Spring Update

 

Haven’t posted at all during the past two weeks, but there’s a very important reason.

Hopper and family are moving!

We are in the process of selling the house and accepted an offer last night. The fruit of nearly 60 days of labor.

We invested mucho dinero into our home of 17 years to get it in sellable shape. Painters to slap a fresh coat of paint on all the interior walls, ceilings, and moldings; a contractor to raise the front walkway four inches to get up to code; a handyman to install clean new blinds on all the windows (sixteen of them). Me and Patch threw out old couches, tables, chairs, rugs, and an assorted mishmash of things unused in over a year over the course of twelve garbage pickups. I was honestly paranoid the trash men would boycott my house. The rule of thumb is: If it has no sentimental value and we haven’t used it in the past twelve months, it gets tossed!

We had a recommended professional jack-of-all-trades do some cosmetic work on the place, too. And me and the girls painted the deck for the first time in five years. Outside, we’ve clipped the hedges, kept the lawn manicured, ripped out a dying fir tree. Inside, the basement is now crammed with two dozen moving boxes, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel: we can probably get everything packed away in only a dozen more. We’ve paid for a professional packer to help us, and man oh man has she helped, serving not only as a packing expert unafraid to roll up her sleeves but also as a motivational coach keeping our spirits up.

I must admit I am sad, as are the girls, but it is the right thing to do. It was a starter home that we were unfortunately stuck in ten years too long. The house has lots of good memories – birthday parties, barbecues, throwing the football in the front yard, shoveling snow off the roof, reading books in just about every room, watching Super Bowls and must-see TV with the little ones. It also has bad memories - $$$ involuntarily spent on a new roof, a new furnace, a new bathroom, sleepless nights looking for work, the continued frustration of being defeated by the simplest task of home maintenance. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.

The old homestead, 2004-2021

The wife has already scoped out some potential new homes. Like the Jeffersons, we’re moving on up. Larger, newer, better. Spare bedroom, fireplace, office or gym or both, bigger back yard. I’m looking forward to the new digs (but not necessarily the stress of finding it, bidding on it, financing it, and moving in to it). I’m hoping and praying six months from now I’m back on an even keel.

So that’s why no blogging. The pressure of packing everything up, leaving spontaneously when the realtor calls with a potential buyer, managing my not-so-little little ones while the wife’s away for work. Keeping the place immaculate. Business has been busy, too, as I lost my assistant at work (he left to go to school to become a nurse). There’s always something, they say, and they’re right.

Most importantly, I haven’t really read much lately. It seems like I’ve been slogging through the Lensman paperback and my current WW2 tome, but that’s only because I can only find something like fifteen minutes a night to read, and that’s unacceptable. We lost our cozy living room (it’s been gutted to show its spaciousness and allow potential buyers to visualize their furniture in there) so the girls and I have been watching movies on the flatscreen in the master bedroom: Taken, Taken 2, The Boy, and Christine. The girls love their suspense and they love their Steven King.

More updates and musings on the horizon …

 

Came By Post Today

 

On a whim a few days ago I ordered this book – First Lensman, © 1950, by E. E. “Doc” Smith. It’s been two months since I’ve read some good ol’ SF, and for some reason this book popped into my mind. Now, it’s not exactly a classic, in the sense that Asimov’s Foundation, Clarke’s Childhood’s End, or Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is. Indeed, Smith is not of that Holy Trinity of Science Fiction, that Pantheon of the Gods. But if Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein (and also Bradbury and Silverberg, I would argue) are the Olympians of Science Fiction, E. E. “Doc” Smith was a member of the Titans, their predecessors.

First Lensman is actually the second of seven interrelated novels, which in turn evolved from stories Smith published in the pulps in the ‘’40s. The first novel, I am told, is not essential to the story, but the others should be read in sequence.

Unfortunately, I first came across Smith fourteen years ago when I picked up – again on a whim, always on a whim – the seventh and final book in the series, Children of the Lens. I liked it, sorta, but was kinda lost, and I’m thinking it was because, well, I’m reading the final book of the series and there’s a whole galaxy of stuff referenced in it that I’m quite unaware of. So it was always in the back of my mind to start at the beginning, or close to it, at some undefined future point in time.

That time is now. I think.

 

 

In a nutshell, Smith is the quintessential “space opera” guy. The writer whose books George Lucas and Steven Spielberg devoured when they were wee lads. Children of the Lens struck me as very Flash Gordon-esque. I have a neat little memory of my father getting all excited introducing Flash Gordon to my brother and I one afternoon when he caught it on the black and white TV. I enjoyed it, as much as one could who was in the thrall of Star Wars, before Star Wars was known as Episode IV: A New Hope.

So that’s what I envisioned when I read Children of the Lens a decade-and-a-half ago, piecing together the plot and the setting as best I could while fighting my employer, raising a three year old and dealing with a pregnant wife, and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Soon after I had all my heart issues and the basement flooded – the one and only time it did because the sleep-deprived Mrs. forgot to shut off a water valve – a flood which resulted in the destruction of numerous books, Children of the Lens included.

One of my aunts somehow learned of this and bought me a replacement copy. Which, to this day, sits in the On Deck circle on the shelf behind me. (Well, until it got packed away a few weeks ago as we prepare for The Move.) I’d like to revisit it, this time prepared. Hence, First Lensman now in my hands.

A review to follow in the next couple of weeks …

Don't Like This World Right Now

 

In 2013, I watched my first Mets game in three decades, got hooked, spent the entire season rooting for them and going to Citi Field and buying all sorts of merch, and enjoyed every heartbreaking minute of it.

In 2014, I spent some time reading through about ninety-nine percent of the published works of horror forerunner H. P. Lovecraft, and enjoyed every creepy minute of it.

In 2015, I got my middle-aged buttock in gear and walked a two or three hundred miles and lifted a couple tons of iron, and enjoyed every sweaty, strenuous minute of it.

In 2016, I began studying for my tax certification to begin a part-time gig preparing taxes for the masses for some extra coin, and enjoyed every overly complicated minute of it.

In 2017, I jammed for hours and hours on the Gibson Epiphone guitar the Mrs. got me for my fiftieth birthday, and enjoyed every calloused finger and off-key minute of it.

In 2018, I marched with Napoleon throughout 18th-century Europe and studied side-by-side with this complex god-emperor, and enjoyed every harshly fascinating minute of it.

In 2019, I dove deep into the Beatles oeuvre, read up on Custer and his eponymous massacre, delved into the mirror-sports world of Bundesliga soccer, marathoned through seasons of Under the Dome and 24 with the girls after work, reread a half-dozen classic – to me – novels, and even nursed an ankle sprain that nearly separated my metatarsals from my tibias and fibulas, and enjoyed every glorious minute of it.

Why can’t we have good things anymore?