LIGHTNING ROUND

I never have time for anything these days, which explains why I haven’t updated here in a long fuckin’ time. So, instead of devoting time I don’t have to the posts I want to do (I honestly have a handwritten list I add to whenever I get an idea), I am just going to rundown what has been going on for the past however long.

Fishing has been good. The pond has been producing, and not just for me. Grace and I have hooked and landed some nice largemouth, and she is not timid at all about handling them, which is nice to see.  She still needs a lot of practice playing and landing bass, but she seems to genuinely enjoy fishing, which warms my heart.

Grace’s first big bass.

Speaking of the pond, I have been stopping to fish it in the mornings on my bike ride in to work. How’s the bike riding going? Well, it’s going well. I rode in every day last week, which is about 50 miles. Probably closer to 55 when you add in the random rides I took on my lunch breaks when the mood struck me. The pannier has held pretty well so far, and I have not had any major catastrophes besides a flat tire since the great rim-cracking of 2012. Enjoying riding more and more each day, look forward to taking a long-distance ride at some point, if I ever find the time. I’ve been using a site/app called Strava to track my rides, and it is real nice. It allows you to block off certain segments of your rides and gives you time, distance, elevation change and average speed for those segments, so now I know the big hill outside my apartment complex is a 91 foot elevation change at a 6% grade and my best time going up it is 1:50 at 9.4 miles an hour.

As I recall, I couldn’t walk for a few hours after doing that, too.

Speaking of Apps, Turntable.fm, a site which I have been a fan of for a while now, has finally released an Android app, and it is surprisingly good. If you are unaware with Turntable, I will spare you the details of what the site is and recommend you go check it out for yourself, as it is a great way to listen to music. The Android app sacrifices a few things that you can do on the website, like song previews and viewing the list of what has been played in the room, but overall the features are pretty closely in line with the website version of the service. I’ve encountered some buginess and crashing, but not anymore than any other new app.

I don’t have a segue into the portion of this post that relates to TV, and I am also tired and should go to bed, so here is a few sentences about a few shows.

GRIMM: This show has been a pleasant surprise. The season ended on a bit of an eyeroll, and the show in general could do with a lot less CG and police procedural, but in the end the show has created characters I actually want to sit down and watch each week, and that is a lot more important.

SHERLOCK: Yo…you should watch this show. It is really good. It’s got a British X-Files vibe to it. Not just in a “monsters/government conspiracy” sense, but, more importantly, in tone and in the dynamic relationship between the main characters.

HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER: This once great show is just a big steamy pile of shit. Nobody even has the courtesy to put it in a bag and set it on fire so someone can stomp it out. They just kept trotting it out there at a blistering one-new-episode-a-month pace and, somehow, despite the weeks off between episodes, were unable to not only come up with any new ideas, they also seem to have forgotten how to even write cheap jokes. It’s unfortunate what has happened to this show, and even more unfortunate that I still bother watching it for some reason.

RIVER MONSTERS: Jeremy Wade is great, and I love watching him fish, but I really wish this show would drop the whole dramatic angle. If it was just dude going fishing for crazy weird fish throughout the world it would be a much better show. The whole dramatization of fish attacking people thing is dumb, but, whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers, and if the only way I can get Jeremy Wade on my tv is by him making a big deal about attacks, so be it.

I am fucking exhausted and should get to bed. Gotta get up and ride tomorrow.

Also, tomorrow (fuck me…it is after midnight it seems…so…today, I guess) is Grace’s preschool graduation. As slow as this last year has been for me, trapped in a vortex of 60+ hour work weeks, Grace’s first year of “school” seems to have ended as quickly as it started. Even though it is only preschool and she only had 6 or 7 classmates, I am trilled and proud and excited and so happy to see her grow up like she is doing, even if I feel like I am missing most of it.