Tag: LSU-South Alabama

That’s the Way Love Goes

Sunday morning the Gregalicious slept late, and I feel good this morning. I stayed up late to watch Saturday Night Live return, and wasn’t terribly impressed. Our Internet also kept going in and out all day, which was annoying, especially during football games. The three games I primarily watched–Kentucky-Mississippi, Auburn-Oklahoma, and Georgia-Alabama, were all excellent games–and I also switched over to LSU-South Alabama periodically, but it was also a blow out so didn’t need to watch much. Still unsure how this season is going to shake out for everyone, which makes it interesting. I think there’s a lot more parity in the conference now, once you get past the clearly best teams this year (right now, I am going out on a limb and saying it’s Alabama and Texas, both teams LSU has to play in Baton Rouge this year) I think everyone is pretty equal for the most part, with the usual suspects (Mississippi State, Vanderbilt) in the basement. Kentucky almost beat Georgia last week and did beat Mississippi yesterday; Georgia almost beat Alabama, and that Auburn-Oklahoma game came down to the wire. The Saints play at noon today, which is cool, playing the Dirty Birds in Atlanta.

I did manage to get some things done during the games; I cleaned the downstairs bathroom thoroughly, I ran some errands in the morning (mail, Fresh Market, car wash) and then came home to start watching football. I also read, while in my chair, both We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (more on both later), so hope to start the new Gabino Iglesias at some time today, most likely during the Saints game. Jackson and Levin are excellent writers whom I deeply admire, with completely different styles but evoking the same feelings when you read them. I also managed to get most of the dishes finished yesterday, with whatever I used yesterday as the only dirty dishes left in the sink–and that will take about two minutes, tops. I had thought about delaying my trip to make groceries until tomorrow, but now that I am up I think I’ll go ahead and do that this morning and get it out of the way.

I also want to work on the kitchen a bit today, and I also want to get the floors worked on again. Sparky tears up the rugs all the time when he’s running around like a demon to burn off some of his Big Energy, and the longer they are messed up the worse they get messed up. I also have some other posts I need to get done this morning before I leave to make groceries; and the longer I let them sit there unfinished, the more likely it is they’ll continue unfinished. I have a particularly spicy one about transphobia that I’d love to get done at some point so I can Substack it (and attract more of the bigots and Nazis there), and of course, there are any number of others unfinished as well. Heavy heaving sigh. I also have three book reviews/reports to write–I’ve now finished The Price by Armen Keteyian and John Talty; an arc of We Are Watching by Alison Gaylin, and Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper, and I need to get those done sooner rather than later as well. I also have some emails I need to answer as well as some to generate.

Sounds like a to-do list to me, doesn’t it? I also need to clean up the mess around my desk. But the key is not to get overwhelmed by the length of the to-do list, and just start marking things off. I also need to work on the Scotty Bible today, but I can also see that I am starting to think in the old bad anxiety/stress markers by overwhelming myself with so much to do already. Next weekend I have an eye appointment, so I can order new glasses, and my doctor’s appointment is coming up. I am probably going to meet Dad in Alabama weekend after next, and will probably go up to Kentucky later this month. How exciting!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and hope everyone in North Carolina and Tennessee are okay.

Ruby Baby

And Saturday morning has rolled around again, and it’s a lovely morning here in the Lost Apartment. The LSU game tonight is being televised (SEC Network) so I can flip back and forth between LSU and the Georgia-Alabama game. There aren’t many games on today that I feel the need to watch or even follow, but I can have the games on while I do other things. Yesterday I ended up taking the day off–I didn’t know how long I’d be out with the errands so I just bit the bullet and took a personal day. It ended up being a lovely day; the weather was very spectacular; in the heat of the summer it’s easy to forget how gorgeous it is here the rest of the year. After the errands were done, I finished reading Jordan Harper’s superb Everybody Knows (more on that later), cleaned up the house some, and had a rather nice day at home with Sparky. I think for the weekend I am going to reread two rather short horror novels to get in the mood for Halloween Horror Month, and the first read of that month will be Gabino Iglesias’ House of Rain and Bone.

