Week in Review – September 12, 2021

“Let’s Roll”

I took Finn to look at apartments on Wednesday. He ended up liking the first place that we looked at, Hudson Ranch, the best. It’s a smaller community, easy walking distance to his work, and about 2.5 miles from our home. He was excited that his one bedroom comes with a washer and dryer. Move in date is sometime around October 9th. Here are some pictures of the model – looks pretty comfy.

Football was back on Thursday night, with the Cowboys kicking off the season against the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Cowboys played amazingly well, ultimately loosing 31-29 to a last second field goal. Had they made easy field goals that were missed earlier in the game, they would have pulled off a very impressive win. It was fun to get back to texting with Tim and Campbell during the game.

I managed to convince Finn to get his second COVID shot on Friday afternoon. There were no immediate reactions this time, although we had fun telling McD that he had fainted and taken down the CVS candy aisle. He went to work on Saturday morning and made it until 1pm before the body aches were too much. He’s back at work today (nice 6am Sunday start) and seemed to be feeling fine when I dropped him off.

Bob Schneider played an excellent show at the Kessler on Friday night. He performed both an early and a late show, and so we were home at a reasonable hour after a concert in Oak Cliff for a change. This was a good thing as my Saturday started at 7am with a Finn drop-off.

Schneider opened up the show with one of my favourites – “2002” from the “Lonelyland” album. I think that’s his best album – it’s one of his early ones from 2001.

He really is a unique singer songwriter, having the ability to switch from deep and moving to ribald humour, sometimes in the same verse of a song. His intra-song patter is just as entertaining as the music. Janelle and Steve joined us and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show.

We’ve been enjoying watching the US Open tennis, and particularly the new youngsters that have been doing so well. There is clearly a new generation taking control of women’s tennis, with the amazing feat by Emma Raducanu of winning the final without dropping a set the entire tournament. She was ranked 150th going in.

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 made Saturday quite somber. My colleague was visiting his daughter in Baltimore and having a coffee by the harbor when this happened right at 8:46am – the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

I was talking to Finn about the events of 9/11. He didn’t know about Todd Beamer from Los Gatos – the guy who said “Let’s Roll” on flight 93, before leading a small group that over-powered the terrorists, and preventing the flight making it to Washington, DC. What a true hero.

I tried a new breakfast bake recipe on Sunday. This one is very healthy and vegetarian with quinoa, mushrooms, onion, spinach, cottage cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and egg whites. It turned out well but I think I would prefer some more egg and less quinoa. There’s plenty left for Finn to have for his very early morning breakfasts this week. We both ran 30 minutes early this morning and so were ready for breakfast when this came out of the oven.

I’ve read a couple of book since my last posting. “A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler is described this way in a review:

“The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal only part of the picture: Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets.

From Red’s parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn house that has always been their anchor.”

Tyler has rapidly become one of my very favourite authors after learning of her earlier this year, and this is a classic example of her work – wonderful characters and a beautiful talent for writing about the mundane and ordinary details of family life. This one set against a backdrop of the home construction/remodeling business and the Depression.

My other read was “The Eternal Audience of One” by Remy Ngamije, a writer from Namibia. The story follows Seraphin as he escapes Rwanda, then Namibia, and tries to make a life in Cape Town. Here’s a summary from a review:

“Seraphin Turihamwe is a young man whose life is characterised by movement. After leaving Rwanda under duress and never feeling at rest in Namibia, which he believes is slow and boring, he finds himself fighting to fit in in Cape Town. So much about the city is designed to push people like him out. Through his interactions with a few reluctant mentors, loyal friends and the women he carries on relationships with, he explores and performs different parts of his identity while dealing with other issues of family, race, immigrant life and love.Seraphin and his pursuit and struggle for inner peace and identity effortlessly meld together geography, history and how one’s experience of a place can be perceived as a relatable journey. The themes of movement or displacement, life as an immigrant or refugee and the life of a black youth are neatly unpacked. His relationships with women become markers of the passing of time and lessons learnt and provide insight into who he is and who he wants to be. Whether he ever finds rest and truly comes to know himself is up to the reader to decide.”

I didn’t love this book but did enjoy learning something about life in Rwanda and Namibia.