Steve agreed to watch thirty minutes of Portrait last night (he set a TIMER) and when it went off he was like “well we should finish this scene and then the next scene” so I feel a great personal victory has been achieved.
Nicky, I really appreciate these newsletters. I find myself too mentally taxed to comment all the time, but they have been surprisingly grounding to me and I hope you recognize how much we appreciate you giving of yourself. Beauregard woke me up early this morning and I thought of you all. ❤️
I'm staff at a college department and just got a letter from one of our visiting faculty for when one person goes up for tenure eventually. In the best of times he is often in my office asking for help with ...pretty basic computing. He was very worried about the prospect of teaching completely online for the rest of the semester and described the links and tutorials IT sent around as "sending an erector set to a St. Bernard." The letter talks about how the younger faculty showed him how to use various tools, and in particular about how one of them went so above and beyond in spending hours on facetime going step by step that he now feels comfortable using the tools he needs. It was just a really really nice thing to read first thing this morning.
Love to everyone. My 3-in-June-year-old crawled into bed with us at 6 this morning usually when she does it's a hot mess of feet in your trachea and/or solar plexus somehow at the same time, but this morning she was just really affectionate and snuggly, so I felt extraordinarily blessed, just quietly drifting towards consciousness with spouse, her, baby #2 kicking up a storm, and 90 lb of dog (65 lb lab mix and 25 lb beagle mix) and snuggled up together. It's a totally shit time, and I have so much to be grateful for.
I hereby promise if you work on a Broadway or off-Broadway show and are one of my readers I will go to it when things happen again and give you the biggest hug.
Thanks so much for these - I had a day yesterday where I found out that the guy had been fooling around with the last year or so is quarantining with his ACTUAL GIRLFRIEND. A drama revealed in iPhone location tags. Who knew middle-aged quarantine could be so dramatic? Anyhow, this is my cry into the wind, as I am a single parent with two kids and I have to go teach French and fractions now.
Had to drop my summer graduate classes - major first world problem, I know. I can't afford them thanks to *gestures at virus, economy, etc*. My fiance took a massive pay cut so I'm the breadwinner for now.
I'm focusing on the positive though. We've kept our jobs, our housing is secure, and my loved ones are healthy. My menagerie of pets is healthy too. That's all I want. Well, I want all of you to be healthy and safe too. Ok, final answer. <3
I rewatched Rear Window last night (even though my WFH setup actually faces the Front Window). And now I want to start a blog tracking All The Times Jimmy Stewart Is Good At Playing Heroes Who Are Also Kind of Assholes.
Whooooo we just got our statewide stay-at-home order, with a very strong tone of "because You People apparently can't follow more chill instructions," which, fair, I have seen some nonsense in my neighborhood.
I am reading the Man from the Train and let me tell you I can watch Dateline, Forensic Files, listen to true crime podcasts and read true crime books and not have an issue. I routinely impress my boyfriend by hating horror movies but am yet still able to sleep at night without nightmares. But I stayed up until 11:30 reading it last night and I was 100% scared and kept waking up to check that the night light in the hall hadn’t come on (motion activated low tech early warning system). I know these events happened 100 years ago but the concept of some rando going around axe murdering 100s of people scared the bejesus out of me in a way that the stories about known and captured serial killers do not. So I will not be reading it late at night anymore. Day time book only.
Honestly had to stop myself from just adding the whole dang O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack when I got to Big Rock Candy Mountains for the Spotify playlist. :) It's the first movie soundtrack I ever bought with my own money after seeing the movie in middle school and it still remains one of my favorite soundtracks and my favorite Coen Brothers movie.
does anyone wanna talk about the books they are reading? I just finished the Call Me By Your Name sequel Find Me (needs an editor), and have started rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses. It's going slowly because I have gotten considerably more stupid since five years ago and also, lol, a pandemic is not helping my attention span. I've also started listening to a readalong to Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey while folding laundry and it is SO NICE.
I find it very hard to read books online so despite my nice little NYPL membership, when I run out of the library hardcovers I've been hoarding I will probably attempt the Difficult Classics I own and have never got around to
Re: knitting, a small bright spot for me: My friend has hosted a regular monthly "crafternoon" for a year or two now, and I rarely attend because I'm not even a little bit crafty, though she always invites me and tells me I'm welcome.
But since social distancing went into effect, she's decided to do it twice a month on Zoom, and everyone just kind of turns on their cameras and works on their own thing, and there are little conversations here and there, but mostly it's just hanging out. So I've been attending those and coloring, the one thing I am happy to do, and it's really nice to see everyone!! And feels less effortful than some video calls kind of are.
uuuuuhh i'm just learning the news about John Prine here and this might be the thing that breaks me. He was my darling dad's absolute favorite singer/songwriter and i'm deeply attached to him. I've had the privilege of seeing him and his band live about six or seven times and each time i feel a kind of magical re-connection to my dad (whom i lost 23 years ago tomorrow). For someone who's not particularly spiritual, it's been a tremendous, tremendous gift. I guess i'll go listen to Lake Marie on repeat for the rest of the day and pray for Fiona and John.
When it is finally sunny in New England I will be sitting in a camp chair in my driveway in my bathing suit and I am full of gleeful anticipation for that day. I wish you all a similar feeling.
