Dear everyone,
It’s been two weeks since our return from Mexico. We had some nice weather (for January) when
we got back, but now it is cold and icy outside. A couple of days after we
returned, we were graced by a visit by Jasper’s girlfriend Vivian Young. She’s
a second year student at CMU in their highly competitive computer science and
fine arts major. Jasper obviously told
her about us, because she arrived with several food gifts: dried Chinese longan, shelled hickory nuts (I
sent a photo of the label to Bill Watkins to figure out what they were), and a
big box of Ferrero Rocher hazelnut
chocolates. She also brought Robbie a special lobster hat and a little vest.
Now we need to call him "The Robster"
While they were here, they went downtown to the Art Institute and ice skating
in Millennium Park, and visited the Brookfield zoo. They also cooked Indian style butter chicken
and vegetable curry for us one evening.
We have passed the 4th quarter crescendo at work,
which is good, since one of the partners (Joe Pyle) retired at the end of 2019,
and his replacement doesn’t start until May, which means more work for the rest
of us. Jami Walloch went over the output
statistics last year, and apparently I am around 1.5X the average - - which
means other people are doing something other than signing out cases. I don’t have any administrative responsibilities,
thank goodness. I am looking forward to
my replacement, Wesley Samore starting in July; at least I will have someone
else to look at the muscle and nerve cases.
These wouldn’t be so bad except for receiving these specimens without
any clinical information, and no telephone number to call someone who knows
something about the patient. Sometimes I
feel like a skip tracer.
I have read some interesting books lately. I saw Aaron Brown reading Owen’s
recommendation, The
Sellout in Mexico, so I had to try that.
This is a well written, but dense book.
As I said to Aaron, it reads like an angry, black, Thomas Pynchon. I had a lot of trouble getting past the ¾ mark,
and I have to wonder who Beatty thinks his audience is? The people who really need to read this book
won’t. I liked Erasure a lot more.
Another good read was They
Will Drown in Their Mother’s Tears.
This was an adult dystopia about a future (?) Sweden where enemies of
the state (read: Muslims, Jews, activists…) are locked up, maybe experimented
on. Is time travel involved, or is the protagonist insane? I may be giving some part of the plot away by
saying it was a bit like the literary equivalent of La Jette or Twelve Monkeys.
I have been watching the first season of Killing Eve. I got the DVDs out of the library. This is an amusing sort of spy thriller, but
I don’t know if I am going to watch the 2nd (or further) seasons. Season 1 certainly looks like it is building
up to a big cliff hanger. Cindy and I
have also been watching The
Good Place, Schitt’s
Creek, and the Kominsky
Method.
Love,
H.
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