The score was 17-13 at half time. I had to run to the grocery store for a few essentials. I figured I could do it without missing any of the game; however, by the time I got back, the third quarter had started and it was 24-13. All downhill from there. The Houston Texans put up a valiant effort in the fourth quarter, but it was all for naught.
I spent most of Saturday morning reclaiming my office. My parents never threw out empty boxes—they were relegated to a spot “behind the eaves” (our expression for an attic that ran the full length of the house on the second story) and pressed into service whenever something had to be boxed up. We all knew at Christmastime not to make any assumptions when we unwrapped something based on the box we found. It might be an old clock radio box that contained, I dunno, a fountain pen, or a shirt. I’ve inherited that gene. I think I have just about every box from every book that’s ever been sent to me. Generally I flatten them down, put the peanuts in a garbage bag and relegate them to the attic. However, for the past several months I’ve just been stacking them up against a bookcase and the mound was getting closer and closer to my desk chair. So I broke them all down, did some other sorting, actually threw a few of the more decrepit boxes out, and my office seems like a new place. I think I heard an echo in it when I said something yesterday.
We had to go shopping for a new exercise machine yesterday. I take it as a bad sign that the frame of the old one cracked while I was using it. The metal frame. Must have been some sort of structural flaw or metal fatigue. Even though I gained a few pounds over the holidays, I still weigh less than I have in the past 20+ years! I had to laugh at some of the upper-end models I perused: they’re now WiFi enabled with browser screens so you can surf the internet while you sweat off the pounds. Too much.
I finished my Cemetery Dance essay for issue #70 over the weekend, as well as my next Storytellers Unplugged essay, which will come out on Thursday. I’m trying to get my hooks into a short story for the next MWA anthology, but the deadline is less than three weeks away so I might have to skip it this time. First time I haven’t submitted since I joined, I think.
We finished the third season of Treme this weekend. Not terribly happy with the outcome of LaDonna’s story, but it couldn’t all be upbeat. Davis’s “final” single was a hoot. Good to see Toni and the cop played by David Morse work things out, as well as a happy outcome to Sonny’s story. Does anyone else think that his girlfriend’s father looks like John Mellencamp? Some characters became less likable in the second half of the season. I don’t know what to think about Annie. She expressed a lot of frustration with Davis for not remembering things she supposedly told him, but we were never shown the scenes where she said those things so we have only her word for it. Sure, Davis can be scattered at times, but I wonder if she wasn’t using that as an excuse to push him away. And what got into Jeanette? She turned into the same kind of jerk chef that she used to hate working for in NY. My wife was worried the journalist was going to get whacked, but he seems to have escaped New Orleans unscathed. I think I saw the roof sign from the hotel where we’re holding World Horror this year in one shot. I wonder what they’ll put the characters through in the final five episodes that will comprise season 4.
I’m still working my way through Hatufim, the Israeli precursor to Homeland. There’s a great scene in the fifth episode where the widow of the third kidnap victim is trying to get everyone to leave the house when she comes up with the idea of having them walk her numerous dogs. A spy-love interest storyline is starting to shape up, but still there’s no real parallel to Carrie.
