I’m trying a different format this time: chronological order.
Since the last weeknotes, which was 4 weeks ago, the two main events that happened are i. traveling to NY for my wife’s grandmother’s funeral, and ii. catching covid. Covid has been no joke and has taken longer to recover from than I expected, but that’s just lack of experience. I’m basically declaring bankruptcy for that period and going to cover just the last week. I think it will be enough.
Still getting over Covid and I estimate my recovery at 90%. It’s the “still a little more fatigues than I ought to be” level. With a side of congestion and an occasional cough or two. It’s not even 100% gone by today, seven days later.
I have declared my second bankruptcy and given up on finishing The Voyage of the Beagle. I also have little interest in finishing off Blindsight, a book that I read last year and picked up to read on the flights to and from NY at the beginning of the month. It served me quite well for that, and I think I read about half of it. But once I began to mentally re-emerge from my covid stupor, neither of those books seemed all that interesting. I had already read one of them, so I knew where it went and hadn’t made enough new discoveries in the text to really motivate finishing the rest of it now that I wasn’t trapped on an airplane with little else to do. And Beagle, well I just remember that it was indeed interesting, but the pacing of it seems like an effort, a slog, to pass between the genuinely compelling bits. I may yet come back to it.
In the mean time, I sampled the first few pages of a small handful of books and selected the book that I had originally intended to partner with Darwin’s record: The Log from the Sea of Cortez by Steinbeck. I’ve never read any Steinbeck before, and am now about halfway through the text. I’m really enjoying it so far, and find the narrative structure to be quite inspiring in a couple of ways. My approach to backpacking trips has always had a little flavor of expedition to it, but I could make it more intentional. Do some more homework before hand, and have a couple of goals beyond just walking some distance and enjoying the scenery. On the other hand, I don’t want it to become another project or grind. So, you know: balance. The second way I am inspired by the text is the particular form of it. Basically, Steinbeck and Ricketts are describing the events of their expedition, and at every opportunity the text makes like detours and sidetracks to explore ideas, thoughts, and questions that tangentially relate or were inspired by some recent transaction or event in their collecting. And whenever that is satisfied, the text returns to the narrative log of their expedition for a paragraph or two before inevitably deviating again into some observation or other that isn’t about biology or navigation or oceanography. Maybe I can use this structure for my own writing, even starting from the events of my own backpacking expeditions of the last few years? Who knows, it could be fun!
It’s my birthday. Several friends and family call or text or otherwise wish me a happy day, which is very nice and very appreciated. Neither my wife nor I are particularly feeling 100% and opt to delay and more substantial celebrations to this weekend. Covid is a major bummer!
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting a little older, or everyone is on vacation this summer, or maybe even the AI apocalypse is even nearer than I realized, but it sure has been seeming like very little genuinely interesting content is being found on the internet these days. I noticed it sometime in June; a lot of articles or tidbits seemed forced, or slow news day, or there was just less to pick from, they had too much hustle and not enough genuine interest. Is it me? Is it content makers? Is it the slop getting in the way? People trying too hard, or not hard enough? Anyway, my solution has been to try to get offline more, pay attention to what’s physically around me. I’d like to explore this more, but it seems so slippery, and so difficult to assign to one area. Maybe everyone is just exhausted from everything, Ukraine, Gaza, election cycle, the economy, whatever. Maybe it’s just me that’s exhausted.
Finally, the new patch for No Man’s Sky lands on Xbox (well, it landed on Wednesday). I haven’t made much time to play games in the last few years. Probably it was kicked off by my frozen shoulder injury last year: playing games hurt. But it’s been a trend for a while. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy them, and often my approach isn’t all that different from Any Austin’s, which is to say I’m always asking about the different choices that are made for the game and what their consequences are. I don’t really think I ever get far enough into them though to really find the deepest nuggets. Still, my wife often asks “are you him??” when we watch one of his yt videos. It takes more time than I care to spend to play and replay the games.
