Snow, book, revolt

If you know anyone in the B’Gapple, you may want to invite them up for the weekend, because the City That’s Afraid to Sleep is about to get hammered for the first and worst time this winter, and it is not going to be pretty. Normally, I’d be rejoicing because of the coming snow (we’re expected to get about half the foot that NYC is expecting), but it is still quite cold, and Sunday after the snow it’s only expected to get up to around 7 degrees F, a little below my normal skiing comfort level. Hannah has a sinus infection (and it’s entirely possible I have a little one, too), and has missed most of this week of school, so I’m disinclined to push a skiing trip. But oh, man, do I want one, especially having had to sit last week out. Maybe we need to make up for it with an overnight next weekend. Hmm . . .

I tend not to do the popular when it’s popular, and so I’m just getting around to reading Dave Eggers’s “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” after having read everything else he’s done and being a huge fan of McSweeney’s. Turns out it’s just as good as everyone said it was. Damn. Even if you haven’t lived through his situation — both parents dying young and close together, leaving him to take care of his much younger brother — there are elements of the story that are familiar to anyone who has survived loss, and he captures them brilliantly. His writing is clever without being flashy, straightforward, and yet he manages these interesting little conceits that in other hands would be pretentious at best. I loved “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” with its brilliant conceit of the unreliable narrator, and all those unanswered questions at the end, and it’s even more interesting now that I know more of his personal situation. Overall, great book.

Fighting back against the revolt of the appliances. Well, sorta. I finally got a replacement for my CD changer on eBay — nearly the same model, factory reconditioned (well, we’ll see, won’t we), $50 less than I first paid. I couldn’t get one with nearly the same quality for the same price new, so that’s what I went with. And then the minidisc player — okay! So I’m an early adopter! So shoot me! — suddenly put up a fit the other day, swallowed a disc and wouldn’t let go. Something told me this was just a one-time problem, so I took it all apart, got the mechanism realigned, and darned if it didn’t work! Good thing, too, because if it were to go, my ONLY sources of music for the stereo would be my 1987 tape deck (still in great shape, though), and my 1980 turntable. And that would just be sad.