lunabee34

( really long review of season 4 of Stranger Things )

I have been assiduously avoiding spoilers, so if you made a review or meta post you think I'd enjoy, please point me to it!

1. I had my first mammogram yesterday. It was not the most comfortable experience, but it didn't hurt, and it was over in a matter of minutes. I was very pleasantly surprised. I suspect this is one area of life in which having enormous boobs is a plus. LOL

2. I'm doing the spa package today (my birthday gift from Josh): massage, facial, manicure, pedicure. They do them back to back, and it takes four hours, and it is glorious. I get my hair and brows done tomorrow, and then I will be ready to go back to work on Monday after scrubbing the summer off. LOL

3. Yesterday was our last trip to the pool for the year. It will continue to be open through September, maybe even into October, but I don't enjoy going once the students come back for the fall. The pool gets very crowded. Also, I stop dying my hair at the end of April/beginning of May because it seems really dumb to pay to have it done and then dunk it in 100% chlorine, so I quit going to the pool once I start getting my hair dyed again in the fall. And finally, when we went on vacation to my parents, my bathing suit started to disintegrate, and I really don't want to buy another one right now. I got away with it for the two weeks after we came back because the pool is largely empty, and a bathing suit with a couple of patches worn thin is not the tackiest thing I saw at the beach on Tybee LOL. I will miss swimming, but I'm ready to start running again.

4. My BFF from middle school to high school (about 5th-9th grade) contacted me out of the blue at my work email, and so we're going to talk on the phone tonight. I'm excited to catch back up with her.

5. Thanks for linking me to your Stranger Things thoughts, everyone! I am slowly going through them. Here's my take on the last two episodes: ( spoilers )

Looking forward to the next season.

1. We went to the beach at Tybee Island yesterday. Fiona had never been to the beach before, and that was her vacation request this summer. When I went to bed last night, I felt like somebody had beat me up. I can't believe how much of a workout that was. I probably only tread water for 20-30 minutes total, but doing it in those waves was hardcore. Same with just standing and bracing myself against the surf. Wow. The girls had a fantastic time; poor Josh spent the whole day up under the umbrellas and praying not to get sunburned. He is a good sport.

2. ( Stranger Things season 3 episodes 4-6 )

I hope we finish tonight!

3.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don't have a lot of strong feelings about the Homeric epics; they basically amount to Odysseus is a jackass, Achilles is a whiny baby jackass, and Hector is bestest. The Iliad starts in the middle of the action with an invocation to the muse featuring Achilles's rage, and there's just not much more to him in the poem IMHO. The classics are not my bag; I've read the Homeric epics and Hesiod and many other primary texts from ancient Greece and some secondary texts to contextualize, but it is not my area of study at all, and if there's more to Achilles than an angry dude who sticks out his bottom lip and crosses his arms and takes his toys home, I don't see it. Well, until he turns into grief-stricken Achilles who is infinitely more interesting to me.

Miller makes me like Achilles and care about Achilles and see him as an essentially good guy. His anger and his choices make a lot more sense to me in the context of this book than they do in the poem.

The novel reminds me a great deal of Renault's The King Must Die except that the divine there is always ambiguous and may not even exist, but the supernatural is very real in The Song of Achilles. I love Thetis, how otherworldly and hard and frightening and destructive to what is human she is. Her mercy at the end means so much more as a result.

This is such a good book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.



View all my reviews

My testosterone cream arrived in the mail! Only one business week of multiple phone calls each day to make that happen. LOL I am cautiously optimistic. The internet tells me that I can expect to start feeling more energy in 2-3 weeks; I really, really hope so, y'all.

We've been watching Stranger Things since we got back from vacation; we've seen through episode 5. No spoilers past that episode, please!

( spoilers for season 3 episode 1 )

We just finished Stranger Things season 2, AND IT WAS TOTALLY TUBULAR! LIKE TOTALLY!

OMG, y'all I have got to go to bed, but it was an almost entirely perfect season of television. I have so much to say about it.

I'm sorry, sjnt. I seem to have developed a rather severe case of Steve-itis. I think it's antibiotic resistant.

1. Fiona turned six on Monday. I can't believe she's that old. It is such a surreal feeling watching your kids grow up, and by surreal, I mean guaranteed to make you feel extremely old. LOL

2. We are going through a re-org at my university, and our chair has been promoted, leaving that position vacant. I am really gratified that multiple colleagues have suggested that I apply or assumed I was throwing my hat in the ring and expressed support for my candidacy. I have worked extremely hard to build my professional reputation, and that vote of confidence feels really good. I'm not going to apply for two reasons. I'm not ready to give up my flexible schedule. I actually wouldn't mind the 12 month contract part; you all know I get really antsy and bored over the summer when I'm not working, so that part of it would probably be good for me. It's the 40+ hours a week part that I'm not interested in (and it would be + because the job would involve a fair amount of travel among campuses). I would have to exercise either before or after work, which is a problem for me in either direction. I also want to be flexible while Fiona's still so young. I want to be able to attend her events and pick her up from school and etc. The second reason is that I just don't feel ready yet; I have gotten a good foundation in how the upper echelons work by serving on Senate for many years and chairing and serving on university-wide committees. I could do the job at this point, but it would have more of a learning curve than I'd like. Ideally, I'd like to be Assistant Chair for awhile first and get experience that way. If the Assistant Chair position ever comes open, I will 100% apply for that position, but I will probably wait until later in my career to try for Chair.

3. Josh is away for an out-of-state conference, so Emma and I started watching Stranger Things on Sunday night. We have one episode left. LOL I haven't blown through a TV show like this in a long time. I actually watched the first four episodes when it first came out, and I just stopped for some reason. I am boggling at myself now because it's so good and so gripping, I don't know why I did that. All I can think is that I must have been overwhelmed by how much TV we were trying to keep up with at the time and anxious about all the child harm/trauma.

( spoilers for Stranger Things )

Don't spoil me for the season one finale or season two please!

4. ( The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt )

5. ( spoilers for the last three episodes of Lucifer )

I am extremely satisfied with this season, and I really hope we get another. Does anybody know if there will be another season?

6. ( spoilers for Jessica Jones season 2 episode 11 )

Does anybody know where The Defenders fits into the Jessica Jones timeline?

Please don't spoil me for JJ season 3. :)