Kareila's Journal

I read today that Google's old link shortener, using the goo.gl domain, would stop working on August 25th. I didn't find any of their links in my journal, but I did find a bunch in my Twitter archive, so I grabbed copies of those links while I could still resolve them. (Most of them were Mental Floss retweets.)

I need to get back to curating my old tweets and including them in my journal archives before that entire site collapses into a black hole.

I also downloaded my archive of Pocket links last month when that site announced its retirement, but I hadn't used it in several years and honestly it was just another bitbucket to toss stuff into and forget about. I hardly ever actually made time to go back and read or watch any of the links I "saved for later." (The deadline for that one is October 8th.)

Seems like lately, time is less of a river and more of an avalanche.

Got an update from our chorus manager today.

The search for a new chorus director is still getting organized and won't be done until late in the calendar year. They've decided to let the orchestra's associate conductor act as the interim director for our fall performances (B9 & Messiah). He was already going to be conducting the Messiah anyway.

Turns out the reason Carmina Burana wasn't included on the symphony's concert schedule is because we're inexplicably doing it with the local ballet organization instead. Interesting.

We've also been told to pencil in a possible one-night performance in late February, but not what it might be. So there's at least a slim chance we might still do something this season that I haven't already done at least 3 times before. We had earlier been told that we would be involved with The Polar Express, but then they decided to do Muppet Christmas Carol instead.

Glad we have the familiar interim minister starting next week. We had to listen to the Gideons today. But Robby was able to attend the service, so I didn't have to run the music two weeks in a row.

I told my Hiddleston-obsessed local friend that The Life of Chuck was finally on at the theater, so we went to see that this afternoon. It was strange but good. Happy to see [name redacted] on the big screen for the first time in something like 30 years.

Then I came home, turned on ESPN and started screaming when I saw that the Red Sox had traded Devers to San Francisco. No one saw that coming.

I've unpacked maybe (optimistically) about a third of the books, and I've used up well over half of the available shelf space. But there's still an open wall for more shelving once we see what's left after the kids reclaim whatever they want to keep in their rooms. (Alternatively, I could force myself to downsize even more.)

Connor and I took a break and went to the board game cafe today for their one-year anniversary celebration. We played Wyrmspan, which is a reboot of Wingspan featuring dragons instead of birds, and enjoyed it quite a bit - although it's been so long since I tried out Wingspan that I'm not really sure what all was different apart from appearances.

Robby and I are actually caught up on the Murderbot TV series, or were until yesterday. It helps that it's only half an hour per episode. I find that I don't mind the character changes too much, but I do wish they had figured out a better way to show what SecUnit was sensing through the security feeds instead of just having the narration describe it.

I didn't really need to buy Connor a new iPhone for his graduation, but I made him the offer since that was what I gave Will when he graduated, and he took me up on it. Connor had been using the iPhone SE that I had bought as an extra family phone 4 years ago, and although it's still in good condition, it's definitely dated. He picked out a basic iPhone 16 in teal green, but only after I demonstrated that he could disable the so-called Apple Intelligence features.

I also didn't really need a new Kindle, either, but Amazon was having a sale recently, and I got an additional discount from trading in the kids' Echo Dot devices, which were at least six years old and had barely been used in all that time. In fact, when we moved house last year, I had boxed them back up in their original packaging, so they might have fetched even more on the resale market than what I got for trading them in. At any rate, my new Kindle is more responsive than the old one, has a slightly better screen, about twice as much storage space, and charges via standard USB-C. The only downside I've found so far is that Calibre on my laptop can't sync with it; I have to use Amazon's USB File Manager app. And I still can't sideload EPUBs directly.

I guess I will deregister my old Kindle and offer it to Robby to use. In the past, whenever he has wanted to read an ebook, he's used the Kindle iOS app on one of my old iPads. If he doesn't want the Kindle, maybe I'll load the Discworld books onto it for Connor, since he never did get around to reading them before they disappeared into moving boxes. (Although he has plenty of other books that aren't packed away... he's currently working his way through One Hundred Years of Solitude.)