Steve agreed to watch thirty minutes of Portrait last night (he set a TIMER) and when it went off he was like “well we should finish this scene and then the next scene” so I feel a great personal victory has been achieved.
Nicky, I really appreciate these newsletters. I find myself too mentally taxed to comment all the time, but they have been surprisingly grounding to me and I hope you recognize how much we appreciate you giving of yourself. Beauregard woke me up early this morning and I thought of you all. ❤️
I'm staff at a college department and just got a letter from one of our visiting faculty for when one person goes up for tenure eventually. In the best of times he is often in my office asking for help with ...pretty basic computing. He was very worried about the prospect of teaching completely online for the rest of the semester and described the links and tutorials IT sent around as "sending an erector set to a St. Bernard." The letter talks about how the younger faculty showed him how to use various tools, and in particular about how one of them went so above and beyond in spending hours on facetime going step by step that he now feels comfortable using the tools he needs. It was just a really really nice thing to read first thing this morning.
Love to everyone. My 3-in-June-year-old crawled into bed with us at 6 this morning usually when she does it's a hot mess of feet in your trachea and/or solar plexus somehow at the same time, but this morning she was just really affectionate and snuggly, so I felt extraordinarily blessed, just quietly drifting towards consciousness with spouse, her, baby #2 kicking up a storm, and 90 lb of dog (65 lb lab mix and 25 lb beagle mix) and snuggled up together. It's a totally shit time, and I have so much to be grateful for.
I hereby promise if you work on a Broadway or off-Broadway show and are one of my readers I will go to it when things happen again and give you the biggest hug.
Thanks so much for these - I had a day yesterday where I found out that the guy had been fooling around with the last year or so is quarantining with his ACTUAL GIRLFRIEND. A drama revealed in iPhone location tags. Who knew middle-aged quarantine could be so dramatic? Anyhow, this is my cry into the wind, as I am a single parent with two kids and I have to go teach French and fractions now.
I submitted my dissertation to my committee last night. PRAISE ME.
Had to drop my summer graduate classes - major first world problem, I know. I can't afford them thanks to *gestures at virus, economy, etc*. My fiance took a massive pay cut so I'm the breadwinner for now.
I'm focusing on the positive though. We've kept our jobs, our housing is secure, and my loved ones are healthy. My menagerie of pets is healthy too. That's all I want. Well, I want all of you to be healthy and safe too. Ok, final answer. <3
I rewatched Rear Window last night (even though my WFH setup actually faces the Front Window). And now I want to start a blog tracking All The Times Jimmy Stewart Is Good At Playing Heroes Who Are Also Kind of Assholes.
Whooooo we just got our statewide stay-at-home order, with a very strong tone of "because You People apparently can't follow more chill instructions," which, fair, I have seen some nonsense in my neighborhood.
I am reading the Man from the Train and let me tell you I can watch Dateline, Forensic Files, listen to true crime podcasts and read true crime books and not have an issue. I routinely impress my boyfriend by hating horror movies but am yet still able to sleep at night without nightmares. But I stayed up until 11:30 reading it last night and I was 100% scared and kept waking up to check that the night light in the hall hadn’t come on (motion activated low tech early warning system). I know these events happened 100 years ago but the concept of some rando going around axe murdering 100s of people scared the bejesus out of me in a way that the stories about known and captured serial killers do not. So I will not be reading it late at night anymore. Day time book only.
Honestly had to stop myself from just adding the whole dang O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack when I got to Big Rock Candy Mountains for the Spotify playlist. :) It's the first movie soundtrack I ever bought with my own money after seeing the movie in middle school and it still remains one of my favorite soundtracks and my favorite Coen Brothers movie.
does anyone wanna talk about the books they are reading? I just finished the Call Me By Your Name sequel Find Me (needs an editor), and have started rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses. It's going slowly because I have gotten considerably more stupid since five years ago and also, lol, a pandemic is not helping my attention span. I've also started listening to a readalong to Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey while folding laundry and it is SO NICE.
I find it very hard to read books online so despite my nice little NYPL membership, when I run out of the library hardcovers I've been hoarding I will probably attempt the Difficult Classics I own and have never got around to
Re: knitting, a small bright spot for me: My friend has hosted a regular monthly "crafternoon" for a year or two now, and I rarely attend because I'm not even a little bit crafty, though she always invites me and tells me I'm welcome.
But since social distancing went into effect, she's decided to do it twice a month on Zoom, and everyone just kind of turns on their cameras and works on their own thing, and there are little conversations here and there, but mostly it's just hanging out. So I've been attending those and coloring, the one thing I am happy to do, and it's really nice to see everyone!! And feels less effortful than some video calls kind of are.
uuuuuhh i'm just learning the news about John Prine here and this might be the thing that breaks me. He was my darling dad's absolute favorite singer/songwriter and i'm deeply attached to him. I've had the privilege of seeing him and his band live about six or seven times and each time i feel a kind of magical re-connection to my dad (whom i lost 23 years ago tomorrow). For someone who's not particularly spiritual, it's been a tremendous, tremendous gift. I guess i'll go listen to Lake Marie on repeat for the rest of the day and pray for Fiona and John.
When it is finally sunny in New England I will be sitting in a camp chair in my driveway in my bathing suit and I am full of gleeful anticipation for that day. I wish you all a similar feeling.