First Week of December Thoughts on Year End Lists and More

I had every intention of writing yesterday; after all, I had a largely unstructured day, since my ear doctor appointment got moved from Tuesday to Monday.   I had every intention of walking too.  

And how did my day get away from me?  I should be more specific--my mornings are the times when I have plans for getting things done.  Yesterday I started baking because we had the idea of sending a care package to a nephew who is studying for final exams.  I kept baking, and when my spouse was at the dentist, I wanted to enjoy having the house to myself, so I didn't go for a walk.  I was making progress on the endless grading that is constant at the end of the term, so I kept going.

By later in the day, after I got back from the post office and the library, it was windy, so I decided to hunker down, watch T.V., and sew some quilt squares.

Let me record some thoughts from the past few days:

--I was sad to hear about the death of Tom Stoppard and astonished to realize that he was 88 years old.  I had forgotten that he wrote the screenplay to Shakespeare in Love.  If I ever get to teach the Brit Lit survey class again, I'll end by having us watch that movie in its entirety.  It's an interesting counterpoint to Waiting for Godot--in some sense, it's in the absurdist line of theatre, but it's also different in ways that make sense as a way to close the course.  It looks both forward and backward, and it's a work from 1999, which gets me closer to the 21st century than I got this year, when I ended with Waiting for Godot.  I feel vaguely guilty for ending the course in the 1950's, and showing a film that features a Stoppard screenplay would alleviate my guilt.

--I went to the post office yesterday expecting a big crowd--it is early December, after all.  Happily there was only one person already at the counter and then me in line.  I bought some holiday stamps, even though I already have plenty of stamps.  I thought of my grandfather, my mom's dad, who collected stamps and taught me how to do it.  I wondered if anyone still collects stamps.

--We've been binge watching NYPD Blue.  I am using the term binge watching perhaps differently than some do, especially when talking about a series that lasted from 1993 until 2005.  It's a show we return to, but it's easy to dip in and out.  There are enough story lines that go across episodes that make me want to return to it.  It's well written and well acted, and it seems as worthy of attention as any of the "prestige TV" shows that aired on HBO in the past decades.  I watched it for a few years when it first aired, but I don't remember much of it.  Because it was a weekly show that was on the air for so long, there's a lot to watch, and we are watching it on a channel that just runs the show, episode after episode, so we can't pause the series.

--I am looking at a variety of year-end Best of _____ lists.  I'm no longer surprised when I haven't heard of most of the movies on the list.  But this year I'm surprised how few of the books crossed my radar screen until landing on the year end list.  And many of the ones that are on the list that I've heard of are ones I didn't like.  Hmm.

--Yesterday I took our Thanksgiving hambone and turned it into a pot of bean soup--what alchemy!  For decades when I cooked vegetarian beans, there would always be someone who asked what gave them flavor without the pork.  I never understood the question until a few years ago when I got to take the hambone home.