Somehow I missed my “best, etc. of” post for 2021.
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I’m not sure how I managed that. But I seem to have lost interest right after my last post about my cancer treatment. I don’t remember losing interest, but maybe that is itself a symptom.
Either way: here is this year’s relatively unorganized sampling of 2022, as I experienced it.
Situation I’m most grateful for
It’s been a bit over a year since I went radioactive to make sure any thyroid cancer cells had been eradicated. Since then, I’ve had a couple doctor visits, a handful of blood tests, and an ultrasound on my throat.
The news is excellent: there’s no sign of the cancer.
Since it had been a little on the aggressive side, as thyroid cancers go, the doctors still want to see me every six months for a couple more years, but if things remain unchanged, that will slow to an annual checkup.
But for now, I can whine and complain about the usual signs of aging: stiff joints, creeping weight gain, and old-man bladder.
Situation I’m most annoyed by
At my last physical, my doctor listened to some of that whining and complaining about the usual signs of aging, especially about some trouble I’d been having sleeping. On a normal night, I was waking up four times; on a bad night, it could be every hour. She suggested I have a sleep study to see if I have sleep apnea.
They let me do the sleep study at home. That was fraught with annoyance, but in the end it was undeniable that I have apnea. And, as is true in such cases, all those awakenings that I remembered each night were only the tip of the iceberg.
So I now have what the Younger calls a “Darth Vader Machine.”
I guess it’s working. Occasionally I wake up, and the mask is uncomfortable and makes it hard to fall back asleep. Twice, I’ve awakened to find that I’d taken the mask off during the night without realizing it. But for the most part, I’m feeling more rested—even though I’ve been sleeping fewer hours.
The software in the CPAP machine says I’m down from the 36+ apnea-related awakenings of my sleep study to just two or three—or, on some nights, even zero. So, yeah, I’m okay with it. But it’s really annoying.
Holy shit! Most enjoyable TV series
The creators of Westworld got their hands on William Gibson’s novel, The Peripheral, and built something brilliant. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Flynne Fisher with a perfect mix of empathy and badassery. Jack Reynor plays her brother, Burton, the epitome of military competence (with a genius empathetic twist).
I don’t want to say more; the less you know going in, the more plaisir de la découverte you’ll experience as you watch.
And if, like me, you’ve read The Peripheral, don’t worry: the changes are significant enough that you’ll feel a similar plaisir as well. As one of the producers explained—expressed in a way that only someone familiar with the story will understand—we should think of the series as a stub of the book.
I’ve seen the eight-episode season twice, so far, but I expect I will have watched at least once more before I’m back at work in mid-January.
I will very disappointed if there isn’t a second season. #RenewThePeripheral!
(If my attempt to avoid spoilers doesn’t motivate you to see it, check out the trailer. It gives a pretty good taste without giving away too too much—though I think you’d be happier knowing less.)
Most enjoyable re-read
I did not read much this year; indeed, Goodreads tells me I finished fewer books this year than any other since I started logging them in 2013. (I watched fewer movies than in recent years, as well. I’m sensing a theme….)
Nonetheless, much of what I did read, I enjoyed. In particular, once I learned that The Peripheral was going to air, I decided I wanted to reread some Gibson again. I’d already reread (re-re-re-reread?) Gibson’s Neuromancer a couple years back (it was in my The best, etc., of 2020 list), so I wanted to choose something else. And I didn’t want to reread The Peripheral; I wanted to enjoy the show without having the book fresh in my head (a good choice, I think!).
So I went back to my second-favorite Gibson book (after Neuromancer): Pattern Recognition.
I don’t tweet much, but I did tweet this:
(BTW: this is a screenshot, not a link, as I’m not sure if Twitter will survive its new owner.)
Something I enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily recommend
The Matrix is my favorite movie (today, anyway: it often switches places with its close second, Blade Runner). But I’m aware that, no matter how cool that opening scene is, I’ll never again see it for the first time. (I know, the human condition. Nonetheless.)