We started watching Grotesquerie last night, and it’s really superb. Niecy Nash-Betts is a fantastic actress with incredible range, and this part is perfect for her. The show is very creepy and reminiscent in some ways of the classic Seven, from the 1990’s with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman (which is also my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow film), and we were sucked in again. I hope the show doesn’t wind up going off the rails, as so many of Murphy’s shows do, but I am looking forward to watching. I’m actually also still thinking about Monsters–isn’t the point of great art to unsettle you, make you see things from a different perspective, and perhaps even change your mind about something? I don’t know that I’m interested in learning any more about the case–not doing any deep dives into the Menendez case, but watching the show did give a fresh perspective on the case, and society and the culture have changed significantly since the murders and the trials.

I do have some errands to run today–I need to get the mail, drop books off at the library sale, wash the car, and make a grocery run. I ordered a new desk chair (my old one was torn to shreds by Skittle…and he’s been gone for fourteen years) because this old one is definitely ready to be retired and sent to the dumpster. I don’t think I am going to cook out this weekend–unless I decide to barbecue that pork tenderloin in the freezer; tenderloin always tastes better when it’s got a bit of burnt crust. Note to self: either set it out to defrost or get something else at the Fresh Market for dinner tomorrow. Of course, I could just get a pizza for tomorrow…decisions, decisions. I also want to make some more progress on the book today and the Scotty Bible; I need to mark pages in the last two Scotty books, and I am also trying to decide how this current one works out (I did solve problems I was having with two other works-in-progress, Muscles and Chlorine; reading good writers always gives me inspiration for my own; thanks, Jordan!). The Saints play the Dirty Birds tomorrow, and I’ll probably do a grocery run tomorrow, too. I also want to get caught on some blog posts that have been in drafts for a while, and I’ve not done a Substack in quite a while–you can’t build an audience (I blocked a right-winger yesterday who started following me; no fucking thanks, treasonous scum) without posting.

And there’s always, always, cleaning to do.

But…truth be told, I don’t feel anxious or stressed about anything. That’s actually kind of lovely, you know? I also want to watch Saturday Night Live tonight–at least the cold open, I can always stream it tomorrow–but not sure if I want to stay up that late. I stayed up later than I intended to last night, which was fine, but I managed to get up at eight anyway (thanks to Sparky) and I feel good today. I need some more coffee and some breakfast, and to get cleaned up, but I kind of want to get the kitchen and so forth under control before I run my errands before coming home to watch games and do things. I had the Eras tour on yesterday while I read and cleaned, and it really is very excellent; reminding me again of what a force of talented creativity Taylor Swift is–and the way those massive crowds react to her is really something to see, the joy on the faces of people actually there as they dance and sing along with her as she puts on a helluva show. (I still wish she’d done “Red,” but her choices from the Red album were pretty good ones, and the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” certainly belongs on the set list.) So, of course MAGA has targeted her–they want to kill all joy. Period. The Joy Killers is what we should be calling them.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close so I can get more coffee and have breakfast. Have a spectacular Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back for sure.

Screenshot

The Grand Tour

Another Wednesday Pay-the-Bills day has rolled around, and I woke up relatively early this morning. I’d been wondering what time Sparky gets into the bed with me every morning, and now I know. I woke up at five thirty for some reason that remains a mystery to me, but I did, opened my eyes and looked at my alarm to see the time. While I was doing that Sparky materialized from wherever he sleeps at night, climbed up into the bed, and curled up into a cat puddle by my feet. He didn’t bother me at all until the alarm started going off–and even then, he mostly was just hitting me on the top of my head with a paw–no claws out this time. Of course, the first thing I did once I got downstairs and made coffee was check the hurricane path for Helene; she’s shifting even further east since yesterday, so maybe the panhandle won’t got clobbered as bad as it was looking yesterday. It looks now like the path is going into the bend of Florida’s Gulf side, and heading north through Georgia from there. Stay safe, everyone. It looks like it will hit tomorrow.

