Tuesday

I had begun this as a Monday post, but then life got going, and ah, well.

We’re here. We had a busy weekend. One of the kids got married, and it happened to be the same kid who spent the past year in the third year of law school and then the summer moving and studying for the bar and then two days of the last week of July taking the bar, so yes – that kid has had an eventful recent past, and by extension, so has Mom.

So here’s to a new family, a new home in a new state and a new job!

Next up: moving someone else to college. So this week is all about rediscovering the extra-long twin sheet set and college textbook prices. One advance from the previous go-round? Textbook rentals are much more common and, for the most part, the way to go.

Let’s digest:

Watching: Not much – no time – except for chunks of Roman Holiday, inspired by my quest to defend the film in the Althouse comments section.  Sigh.  I do love that movie. Lots.

I have been told by a few people that Justified is indeed worth watching, so I might give it a shot to tide me over until 2020 when both Better Call Saul and Fargo are set to return.

Listening:  To that Rondeau and the Bach Prelude in F, which Keyboardist Son very successful played on the organ at the wedding – plus thirty minutes of impressive (to me) improvising before the ceremony.

Also to another Son on this podcast, talking about the Star Trek movies. 

“Stella by Starlight” – Keyboardist Son’s jazz assignment of the week. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear the conference participants at the Southeastern Sacred Music Conference sing at our Cathedral’s 5pm Saturday Mass – we were still reception-ing at the time.

We’re going to be listening to several different lectures and other audio material related to the Iliad in the near future, followed in short order by  – surprise – the Odyssey. 

Reading: Of course much online material on the zillion barely-newsworthy things that happen every day and the one or two actually newsworthy events.

The other day, I just wanted to be immersed in a book for a few hours, something I could read from beginning to end in one sitting, so it ended up being Lost You by Haylen Beck. It was certainly better than the last contemporary thriller/mystery I read which was just awful – and I can’t remember the title of it, to save my life. Flat writing, lame “twists.” You know the drill. This one had marginally stronger writing and a decent twist that upends the expectations you probably had at the beginning.

The book also was centered on paid surrogacy and could be read as a critique- not hard to do considering how terrible paid surrogacy is – but that critique is undercut a bit by an author’s note at the end which, while it doesn’t celebrate surrogacy, compliments all the surrogate mothers out there – which in a way, is a critique of surrogacy, if you think about it.

So it was back to Cheever last night for some meat. I read “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow” which was another loop through Cheever land that begins with one perspective, lands us in another place where we walk around a bit and see some terrible decisions and their consequences, then guides us back out to another window looking out on it all. I’m fascinated by that constant narrative motion. I can’t call it a shifting point of view, for it’s not quite that – it’s more like the ultimate omniscient point of view.

We’re due a library visit today. I’m feeling like a Cheever novel will make it home – I read The Wapshot Chronicles a few years ago and it’s still around here somewhere.

Of course, also daily reading of son’s movie thoughts – Autumn Sonata and Chappaquiddick, for example. Oh, and I see he just put up Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Speaking of reading, if you’re looking for something to read – as I always am – take a look at Eric Idle’s reading log. I happened across it while looking for the text of the Cheever story – and while our tastes don’t mesh exactly in every respect, there are some authors he mentions that I might check out.

Writing: Blog posts are about it, unfortunately. I’ll be in Living Faith on Thursday. Mary and the Christian Life will be free on Thursday, as well.

(Because it’s the Feast of the Assumption, you pagans.)

Schooling: A post will be coming on that later this week. It’s going fine – all I can say is that dropping Saxon and returning to AOPS has changed my life. Our lives. So much better.