Blue-Footed Musings

I recently finished reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. The cover of the book has a seal touting it as a “Good Morning America Book Club Pick.” Big whoop-de-do. I read it simply because it sounded like my kind of book.

I still hate writing plot synopses and haven’t learned how to do them properly. Today I’m going to take life easy and refer you to the Wikipedia synopsis for this book instead of me writing one. I figure I might as well, since I had to look the book up anyway (I couldn’t remember the name of the main character who narrates the story, and that’s because, as Wikipedia confirmed, she was never named. You’d think I would have realized that at some point while reading, but I was oblivious to the fact until I tried to recall her name. SMH.).

The Ministry of Time is a great book in many respects. I liked the subject, the main characters, the overall structure, and the writing. But somehow, though I enjoyed it, I did not love it. Strangely, I think the best parts were the chapters devoted to the doomed arctic expedition, not the sci-fi stuff.

Currently reading:

• The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah. The jacket flap proclaims this book to have been written “in the tradition of A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun.” Though that description is not what brought the story to me, I enjoyed both of those books and hope this one will be as good. My copy is a library book that’s now overdue. Oops. I started reading it last night to see if it’s worth keeping, and I think it is. Shall I continue to defy the library by quietly not returning their book, or shall I go to the library and see if they’ll let me renew it? Hmm.
• Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson: I took a break from this thoughtful and somewhat glum book to read The Ministry of Time, which suited my mood better. It is also due back at the library (ack!). It won’t take long to read. If I were to apply myself, I could finish it this weekend. That’s obviously what I should do. If I don’t read it now, I’ll only have to later, because it’s on the BBC’s list of Top 100 Children’s Books.
• The Maze Runner by James Dashner. This book came under my radar because a movie was made out of it, though I didn’t happen to see the movie. My unvarnished opinion of the book, based on the first 180 pages of it, is that it’s stupid and annoying. But it’s a quick read that has piqued my curiosity just enough for me to feel compelled to continue.
• The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. This book was also made into a movie, one that looked so interesting that I almost watched it, even though I don’t always handle zombie stories well. It’s one of my husband’s books. I didn’t even know we had it. I just happened to be in the living room one day, absentmindedly looking at the books on our newly-built shelves, when I spotted the title and thought, “I wonder if it’s any good?” So I sat down in a chair and started reading, which is, incidentally, exactly the kind of thing I’d hoped would happen once we had our books displayed in a room with comfortable chairs. I’ve been really enjoying the book so far, but I just reached the point in the story at which the violence begins in earnest. Will the story continue to beguile me now that it’s gotten gory? We’ll see.

Sadly I have not been reading Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson. It’s another overdue library book. I can’t seem to muster the desire to read it right now, but I’m making note of the book here, because I am interested in Shotakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony and the history that goes along with it. I hope that I will at the very least write a blog post about them and perhaps revisit the book someday.

I woke up late today. It was a poor start to the weekend. Not only am I feeling groggy, but having slept away a significant chunk of this day, there’s less weekend left to enjoy. It’s already well after noon, and I’m only just starting to think about what I might like to do.

Anyway, here’s a list of things I should do.

1. Set up my new office air purifier.
2. Roast chestnuts. I already printed out my “recipe” and bought some chestnuts, as well as a proper chestnut knife. There is nothing to stop me except perhaps the chestnuts themselves, which are a couple of weeks old now, and it’s possible they’ve gotten moldy. (Please don’t be moldy, chestnuts!)
3. Bake a pie. I picked up some Wolf River apples yesterday. Though I immediately joked with my husband about them being “sacrificial apples,” because far too often we buy things and then neglect to use them in time, I have high hopes.
4. Write some blog posts. If you are reading this post, that means I’ve already written at least one. Success!
5. Listen to my overdue library CDs.
6. Read some of my overdue library books.
7. Go through the stack of papers on my desk. Really, I need to do this. The stack is getting ridiculously disorganized and precarious, and it contains things that actually need to be taken care of.
8. Laundry. I always need to do laundry. Sometimes there is more laundry, sometimes less. Now is a “more laundry” time, and I’ll only be making my own life harder if I don’t tackle the problem now.
9. Assorted cleaning tasks. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that the house is a mess. If I can make at least one area less messy, hooray.
10. Pay the credit cards. I ought already to have done this. Naughty me.
11. Finally have my celebratory birthday dinner. I wanted to go to my favorite Mexican restaurant for my birthday, but there was some reason we couldn’t go, so my hubby promised me that we’d go later. Enough time has since passed that we’re in danger of forgetting not only the reason why we didn’t go before, but also to go at all.
12. Take a nice, long walk. I didn’t need to include this item on this list, because walking is a daily goal. I just wanted the list to end on an even number. 😛

