Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Did the normal Saturday stuff- grocery shopping, both workouts (I thought about skipping weight training but there really wasn't anything better to do). Then watched/slept through the Bronze Medal game (was hoping that Slovakia could play the Cinderella card, but it wasn't to be). Went to dinner and then to the play my brother was in. It was good and he did well as usual.

I've done a teeny bit of writing today, trying to finish one of my WIPs, but really don't know where I'm going with it (which may be why I'd tabled it in the first place.) I might spend a few minutes after I'm done here working on something.

Gold Medal game tomorrow. Dad has "Miracle" on in the other room. I love that movie and, of course, I'm of an age when I remember the game somewhat, but what I really remember was being in church that Sunday and just wanting to go home to watch the end of the Gold Medal game and being worried that Finland was going to win. I think they mentioned the score of the game during the closing announcements. We did get home in time to watch it though. It's funny because it'll be the other way around tomorrow- wondering if the game will be over in time to get to church.

And then the Jordan Binnington (goaltender for the Canadian MNT and my St Louis Blues) watch begins. If it's not a blowout, some team is going to want him for a rental because even though he's dead last in NHL goaltending this season, he manages to come up big in big games.

That's it for me. See you tomorrow. Off to write.

Everything seemed to take longer than it should with my car today which was a lot of my doing. I had a 9am appointment at the car place which is literally next door. I dropped the car off on the way back from bloodwork at 8:15. They asked, "are you dropping it off?" I said "yes." Not realizing that "dropping it off" meant, "leaving it here so we can tend to everything but your car for the next goodness knows how long." I walked back over at 10, they still hadn't started on it. So aggravating. I didn't get to the DMV til 11:30 and at that point the line was going to take me past the opening faceoff for the Gold Medal game (priorities!) so I left. It moved much quicker when I got back later in the afternoon.

I think the PWHL has spoiled me a bit in that it's so nice to see the best hockey players in the world more than once every four year. Still the Olympics are special and both of the Medal games went to OT today. I was really happy to see Switzerland taking bronze and had mixed feelings about the Gold Medal game. The PWHL has affected me there too because the team that I despise the most there had six players on the USA team which made it a little hard to root for them. I was happy for Hilary Knight and am glad she got to go out on top.

Choir tonight was depressing as only four people showed up. We decided to abandon the idea of singing for this weekend and if we can't get enough people to commit to sing with us for Easter, we're probably just going to stop choir altogether.

I did get to see the moon on my way home. It's a crescent moon right now, only the crescent was rotated on the bottom so it reminded me of a lunar eclipse in a way. Very beautiful.

I finished "Bugonia". Odd film with very strong performances. So that's three of the Oscar nominees that I've seen and "One Battle After Another" is still leading the pack.

Wrote two drabbles today for hardtime100. I'm going back through the list and writing on the prompts that I haven't gotten to yet.

That's it for now. See you all tomorrow.

Hockey wound up predictably though Switzerland did put a little excitement into their game. So USA-Canada in the final and Sweden-Switzerland going for bronze.

Robert Duvall died. His role in "The Godfather" is iconic. I remember at one point that I was going to write something about that look that Tom gives Michael when Michael breaks out his plan to kill Solozzo. Searched my files and didn't find anything, so I guess I'll have to put it out there in the world later on.

Took a day off from the remaining fest work I have to do. I watched parts of movies instead- finished up "Sinners" which you have to watch through the first part of the credits or it won't be as fulfilling and started on "Bogonia" which looks like it could be either hilarious or horrible.

Everytime I'm scanning the movie list on Peacock, I get the incredible urge to watch "Bros" again. Pretty soon that's going to start challenging "Brown Sugar" for Most Watched Movie on a streaming platform.

That's all I've got for now. Going to try to go to bed at a decent hour. See you tomorrow.
-C

Glad it's Friday. Tomorrow's going to be a lot of running around- helping with grocery shopping, yoga, (possibly weight-training), and helping my mom assemble a bed frame in the new nursing home we're moving her friend into. I might be able to squeeze a nap in if we're done soon enough, but I'm not counting on that.

