It’s a dreary Sunday evening. It’s been a dreary weekend. Here in Minneapolis it hardly ever rains though. We get the gray skies and drizzle, but not real rain. Not the gully-washers I crave. The world is turning green again. The buds are coming in on our Magnolia tree, and our Pigsqueak is blooming—though the rabbits ate most of their flowers. My allergies are also in full swing.
We saw Maria Bamford last night, who I believe is one of our greatest comics. It’s hard to explain why I believe that, but it’s something to do with her combination of raw honesty and absolute silliness. It’s dark humor, which is my favorite kind, but it’s also just zany. Her special “The Special Special Special!, which she filmed in her own living room with an audience consisting entirely of her parents remains one of my all time favorites.
I did manage to get a board game to the table this week. Okay it was this morning, but that counts. I’ve begun to wonder if I actually like some of things I claim to like—board games being one of them. I read about them, I buy them, I sleeve the cards and organize their components, but I don’t end up playing them all that often. I’ve even gravitated towards solo games to remove the friction of having to find someone to play with, and even still, my default things to do with any free time are reading a book or playing a video game.
As another example, I collect comics. Well, I don’t know about collect, but I buy them, read them, bag and board them and put them in a fancy wooden box I bought for that purpose. I got back in to buying physical comics about two years ago when I was regularly visiting a gaming store that also sells comics. I collected them when I was in high school, but stopped reading comics entirely for something like 20 years, and when I started again it was mostly digital and the occasional trade.
Anyway, I now subscribe to a few monthly issues that show up in the mail and now I’ve accumulated quite the stack of unread comics. Like, I have at least a year and half of one series sitting in a pile unread, and a bunch of issues of three or four other series in that same pile. (This is a common theme for me: I have issues of the New York Review of Books sitting on my coffee table from 2024. I’ll read them eventually!) I’m in between books right now, so this weekend I’ve been chipping away at my comics backlog.
All that to say, I’ve really been questioning if I actually like all of these things or am I putting on all these nerd trappings for some other reason? If I enjoyed them I’d make time for them right? Or is it a friction problem? Is it an ADHD problem? More to come on this I guess. I don’t have an answer.
I got in my three rides this week. I did a Power Zone ride for the first time in awhile and it really got my heart going. I’m going to need to do a few of those next week. I also tried a new-to-me type of class called sprint interval training where the goal is high speed (high cadence, high resistance) for short bursts. It’s a variation of HIIT I suppose. The rest of the days were a combination of stretches and meditation as usual.
The sun is setting and slipping below the clouds now. We’ll get a few hours of sun as the day winds down.
Things I enjoyed this week
- I finished the first book of “The Lord Of the Rings” and re-watched the first movie for the first time since seeing it in the theaters during its original run. I enjoyed it back then, and I enjoyed it the second time, even with the book fresh in my mind.
- I made this red lentil and sweet potato curry this week which was delicious. I made it slightly too spicy because I used a brand of curry paste I hadn’t used before, but it still turned out great. It’s too spicy for my wife to eat, so I’ll be having the leftovers for lunch, and I froze some for later.