Yesterday provided some much needed D&D silliness, including an airball match between our DM's versions of the Yankees and the Red Sox. (Yes, we invented a new sport for magic users.) It ended with us on a pirate ship with a literal skeleton crew, emerging from a cavern where it had been trapped for 100 years. The DM was trying for a PotC callback, but when I said it sounded more like the end of The Goonies, he confessed that he had never seen it. I realized that on reflection, I remember that movie fondly because it was about a mystery hunt.

My mom came over for lunch today and we watched some baseball. I always enjoy the games on Mother's Day because the players wear pink gear and use pink bats. She gave me the digital code for A Complete Unknown that came with her copy of the DVD, so I might try to watch that soon. We also talked a bit about the Red Sox clubhouse Netflix series, which we've both seen now. She's more keen on watching their games now that she knows who more of the players are. (Alas, Triston Casas is out for the year.)

I may try to watch Andor soon since I keep hearing good things about it. I've also marked my calendar for the Murderbot season premiere on Friday, and LEGO Masters is going to air over the summer this year.

Connor's final theater project was acting in a short musical about ransomware. He played Thomas, a young man whose grandmother's computer has been infected. The other two characters (besides him and his grandmother) were the software virus and the nine-year-old programmer who created it. I wish I could have seen it. He said that the choir teacher was in attendance and afterward, reportedly asked Connor where he had been hiding his singing voice for the last 4 years.

Afterward, we had an outdoor celebration lunch at one of our favorite local restaurants, where we were visited by a baby praying mantis and multiple friendly lizards. We were also serenaded from a safe distance by a lonely Canada goose.

Then last night, I convinced Connor to go with me to attend a chamber music concert, since Robby didn't feel up to sitting through it after spending the day at the office. It was a lovely program of harp ensemble pieces by French composers. There was the expected amount of Ravel, Debussy and Fauré, but the highlight for me was Massenet's Méditation from Thaïs, which I didn't know that I knew. Connor enjoyed the concert as well, and we arrived home afterward to find a young deer in our front yard and a toad on our doorstep. Surprisingly, the deer didn't startle; we calmly regarded each other for a long moment, and then it returned to grazing and ignored us as we walked inside.

Today Connor reported that he aced the first of his two finals. There's still some confusion with his English teacher over whether he has any more missing assignments, but he also has a final for that class on Friday. Tomorrow is his AP Stats exam.

I finished Wanderstop yesterday. I was awarded all of the in-game achievements even though I didn't satisfy one of the final shop customers before the story concluded. I'm not sure I would play it again, since the order and pacing of the story is so rigid, but I do like the soundtrack a lot.

Saw the Murderbot trailer. I still feel like the main character has been wildly miscast, but I could tell from what made it into the trailer that the story is going to be very faithful to the book, at least. Cautiously optimistic.

Saw the Tron: Ares trailer, and as someone who loved Tron: Legacy, it made me irrationally angry. Have they just decided not to care about what happened to Sam and Quorra? I'm tempted to say "this movie should have been a video game" without even having seen it.

Watched the first episode of the new Red Sox Clubhouse series on Netflix. It is super well done and also a total emotional roller coaster. I really miss Tyler O'Neill. (He's with the Orioles now.)

Robby related an exciting new symptom. "I moved my head, and suddenly the world started spinning."

Me: "The world is always spinning. You just lost your ability to compensate for it."

When I asked if he was going to need to take any personal time off work, he said that he had most of his 18 years' worth of sick time saved up (something like 200 days) so... uh, yeah. He's good on that, at least.

Currently trying to decide if this situation counts as a family emergency, because honestly for me it feels pretty normal and maybe my life is just a permanent family emergency at this point.

Just saw on Facebook that the conductor of the symphony chorus is resigning after 17 years. Which means I have been singing with the chorus for 17 years. Which seems like a ridiculously long time, but then it's also only six months longer than I've been with Dreamwidth.

I've had a few disagreements with him over the years, but he's a good guy who is leaving some very big shoes to fill.

Meanwhile, the accompanist at our church has announced her retirement with her last day being Easter Sunday (a month from now). Our music minister has tried and failed to find replacements for her when she's had availability issues in the past, so this time she's jumping straight to ordering a digital machine that is preprogrammed with all of our hymns. And as the resident music technologist, I'm being asked to become the subject expert on it. I'm not entirely thrilled with this development either.

However, I did get my car back today and Auburn won their first tournament game so at least some of my more recent pessimism was unwarranted.