It's been a cold and rainy spring in the North, with just a few days
in the past month or so that have actually been spring-like.
Yesterday was one of them, and it's amazing how sun and warmth
combined with birds, flowers and the other signs of nature can
elevate one's mood. But it has put off our plans for a garden, which
we're still planning to do, although it probably has more to do with
our move last August. It's always difficult to know what will grow
where after moving to a new house with new property - is the soil
too rocky? Does the sun hit the right parts of the yard for enough
hours a day?
We have also not been able to do much biking due to the weather,
although I had my bike tuned and cleaned up and replaced one of the
tires, so it's ready when the weather cooperates.
~
My wife and I have started watching the post-apocalyptic series "The
Last of Us" [0], which came out in 2023, so we're a bit late to the
game. It's been a very good show so far. I never played the video
game of the same name, so I'm just seeing it as it is, but the
writing and acting are top-notch. The last episode we watched, the
third of the first season, earned Nick Offerman much praise as well
as an Emmy. He plays a survivalist who stumbles into a long-term
relationship with another man who was caught by one of his
traps. The episode was a bit of a departure from the main theme of
the series, and could almost be a standalone movie in its own right
(it's 80 minutes long) - but it's well worth watching.
[0]:
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The%20Last%20of%20Us%20%28TV%20series%29
~
I recently finished the novel "Homestead", by Melinda Moustakis. It
was an impulse grab at the local library, as it seemed interesting
from the cover blurb. It tells the story of a newly married couple
with a 150-acre homestead plot of land in 1950's Alaska, and has a
lot of "slice of life" vibes on top of being set in a historically
interesting time, when Alaska was first granted statehood, and the
federal government was trying to encourage settlers by giving away
property in trade for building a cabin and cultivating the land.
While the setting and topic were interesting to me, I found the
prose odd - the author used a lot of partially formed sentences, as
if she wanted to convey the various characters' thoughts as they
would really think them, but it made the dialogue and scenes hard to
follow at times. It was also hard to like the husband Lawrence, he
really was not a nice person. At one point Lawrence's father visits
to help finish the cabin build, and he is such a better person than
his son, you wish the novel was about the father. Still, the setting
and historical context was interesting, and I do like stories with a
homesteading slice-of-life aspect, so I found it a decent read
overall.
