Phthursday Musings: Rapid Fire

Brevity is not my specialty but here goes:

Hall of Fame Voting: Good on the writers for putting the much deserving Scott Rolen in! I’m a big Hall guy but I don’t think you need to be a big Hall guy to recognize his excellence. To borrow a bit from Joe Posnanski, it’s not the Hall of the Famous. The Hall itself bestows fame on the deserving. Scott Rolen is definitely deserving.

Chicago Mayoral Race: I am not paying super close attention but is a sad sad statement that somebody is actually giving Paul Vallas money to run those awful commercials. As an aside I was reminded a couple weeks ago that Vallas was Pat Quinn’s running mate in 2014 when he lost to Bruce Rauner. As a wise man said: I had to laugh like hell.

Power Pop: Earlier today my bro Rawley advised that we listen to Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! It was an excellent tip. This has in turn led to something I might actually write about at some length in the near future. What am I hinting at, you might ask? Well, aren’t you the nosy parker.

Mastodon: I’ve been hanging out on toot.pizza for a little while. I like it but it’s a weird experience. The people I know who got on Mastodon all seem to have gotten accounts on different servers. It’s kind of like how our closest friends all live in different cities, and wouldn’t it be nicer if we didn’t? So maybe some of you should just join me on toot.pizza and you too can learn more about the NYC subway system and the like.

Clavicle: I’m 14 weeks out and my collarbone still isn’t fully healed. I’m doing alright with it if I just avoid dead lifting heavy things with my left arm. I never would have guessed it would be so slow! The good news is that I’ve worked substantially back up to my previous weights on some machines and my overall shoulder pain is down over the last week. I’ll be ready for a race when the weather turns cromulent.

Romanian Folk Ballads: Not exactly a common topic around here. Last Friday though I saw the incredibly enchanting Ana Everling lead a restrained quartet. It was definitely an unusual experience for me, and I think I’m further intrigued to go to shows far outside my usual comfort range this year. She’s Moldovan, her most recent album is in Portuguese, she’s done an album in French, and her set seemed to consist primarily of Romanian folk ballads. I couldn’t find video of a similar arrangement so here’s here solo with guitar - which looks to be the arrangement for her next show at a small music room attached to a Colombian restaurant.

Pizza: Yes, Pizza Around Illinois is happening. Our start is slow because it’s January and not when the family is keen on driving to unusual places. We are still soliciting suggestions - and, more importantly, quasi-invitations!

Jams, Jellies, Preserves: For some reason my goofy child some months ago took to having his peanut butter sandwiches with only peanut butter, or with peanut butter and Nutella. This makes me the sole household consumer of various jams, jellies, and preserves. The most common type to have on hand is red raspberry preserves, though second place probably goes to apricot preserves, which I get with some regularity. Why did I start getting that? Because: That’s what my grandfather preferred. Preferred Preserves. Preferrves. Preserfvdes.

Ice to Sit Back and Relax: As I type this paragraph I am icing my feet. The occasion is perhaps backwards: it was time to get all of the matted encrusted ice out of the freezer ice bucket. Last year we had a water line run so we could get the ice maker to work, on the grounds that, allegedly, I went through too much ice. Well, it’s been ver ver ice to have the frozen water readily on hand. But it’s also led to ice spilling all over the place because of poor design on the part of Samsung engineers. It also leads to the tray eventually just freezing full of ice. Tonight I dumped the frozen block into a bucket and, being an eminently practical person like my grandmother was, I am not wasting the ice.

Writing: I was thumbing through pictures on my phone for inspiration and found this one, taken at the library a few months ago:

What would they do if I showed up one night? Would they be totally perplexed by this? Would they be gobsmacked? Would they chide me for using the word gobsmacked? I wonder if I will ever show up at something like this and say: oh hey, I’m a writer, sup.

Lamps: Seriously now, is anyone ever completely happy with their lamp situation?

Clouds: I was in the air a couple weeks ago and saw this:

It truly is a strange thing to be above that. To see that. Air travel is incredible.

It is also, often, absurdly annoying. It is kind of an archetypal American thing, isn’t it? Awe-inspiring and awful, sometimes all at once.

Finally: This is a time of year when I think I - and probably you - get a particular kind of agitated. The kind of agitated where agitated isn’t really the right word because we’re not about to actually get up and go do anything. It’s like… a mild case of mental or emotional eczema or something. Itchy but only itchy enough to be persistently annoyed and not enough to actually do something about it, because that would require doing something.

For now I seem to be staving it off though! I’m not sure how. I feel kind of OK about things, even the things I kind of don’t feel OK about. I hope this persists.

The one thing I would say seems different is that I’ve made more of an effort to have music on when I could. So to that end, I encourage you all to get some music on.

Not sure where to start? You can never go wrong with this: