Every Sunday, this site posts a new longform journalism article. There are some excellent examples in there that I haven’t gotten to, but I’m definitely bookmarking it. Also see: Longreads, which also aggregates longform reading.
File this under Things I Learned today: my work MacBook Pro and personal MacBook Air can charge from both the MagSafe port and one of the two USB-C ports on the side. I found this out quite accidentally at work when I plugged my work machine in and it made the happy “I’m charging” ping when it was connected to a Dell power brick/port extender.
It’s been a week since I went snowboarding and I think this might be the first morning where my rib is feeling better. The larger soreness and pain in the overall area disappeared on the second day, but I’m still feeling a sharp jab right under my armpit, at probably my fifth or sixth rib. Yesterday morning I woke up feeling really good laying in bed next to a snoring Hazel, and yawned deeply, which seemed to aggravate it almost immediately for the rest of the day. On top of all this, the girls and I went to the local pharmacy and got our Covid shots Friday afternoon. Without thinking about it, I got mine in my left arm, so Saturday I felt sore pretty much all over my body. I fought through it and worked outside for the entire day, because I spent all of last week trapped behind my desk. Despite all of this it felt really good to be outside and moving around, even though by about noon, all I wanted to do was go inside and take a nap. Today it’s sore but not actively reminding me it’s there, so I’ll take it extra easy and see if I don’t make it angry again.
I’ve been working on a new project: pouring a silicone mold of the 3-D printed dealer badges I made. I bought a simple mold kit off of Amazon last week, boxed in a square on a piece of scrap wood, mixed the silicone, and poured it on Tuesday evening. The silicone didn’t set overnight like it was supposed to, and a little reading revealed that that was probably due to the cold in the house, or perhaps my imperfect non-scientific mixing process. The silicone is supposed to be mixed according to weight, which is about as easy as measuring the volume of a sneeze. I put the mold on top of a radiator in the spare bedroom and let it heat up for a couple of days until the top was tacky to the touch—by then it should have been completely solid. To get it to firm up, I put it down on the workbench under a photography bulb and let it sit for a couple of hours. What wound up happening was that the silicone heated up to the point where it started melting the PVA plastic underneath and the whole mold basically fell apart into a sticky glob. So I’ve got to go back to the drawing board. I’m going to make an appointment to go back to the library and spend a good three hours printing a new version of the badge, then remix some silicone and try to set it up for success this time.
Sunday morning the cats and dog seemed to be really interested in the fireplace. Sipping my coffee in the den before the girls got up, I heard a flurry of commotion in the living room and investigated, but found nothing. Nox sat in front of the fireplace, staring into the glass as if he was watching a really good episode on TV. The sound was not a cat sound, and the dog was laying next to me on the couch, so I was perplexed—but saw nothing wrong.
Later in the day the same thing happened, but this time I was in the room. Both Hazel and Nox were glued to the fireplace window. I heard a fluttering and realized there was a bird trapped behind the woodpile. I got my welding gloves from the garage, we shooed the animals away, and I opened the glass to find a very frightened, very tired catbird waiting to be released. He fluttered over to the window and sat on the sill, so I opened the one next to him and gently shooed him outside, where he flew up to sit on a branch on the oak tree. By the time I made it around to the back door, he was gone.
A brief internet search for the symbolism of meeting a catbird brings up as much contradictory information as a horoscope. It could mean good news, it could mean deceit; it could be a harbinger of new relationships or it could warn against manipulation. I choose to believe he was sent as a reminder for me to stick my head into the flue and check on the chimney, which is clean and clear.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this retro commercial from back in the days of beepers. Someone on a video I was watching referenced it, and I LOL’ed just as hard watching it yesterday as I did back in 199-whatever.
Here’s some clips of some of our runs yesterday. Your host wiping out and cracking ribs is at about 6:20. Gnarly dude!
Here’s an earworm I’ve got at least a slight connection to: the Drop Nineteens just re-released their demo album from 1991, which was reviewed by Pitchfork over the weekend. In the recap the reviewer mentioned a vocalist named Hannah who joined the band briefly during that demo session, who then left and transferred into MICA while I was there, and who came through the design program a year behind us. I knew her from the scene and remember hearing she’d sung on an album by a famous band (I’d heard it was the Sneaker Pimps) but this makes much more sense now.
Anyhow, the song Daymom is really good—it’s got a lot of the things I know and remember of the music from that time. It’s got a very chill vibe even though the tempo is fast, and I’m a sucker for a double layered male/female vocal with bass guiding the melody. There’s a lot of Cure/New Order happening here, and that’s not a bad thing.
In a rare case of planning ahead, I had a stacked four-day weekend full of learning, entertainment, and adventure. Friday, I did the HQL course to get my license sorted out, as mentioned earlier. On Saturday I was in the car headed down to Southern Maryland to visit with my father-in-law, take him out for some Mission Barbecue, and go through his mail. We sat and talked for 2 to 3 hours, mainly me listening about his history in rural Pennsylvania, and then I drove back home through cold dark rain.
Sunday, we hosted Karean and Zachary to go to see the Lion King at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. This required a ton of housecleaning, which mainly fell on Jen, but I threw in that morning to finish up the last minute stuff for their arrival. We were also finishing up an overhaul of the guest bedroom, following a remodel we did last year where the new color turned out to be a bit too vibrant and a couple of values too dark. It was a nice color but made the room feel smaller. We bought a lighter shade of the original color and I rolled it on three walls, leaving one for an accent. Jen framed two pieces of art we bought in Portugal and bought a third for over the bed. After sewing up the new blackout curtains and building a roller shade for the bathroom door, the whole room really came together. Jen picked out fabrics and colors that accent each other and it really feels great in there now—much lighter, larger, and complete.
Sunday morning we got churched up and drove into Baltimore at noon for the 1 o’clock show. This marks the third show we’ve seen at the Hippodrome and it never fails to deliver. This show was amazing: it’s the traveling Broadway troupe and they do an incredible job. The costumes were breathtaking and the set design is incredible. I would bet it’s even more inspiring on a large Broadway sized stage (the Hippodrome is a smaller, Vaudeville-era venue) but we enjoyed every minute and a double Vodka Matata (vodka, ginger, beer, and lime) made everything even more pleasant. After the show, we drove to a fancy Ramen restaurant in the inner Harbor and loaded up on noodles, pork rolls, and gyoza. Properly stuffed, we headed back to the house, got in some warm PJs and caught up on the couch before getting to bed early for the next day.
Monday’s activity was driving up to Roundtop for a day of snowboarding. Finn declined to go so it was just Karean, Zachary and me. We got our rentals sorted out, accompanied Karean to the bunny slope, and gave her some pointers to practice on before her lesson. After watching over her for a run or two, Zachary and I broke off and hit the blue slope. After he got his confidence under him, we really started having fun. The mountain was pretty empty, which was fantastic: the lift lines were almost negligible and we didn’t have to avoid crowds of people on the way down. The snow was typical manmade Eastern stuff, but there was enough down that it wasn’t a sheet of ice and it was cold enough outside to not be slushy and wet. But after enough people went down the slope it started getting rough in patches as they dug in and started making grooves.
On my third or fourth run, I was switching directions, my board caught an ice ridge and I flipped downward on the mountain landing on my left side with my arm underneath me. It all happened very fast and I didn’t have time to cushion myself, and I got the wind knocked out of me. My ribs felt very sore and tender, but I got up and kept boarding. Zachary and I got about seven more runs in before lunch and the grin on his face got bigger and bigger with each ride down the mountain. We did about five more runs after lunch and wrapped things up at three, meeting Karean up in the bar above the lodge. Zachary is really into snowboarding, and I’m going to redouble my efforts to get him out at least twice a year.
