2023 in review

On the reading front, I finished 28 books in 2023 which was equivalent to recent years but nothing close to the early 2000s when I read 150+ books per year. The best books of the year for me were Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making It So, and the English language translation of Juan Gomez Jurado’s Red Queen.

In terms of other media, I don’t keep track of movies or television as well as I do books (thanks, LibraryThing!). But here’s what I remember off hand:

• Foundation – hit or miss.
• Ted Lasso – not impressed with S3.
• Only Murders in the Building – liked the two episodes we watched at Thx, on my list to subscribe to Hulu for it when I pause other streaming subs.
• GBBO – I always enjoy it, I’m predictable that way.
• Deadloch – I finished the first series but am not sure I would watch the second series.
• The Fall of the House of Usher – really enjoyed it.
• Queen Charlotte – ambivalent about it.
• The Diplomat – some of it was cringey but I liked the PM and his sister.
• Glass Onion – yes, please, more Benoit Blanc.
• Hijack – I have professional opinions about parts of this that I will keep to myself. But Idris Elba.
• Klaus – friend recommended this holiday movie and I really liked it.
• Last Christmas – only good things about this movie were the music and Michelle Yeoh (who I assume did it for the paycheck), otherwise it was painfully written/plotted and acted.
• Dungeons & Dragons – enjoyed, would watch a sequel set in the same universe.
• Last season of Escape to the Chateau – it was time for a variety of reasons.
• Mafia Mamma – it was terrible, I can only hope that Toni Collette got a huge paycheck because otherwise there is no excuse for it.

Rewatches: Persuasion, While You Were Sleeping, The Grinch (Original), The Expanse

Theater/BCS: Tiny Beautiful Things, Life is a Stage, Flamenco by the Royal Opera of Madrid

Hockey: a lot? Games in PGH vs the Bruins, the Flyers, opening night against the Next Next Next One, VGK, the Rangers, the Blues, and the Islands. And Chicago vs. the Leafs in Chicago.

Live music: Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, The Eagles, Stevie Nicks, Billy Joel.

Travel:

• Pittsburgh (does it could as travel at this point?)
• Chicago
• Portland (Maine)
• Cape Cod
• Portugal – Lisbon, Porto, and Sintra, with road/day trips to Evora, Aveiro, Braga, Guimaraes, Azeitao, Setubal, Arrabida, Tomar, Obidos, Fatima, Nazare, Batalha, Queluz, and Cascais.

As an aside, I cannot express how much I do not care for the upgrades/updates to WordPress. As someone who does a lot of writing in Word, I find its formatting to be clunky and the hovering box to be irritating. I don’t blog much, although I would like to do it more and get back into the habit, but I’m not sure it will be with WP/JP.

Rained out

ArtScape returned this year after a three year hiatus. Lots of drama and conflict behind the scenes: changing dates (from July to September) drove out other, smaller festivals usually schedule for then; some of the venues relied on for staging weren’t available due to scheduling; there were performance problems; and Tropical Storm Ophelia caused Saturday’s events to be canceled.

Usually I go out of my way NOT to be in town for ArtScape, but I waited too late to book and what I wanted to do (Lost Evenings in Anaheim) was $$$$$ for travel arrangements. So I figured I’d just deal with the people and noise and massive amounts of debris (seriously, the refuse is enormous) and also the honks of people who are angry about gridlock due to street closures. I feel sort of guilty that the cancellation on Saturday meant my neighborhood was quiet.

Live hockey is back! The first preseason games started this weekend. As I tap away, the third period of the Blue Jackets vs. Penguins is streaming in the background. And the Orioles are playing, with the post-season on the horizon 🙂

Just finished reading Juan Gomez-Jurado’s Red Queen. I saw a review of it in Financial Times – or rather of its translation to English – and borrowed it from the library. Really enjoyed it, but now I want to read it in the original. And the rest of the series, which is not (yet) available in English; need to see if I can find it in Spanish.

