening between February snows and April showers. We are hosting our family Easter celebration on Saturday, so in between dealing with kids I’ve been trying to get the house prepped. It was also kickball jersey week, so our bonus room has piles of uniforms I’ve sorted out for St.
youtu.be/hv_zJrO_p… “Devil Inside” - INXS. Only a video this week. I have plenty of music backed up I could share, but I also have a very busy day lined up in preparation for our family Easter celebration tomorrow. The girls also get out of school early today and we’re watching one of my nephews after that, so this will have to do. This song was selected with a definite reason. In the spring of 1988, one of my best friends from my middle school years, who had moved to St.
In the past week we’ve had more snow combined that we had received all winter. Four inches fell last Thursday followed by over six inches Saturday.[1] In each case the snow melted quickly. Thursday it was all gone before the girls got home from school. Saturday’s snow was almost completely gone by Sunday evening. Now we’ve transitioned into warmer days - at least into the 50s - but it is dark and dreary and the land is saturated from seven days of melting snow and rain.
Chart Week: March 8, 1986 Song: “Kyrie” - Mr. Mister Chart Position: #1, 12th week on the chart, second week at #1. One of my favorite things to do when I hear old music is consider artists who had really brief, but really amazing runs. “Did so-and-so have the best year ever?” I’ll ask myself when I hear a song by an artist who was massive for a few months and then disappeared.
It’s pouring rain outside, I have a sick kid on the couch, so today seems like a good day to get caught up on books. Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks. This was a timely read, found at the library on a shelf of books pulled in advance of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday. It is exactly what its title claims to be: the story of a trip around Ireland with a refrigerator.
It’s a little after 11:00 Sunday night as I begin this post. I just watched the replay of today’s Midwest Regional final, or at least the last five or so minutes of regulation plus overtime, on the CBS Sports Network.[1] I’ve been texting, emailing, and reading coverage of that game since it wrapped up in real time. I’ve just poured some celebratory bourbon. What better time than now to start putting words down about my Jayhawks getting back to the Final Four?
An Elite 8 with two Kansas teams in it is enough to earn a very rare Saturday post. Mark down the date, folks, because these don’t happen very often! First off, the important stuff: the Jayhawks are in the Elite 8 for the third-straight season, the second time in school history they have done that (2002–2004). In both of those runs, the third team was clearly the weakest of each group.