Hmm. Let's see. Found a new place to live. Another apartment, similar to the current place, but with an extra bedroom in place of the small porch. Being outside of fashionable downtown Decatur and all its traffic lights it will save us more than two hundred dollars a month. I am very excited to be leaving Decatur. I have lived in many, many parts of Atlanta and I do believe downtown Decatur was my least favorite, but I'll avoid bitching and say that I am happy about our new place.
Operation fat-ass has been a huge success. Two hundred pounds came and went. It's interesting to try on elements of a new persona, or simply to add new elements to the old persona, just to see what it's like. I've been skinny before, and it is novel to be, maybe not fat, but stout shall we say. I don't expect I will maintain this little experiment forever. I imagine myself being kind of a nimble old dude.
Saw a couple of good shows this past week: the very entertaining Asylum Street Spankers and those crusty old noisemakers Unsane. I suppose the fact that I enjoyed the quieter mostly acoustic no-smoking show more is a sure sign that I am getting old.
I really enjoyed the Derby and the Preakness this year (though I missed the filly winning the Belmont), as I have in other years as well, and my sweetie suggested that I would enjoy the Seabiscuit book so I mooched it from Bookmooch and gave it a go. A surprisingly good book. The chapter that narrates his race with War Admiral was one of the most exciting things I've ever read. I wanted to jump up and yell "go Seabiscuit!" But I was in the library. That's a great read. Hillenbrand does a good job of moving the story along, constantly pushing it forward. If I have a complaint, and it's more of a quibble really, it's that I might have enjoyed a little more context, some additional historical and cultural texture. After all, America in the thirties and early forties was a pretty interesting place and the glimpses that she does provide are intriguing.
I'm reading some classic Faulkner now, and I know it's brilliant and all that, but mostly it irritates me. I can get past his pretentiousness but the characters, oy, frankly I don't care if they do drown trying to get across the damned river.
