Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
33/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1990 Hugo Best Novel
Still as engrossing as when I first read it, many years ago. Far-future space opera on a huge scale, but presented through a series of vignettes shared by members of a band of pilgrims (if this sounds rather like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, be glad you got a good education in classic literature) heading toward what seems to be an unpleasant fate for all of them…and possibly billions more. Amusingly, while I knew that this was part of a series (originally two books, then four) because I have all of them on my shelf, I’d forgotten that the next book is not so much a sequel as the second half of a single story. Good thing I can just head upstairs and grab the next book to keep going!
NOTE: Given Simmons’ descent into right-wing politics, including Islamophobia and publicly attacking Greta Thunburg, he has earned a space on my “milkshake duck” virtual bookshelf, collecting those authors whose work I discovered, enjoyed, and might still enjoy, before later realizing that they are what I consider to be rather horrible people.
Day 75: On a hot summer day, it’s very nice to be able to come out back and have a pleasant dinner in the shade by the pool.
Day 74: Wandering around Capitol Hill on a nice warm summer evening as I wait for the Mercury to open its doors. Lots of people out at Cal Anderson Park enjoying a gorgeous summer evening.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tom Cruise may be something of a bizarre personality, but he and the people he works with sure know how to put together a great, big, ridiculous summer action movie.
While I’d watched the trailers a while ago, I must not have paid that much attention to them, as I didn’t realize (remember) that both Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff were in this; both of whom, of course, I’m most familiar with from the Marvel universe. Both are fun additions to the franchise; Atwell as a thief who gets pulled into the general shenanigans, and Klementieff as a henchwoman whose absolute glee at the destruction she causes is wonderfully infectious.
The action set pieces, as promised, are a blast. There’s a car chase that even got my wife (notoriously unimpressed by car chases) invested, and a huge set piece on a train that was as close to literally nail-biting as I’ve seen in a long time. And the Big Bad for this film (and the next, since this is a two-part story) is a clever approach, and rather perfectly topical.
The M:I movies may not be “great cinema” — but (with the exception of the second in the franchise) they’re reliable fun, and easily one of the stronger action franchises going right now, and this one keeps it all moving quite handily.
Day 73: Movie time! We went off to see the latest Mission: Impossible film, and really enjoyed it. Tom Cruise may be a rather bizarre personality, but boy does he (and the people he works with) know how to put together a great, big, ridiculous, summer action movie.
Fun fact: This is the first movie I’ve seen in the theater since Star Trek: The Motion Picture!
(Of course, that was the 40th anniversary re-release of TMP, back in September 2019, not long before the pandemic shut everything down. But still! It’s an entirely true statement!)
For the mask-conscious: At this point, there were only two other people in the theater, and we were having some pre-movie snacks. Once we were done with those and more people came in, our masks went on. Even then, there were fewer than 10 people, including us, in this showing. Early Friday matinee showings are great, even for opening weekend movies!
Day 72: Nothing fancy today — just flopped out in a pile of brightly colored pillows on our basement couch watching this week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, followed by silly reality television.
Day 71: Today I got to do first aid/CPR training. My partner was a little stiff and not very talkative, but at least they didn’t complain when I practiced chest compressions on them.
Day 70: Waiting outside one of our classrooms before getting a low-vision student set up with an Enhanced Vision Acrobat magnifying device so they can better participate in their class. It’s a fairly simple device — a screen with a camera that can be directed at the table to magnify papers, or around the classroom to zoom in on the instructor, whiteboard, or other students — but it makes a big difference. And reminds me a lot of a very similar (but much lower-tech and not at all portable) device that my grandma used as her vision deteriorated over the years that I would play with when we went down to visit them.
Day 69: Time to get back into the evening exercise routine. No real goal other than just being a little more active. The actual doing isn’t necessarily fun, but it always feels good to be in the habit of doing a bit of this regularly.