Recently read

Has Bujold’s Knot of Shadows been out long? I haven’t been paying attention to release schedules, but it popped up as a recommended read. So. It was fine? The fantasy equivalent of a cosy procedural, I guess. It just felt sort of blah; it didn’t engage me, and I didn’t care about anyone in the narrative. There was no larger issue or mystery at hand.

Am about half way through Game Misconduct, which was written before the release of the Jenner & Block report about the Chicago Blackhawks’ failure to take any steps to investigate sexual assault. I love hockey as a spectator, but I think the league and all its feeders should be burned to the ground.

Went to watch live hockey in Pittsburgh. Almost no one was wearing masks. Even in places that asked people to wear masks and social distance – people didn’t. At one point I had to get off an elevator on the wrong floor because people either couldn’t read or didn’t care – that sign that said no more than 2 people per elevator, please social distance and wear a mask – did not mean them. We really are too stupid and selfish to live, aren’t we?

On the drive west, there’s a sign for that fucking guy, hand painted, that includes the admonition “no socialism”. Up the road from another sign painted telling drivers to “drink milk”. I’m guessing the landowners are okay with agrarian socialism propping up the dairy industry, since it is for dairy farmers (them) and thus for the right people who deserve government support, while the general population does not? I don’t know. People make my head hurt.

Get off my lawn

I feel increasingly tired and cranky about women’s hockey and how it is covered and how people who do not watch regularly talk about it.

First, we get it:  fans, mostly men, who don’t watch women’s hockey think it isn’t good enough or fast enough and that the lack of hitting and fighting is a drawback.  (Uh, type usa canada women 2013 into your search bar and look what comes up.  I like that there is less hitting and fighting and more actual game play, but tastes vary.)  And you tell us that at every opportunity.  Frankly, we are aware that you think that way, and yours isn’t the interest we are seeking.  Go watch Don Cherry re-runs.  Women’s hockey is not a carbon copy of men’s hockey, and complaining because it isn’t is a waste of time and breath.

On that same note, please stop saying that the women want a hand out and don’t deserve it.  The NHL and its predecessors were money losers for decades.  You know who gave them money?  Tax payers did.  (Link via David Berri.) So stop saying women are asking for special treatment; they are asking for equal treatment, the same hand out that the NHL got.

Second:  the mainstream* coverage of the PWHPA lacks any sort criticism; nothing they say is interrogated in a meaningful way.  The loudest PWHPA speakers have been racist jerks; former players with axes to grind; and current national team players who come across as petty grudge-holders.  HockeyNight’s coverage last night included blatantly inaccurate statements about the NWHL, and framed the PWHPA as a union (which it is not) engaged in a boycott (which this is also not).

*They are happy to talk to big men’s hockey outlets and national reporters who don’t actually know the nitty gritty of woho, but based on the woho media I follow, they ignore pretty much everyone else and fail to provide even basic press information.  (That was a criticism of the NWHL early on too, but they learned from it and are much improved.  People forget that the league is five years old.  That’s an infant in professional sports league terms.)

Third:  the big voices on social media for the PWHPA may be standing up for national team players, but it isn’t really clear to me as an observer that they are doing shit for the lower tier players…who are getting a change to play in the NWHL since there is space now.

As a fan, would I love for professional women’s hockey to pay a living wage?  Yes.  Would I buy tickets, merch, pay to stream games?  Yes.  The PWHPA has not made any of these opportunities available to me.  You know who has?  The NWHL.  So I’m going to continue buying tickets and merch and streaming the NWHL games (which are free on Twitch).  And I’m going to continue to side eye everyone who claims that there is no women’s hockey league in North America.  There is; it’s just not the one players claiming they wanted #OneLeague actually wanted to survive the CWHL/NWHL competition.

The PWHPA seems to be hoping the NWHL will just go away (or be put out of business by the NHL), which is kind of pathetic and short-sighted, IMO.  Boston and Minnesota have sold out their games this season; the league has added another investor and multiple sponsors; they are sharing revenue with players.  It also seems naive to me:  why do you think a women’s league operated by Bettman et al. would be good for women?  Do you think they’ll handle CTE differently for women?  Do you think they’ll release players for the Olympics or Nationals?  That seems unlikely.

