Chris Brooks Newsletter 026
May 2024 marks the birth of our first grandchild. Welcome Rory!
1. 🚘 Where I've been traveling
Last month I told you we had just flown out to California for the birth of Rory. After a week in Napa, we flew to Melbourne FL to meet our new grandnephew Brooks. Rory and Brooks!
We had loaned our Tesla to Jennifer for the winter, so our return to Keuka was along the I-95 corridor, a route we've become too familiar with. That corridor is best when you can avoid I-95 completely and stick to the backroads.
Right now we are on a quick weekend trip to NJ to see Matthew and Lauren. We stopped briefly to visit the Museum at Bethel Woods.
2. 📖 What I've been reading
Articles:
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Diss Post is About Answers - by Chris Dalla Riva. I love answer songs! Maybe my favorites:
Sometimes there would even be answers to other answer songs. For example, Hank Ballard’s 1954 hit “Work with Me, Annie” spawned multiple responses, one of which was “Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry)” by Etta James. Ballard and his band then responded to James with “Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More)”.
- I might be guilty of pushing our marriage into corporate productivity / agile project management / digital tools at times. I do miss the daily standup meetings Julie and I did for most of 2015 after I retired.
Books:
- Finished A Course Called Scotland, the third Tom Coyne-wanders-around-playing-golf book. The story arcs feel same-same to me, though with Tom's sobriety in Scotland there was a big contrast with the Ireland book. Enjoyed it, but mostly used it as an atlas to harvest golf course ideas for a Scotland summer trip in 2025.
- Now I'm reading the third book in the Slough House series, Real Tigers. Still good easy fiction.
- I'm reading a pre-release version of Derek Siver's Useful Not True, a blend of philosophy and self-help that is decent so far. More on this next month.
- I'm using Rick Steves' Scotland book to plan a 2025 family trip there, and wrote a love letter to him about a month ago.
3. 🍿 What I've been watching
TV Shows:
- I finished Curb Your Enthusiasm after just under two years of intermittent viewing. For me, this is laugh-out-loud funny and worth the time. He is a despicable character and has learned "no lessons" in his life, but the questions raised about the norms and rules of society are legit.
- Julie and I are in the final season of The Sopranos. We have remained spoiler free and look forward to the conclusion.
Movies :
- I watched Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One on the flight east from California. Right up my alley.
4. 🎶 What I've been listening to
Podcasts:
- I'm caught up with A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. so I will stop mentioning in this newsletter unless I encounter a compelling episode to share. I hope the creator lives long enough to get through the 500 songs.
Music:
- Apple Music did their own take on the 100 best albums of all time. I love lists and have loved lists since I started reading. I remember getting the Book of Lists for a birthday present when I was about 10 years old, which lines up with the first publication in 1977. In the 80s I used the Rolling Stones lists of greatest albums to guide my exploration of rock music. I think it is best to look at lists like this in clumps of 20-25 entries or so the 80th entry is a tie with the 100th. Still, and you know I'll have a complaint, how can Jagged Little Pill be higher than Horses, Joshua Tree, Exile on Main Street, Tapestry, and After the Gold Rush? The top 10 are solid, and it is nice to see Abbey Road and Revolver properly holding their spots above Sgt Peppers which didn't make the list.
- Nobody asked for this and nobody will care, but I made a playlist of Na Na Na songs.
5. 🎮 What I've been playing
- Still enjoying Balatro, working my way through all of the challenges. I'll move on after that achievement.
- Played our favorite four-player word deduction game So Clover! with Matthew and Lauren.
- Played a cooperative One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows with Julie and Matthew.
- Continued our The Crew: Mission Deep Sea campaign with our Keuka Lake neighbors.
- Taught and played Wingspan with other Keuka Lake neighbors.
Got me thinking - what are my most played games, since I began tracking all of my plays? Here goes:
Game | Qty |
|---|---|
77 | |
72 | |
62 | |
39 | |
38 | |
32 | |
29 | |
29 | |
28 | |
24 |
6. 🤯 The Struggle of Self Improvement
I have two significant self improvement efforts ongoing, one long-term and one that is the focus of my yearly theme. I'm struggling with both.
- My long-term project is getting better at golf, a project I started in the spring of 2020. The great thing about trying to get better at golf is that there is an objective measure: your handicap index. When I started this endeavor in 2020 my index was in the 12-15 range, and my initial goal was to get into the single digits; lower index is better, and if you've ever heard of "scratch golf" that means you have an index of zero. In 2022 I bounced down to somewhere in the 8-9 range, and in 2023 I got down in the 7-8 range. I took most of the winter off because of our Spain adventures, returning to golf in March. Since then my index has moved from just below 9 to 11.3. How am I back where I started four years ago, after all of this investment in improvement? I know that I'm a significantly better golfer than I was then, and I think I know how to get myself back to good. Still, this is so frustrating. Golf is hard.
- My short-term project is to continue my quest to speak and understand the Spanish language. This is proving to be much harder than I thought without the discipline of daily classes. I use the Streaks habit tracker and set aspirational goals for myself there, but when I get through half the week without progress the aspiration turns into self-loathing. The answer for now: recalibrate my weekly goals to do something to move myself forward, even if it is just one Busuu lesson a week. Then I can build on that success to ramp up my progress. I know in my heart that I need a dedicated class or personal coach to get the gains I'm truly seeking, but we are a week away from being in continuous hosting mode at Keuka Lake until the end of August. It is unrealistic to enter into such an engagement right now, so I'll put that idea on hold until late fall.
Have a great transition to summer, and I hope you find something enjoyable to do on the upcoming solstice. Until next month!
-Chris