Small joys and random good things

[Warren]

Ellie's post reminded me this thread existed. I meant to find a thread to post a small random good thing last week. As Facebook will do, it suggested a few people whom I might be interested in 'friending' and up popped the author George Pelecanos. For those who've never heard about him, he's a D.C. based author, mostly detective genre, and worked with David Simon on "The Wire," "Treme," etc. I had nothing to lose so I pushed the invite friend button and he accepted. Not a big deal and I've yet to see him post anything, but I thought it was kind of neat.

I think journalists, writers, and such, accept all friend invites.

I'm sure many do. OTOH, I friended a novelist (Mary Doria Russell) I like quite a bit, and ended up having a personal exchange with her via messenger.

The maximum number of 'friends' allowed on Facebook is 5,000.

I friended Stephen Gordon some years ago and never bothered to unfriend him (but I must have blocked his stuff from showing up in my feed). More surprising, is that the likes of Jacob Sullum and Nick Gillespie don't have 5,000 other people they'd rather be friends with. And I while I am loath to drop names, I'm one of Radley Balko's close personal friends.

[Aresen]

Finally got my new washing machine today. No more trips to the laundromat!! Yay!

[Warren]

Finally got my new washing machine today. No more trips to the laundromat!! Yay!

[JD]

I just got a message on 23andme from someone who's a distant genetic relative, mentioning her grandmother's name, and wondering how we might be related. I went to pull some family records out of my bookshelf, and damned if the grandmother's name wasn't on the cover of the first book I pulled down.

[Aresen]

I turned 30 lbs of raspberries into 30 jars of raspberry jam this afternoon.

[Eric the .5b]

I turned 30 lbs of raspberries into 30 jars of raspberry jam this afternoon.

Nice!

[Eric the .5b]

I got 2000 words of melodrama written today. Would have been better if I hadn't been aiming for under 1500, but whatever.

[JD]

I almost forgot! After all the headache with the building where my wife has her shop (new, invasive tenants with poorly-thought-out business plan), she found a new space and the old landlord agreed to let her out of the lease! And the new space is bigger, cheaper, in a better neighborhood, and closer to home!

[Highway]

I almost forgot! After all the headache with the building where my wife has her shop (new, invasive tenants with poorly-thought-out business plan), she found a new space and the old landlord agreed to let her out of the lease! And the new space is bigger, cheaper, in a better neighborhood, and closer to home!

Woo! Terrific! It's always great when it can work out like that.

[JD]

I bought an electronic drum kit! The same model that my band's drummer has, and speaks well of, came up for sale near me for a good price, so I jumped on it, because hey, why not learn all the things during COVID times? First discovery: playing drums is actually really hard. I may have to stop making fun of drummers.

[Highway]

Playing drums is hard, but can be a lot of fun. Just take it a little slow so you don't injure your wrists / hands / elbows with RSI.

[lunchstealer]

I bought an electronic drum kit! The same model that my band's drummer has, and speaks well of, came up for sale near me for a good price, so I jumped on it, because hey, why not learn all the things during COVID times? First discovery: playing drums is actually really hard. I may have to stop making fun of drummers.

Yes playing drums is hard. Playing bass is hard if you've never done it. That doesn't mean that we give respect to either drummers or bassists. Or guitarists. Or singers.

The only rockers to take seriously are...

[JD]

I went out for lunch today, and I was sort of debating getting tacos, or pizza, or going to the supermarket to get something packaged, but I eventually decided to go to the pizza place, and they were giving away free zeppole!

[JD]

I have this old brass floor lamp that I found on the street back when I was in college; I think it dates to the first decade of the 1900s. I fixed it up and I've been using it since then, but of course the original shade was long gone, so I've just been using whatever shade seemed decent at the time. The other day I was out in my neighborhood, and somebody was throwing away a lamp which was not as nice as the one I have, but there was a really nice glass shade on it, and - the really significant part - the glass was slightly purple, which is a good sign that it may actually be period, too. So now my old lamp finally has a period-correct shade on it.

[Jennifer]

Oooh, sounds pretty! Can you post a photo of it? When I can't go secondhand-treasure hunting myself, I still get a vicarious thrill from seeing other peoples' scores.

[JD]

Oooh, sounds pretty! Can you post a photo of it? When I can't go secondhand-treasure hunting myself, I still get a vicarious thrill from seeing other peoples' scores.

This is not a great photo, and a lot of the purple in it comes from light reflecting off a purple curtain, but it gives you some idea.

glass_lamp_shade.jpg (106.68 KiB) Viewed 6434 times

[Eric the .5b]

Oh, very nice.

[JD]

I got a new nakiri, because I had store credit and really didn't need anything else, and it's like...

[Warren]

jelly

[Eric the .5b]

Had solid food for the first time in a couple of weeks. Shrimp, clams, and mussels in a very light marinara sauce on spaghetti. A couple rolls that I dipped in the sauce. Salad.

Carb-heavy, and I had to chew carefully on one side of my mouth, but just lovely after a diet of Ensure, Boost, and cups of chicken broth.

[Jennifer]

Kickass, Eric! And how's your mouth and jaw feeling otherwise?

[Eric the .5b]

Kickass, Eric! And how's your mouth and jaw feeling otherwise?

A little achey, but not bad.

[JD]

My workplace strongly encouraged us to take a public speaking course, so I finally sighed and rolled my eyes and said, fine, I'll do it. And it has actually been fascinating. So far it's been mostly about speaking with intention, and avoiding the sense of urgency and the verbal tics that we all tend to have by nature. The exercises have ranged from "talk for one minute on a random assigned topic" to "list seven items from an assigned category without breaking eye contact, using filler words, making facial expressions, or using uptalk" to "say five planned sentences on an assigned topic, but every time you would say 'the', you have to say 'oink' instead", and it's amazing how much you learn from being pushed outside your natural comfort zone.

[lunchstealer]

My workplace strongly encouraged us to take a public speaking course, so I finally sighed and rolled my eyes and said, fine, I'll do it. And it has actually been fascinating. So far it's been mostly about speaking with intention, and avoiding the sense of urgency and the verbal tics that we all tend to have by nature. The exercises have ranged from "talk for one minute on a random assigned topic" to "list seven items from an assigned category without breaking eye contact, using filler words, making facial expressions, or using uptalk" to "say five planned sentences on an assigned topic, but every time you would say 'the', you have to say 'oink' instead", and it's amazing how much you learn from being pushed outside your natural comfort zone.

I had to take one in grad school, and I wish I'd put more effort into digging those skills back out and actually applying them in a couple of different situations.

[Hugh Akston]

Couple more tips: Use plenty of lip and tongue action, and make the knee test.