Ugh.  Get off my lawn.  I’ve got a Riveters game to go to.

Year end summary for 2018

According to LibraryThing, I read 28 books.  I have two others still in progress that I started in 2018 and have stalled on a little, mostly because I haven’t had the patience to settle in to a long read since about Thanksgiving.  Several of the 28 books were the Rivers of London graphic novels, which I find to be easy/quick reads, although I don’t love the art particularly. The highest rated books were Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series, which I read all in one go, and two pieces of non-fiction: a biography of the Widow Clicquot and The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy.   The biggest disappointments (other than DNFs that I have stopped recording) were the two In Death books I tried to read: one had victim blaming and slut shaming, while the other had transphobia and showed a complete lack of knowledge/research about civil and criminal securities fraud investigation/prosecution. Stick a fork in me, I am done.

Theater and film:  Just film this past year, because I didn’t love what was scheduled for the then-upcoming theater season and so did not renew my subscription.

• Molly’s Game
• Phantom Thread
• Black Panther
• Annihilation
• Tomb Raider
• Love, Simon
• Avengers: Infinity War
• RBG
• Ocean’s 8
• Won’t You Be My Neighbor
• Crazy Rich Asians
• Widows
• The Girl in the Spider’s Web (Lisbeth Salander)

Travel

• Houston
• Pittsburgh
• Asheville
• Rome – primarily for the food and the Italian Open 🙂
• Spain – Granada, Sevilla, Madrid

NWHL – all the Riveters’ home games for the end of the 2017-2018, including playoffs and the Isobel Cup Final; all but one home game for the beginning of the 2018-2019 season (it was Thx weekend), as well as the neutral site game in Pittsburgh.

NHL – an embarrassing number of games, including playoffs.  But I didn’t renew my partial season ticket plan to the Capitals; in part because they jacked the prices up in a crazy way, and in part because I’m tired of being harassed and threatened at the games.  One of my colleagues swears the harassment should stop now since they’ve won the Cup, but the two individual games I went to early in the season (Toronto, VGK) did not bear that prediction out.

For baseball, there were just three games:  NYY, Marlins, and Rays, all in June and July.

Museums and cultural events…the Walters, the Heinz, so much in Rome that I need to write about.  Two Frank Turner shows.  Sunday in the country, which I went to more to be social than because I knew anything about any of the acts.

Professionally speaking, the beginning of the year was a grind.  The middle of the year and into fall were pretty good.  And then the end of the year was okay in terms of the substance of work but a nightmare because of the furlough.  (So much work is accumulating. It will take a massive effort to dig out.  And the longer it goes, the harder it will be to get current again.)

Belated year end summary for 2017

According to LibraryThing, I read 22 books.  I probably started another 20 but I don’t count them if I don’t get past 100 pages.  The two highest rated books were non-fiction, Eight Flavors and The Woman Who Smashed Codes.  The highest rated fiction were The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by KJ Charles and Penric’s Fox by Bujold (novella).  The biggest disappointments (other than DNFs) were Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs (I think I’m done with her books entirely) and Prisoner of Limnos by Bujold (part of the Penric series).

Theater and film:

• King Charles III
• The Select: The Sun Also Rises
• Macbeth
• School for Lies
• Hidden Figures
• Wonder Woman
• Atomic Blonde
• Marshall
• A Bad Moms Christmas
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Travel

• Houston
• Pittsburgh
• Beach
• Portugal – Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto
• Las Vegas

NWHL

• February 4 – Beauts at Rivs, W
• February 12 – NWHL All Star Game (Steadman vs Kessel, Steadman won)
• March 12 – Pride at Rivs, W
• March 17 – Beauts at Rivs – Isobel Cup Playoffs (Beauts won)
• December 3 – Whale at Rivs, W
• December 10 – Beauts at Rivs, W

