Weeknotes: Week 43, 2023

Warm weather, a visit with friends, a visit to the movie theater, and (as usual) a few more episodes of our stories.

These are the highlights from the week of Oct 23 to Oct 29, 2023.

We enjoyed a burst of warm weather for a few days this week and somehow we still have a few roses. I don’t know how much more of this little fellow we’ll be seeing though.

🍁 We enjoyed some beautiful weather this week here in central Ohio. I try to get out and walk a little bit every day, which gave me a chance to capture a few pics of the fall colors while they last. These walks will get harder now that the cold weather has started moving in. Winter is coming.

🖥️ I’ve pretty much made the decision to use Bear as my OneNote replacement. I wanted to like Obsidian, but Bear’s user experience is just so much better. I’ve already begun migrating my content—which is a real pain because OneNote is such a piece of junk.
⌨️ One of the reasons I like hanging out with the cool kids is that they introduce me to all kinds of fun toys. This week, Andy introduced me to Monkeytype, a slick minimalist online typing test. My scores are not too good because even though it looks like I type fast I also make a lot of mistakes along the way. (Just wait until I start doing tests with numbers.)
🚙 Our dear friends from Maryland drove out to spend a few days with us this week. It’s always nice to have visitors! It was a pretty low key few days—no big events or anything. But sometimes that’s just what you need: a few days away with no drama.

Media Roundup

⚽️ Beckham was very interesting. I probably wouldn’t have watched it had it not been for my better half, but I’m glad I did because I learned a lot about his career that I didn’t know or understand. (I wasn’t really following European football at all in the 90s.) I also came away very impressed with David and Victoria’s relationship. They endured a lot and kept it together. That says a lot.
🎙️ In between episodes of the new Frasier, which so far is surprisingly good, I’ve been re-watching the original. Both actually make me laugh out loud. Quite a feat because not many sitcoms do.
🗡️ A Haunting in Venice is a very watchable movie but not without some serious flaws. I enjoy Kenneth Brannagh as an actor, but as a director he just tries too hard and doesn’t know when to apply the brakes. This is a film chock full of seasoned stars, who all gave very inconsistent performances. And the inconsistency is maddening! The script is inconsistent too, descending into some seriously bad dialog at times. It’s too bad because this could have been a really great film.
⚗️ It has taken a few episodes to get there, but Lessons in Chemistry is finally starting to make me care about Elizabeth. The thread in episode 4 about Mad (her daughter) was really touching.
🌊 Started reading The Blue Machine by Helen Czerski. This is scientific storytelling at its best.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.