But I came close recently, when I stumbled on a young couple reacting to a first viewing of The Matrix. (Apparently, “React” videos are a whole genre now….) And I was pleasantly surprised: watching them watch the movie brought back feelings similar to those I had the first time I saw the movie—especially that opening sequence.
Sadly, I watched a couple other reaction-to-The-Matrix videos, and I’d already lost the echo of that feeling. But for that moment, I felt a genuinely vicarious thrill. (Better even than nostalgia!)
My most successful bread recipe
Awhile ago, while discarding unused kitchen equipment, I stumbled on a stoneware bread cloche, used to make those cool rustic loaves of bread. Reasonable success with that set me on the bread-making path. And, like anything related to food preparation, I do okay if I can follow a recipe.
Well, I found a recipe for jalapeño cheddar bagels, and OH MY GOD they are good!
Unfortunately, both Offspring agree with me, so I have to share them.
My favorite home bar success
I’ve recently started making cocktails and, as with the bread, as long as I have a recipe I seem to do pretty well. There’s a lot to know—a lot of theory behind spirit choices and techniques (e.g., shaken v. stirred)—but I’m learning.
It may be silly, but my favorite thing about all this is making clear ice.
It took a couple tries, but I’ve got it down. There’s something deeply satisfying about breaking up a transparent block of ice, dropping a big chunk into a rocks glass, and pouring bourbon over it.
Most read post
As I said in an earlier post, obsessing over “views” is the wrong metric. Nonetheless, I find this interesting:
If we look at this year, the most read post of 2022 was a memorial to a friend who passed. Unfortunately, since (at least, until last week) that was my only post of 2022, that’s not a very interesting statistic.
But maybe it’s worth checking out my most-read post ever.
Well! If we’d looked before December 3, that would have been What I missed on my low-iodine diet, and it was ahead by a pretty good margin. But two days later, my post about “Outdoor Elvis” had taken the lead.
I can understand why a post about the low-iodine diet might get seen. Maybe Google serves it up on Page 20 of its search results. I know I had read a lot of posts from a wide range of sources, from reputable medical sites to random people who blogged their experience. So that almost makes sense.
By I don’t understand, at all, why I ended up with over 100 new views in two days about this relatively obscure Swirling Eddies song.
Most delightful music discovery
On one of my tumbles down the YouTube rabbit hole, I was pointed toward one of the greatest-of-all-time jazz guitarists, John Scofield. I’d heard the name before, but—as embarrassing as it is to admit—I knew nothing about his music. So I slipped into some guitar forum or other and found a lot of people recommending the 1998 album A Go Go.
And oh, my. It is wonderful, the best thing I’ve heard in in a long time—and given my recent return to guitar, I’ve been listening to quite a bit.
Scofield’s ouvre is varied; he’s released over 30 albums as a leader (not to mention numerous collaborations). I’ve listened to most, if not all, of those albums, and they are varied and brilliant. But A Go Go is playful and inventive in ways that his other albums aren’t.
And thanks in part to Scofield (and to a renewed interest in another guitar god, Jeff Beck) I’ve decided to include an instrumental on the album that I’ve started working on.
Project I’m most excited about
And yes, I did say “the album that I’ve started working on.” It will be a mix of old and new—stuff from before The Reign, a couple tunes that I wrote during The Reign era, a few that I’ve just finished, and maybe a couple covers.
I decided to try making an album after I recorded a couple songs—Josie and Color of the Pen—using Cakewalk, which is a fully featured and free DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Both songs need a lot of work; indeed, I’ll probably re-record them from scratch. But I had fun! I remembered more, from my engineer intern-ish days, than I would have expected—and, of course, I learned a lot of new stuff, as well.
Unfortunately, I’m slow as molasses. I had thought I would call the album “60-year-old male,”1 but I’ve since turned 61 and expect that I’ll probably be 62 when I finish (if I’m lucky).
Best supervisor
Looking forward
I’m not sure what I’m hoping for in 2023. 2022 was okay—probably no worse than 2021, but certainly not much better. And I’m not sure I see much that is poised to change.
Well… as long as the years keep coming, I guess.
Cheers!