NHL

• January 3 – Leafs at Capitals, 6-5 Caps in OT
• January 11 – Penguins at Capitals, L2-5, saw Oveckin’s 1000th point 😦
• February 14 – Canucks at Penguins, W4-0
• March 6 – Stars @ Caps, Stars 4-2
• March 16 – Predators at Capitals, Preds 2-1 OT
• March 24 – NYI at Penguins, L3-4 in SO
• March 26 –  Flyers at Penguins, L6-2
• April 14 – ECQF, G2, CBJ at Penguins, W4-1
• April 27 – ECSF, G1, Penguins at Capitals, W3-2
• May 1 – ECSF, G3, Capitals at Penguins, L3-2 in OT (ugly hit by Niskanen, amazing comeback down 0-2 in the last 3 minutes)
• May 13 – ECF, G1, Senators at Penguins, L2-1 in OT
• May 31 – Stanley Cup Finals, G2, Predators at Penguins, W4-1
• October 11 – Penguins at Capitals, W3-2
• October 17 – Leafs at Capitals, 2-0 Leafs
• December 4 – Sharks at Capitals, L4-1
• December 12 – Carolina at VGK, Carolina won in SO – Flower’s first game back!
• December 14 – Penguins at VGK, L1-2, all about the goalies
• December 23 – Ducks at Penguins, L4-0 (this was a hot mess of a game; Letang got booed because he was the biggest part of the mess)

For baseball, I know I went to at least two Orioles games, one vs NYY and one vs DET, but I cannot find the ticket stubs.

Museums and cultural events…the Walters, the Heinz, National Museum of the American Indian, and a bunch in Portugal.  Which I need to write about.  Two Frank Turner shows.

Catching up

My reading slump continues.  I need to figure out something to write about because I’m really out of the habit of writing thoughtfully about the media I consume.  I write a fair amount for work but the results are pretty technical and blunt, very to the point with a specific purpose and a different kind of analysis and use of persuasive language.  So, I’m going to make an effort with the goal of one post per week about some sort of media, even if it is not about published fiction.

I have managed to read some stuff this summer though.

June

1. Come Sundown by Nora Roberts.  Rosario posted a very good review of this book, although she may have liked it more than I did.  It felt really derivative of Roberts’ Montana Sky, which was once a favorite.  It might still be, maybe, but I’m a little afraid to re-read after 5+ years, because what if it doesn’t stand up?  Or what if it irritates me the way this one did?  The clustered family felt really claustrophobic to me, and the dismissal of urban lives seriously pissed me off.  (Disclosure: I grew up in the middle of nowhere in an old house set in the middle of fields of cows and corn. I now live by choice in a sort of rust-belt city with serious race and crime issues. There are good and bad things about both. Community is not exclusive to small towns and rural life.)
2. Skin After Skin by Jordan Castillo Price.  A new PsyCop novel.  Eh, I didn’t love it?  It was interesting to get a different POV on Victor Bayne and other PsyCops, but there were a lot of inconsistencies between it and the earlier novels that didn’t seem really attributable to just a change of POV.
3. The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch.  A short story or novella in the Rivers of London series.  Really liked seeing Abigail and a plot that didn’t involve Leslie or the Faceless Man.

July – just Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember by John Feinstein.  This follows Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine during the 2007 season.  As someone who learned to love baseball via the Orioles in the late 90s, Mike Mussina was the ace, the starting pitcher, the hero. Glavine, eh, National League, so I didn’t pay much attention except for the occasional interleague series.  It’s interesting to read Mussina’s perspective on his contract negotiations with Angelos/management as he played his final year as an Oriole and then departed for The Enemy.  Feinstein writes that Mussina felt like the fans were critical of him; as a fan, I remember feeling like the ownership/management was shortchanging their ace.  In fact, the last game that he started, I remember seeing a season ticket holder with a sign that read, “If Mussina doesn’t come back, neither do I.”  Anyway, it was a good read but I would probably only recommend it to baseball fans.  For lack of a better phrase, it’s kind of inside baseball and assumes a certain base knowledge about the game and its history and operations.