I got home later than usual last night, which was okay, I guess. Paul didn’t get home until late, either; so I wrote for a while, and did clean-up duty around the kitchen. It looks much better down here this morning, and maybe tonight I can do some more when I get home. I mostly cleaned and did dishes once I finished writing–Chapter 6 is actually kind of a bitch to write, but it’s coming along nicely–and went to bed shortly after Paul got home. I also slept extremely well last night; looks like we may be back to the “more rested the later in the week it gets” weirdness from before. (I’ve lost track of time again because everything has been so nuts and crazy–between the craziness of the most bizarre election cycle in US History, a hurricane, and the craziness of everything else, and yes, I am really tired of living through interesting times, to be honest, thank you for asking.) It does seem like the news is mostly the nonsensical latest madness to come from the other side, and just like that, we’re back to the sycophantic mainstream media letting the right determine the news coverage with their bizarre and weird antics. I’m glad I’ve blocked the primary offenders, and I will never forgive them for this election cycle news coverage, or go back to them as they continue to lose relevance. Good riddance to bad rubbish, is all I have to say.

I’m kind of excited about this weekend. There are great games to watch Saturday, climaxing with Georgia at Alabama, but LSU is playing South Alabama and it may not even be televised, which means I can get shit done around the house rather than settling into my chair waiting for the LSU game all day (it’s a night game in Tiger Stadium, natch). I think Saturday I’ll get my car washed and make a grocery run–it can wait till the weekend; I can make little stops to get things needed until Saturday morning. So I am hoping to get some good writing work done, as well as some good work organizing the apartment and cleaning things up and clearing things out. I’ve made some great progress this year–most of the boxes are down from on top of the cabinets, and now I need to start working on the attic, which might be a fun thing to start this weekend, one box at a time.

It’s nice being so awake and functional on a Wednesday morning, in all honesty. Yesterday I was definitely groggy when I got up, and I don’t think my brain was truly operational until around ten, most likely. I doubt that tomorrow morning I am going to wake up before the alarm, but stranger things have happened. I hope to be able to not only write this evening but also to read for a little while. I think I also want to watch the first episode of Monsters, now that I know every episode was from a different character’s perspective on the case, what happened, what happened before, and so on. That first episode was so jarringly different from the others, so I want to get another look at it with a new perspective. I think the first episode is actually not from a particular character’s POV, but rather from the general public’s; this is how the story was seen by most people. Yes, this show has really gotten into my head, and has made me reconsider some of the things I remembered and my point of view–which was primarily shaped by Dominick Dunne’s1 reporting…and Dunne himself is someone I’d like to revisit and think about. (When I originally read The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, I thought it was a fictional account of the Reynolds murder but it was the Woodward case–also a topic Truman Capote certainly talked about, viciously)

Interestingly enough, I had an experience this morning on social media that wasn’t a surprise, but I don’t understand why–I’ll never understand why, to be honest–people from my past think it’s okay, when I’ve not interacted with you at all in the last forty years, to suddenly pop up and pop off in a horribly nasty way about the right to choose…particularly coming from someone who never told girls he had herpes (and other STI’s), and loved to get girls so wasted that he could fuck them while they were barely conscious. Yes, I have no doubt that you’re a pathetic MAGA freak now–because if you don’t believe women are human beings, and you remember all the shit you pulled in college, the only way you can justify that shitty conduct is by blaming everyone else for your entitled male bullshit behavior…and I hope you don’t have any daughters.

That’s part of the reason I despise Justice Cavanaugh so much; watching and listening to his testimony was a one-way ticket back into the past of my college days, and I could easily picture the vast majority of my fraternity2 brothers being grilled by Senator Harris and having to resort to frustrated tears because boys will be boys goddamnit!!!!

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be reexamining college with the same distance and understanding I have been trying to bring to the other dark times in my past any time soon.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Pay-the-Bills Day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

  1. He was definitely one of my favorite writers; sometimes his columns would be the only thing in Vanity Fair I read in that particular month. I also loved the novels. ↩︎
  2. A tale for another time, for sure. ↩︎