You ever take an allergy pill and then drink too much caffeine? It’s all the physical symptoms of an anxiety attack but you’re also very zoned out and breathing very deeply.
Hi, welcome to my Wednesday afternoon. My job is slow at the moment, and I have all this nervous energy that I need to expel. So I’m gonna talk about all the crap I’ve bought of late that I haven’t had the time or inclination to enjoy.
Before I get started with some aimless rambling and babbling, I just want to thank everyone for their support this past week. We did end up putting Lily to sleep on Saturday, and it was awful and gut-wrenching and sad, but hearing from everyone really did make a difference. I am in the midst of another one of my love-hate spats with the internet and social media, but in this particular instance it was really nice to feel like all our friends around the world were giving us a much-needed hug.
I suppose I should also say that I’m fine, as far as the horrific event that took place in lower Manhattan yesterday afternoon. Indeed, my office is so close to it that I could see the men in white hazmat suits milling around as I ran a quick errand this morning. I was never in any danger (though I had been walking right there only a few hours prior), and I never had a chance to get anxious because by the time that the actual, real news was starting to come in, it was already over. I suppose it might seem weird that I’m not really all that messed up about it, but, I mean, what am I gonna do? I’m already a nervous wreck about the world in general. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse.
I’ve been in a non-stop escapist fiction mood of late, reading lots of horror and thriller and mystery stuff, and I needed to switch things up just a bit. So I’m now three chapters into The Crimson Petal and the White, and it is gorgeous in ways I haven’t yet even begun to parse. I enjoyed Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, and everyone on Goodreads who saw that I’d enjoyed it told me to immediately drop everything I was doing and start reading Crimson Petal; it’s been a few years, but here I am.
I am desperate to talk about Stranger Things 2, except that I haven’t finished it yet. Assuming that the wife is amenable, we will watch the final 2 episodes tonight. Yes, I am aware that a lot of people have very intense problems with Episode 7; I also just read a thing that the Duffer Brothers are aware of this but felt it necessary to fully tell the story they wanted to tell. Given that I am fully on board with this season – even more than the first one, and I adored the first one – I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I will say this, in the meantime – one of the things that I love about ST is how people actually cooperate with each other and believe each other and don’t act stupid for the purpose of plot contrivance. It worked remarkably well in the first season and it’s working even better here. Also – genius casting of Sean Astin and Paul Reiser. (I noted on Twitter the other day that people who recognize Sean Astin from LotR and not The Goonies make me feel incredibly old, and then a friend reminded me that 16 years passed between the Goonies and LotR 1, and that 16 years have also passed since LotR1 and ST2, and holy shit I am old.)
In my dog-related grief, I accidentally did a thing and bought a Nintendo Switch, plus Zelda and Mario (and then Golf Story and also Stardew Valley). So that’s happening. I’ve been able to play maybe 15 minutes of Zelda, Mario and Golf, and they are all things I want to continue playing, so that’s nice.
I also have Assassin’s Creed Origins and Wolfenstein II burning a hole on my Xbox One’s external hard drive, and I’ve played just enough of both of them to know that I’d rather play them on my Xbox One X, which is supposedly arriving next week although I haven’t yet received any shipping information, which is unnerving.
Shouts From The Couch 