August – nothing, according to LibraryThing. Is that right?  Nope, Amazon says I downloaded Lois McMaster Bujold’s new novella, Penric’s Fox.  Although this was just published in August, it fits chronologically as the third book/novella in the series, set after Penric and the Shaman and before his later adventures in Penric’s Mission and Mira’s Last Dance.  IMO, it is just as well, because I found Mira’s Last Dance to be fairly disappointing and appreciated the return to mystery/adventure.

September – I know it’s early for this, but I read at the beach and am likely to spend the rest of the month inching through the nonfiction I started on Friday, so…

1. God Save the Queen by Kate Locke – steampunk + paranormal.  Steampunk has been really hit or miss for me, other than Meljean Brook’s work.  And I used to love paranormal but got vampired and werewolved out a long time ago.  (Would Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten stand up to a re-read, or would it irritate me now? I don’t know.)  But this was interesting in the set up of plot/conflict and some of the world-building.  I liked it enough to seek out the second book of the series.
2. The Queen is Dead by Kate Locke.  Maybe I should have left this series at the first book?  Or perhaps not read it shortly after the first of the series?  In any case, I’m not wasting time or money on the third book.  The POV character’s use of the same phrase about having her trusty lonsdaelite dagger tucked into her corset became irritating after the fourth or fifth repetition, and she was a giant Mary Sue.
3. Secrets in Death by JD Robb.  It was fine.  It was JD Robb.  There was bloody murder, Eve was conflicted about things, she and Summerset snark at each other, Roarke owns everything, etc.
4. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner.  I’m only about 25% through this book.  The massive incompetence, outright fraud, criminal activity, hypocrisy, and bloated-ego-fest that was the CIA through its first decade or so (as far as I’ve read) is terrifying and infuriating and shame-inducing.

2016 – year in review

Reading:

I read 33 books or novellas in 2016; that doesn’t count the books I picked up and put back down or returned to the library unread or unfinished, since I may circle back to some of those at some point.  The two best fiction reads were Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas. Best nonfiction was Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies.  Biggest disappointment was Bujold’s Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.

Also, I read an excellent original hockey fic on AO3. I really like the writer’s voice and style…but the typos and punctuation abuse make my brain hurt.

I started Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine on 12/31 but have not finished it yet; I think it’ll be one of my favorite reads when it comes time to tally up 2017.

Watched:

• Fox’s Pitch series (please be renewed?)
• The Crown
• GBBO
• Star Wars (mostly liked it, love General Organa)
• Jason Bourne (meh)
• Ghostbusters (loved it)
• Star Trek (meh)
• Love & Friendship (loved it)

Theater, Museums, Music:

• Jan 9 – The Critic and the Real Inspector
• March 5 – Othello
• March 26 – 1984
• May 21 – The Taming of the Shrew
• Oct 29 – Romeo and Juliet
• Dec 3 – The Secret Garden
• The Menil
• The National Aviary
• Fort Pitt Museum
• The Andy Warhol Museum
• The Frick – the carriages and cars in the garage are amazing, as is the house
• The Heinz History Center, multiple visits – Toys Exhibit, Pixburgh exhibit, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, glass industry.  The exhibit on slavery is excellent and awful.  As a white person, it was ugly and shame-inducing to walk through.  I cannot imagine how painful it would be for a POC, or even tell whether it would be cathartic or just rage-inducing.
• ROM (loved the Chihuly exhibit)
• Casa Loma
• Bata Shoe Museum
• AGO
• Textile Museum
• Gardiner Museum of Ceramics (loved)
• Smithsonian National Gallery of Art
• Garth Brooks & Tricia Yearwood concert (wow, not much music this year)

Sports:

Okay, this category, now that I look at it, is a little excessive.  Sorry, not sorry.  Also, I’m sure I went to at least one more baseball game, but I can’t find the ticket stub or a note on my planner, so.

