Grab the Lapels

Sunday Lowdown #257

WHAT I ENJOYED THIS WEEK . . .

  • Classes starting! I’m signed up for Advanced Deaf Studies, ASL 6, and Interpreting 2. I’m looking forward to the research in Adv. Deaf Studies (see next bullet point). I’m also excited about all the requirements for Interpreting 2, including interpreting on stage, riding along with licensed interpreters, workshops, etc. The first ASL class is Monday, so we’ll see what’s most exciting about it soon.
  • Part of our work in Adv. Deaf Studies will be translating the professor’s lectures so he can use them in future courses. This is both excellent practice for interpreting and an honor. There is still so much about Deaf culture that is not written down, so to be part of a group that is able to translate ASL for future students is a big deal.
  • I kept my word: the Christmas decorations stayed up until we got a full day with sunlight or when snow accumulated. Snow won out, temperatures plummeted, wind kicked up, etc. Down came the Christmas decorations.
  • After struggling to shovel one small strip down the long driveway, two men in a truck stopped and asked if I wanted them to plow. I’m always happy to support small, local, Black-owned businesses, especially when they see a lady in need and offer assistance!
  • Attending another monthly meeting for Michiana Deaf Alliance. I’m the only hearing member that I know of, and it’s a great privilege to be invited to join.
  • Huntsville, Alabama, where my online horror club was established, had a horror con where David Howard Thornton (famous for playing Art the Clown) was a guest. Thornton is born and raised in Huntsville. My friends went and are apparently mailing me surprise goodies (cannot wait!). Will share pictures when the goods arrive.

WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK

  • I tried a new recipe, a salad with white beans, green beans, lettuce, and a dressing your make yourself. I learned that if you puree a shallot (which is the grumpy uncle of the onion), it will try to melt your corneas with the noxious fumes. You ever eat a salad and cry at the same time?
  • I realized a fake Christmas tree is basically a bunch of plastic on a pole, which, if you think about it for too long, might make you wonder what you’re doing with your life.
  • The new Roomba unnerves me me when I’m not wearing my hearing aids. It keeps sneaking up on/following me.
  • Kirk Hammett, lead guitarist of Metallica, is a huge dork. He collects horror stuff, but after reading his coffee table book Too Much Horror Business, I learned he’s into monster horror (Frankenstein, Dracula, the mummy, the wolfman, etc.). He collects movie posters, toys, and masks.
  • Church support networks can make you healthier, according to sociologists’ studies, but faith does not, which I cover in my report.

WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK

  • Subspecies (1991)
  • Bury the Bride (2023)

GROUP ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK

  • Music Bingo Date Night, and neither of us won because a few times the category was music from after 2010.
  • I led the monthly Huntsville Horror book club during which we discussed Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. I’ll review that one in the near future.
  • Biscuit and I met on twice this week to discuss The Woman in Me by Britney Spears. #FreeBritney!

REACTIONS TO MY REVIEW

Reactions to my review of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie:

Sue @ Whispering Gums loves that I care if people are judged based on personality type. An anonymous poster noted that Hercule Poirot was a detective in the age of Freud. Lou @ Lou Lou Reads taught me that over the course of his novels, Poirot is a rather arrogant character who likes being the center of attention. Emily @ Literary Elephant and Sugar & Scream (blog is the same name) felt that this Christmas novel sounds similar to the plot of the movie Knives Out. Bill @ The Australian Legend asserts that the “upper middle class English” settings of most Christie novels are not for him. Karissa @ Karissa Reads Books believes Poirot would be “insufferable” if you actually met him. Laila @ Big Reading Life agreed with me that audiobooks whose volume isn’t steady is infuriating. Anne @ I’ve Read This finds it funny that the grandfather was fondling diamonds and telling everyone he hates them.

FORTHCOMING WEDNESDAY REVIEW

SHOPPING AT THE LIBRARY PHOTO

I’m committed to going “shopping” for books at the library. Most books I actually buy sit on the TBR pile (okay, it’s a box in a closer) for years, so why not “shop” a the library. Whether I read them or not, it makes the same happy brain chemicals as buying for me. Each week, I’ll share what I “shopped for.”

29 comments

  3. That is quite the stack of books!! I very much enjoyed your new “What I Learned This Week” section. It will supplement the random crap that I learn throughout the week as well but yours tends to be much more entertaining. 🙂
    Please share what horror goodies you receive. 😀

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    • Still waiting on the horror swag! I hope the snowpocalypse didn’t whisk it away.

      Shopping at the library totally worked, and not only that, but for some reason I’m reading them more than I would the books I bought.

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  5. I want to read your paper on church and health and will have to find a quieter, more focused moment (I’m in the middle of my living room with a dog and kids playing around). I love your idea of shopping at the library! And I imagine it helps the library too, whether or not you read the books.

    My brother and niece convinced me to download BeReal – are you still using it? Wanna be friends?

