Weekly Roundup: I Saw Everything

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, reads, and whatever else comes to mind.  In this week's edition I continued to enjoy our unbelievable good weather streak, and movie wise, I have seen everything.

Eats

Amongst all of our great weather we've had just a few days that were cool enough to justify soup.  I have been seeing a lot of sausage and gnocchi concoctions, so I brought that to life via Recipe Tin Eats.  It hit the spot.

Workouts

Nothing special to report, other than I've been outside and active much more than normal.  We really have had an unprecedented streak of great weather.  I was wondering why I wasn't doing more of this stuff in the summer, and it didn't take me too long to figure out why.  From late May to mid September I couldn't just wander out into the 'hood for a dog walk anytime that I felt like it because the temperature was too hot for Doggo, so we had to go either really early or really late, or stick to shaded trails, or do some combo of all of the above.  I had to cut a lot of outdoor activities on my travels short because I'm just not rated for heat and humidity.

In its place, the time change is a bit of a factor.  I felt it on my latest trip when it didn't seem reasonable to be out later than six at night, and back at home nightly dog walks have been happening as close to five as possible so that I'm not out wandering the streets with my black dog.

Watching

I have big news on both the TV and movie front.

TV: The Gilded Age is back!!!  In the past I've been very stingy with this show, saving it only for workouts and delaying starting each season as long as possible to make it last.  This time I'm all in and watching it in real time.  My only beef is that season three ended with the ridiculous premise that a marriage was about to break up...seriously it's not gonna happen so as soon as they put that storyline behind them the better. 

Movie: it is very rare that I get the urge to see something so desperately that I feel that I need to drop everything and rush out to the theater.  One of those rare cases was of course You Can See Everything.

Even as a retired person it was a bit tough to find a three hour slot to go see it.  It just so happened that the three hours of free time dropped into my lap on my most recent trip.  It was a day where my job was to drive from Point A to Point B, and I had to be very strategic about where to stop along the way that would avoid rush hour traffic.  All that I will tell you is that I saw it in Wilmington, Delaware.

In case you are not familiar, this is a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes in the month leading up to the start of her prison sentence.  She and her husband gave the filmmakers no hold barred access to film them 24/7, and they did their job.  I think that it is fair to say that no one expected the end result. 

I don't want to give anything away, so you are going to need to watch it on your own to get the tea, but you do get to see "everything"...just not the everything on the person that I was expecting.  There were still some unanswered questions when she started her prison sentence, and a very interesting technique is used to fill in the gaps.  In the end I kind of felt like I needed to take a shower, and I'm still mulling over how I feel about the filmmakers, but I also think that this is a brilliant movie.  The big question is why Holmes thought that it would be a good idea to do this project, and the only reason that my brain can brain is the knowledge that I have of the personalities of the CEOs that I used to work for.  They are just a different breed.

To answer your next question, it was, um, a bit of a challenge to make it through the three hour run time.  The next day this teaser showed up in the WSJ headlines that I get emailed to me every day...talk about a day late and a dollar short.

Here is a gift link to the full article if anyone would like more info.

Listening

In unprecedented Weekly Round Up history, we have back to back podcast recommendations.

Acquired is a podcast that does deep dives into companies histories.  Imagine my delight when their latest episode dropped and it was about...nothing.  By that I mean that it was a deep dive on Seinfeld!  They had no problems connecting a TV show to the business behind it.

Reading

I'm finding myself in somewhat of a "chubby chaser" phase in my reading, with back to back chonkers.  Every book looks like it's the same length when you do most of your reading on the Kindle.

I finally finished Fellowship Point, and now that I'm a few weeks removed from it, my memory is that it was good.  Not earth shaking but I enjoyed it in the moment.

The next book that I picked up was The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly.  This is historical fiction set in London in 1900, and is an epic story of a female doctor and a crime boss.  This book is a bit light on prose and very heavy on character and plot.  Stuff happens!!!  It is the second book in a series, but from what I can tell it is not necessary to read the other books to be able to keep up with the story.

On the audio side of things:

• I finally dipped my toe into the Emma M. Lion waters and listened to the first book.  I know that so many people adore this series, but I came out of it a little tepid.  It's a short book at just three hours on audio, and at times it felt like a bit of a chore to finish.  I don't think I'm going to read any further in the series, but I reserve the right to change my mind.
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Here is my snarky summary of the LH books so far:
• Little House in the Big Woods.  Laura is five and most of the book is a description of food and how to hunt/harvest it.
• Little House on the Prairie.  Road trip time!  By which I mean covered wagon time.  The Ingalls move, settle down, build a house, and then find themselves on the losing end of a land war between the US Government and the native tribes.  There are a few sentences about that which do not make for good story time reading in the present day.
• On the Banks of Plum Creek.  Dugout time!  Also Grasshopper Plague time.
• By the Shores of Silver Lake.  Whoa, things get dark fast!  The story abruptly jumps forward five years.  Mary is blind from scarlet fever and Jack dies.  Then everyone gets on a train and moves west and at the end of the book they're starting to build a little town called De Smet.  Toward the end of the book the Wilder brothers make an appearance.
• The Long Winter: the winter is so long that even Ma has a meltdown.  The Wilder brothers keep making appearances and we learn that Almanzo makes dope pancakes and he goes out to get the wheat that keeps the town from starving and his brother does not, so he is where our attention is focused.
• Since I loved I Who Have Never Known Men and Convenience Store Woman so much, I completed the CBBC Trifecta with The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Umm...how to say it...this is an easy choice for third place.  It was a combination of being fascinated and disgusted at the same time.  I had to fast forward through a story about a dog.
• Last and unfortunately least: I DNF'd The Only Thing There Is to Want by Sarah Hepola.  This was a memoir that started strong but soon nosedived into a mess of bad choices and whining about the consequences of said bad choices.  I feel like memoir as a genre is just not working for me right now.

What Else is Going Down

I'm trying to figure out how to balance travel with starting more projects at home.  I'm toying with the idea of staying home for a bit to work on a few things.  Stay tuned.  I got in another trip last week so those deets will drop as soon as I get around to writing about them.

Meanwhile, Doggo is upside down so it is time to end this post.

Peace out!  Have you seen/are you going to see You Can See Everything?  Thoughts?