“Birthday Week Begins”
I made a quick trip to Queretaro, Mexico from Monday through Wednesday. It’s an easy flight – just two and a half hours from Dallas, and a small airport. No COVID test needed to enter and they have a doctor who comes to the office to do a test for return to the United States. Work wasn’t a lot of 
fun as I dealt with some employee issues, but I did enjoy a couple of nice dinners. Argentinian steakhouse with Francisco on Monday, and then a great Italian place, Il Duomo, with Manuel and Juan Pablo on Tuesday. I was surprised to find a solid selection of French wines and steak tartare (prepared tableside) on the menu.
The queen clams were a delicious appetizer, and the service outstanding throughout. The ash goat cheese on my salad was a real treat. Highly recommended if you ever find yourself in the area.
When I returned home, Diana had been busy preparing for my “birthday week.” Tulips, a card, drinks, and lots of my favourites in the fridge. Thanks, my D!
She even brought me my favourite crunchwrap combo lunch from Taco Bell on Friday – delivered to my office. I am seriously being spoiled this week.
Earlier on Wednesday, Diana drove Finn to pick up his car from Tony. Will had arranged for a ceramic coating on the new paint job. It does look amazing.
Janelle came over to visit with Diana on Thursday. They got a kick out of some of the pictures that I was gathering up for a presentation that I’m giving next week – younger and much younger K.
Out for our walk on Saturday morning, we came across the monthly Cars and Coffee gathering. I had to take pictures of the original Toyota Supra model – the first car that Will learned to drive in – stick shift and all.
The weather wasn’t good on Saturday afternoon, so no pool time for McD. I suggested she try a jigsaw puzzle. She can’t stop after she starts – straight back to it when she got up this morning. It’s a puzzle of “Where the Crawdads Sing” – just the right degree of difficulty so that she wasn’t at it for several days.
I found some new puzzles this week – Phrasle, works like Wheel of Fortune with allowance for up to 4 wrong letter choices, and then Phrazle, which works like Wordle, with up to 6 chances to guess the entire phrase.
At sushi lunch on Saturday, Finn was telling us a story about Clorinda educating him on how to eat arancini (Italian rice balls). Apparently it’s important to tear them in two before adding sauce. Neither D or I have received this advice. And then what shows up in the crossword this morning?
I enjoyed a nice long swim this morning, and now I’m relaxing and watching the PGA golf tournament as I write this. Diana is out working in the garden where everything is blooming and perking up – even C-boy the cactus.
My book this week was “The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan. The story includes several of the characters from her Pulitzer Prize winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, a book that I really enjoyed. The first few chapters were engaging and funny and had me looking forward to the rest of the book. But things went downhill for me – too many characters that it seemed were supposed to be related, but I couldn’t keep up with the connections. Then changing into different formats – a chapter of email/twitter exchanges that didn’t work for me at all. The concept of being able to store the history of one’s consciousness is quite interesting though. Overall an enjoyable read, just didn’t live up to my expectations.
The critics seem to love the book, so maybe you’ll like it more than I did. Here’s the synopsis:
“It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.
Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.”
The gentleman next to me on my flight to Queretaro was wearing a hat that said “Camel”, with a guitar logo. I asked him if that was the band Camel that recorded the Snow Goose album. It was, and a fun conversation ensued about his trip to the Albert Hall to see the band perform that album recently. He is also a big Wishbone Ash fan, and was excited to meet someone who knew about the music he loves.
This one from Ray LaMontagne really caught my ear – lovely song:
Here’s an INXS cover from fellow Australians, The Teskey Brothers:
And finally, something from Amy Helm, Levon’s daughter:
Stay safe, compassionate and kind to everyone!