grinninfoole

1) I have been sharing an iTunes account with millari  for the past few years, and now, because of a hassle with the credit card info (and our break up), I'm going to switch to my own.  I will call Apple and see if they'll let me port the songs and applications that i have downloaded to my account. 

2) The snow, ice, and freezing rain have become an actual problem; they're a constant nuisance, it's a great chore to clear the driveway, and driving has become noticeably more dangerous.  I don't look forward to the floods we're going to have come the spring.

3) Our long term house guest will be leaving within a week, which means  next weekend I'll be moving into the other bedroom.  It will be the first time in about 8 years that I won't be sharing a bed with M every night.  It's an important next step, and a good idea, but I'm dreading it a little, as I know there will be a couple of weeks of sleeplessness, and fighting off the loneliness. (Which, psycho-somatically, makes me feel cold so reliably, I now feel lonely when a get a chill.  Happily, I have gotten flannel sheets. :)

4) Possibly to fight this off, I'm watching a lot of TV.  Inspired by a recent visit by usakeh, I watched the first two seasons (and part of the third) of Avatar the Last Airbender, getting totally hooked in how it does so many things so well: terrific animation with dynamic action and subtle storytelling and characterization; excellent voice acting; strong dialogue; a mix of comedy, action, romance, drama, and even suspense, all of it plotted well, with long term arcs clearly planned in advance, and sympathetic, capable bad guys to go with our actually heroic protagonists; the show presents men and women well, passes the Bechdel test with ease, and even poses moral dilemmas for the characters which it then refuses to hand wave.  If you haven't seen it, make it a priority.

Then, I burned through Starblazers, the Americanized version of the first two seasons of Space Cruiser Yamato, which I adored when I was a young boy.  It's... still a good show, but one I have to hold at arm's length in a way I don't with Avatar.  It retains an emotional power, with fabulous music, and great voice acting (Eddie Allen, your characterization of leader Desslok as almost-too-bored-to-bother-to-crush-his-enemies set the benchmark for villains, masterminds and adversaries of all sorts), but the gender roles are cringe worthy, and the science in the SF is... embarrassingly careless and wrong.  Still, I had to watch it all.  I think I'm avoiding things.  You know, for a change.

5) My mom is having more difficult periods, more episodes of extreme fatigue and debilitation, which are increasingly keeping her stuck at home.  This wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't stuck there with my dad, who remains as oblivious and self-centered as ever, except he's rapidly losing his memory.  I visited last weekend, and didn't know who I was talking about when I referred to his mother by the nickname I always used for her.  My brother is a rock (an increasingly busy rock) for helping them both on a daily basis, and I'm not sure what else I must do.

6) My friend MAMEd, who is my age, will become a grandfather this year.  Meanwhile, a charming young woman (fridge_buzz_now , who is, I guess, young enough to be my daughter who I met through the internet) has just lost her mother to illness.  She's heartbroken, of course, and I'm sad for her.  I'm also struck that I'm only a year younger than her mom, and my first thought on seeing a recent picture of her (shortly before the final days) was 'damn, she's a looker'.  In tandem, these two bits of news are prompting the feeling that I'm out of season, like a bird doing mating calls in July.  It's very depressing, and I'm working hard to focus on doing what I can to live my life, and not dwelling on the failures of the past.

And the timer has chimed, so I shall post this and move on the next item on the list, making a fire.

Thanks for reading friends.  I don't say it enough, but I appreciate all your posts and comments, and I love you.

One thing that motivated me to write about this was Morlock's short essay on the topic, to which I linked in my previous post. Another was hearing part of this conversation on NPR's superb Tell Me More. [transcript] It's about a program in schools in Washington DC to have playground coaches, to tamp down the Lord Of The Flies aspect. I wished there had been something like that at my school.

I miss Tell Me More, btw. It used to be on at 9 AM on WNNZ, and I listed several times a week. Now it's on at 11 AM, and I almost always miss it. Which sucks, because I think it's the best news show out there, in part because Michel Martin is a rare journalist who will actually call someone on something when she thinks they aren't making sense... and then let them explain.

EDIT: An example of why MM rocks my world: telling off Chris Wallace and Don Imus for dissing Cokie Roberts.