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    • Ha, I haven’t used it in a while. I just didn’t see much happening over there, and one person always had these cute “oops, is my room messy?” photos that were posed not messy at all, and it made me self-conscious for taking pictures that made me look like a potato.

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  6. Classes started already? Your academic life is a nonstop whirlwind! Are you done with your sociology of religion class then?

    Your Roomba comment reminded me of an X-Files episode from when they brought it back for a season or so after all those years. Scully had a Roomba that was spying on her and attacked her, so you had better be careful 😉

    The anonymous Freud comment was me 🙂 I must have forgotten to sign in or something.

    I love your little chicken gourd so much! Birnham Wood is on my TBR. Hoping to read it sometime this year.

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    • Oh! I noticed an uptick in anonymous comments, but I never know who’s lurking about. Glad you unmasked yourself!

      Well, now I’m doubly concerned about the Roomba and am wondering what sorts of information it is gathering on me. Perhaps it can advise me on my upcoming chapel interpreting gig Friday. Like, does it know the content I need to practice?!

      The chicken gourd was a craft show score!

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  7. OMG these updates made me laugh. Sigh, yes, fake xmas trees are just plastic on a pole, and yet they get us SO EXCITED.

    I’m not sure why, but I’m nervous about what your horror friends are sending you. Will it be something scary that pops out of the mailbox? Only time will tell.

    It’s minus -40 here (Celsius) with the windchill in Calgary right now. HELP!!!

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  9. I’ll be the odd one out and not read Birnam Wood. Just when you find a (nearly) Australian book I won’t join in. Not a Catton fan.
    My daughter has acres of pine trees – not native here, but they grow like weeds – so no need for plastic. Strangely, the threatened Red-tail black cockatoo has learned to eat pine cones so there are restrictions on chopping them down.

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    • I had to look up Catton’s other books to see what she wrote, and it looks like she always has quite a bit of time between each one. Some authors just work that way. I once went to a talk Junot Diaz gave, and someone asked if he felt pressure after his first book was successful to come out with a new one quickly. He said no one is waiting for literature to get to the party.

      I would feel weird cutting down a real tree for Christmas because we’re already feeling real effects from climate change. I know it’s popular now to do that thing where you bring in the tree with its roots and then replant it after Christmas, but I’ve also read that trees can’t handle root disruption like they, and they typically die (though the homeowners leave feeling like do-gooders).

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      • No trees were cut down for my christmas! Not that my daughter doesn’t have plans to fell mature pine trees and convert them into sawn timber, but it’s a bush block and will rapidly regrow with natives. The christmas tree was a branch (I’ve tried the tree in pots thing and it generally ends as a dead dry twig.)

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  10. Oh where to start. Thoroughly enjoyed this format for your Lowdown, but there seem to be even more points for me to comment on, and I’m already late. Where has this week gone? Well, I know – besides the Australian Open Tennis, I had lunches out four days in a row this week, two of them attached to movie outings, so, really, I’ve had very little time to read books or blogs.

    I look forward to hearing about your studies this semester. I know you’ll do well because you are such an intelligent and creative hard worker.

    Your point that “Church support networks can make you healthier, according to sociologists’ studies, but faith does not”. Did we discuss this somewhere, or did I read it somewhere else? Anyhow, it’s obvious to me. I’ve often thought I wouldn’t mind joining a church because a good one contains people who care about people, but I just can’t cope with the faith bit. Pity.

    Love your reason for not winning Trivia. For me it would be that they played music after 1980! I do know some of course, but not enough to win a trivia contest.

    I have a small plastic on a pole tree – like under two feet tall – but as we didn’t spend Christmas here this year, I didn’t get it out. I do have a little Christmas Tree decoration made out of Christmas-fabric covered recycled bottle tops. I love it. I hung that on our front door (instead of a wreath) and that was our tree. Very easy to hang out, and very easy to pack away. I’ve often thought of doing a branch like Bill did, having also found that the live trees in pots don’t work for me, but have never found the right branch.

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    • I also got behind on reading blogs this week and am still catching up. I always have to find my feet with a new semester, especially when it comes to laying out all the homework and due dates and backtracking into what is essentially project management.

      It’s odd how our connection to music can stop once we reach adulthood. For some, that is 18, maybe 22 and post-college. For me I think it was 18. Anything after that may sound familiar, but I have no clue who it is or what the song is called.

      Sounds like you had a nice time decorating a bit without making a big deal out of it. That’s good; you’ve already done enough packing in the last year, no need to add more work around Christmas. I suspect finding the right branch is as celebratory as finding the perfect walking stick while out in the woods.

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      • I understand that, completely at the beginning of the academic session, .

        It is odd, the way our music focus changes when we leave those teen years. Not quite sure what that’s about except that I suppose the whole focus of our adult lives changes and there’s less interest in focusing on music to reflect our emotions the way we do when we are teens. Is that it?

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