• Feb 22 – Coyotes @ Caps
• Feb 27 – Jets @ Penguins
• March 11-14 – Indian Wells for the BNP Paribas tournament, love this venue.
• March 18 – Predators @ Caps
• March 28 – Blue Jackets @ Caps
• April 7 – Penguins @ Caps (makeup game for blizzard), WIN!
• April 16 – Game 2 of the 1st round of the playoffs – NYR @ Penguins, loss
• April 23 – Game 5 of the 1st round – NYR @Penguins, won the series
• April 28 – Game 1 of the 2nd round – Penguins @ Caps, lost in OT.
• May 4 – Game 4 of the 2nd round – Caps @ Penguins (OT win!)
• May 13 – Game 1 of the ECF – TBL @ Penguins – ouch, lost, Letang got boarded (and knocked out) right in front of me.  It was ugly.
• June 1 – Game 2 of the SCF – Sharks & Penguins, OT win.  The Goal (actually all the goals) was right in front of me!
• June 5 – NYY @ Orioles
• Sept 14 – pre-tournament SWE-EUR
• Sept 17-29 – World Cup of Hockey tournament; 16 games.  So. Much. Hockey.
• October 15 – Ducks @ Penguins (win!)
• Nov 8 – Sharks @ Caps (Sharks win!)
• Nov 16 – Penguins @ Caps (ugly, ugly loss)
• Nov 19 – Penguins @ Buffalo (SO loss, man, Flower was so good in the 3rd and OT).
• Nov 20 – NWHL Pride @ Beauts (posted thoughts/opinions about this over on tumblr)
• Dec 30 – Three Rivers Classic (consolation game and championship game)
• Dec 31 – Canadiens at Penguins (OT win!)

Travel:

• Houston
• Pittsburgh
• Buffalo
• Beach
• Toronto

Goals/plans for 2017:

• Drop the Caps tickets, use the money to visit other teams’ arenas
• Go to at least two more NWHL games this season
• Go to either Italy, Portugal, or Spain on vacation (in February, maybe?)
• Read 40 books
• Make myself post more regularly
• Find a tutor or conversational group to refresh/relearn the Russian I’ve mostly forgotten

A little bit of reading

Someone mentioned on social media that they had the new Bujold to read, which made me go see what she has new out.  A Penric novella!  Nice.  It was a quick read, but good, a peek into Penric and Desdemona several years down the road from the last novella.  Bujold does well in a shorter format, I think.

Other than that, the only things I’ve read lately are a re-read and the third book in K.A. Mitchell’s Ready or Not series.  Eh, not the best book of the series.  I didn’t believe either character had any real growth and didn’t believe the HEA at all.

The re-read was of the most recent Kate Daniels book.  Reading it, I’m frustrated because I like Andrews’ voice but find the world-building and character-building to be inconsistent and wobbly.  Also, there are a lot of inconsistencies if you read carefully, and it isn’t clear if it is planned and a function of tight POV via Kate or retconning.  I’d like to think it was a POV function but there are enough sloppy errors or blips in the series that assuming that seems risky.  (Ex: Doolittle has two different first names depending on which book you read; Derek will never howl again we are told, only to have him howl repeatedly; changes in the capacity for post-Shift technology; basic math and time/date/counting errors; etc.)

~~~

I’ve watched the first two episodes of The Crown on Netflix.  Wow, so good.

Also watching Pitch, usually on demand.  Love Ginny and Amelia and the whole cast, really.

~~~

Project-wise, the throw blanket I am working on as a gift is probably not going to be finished in time for Christmas.  I’m not sure if I’ll just give it as an other/odd day gift or wrap a couple of sections of it as a promise to be finished.

