September

After our quick trip to Texas for Labor Day, we got to kick off September with the concert that Jeremy had been looking forward to for literally a year: Weird Al. The first album Jeremy ever bought was Alapalooza (in 1993), and more than thirty years later, he finally got to see (and meet!) Weird Al. To prepare, Oscar has been listening to his Weird Al playlist for months. The show opened with an hilarious set from Puddles Pity Party, which was a perfect way to get the energy going, and Al's set was an hour and a half of loud, catchy, dancy performance. The man is 65 years old and moves like he is half that age. It was a great show.

About a week later, Jeremy and I went to see Ben Folds with the Denver orchestra. I have been a Ben Folds fan for almost as long as Jeremy has been a Weird Al fan, but I have also gotten to see him a few times before. This was a very different type of show, what with the orchestra and all, but it was also extremely grounded in Folds's clear themes of supporting the arts and reflecting on how songs are written. (And he played three of my big favorites, so I was extra happy.)

After Ben, Jeremy and I got one of those ridiculous milkshakes, which really was almost too sweet to eat. The next morning we enjoyed a kid-free trip to the Denver Art Museum; we have memberships this year, so we have been taking our time making our way through all of the exhibits (it's a big place!). And then we met the Colorado cousins for a quick and delicious lunch, but of course failed to document it.

The last event of our overstuffed month was Taylor Tomlinson, who was absolutely hilarious. We will definitely watch the "Save Me" special when it eventually gets to Netflix, but my secret favorite part might have been the bonus "confessions" bit at the end of her set where she sat with her opener, Zach Noe Towers (also very funny) and riffed on tweets from the audience.

Other September highlights:

• The sunflowers Mom planted, which we assumed that the hailstorm in July had destroyed, suddenly and gorgeously bloomed this month. (That's one of them in the picture at the top of the post.)
• Oscar's school had its fall festival, which for the first time included a chili cook-off. I made some white chicken chili and a batch of sweet potato and black bean chili because why not. (I know that Texas chili purists will say that these do not count as chili, and to that I say, "Suck it, beans are delicious.")
• Sarah McLachlan released her first album in almost a decade! Better Broken has been playing on repeat in the background of my life for the past few weeks, and it is gorgeous– calming and kick-ass simultaneously, a trick that she seems almost uniquely suited to pull off.

Books:

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey: I generally don't like to assign genders to books, but . . . this is a man book.
• Here One Minute by Liane Moriarty: I've never read any of her books before, though I did know of her from a couple of TV shows based on her books. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I ended up really enjoying this one. The quick movement between the various perspectives keeps the story moving along and also allows Moriarty to explore different ideas about fate and free will without necessarily endorsing one over the other.

TV Shows:

• Bunheads: aka Gilmore Girls on Pointe Shoes, aka The Sherman-Paladinos' First Ballet Show. I have tried several times now to watch this show and made it farther than ever before– I think six whole episodes! There are so many things here that I should like, and yet I never find myself getting even minimally invested in any of these characters. Sorry, Kelly Bishop. I don't think it's your fault.
• Upload, season 4: This show, I belatedly realized, has been on the air since 2020, disrupted by the pandemic and various strikes along the way. And this last season is, for some reason, only four episodes long, which makes it feel even more rushed and insubstantial than the rest of the series– which, I'll be honest, has always had troubles feeling substantial. Still, the cast is good and some of the plot points do land, and it's always nice to see a dystopian version of the future that does retain some sense of humor.

Movies:

• The Fantastic Four: First Steps: I wasn't in a huge rush to see this one, but I had some free time and decided to finally get around to it. Coming on the heels of watching Superman, which has that manic, fast-paced humor that Gunn excels at, this superhero movie felt downright slow and cheerless at times. The story itself is fine, and there are some amazing visuals, but I'm not sure why they cast such good actors only to have them do relatively little.
• Twinless: A couple of years ago I watched James Sweeney's first feature, Straight Up, then forced a couple of friends to watch it so that I could talk about how weird and great and ultimately kind of frustrating it was. When I saw that he had a new movie coming out, I got super excited and immediately bought a ticket, and I am so glad I got to see this one on the big screen. Sweeney has an ear for dialogue and a mind for the twisty, turny, sometimes ugly mental stuff that comes with being human. Dylan O'Brien is absolutely stellar here.
• Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale: Mom and I saw the first one together in 2022, one of our first major outings as the pandemic started leveling out. It was fun to revisit this cast and their fabulous wardrobes. The story is borderline nonexistent, but everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I did miss Lady Violet, though.

Stitching updates: I finally got around to making my nametag for EGA meetings (they charge fifty cents if you show up without one!) and took a bit of a break from other projects to do this little stitch with overdyed thread. I had to do a lot of pulling and redoing to get this one done, but I enjoyed trying out new stitches and figuring out how to work with multicolored thread.

And I am making up ground on the temperature stitch. Here it is, completed through June!