Every year I say I'm going to prep better for the fest and have most of my fics done, but that didn't happen this year and I'm basically writing them as we go now. Do I need to do something every day? No. Do I want to do something every day? Absolutely.

Watched a bit of the Olympic opening ceremonies tonight and that is time that I'm not getting back. I also watched all of the hockey today and that was well worth it. I'm getting a bit concerned for the teams in Group A because there's a nasty norovirus that has taken out two teams. Poor Canada is healthy but hasn't played a game yet and it's not looking good for tomorrow.

That's it for now. See you all tomorrow.
-C

Every year on the first Sunday in January, my church gives out "Spark Words" to all the people in attendance at service (either in person or on-line). The words are chosen at random and you're asked to use it as a sort of touchstone during the course of the year. In the past, my words were "Trust" (which I nearly threw back in because that's a hard one for me) and "Sunrise" (which I still am not sure what I was supposed to do with that)- there were a couple of others as well, but I don't remember what they were.

This year the word I chose was "Vitality." Merriam-Webster defines it as "lively and animated character" and "power of enduring". Some synonyms are vigorousness, vibrancy, exuberance, liveliness, cheerfulness, and enthusiasm.

So I guess the plan is not to sleepwalk through the next year, but to be enthusiastic in my actions. There might be days when this is as difficult as "trust.

If you had to pick a word, not at random, what would your word be for the year?

Until next time.
With exuberance,
C-

A category-3 tornado ripped through my city last Friday. Fortunately, our apartment wasn't in the path of it. I went out to the north side of the city yesterday to drop off some donations and the devastation was incredible. I got lost on the way to the donation site and was driving around a park in the area and it was just tree after tree that had been uprooted in the storm. The other amazing thing was all of the people who came out to help- there were people on street corners handing out meals and water and the line of cars heading to drop off items at the donation site was quite long. There were already roofers up at the community center making repairs. It was great to see so many people working to make things a little easier. They were asking for donations of tarps today as it is raining here tonight with the possibility of another tornado as well.

In all my years in the Midwest, I have been around my share of tornado warnings, but I can't remember a storm like this in my lifetime. It was a beautiful day until around 2pm, then it started to get dark and grey and the wind picked up. It blew the power out at my office and the wind would rattle the doors and windows. The building the office is in is like a storefront and the front wall is mostly big windows, so not ideal to be sitting there when the wind picks up like that. There were no sirens, the cell phone warning never went off, and even the radio didn't have a tornado alert. That's how fast it happened, and it was over just as quickly.

Everything else is going okay. I haven't written much of anything. I've been reading a lot. I'm now working on "The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley. It's not too bad. I'm a little miffed that there only seems to be one team worth cheering for left in the NHL playoffs. My favorite team, the Ottawa Charge, has made the PWHL finals and I'm thrilled about that. It'll be nice to watch that for the next week.

That's all I've got for now. Hope you all are doing well.

Still chugging along. Not much happening. Here's the rundown.
( Update )

Happy New Year!

Spent most of yesterday and part of today doing my traditional clean/purge/organize. It's at a point where I'm satisfied with the outcome and have the best intentions of keeping it this way for the foreseeable future. I boxed up or donated several of my old CDs and have made space on that shelf for more books.

Goals for the year:
Health - exercise more regularly, make healthy choices in what I'm eating (re-establish the 8pm cut-off), get to sleep at a decent hour, and make a concerted effort to lose 20 lbs by the end of the year.
Social - attend more social activities sponsored by my church / reactivate my involvement in some of the online communities here / make weekly check-ins and give and reply to feedback on DW & LJ
Reading - read 10 new-to-me books this year
Writing - write more. 100k is the goal. I fell way short of that last year, so I need to make a plan and stick with it

That's it for now. I'll do a recap of my 2023 writing soon.

Had to take the computer to the shop today. Second time in two weeks. It's doing a bizarre thing where I'll get the black screen o'doom. And then when I turn it back on, pixels arranged in the shape of castles randomly appear. Last time they did a 24 hour scan and couldn't get it to show up.

Things may be moving in an odd direction in my personal life but I'm trying not to project too much. Just let things go how they go.

Haven't written much but I'm keeping myself busy with some painting and coloring projects.

That's it for now. Hope your lives are going well.