Anyway, my point was that a friend and I have started playing online one night a week for the last few months and we were excited to play something different than Fortnite. Our options are pretty limited since we don’t both have the same system, but NMS is one of the choices. I’ve been playing it for years, off and on. My last save was sometime last year, so somewhat infrequent. It’s a new game for him. Hilariously, as soon as we decided to give it a go, a new patch dropped but because of certification lag we now couldn’t play together until both systems got synced up. It finally happened on Wednesday and we played on Thursday. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this topic.
I’m not really sure how to begin this one. We have quite the little community going at our local unofficial dog park. One of the occasional canine members passed suddenly last week from a natural illness that had been undetected. Her owner came to share the news, and it was a sad and tearful moment as we were shocked and saddened. She was a good dog and will be missed. The community is doing the right things around the owner, and I’m glad for it. I hope we can continue to nurture this small group and support each other.
I watched most of the Olympics opening ceremony, and while I don’t have a strong opinion about it, I am generally positive about it and enjoyed the spectacle. I don’t generally enjoy sports announcers. I know that the opening ceremony isn’t a sport, but it does include those same professional talkers that I don’t find add much. So I muted most of it, except for a few moments that were obviously musical. Maybe that contributed to the puzzling spectacle of it all, which I found just seemed to go on and on, in the rain, with one new surprising vignette after another. Given all the computer generated X1 that’s been happening in the last year or so, I wasn’t surprised to see it make a showing, but I kind of wish for a different choice. Shrug.
Saturday garden day. It was volunteer clean up day at the community garden where my wife has a plot. The work was pretty easy basic stuff. Trim trees, clean up the trimmings and haul them to the greens pile for composting. Collect any non-compostable trash to the dumpster. All told about an hour of effort and a substantial improvement in the look of the place.
In the afternoon we drove over the Los Gatos and our favorite bakery in the area for something suitably birthday cake like. To our surprise there wasn’t much left in the case, it was decimated. Nonetheless there were a few quite dwindling delicious delicacies left by the time our number was called, even though some things we had our eyes on got scooped up right before us. It didn’t matter, all things at this bakery are properly delicious.
We also made a stop at the well known ice cream shop, our first time. It was very good, but some things I make better- my vanilla ice cream is better than their double vanilla. Lesson: get the flavors that are too much trouble to make at home, or are new to me and surprising. Ah well, next time. My wife’s vegan scoop was delicious and original. “Best non-dairy ice cream” she’s ever had.
So I ate all of one of those slices of cake last night. It’s not a huge piece or anything, but I didn’t need it, and I basically regretted it all night. Possibly the other items in the non-sense meal I made up contributed to the minor stomachache I was dealing with. I have to be wiser and more diligent about what I eat, even though I already generally eat pretty well. Just when I slip up, or indulge, or whatever, I mind the unpleasant after effects more than I used to.
fill in the blank. ↩
Posted: in Notes.
Other categories: week notes.
Back references: none.
Tags that connect: [[covid]] CDC Waste Water Covid Trends, New to me Facts and Ideas in March 2024; [[Darwin]] Most Up To Date Now Page, Bi-Week Notes No. 14, The Now is Now, Now Now, Late updated Now, Week Notes No. 10; [[eating]] New to me Facts and Ideas in June 2024; [[gardening]] Updated Now, Updated Now; [[NMS]] Latest Now Page Updates, Latest New Now, Update to Now, New Now Update, Updated Now, Updated Now; [[Olympics]] Latest Now Page Updates, Latest New Now, New Now Update, Updated Now; [[The Log from the Sea of Cortez]] Update to Now, Week Notes No. 18, New Now Update, Updated Now; [[The Voyage of the Beagle]] Most Up To Date Now Page, The Now is Now, Now Now, Late updated Now, Two Week Notes No. 11 & 12.
Tags only on this post: aging, Blindsight, Charles Darwin, eating too much, New York, No Man's Sky, Peter Watts, Ricketts, Steinbech, Watts, Xbox.