A weekly note

A beautiful day today. We were able to open the windows and doors early and enjoy the breeze through the house.

We of course waited to walk until clouds were looming near. A light sprinkle waited until we had a few blocks left before turning into rain. And the thunder waited until we were almost back to our driveway.

It’s fun to have an actual Spring day. There haven’t been many this year. Fingers crossed for all the temps in the 60s that we should be getting this week.

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I was overwhelmed with a sense of what a strange privilege it was to be able to sit in this coffee shop among other people who did not wish me any harm and who would, more likely than not, be happy for me if they were to know that I was having a good day – that my wife was on the mend and that my car had started and that this was a tasty sandwich and that the sun was shining outside

I was remembering Solar Bones from several years ago and browsed through my highlights from the book. I look forward to this type of sit in a coffee shop being normal again.

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A had his first eye appointment this week. The sunglasses they gave him after dilating his eyes, my goodness. So damn cute.

We heard of the InfantSee program last year when we visited the optometrist, and were a little curiously suspicious—like, what can you really tell about a baby’s vision? But, it turns out they check quite a bit!

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I’m pretty sure I pronounce dilating wrong. I seem to toss in an extra “a” as in di-a-lating. Maybe I never tried to type it out before now?

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We cancelled Neftlix today. This current account has been active since October 2012. I’m sure we’ll make our way back at some point, but it’s nonsense to pay for more than one streaming service at once. In the feedback form, I said it’d be nice if they had some sort of on-demand pricing.

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We also cancelled the Google Home in A’s room. It’s only duty was to play rain sounds for up to 12 hours at a time. It tried too often to insert itself into moments where we did not request help.

I found a nice looking and well reviewed and not “smart” white noise machine that is working out wonderfully as a replacement. Press the on button, it’s on. Press it again, it’s off.

There are a couple other Google Minis in the house that we don’t use for anything anymore. All will be headed to Goodwill to help fuel a data repository somewhere with another family’s goings ons.

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Matthias Lindermayr released a new album, Sequence, this week. His New Born has been a favorite for a couple years now.

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Very readable and enjoyable, but I realized all of a sudden about 90% through that I didn’t like any of the characters and just wanted it to be over. That said, the last chapter hit home.

I finished Sally Rooney‘s Beautiful World, Where Are You this week. I posted the above on Goodreads.

Conversations with Friends and Normal People were very readable and enjoyable as well, though I don’t remember much about whether I liked the characters. Maybe readable and enjoyable is enough sometimes and the characters are just fodder?

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I still have a whole thing to write up about two songs and a handful of musicians that I’m going to push to next week again. It’ll be worth it. For me, at least.

In the meantime, Jeremy Pelt pops up in various Jazz mixes every once and a while and that’s kind of fun. 🎺

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Deep breath tonight. Big, full week ahead.

And if I start strategizing right, I’ll have some Gâteau Basque to show off next weekend. 🥃