But I did finish a scarf to match my awesome new hat, and am about 40% finished with a copy of it for a colleague who admired it and asked if I could make them one.  It’s pretty easy to knock one out, easier than the throw blanket sections, which are less portable and thus less able to be worked on during my commute.

~~~

I went to the Pens-Caps game on Wednesday.  It was a mess.  I decided after attending the San Jose game the week before that I would not be renewing my partial season ticket plan next year, and this game reinforced that decision. I hate the forced patriotism and rampant military hero worship encouraged or forced on and by the crowd.  I find the crowd to be pretty ugly in general, and it’s worse when the Penguins come to town.  Two women behind me spent the whole game saying that wanted Crosby, Malkin, Letang, et al. to be boarded or hit or knocked out of the game, often when none of them were on the ice.  (Note: these were Trump supporters who compared Crosby talking to refs during the disaster of a game with 9 penalties to “protesters” who should “shut up and go back to work”.)

I’m pretty sure they could tell how uncomfortable they were making me, because they asked which Caps player I felt similarly about, a player I hate.  It’s like they wanted me to justify their ugliness.  Here’s the thing: I don’t dislike any Caps player enough to want them to be hospitalized or their career ended by a hit the way they described.  I don’t care* enough about any Capitals player to bother.  There are players I refuse to watch play, for whom I would feel no pity if their stats fell off a cliff and they were waived or were cut (not Capitals players), but but hating professional athletes is as big a waste of time as hating a particular actor or musician.  Just change the channel.  The Capitals’ roster is only relevant to me when they are playing a team I like, which is usually only 9 or 10 times per season between the Penguins, Predators, and Sharks.

*There are players I think are overrated or overpaid or overhyped.  For example, I think Ovechkin is the best pure goal scorer of his generation, but he’s an inveterate diver and lays a lot of late hits that don’t get called.  Orpik hits like a truck but is way overpaid for being the 4th or 5th dman.  Oshie and Tom Wilson remind me (in a not flattering way) of the douchiest frat bros I knew in college.  But do I hate them?  Nah, it’s not worth the emotional energy.

September things

According to LibraryThing, September was my best reading month this year — five books! It feels like an accomplishment, when in my reading heyday I read five books or more a week.  Still, it’s an improvement.

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I spent the last two weeks in Toronto, visiting museums, walking all over, and watching All the Hockey.  Literally, I attended sixteen World Cup of Hockey games in 13 days.  Twelve of those games were crammed into six days.  Some of them are a blur, but for some really specific plays, like Nathan MacKinnon’s OT goal; Crosby’s highway robbery of Kucherov and backhand goal; a shift by Malkin behind the net in which he seemed to have the puck on a string; McDavid to Eichel to Matthews; etc.

Non-hockey highlights:

• the Chihuly exhibit at ROM – I could have happily plopped myself down on one of the beanbag things and stared at ‘Persians’ for hours
• steamed pork buns at Mashion Bakery, which I found by chance, lured in by the amazing smell despite the sort of sketchy block and very plain exterior
• people-watching at the St. Lawrence Market on Saturday morning (I chatted with a lovely lady visiting from New Jersey with her church group)
• Stonemill Bakery’s double almond croissant
• the Seville orange marzipan pinch at Soma Chocolate
• my charming seat mates, the family from Woodstock and the dudes in from Banff, and the usher whose predictions were seldom accurate but always entertaining
• everything about the Bata Shoe Museum and the Gardiner Museum (ceramics)
• the display of antique snuff bottles at AGO

 

Other observations:  The building going on downtown is striking — there’s so much of it and it’s so beautiful.  I stayed in the St. Lawrence/Distillery neighborhood and walked pretty much everywhere, as far as Spadina and Little Italy.  Lots of green spaces, friendly people.  I noticed a lot of smokers everywhere, almost as much as in Paris, which surprised me.  And the odor of pot was especially prevalent around ACC.

And my streak continues.  Once again in a foreign country (or in any city I’m visiting, even in the US), I was asked for directions.  On multiple occasions.  I do not understand it.  I mean, I was able to answer because they were asking for a specific landmark or street that I knew, but what about my face or posture says, “Hey, she knows where you need to go?”  Because, seriously, I have a horrendous sense of direction.