• The kids finished their first week of school. I got up every morning at 6:00 a.m. to make sure they were out of bed and getting ready without getting in each other’s way. I’m proud of how well they managed it. I feel comfortable leaving them on their own in the mornings from now on. And thank goodness, because I am already exhausted. Me and morning just don’t mix!
• My husband saw a bobcat in our yard!
• I finally finished the composition piece I’d been working on forever. Now my teacher suggests I write a passacaglia. Hmm. I’ll think about it.
• My husband has arranged for Livia to have fencing lessons, at her request. She hasn’t fenced in years, not since Covid. Previously she studied foil but will now be learning epee. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly she can catch up.
• I think I may have fallen behind at work, but I can’t seem to care. I’ve lost all my joy in the job.
• I gave in and bought the NYT subscription. Well played, NYT. Well played.
• The Powerball jackpot has been over a billion dollars for the last few drawings. It’s fun to dream about becoming a billionaire overnight, and I think it’s worth a few bucks to entertain that dream. Too bad every one of our tickets so far has contained not a single winning number.

Today I hit a paywall for two previously free NYT puzzles: Letter Boxed and the Mini. It put a damper on my day to have my usual round of puzzles cut short. I wasn’t terribly surprised by it, though. I’d been expecting something like that to happen. Naturally the newspaper wants people to buy subscriptions, because they need to make money. So now the question is, do I want to do that?

Pros:

1. Supporting the puzzle makers, editors, and solving community. This is a strong pro!
2. Supporting a major news outlet. God knows we need a free press, and if we don’t pay for it now, someday we’re going to “pay for it.”
3. The current price is good ($18 for a year of Games or $1 per week for unlimited NYT access for 6 months). Maybe too good. It used to cost $50 for a year of Games, and I thought it was excessive to charge that much on top of the newspaper subscription. IMHO, the newspaper subscription should include everything, or at least get you a discount on the extras. But $18 for Games alone is selling themselves too cheap, and it worries me.

Cons:

1. Spending more time on puzzles each day, as will inevitably happen if I get more access to them (like I don’t already devote enough of my time to puzzles!).
2. Spending money on something I don’t need at a time when I should be trying to spend less.
3. Supporting the NYT, which I’d previously quit for a reason. I trust them (mostly) to give us accurate news, but I don’t trust their motives or allegiances, which is why I added “(mostly).”
4. It irks me to be strong-armed. They’re trying to force me to do something, and my inner rebel is like, “Screw you, I don’t need your stinking puzzles anyway!”

Hmm. Gotta think about this for a while. But I am leaning toward buying a subscription.

Yesterday we took the kids to The Adventure Park in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, when we got there we could hear thunder. It wasn’t super close, but as safety experts say, “If you can hear thunder, you’re close enough to the storm to get hit by lightning.” The park’s rule–a totally reasonable one–is that nobody’s allowed on the course until 30 minutes after the thunder, and every time the sky rumbles, the clock gets reset.

Rather than wait for who-knows-how-long, we headed over to the neighboring Heritage Museums & Gardens, only to find that they were also closed due to the weather. They have indoor exhibits as well as the outdoor gardens, but I guess they close everything rather than risk people getting struck by lightning on the grounds. I can’t say I blame them. Just before we left, we saw a bolt of lighting that made us strongly feel the need to not be outdoors. So we consulted my phone for local indoor activities, and that’s how we found out about the nearby Sandwich Glass Museum.

The Sandwich Glass Museum is not a huge place, but they’ve got some great displays, including several with an audio component (those were fun!), a stunning special exhibition of glass by Josh Simpson (through October 31), glass-blowing demonstrations every hour on the hour, and a gift shop. We had a good time, except Livia, who hadn’t wanted to go to the glass museum at all. She got even more upset when we told her that we weren’t going back to the adventure park. We weren’t happy about missing the adventure park either, given that it had been our goal for the day, but we’d spent longer in the glass museum than expected, and the hour had gotten too late.

An employee of the glass museum recommended Seafood Sam’s on the Canal as a good casual seafood restaurant, and we went there for dinner. The food hit the spot. Then we headed home, promising Livia we’d take her back for her aerial adventure soon.