7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Four years ago, my laptop died.  At the same time, a friend was going into seminary.  He had to have a computer in seminary, of course, but it could only be a seminary-issued machine.  He’d purchased a laptop fairly recently, and so he sold it to me for $250.  That was my laptop for, as I said, the past four years.  It’s been fine – your basic Toshiba.  I hurt it about a year ago when I spilled Diet Coke on the keyboard.  I acted quickly, but not quickly enough to save the comma key – and so for about a year, whenever I needed a comma, I’d have to cut and paste one from another document.  Awkward, but I accepted it as the consequences of my actions.  Recently, the machine’s general sluggishness and size started to get on my nerves, as well as the whole comma thing,  so I decided it was time to replace it – and the more I thought about the bloatware that comes on any non-Mac machine, the more I didn’t want to deal with it.  So, yeah, I jumped in and got a MacBook Air this week.  I figured four years of average yearly laptop cost of $60…it might be okay and averages out to a decent cost.  I like it so far.  I’m mostly amazed, like a toddler, at simple things: as in how it powers up instantly.  Little things.

— 2 —

Michael on the slide on the right. You come down a tube and the momentum shoots you up this slide, then back down.

Not my usual thing, but this week, we went to a waterpark – called Splash Adventures.  It was formerly a smaller full-scale amusement park called Alabama Adventures, but this year they shut down the non-water rides and expanded the aqua area.  I paid way too much to get in – I understand there are discount coupons floating around, but I didn’t score any this time.  It was a cloudy day, so the park wasn’t super crowded.  The weather shifted from clouds to off and on rain in the afternoon, but that didn’t deter anyone – there was no thunder or lightening, so they only chased everyone out of the rides once, during a particularly heavy downpour.  But for an hour or so in the afternoon, there was swimming in the rain.  What I remember from swimming in the rain as a child is that it felt ecstatic – almost transgressive.  Why is that?

— 3 —

I am needing to get serious about schooling plans.  I am torn between the need and desire to research (because Research Is Fun) and the sure knowledge that each and every time, I will fall right down a very deep rabbit hole, and I have a life.  I need to adopt the same philosophy I have in regard to travel plans.  At some point, I just have to pick one, stop dithering, and  move on.

— 4 —

I read Beautiful Ruins this week, partly because of the plot description, but mostly because of the cover. I admit it.  I adore this cover and covet it. The book was okay.  Lots of characters with various arcs, lots of jumping back and forth through time.  It was all a little much, and I didn’t like the central conceit. To describe it would be to spoil a plot point that’s not made clear til partway through the book, but let’s just say I thought it was gimmicky and obvious, and I would have been more interested in the book without it – if the author had found another way to explore the lives of these characters – mainly a rising Hollywood starlet, a rising Hollywood producer, and the proprietor of a ramshackle hotel on a ramshackle town that didn’t make it into the Cinque Terre (which would have made it Sette Terre, then, right?).

Still covet the cover.

— 5 —

Have been reading The Pursuit of Italy for a while and hope to finish it this weekend.  It’s a fascinating, rather iconoclastic look at the history of Italy.  It’s iconoclastic because the author dispenses with the narrative of inevitability and destiny in regard to Italian unification and nationalism and takes a close look at the complexities and perhaps even negative consequences of the creation of the nation of Italy.   He doesn’t really think much of the Church and hence doesn’t take a lot of time exploring the role of the Church in all of this through the centuries in a terribly deep way.  I would like to find a relatively objective and contemporary history of the Papal States from the 18th century on to flesh it out for me, but I’m not having any luck.

— 6 —

I have also been reading The Betrothed - for weeks.  That sucker is long. Maybe I’ll finish it this year.  I read it and Beautiful Ruins on the Kindle app, and have The Pursuit of Italy in a hard copy from the library.  I find that I really don’t like reading non fiction on e-readers.  I do so much paging back and forth and referencing of indices and bibliography, I find print books easier for me in that regard.  Also, I do find that for me, there is a relationship between the solidity of a book in space and my ability to retain information.  I think they have done studies on this – one of my older sons told me about it – but I do think there is a connection (again, at least for me) between physical action and the senses and my levels of retention, especially with complex non-fiction.

— 7 —

For those of you in the Southwest, this is no big news, but for a foreigner, seeing all the adobe and adobe-like structures everywhere down there is a treat.  The whole landscape is so different anyway, and the structures with their earth-toned colorways, flat roofs and rounded corners which blend into the hills, just add to the attraction.  From an interior perspective, what I liked the most were the wide window ledges and the alcoves.  I believe they have a specific name, but I don’t know what it is.  I love them, though – this from our rental. 

For all the saints. In La Lomita.

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