My ribs are very tender this morning. It’s mainly the fifth and sixth, directly under my left arm on the side. Jen found me a Lidocaine patch and I put that on last night before bed; I’m going to keep applying them until the soreness goes away. If I had to guess, they’re either bruised, or possibly fractured, but there isn’t much any doctor could do other than tell me “don’t fall on them”.
I spent four hours on Friday talking to a nice older man about guns. Specifically, we talked about a handgun qualification license, which I’ve been interested in getting for a while now, but have been stalled by for different reasons. This course was very good. He’s been training for forty years, so the class went by smoothly and he filled it with a ton of good information. We went over safety first and he had me handle several different types of actual guns after we talked about correct grip and fit. It turns out my long fingers require a fat grip to get my finger in the right place on the trigger. We talked about the dominant eye in relation to sighting and I learned my left eye is dominant, which made him suggest I learn to shoot with my left hand, something I was not expecting. Then we went downstairs to the range and reviewed range safety before he had me set up and fire three different pistols: a SIG chambered in .22 for target and stance practice, a SIG 365 chambered in .380 and a Glock 48 chambered in 9mm.
The .22 was easy to shoot and got me set up for the larger calibers. He had me shoot 10 with both hands in a combat grip, then 5 with my right hand and 5 with my left. I got the best results with my left hand, followed closely by the dual grip.
The .380 also felt very good—it’s a smaller frame but fit snugly in my hands—and I found the amount of recoil to be just right. I got a good grouping with this one as well, better than the .22, actually. I was very impressed with this pistol, and it’s a modular design which allows for longer and wider handgrips in various sizes, and can be chambered in 9mm. It’s also smaller size, which is good for concealment, but at the end of the day I’m not interested in carrying it.
The last Glock I shot years ago, a 17, I didn’t like so much because the grips didn’t fit me well, but I also found out yesterday that I was holding the trigger wrong. My finger was hooked around the trigger past my first knuckle, when it should have been centered on the first pad. This 48 had a sleeve over the grip and fit much better, and I got a very clean grouping in the 9 ring. As much as the other guns were good, I think I would go with the Glock and get it set up for my hands better.
So next up is a fingerprint card, and then I send in my paperwork to the State Police to hopefully get approved.
I could have sworn I’ve posted this before, but a search tells me otherwise. The opening bass riff to You Can’t Quit Me Baby has been rumbling through my head for the past week; there’s something hypnotic about this section and the pre-chorus, with a wailing slide guitar echoing the background vocals. The bass is just a little ahead of the drums, which gives it a laid-back, stoned vibe. This is one of my favorite tracks on the first Queens album, and a lot of fun to play.
In related news, I received the payment for my Steinberger yesterday, quietly putting a bow on that transaction. I will say that my experience with Reverb was very positive—knowing there’s a third party helping guarantee the sale seamlessly was a huge relief.
I’ve got two sets of Apple Airpods Pro: my original set, which I bought in 2020, and a Pro 2 set, which I bought in the middle of 2024 to upgrade the first set after the microphone started failing. I had the originals replaced under warranty in 2022 when one side went bad and started clicking constantly, and they returned to faithful service. I use the good ones for everything but working in the garage, and I relegate the first set for getting dirty under the truck or painting a bedroom. They’ve been crackling in my ear for several weeks now, and I finally took the time to look up a solution: the noise cancelling circuitry is going bad, apparently. Turning it off solved the problem immediately, but leaves me without a cocoon.
Blind elevated their ethereal sound into a more mature exploration of the imperatives of existence. It’s more subdued, at least from a production standpoint, but finds its niche in luminant melodies and the band’s elegant yet spare musical arrangements.
I’ve written about The Sundays before; they are one of my favorite bands of my college years. This is a thoughtful retrospective of their second album, which came out in 1992 with a different vibe from their first record. Melancholy, yes, but still beautiful and inspiring. I wish they’d continued making music together, but we have three excellent albums to look back on.