thank you notes 9/9
i'm thankful for "still processing," the new podcast from wesley morris and jenna wortham. i'm thankful for their easy intimacy with each other, for their humor and thoughtfulness. i'm thankful to hear wesley's voice again (rather than just reading him), which was something i found myself really missing after grantland ended. i'm thankful for the segment where they go out into the heat and talk to a man waiting in line to buy tickets for shakespeare in the park. i'm thankful for the silly opening where they each improvise descriptions of what makes the other so great. i'm thankful they introduce the sponsored section of the podcast by singing part of "bills, bills, bills" acapella.
i'm thankful that i have a job and that it is paying my bills. i'm thankful to remind myself of that, of how lucky and good that is, even though work continues to be very hard. i'm thankful that i work with lots of good people and that we get along, which makes the job merely very hard instead of impossible. i'm thankful that i was praised by a member of the development team yesterday for a bug ticket i had written and am thankful to have discovered a pattern that may help another bug to be resolved. i'm thankful when customers are happy because i've solved a problem that was bothering them. i'm thankful that even though it's hard to imagine when i will have the time to work on it, my manager wants me to continue developing a little helper script i made for us to use and that she and others are impressed with the work i do. i'm thankful even though i wasn't able to take my lunch break till 4:15 yesterday, i at least did get to take a break then.
i'm thankful to have some acne for the first time in a long time. i'm thankful to know that this is probably because of work stress that i'm not handling as well as i could. i'm thankful that i didn't have to deal with bad skin when i was an adolescent or young adult, since i had plenty of other problems to occupy my mental bandwidth and zits on top of it would not have been nice. i'm thankful for the newspaper comic strip "zits," which i remember my mom passing me from our local paper at breakfast when i was young. i'm thankful that i am married and so don't have to worry (or worry in the same way) about strangers thinking i am ugly because of a breakout.
i'm thankful for skiptracing, the new album by mild high club. which is super mellow and lovely in a summer fridays sort of way. i'm thankful that noname's telefone is now on spotify and thankful to still be in love with it and with her voice (aural and writerly). i'm thankful to listen to the new wilco album, schmilco (i'm thankful also for the walkmen's album length cover of pussycats, especially the cover of "many rivers to cross" with its exuberant elegaic slide guitar and hoarse incantations from hamilton leithauser). i'm thankful that the tipsy baker is on a korean kick and a janet malcolm kick (a combo that illustrates why she is my favorite food blogger) and thankful that i bought d a copy of a comic book tipsy mentioned after d mentioned that she wanted it.
i'm thankful that this is a nice thing to do if you have the privilege to afford to be able to do it, to get someone something small they mention wanting in a certain moment but might not buy for themselves and might then forget wanting. i'm thankful, in addition to all the stupid garbage, to have taken some nice things from the multicam sitcoms and hollywood romantic comedies i used to learn how to be a person when i was younger.
i'm thankful for golden hill, which continues to be wonderful. i'm thankful for the glorious winding sentences of description of colonial manhattan (i'm thankful, also, for the way that the writer's descriptive powers don't prevent him from writing a cracking dickensian plot, full of twists and turns and characters scampering over rooftops to avoid mobs of drunken brutes). i'm thankful for this exemplary passage i read last night, when a character is riding a skiff up the river with a woman he won't admit to himself he is in love with:
"The Hudson was narrowing, and through the clouds on both sides, glimpses of much higher bluffs were appearing, steep and wooded and dark, and tinted also with a mysterious dim red. The tide was carrying them up into a valley as deep as a canyon; the current within the titde was drawing them rapidly in toward the right-hand shore, until a wall of hillside was scudding by close enough to reduce the mist to mere streamers and tatters, and Smith could soon see, tilting above him, a continual blanketing thicket of bare trees in spidery grey filigree, all strung with tresses of dead creeper, the strange colour explaining itself as a kind of autumn tinge in the bark that (repeated a millionfold) made the whole wood glimmer faintly maroon. The rocks at the Hudson's edge were drawing a little too close for comfort. Two more of the sailors joined the steersman to lean hard on the tiller. Smith and Tabitha moved out of the way and fetched up together against the right-side rail. Creaking, groaning, the lugger's prow came round, and they eased back more comfortably offshore into the deeper channel; but Tabitha and SMith stayed, side by side, at the rail, looking out. The strange noiseless flight, the unexpected height and grandeur of the scene, the colour unknown in all his previous experience of country views, lulled Mr Smith into an awed, almost an enchanted state, and perhaps something of the same quieting effect operated on Tabitha, despite the familiarity of her home river, for her agitation seemed to be soothing away. She too seemed content to gaze at each new sight the thinning mist disclosed."
i'm thankful for golden hill, which continues to be wonderful. i'm thankful for the glorious winding sentences of description of colonial manhattan (i'm thankful, also, for the way that the writer's descriptive powers don't prevent him from writing a cracking dickensian plot, full of twists and turns and characters scampering over rooftops to avoid mobs of drunken brutes). i'm thankful for this exemplary passage i read last night, when a character is riding a skiff up the river with a woman he won't admit to himself he is in love with:
"The Hudson was narrowing, and through the clouds on both sides, glimpses of much higher bluffs were appearing, steep and wooded and dark, and tinted also with a mysterious dim red. The tide was carrying them up into a valley as deep as a canyon; the current within the titde was drawing them rapidly in toward the right-hand shore, until a wall of hillside was scudding by close enough to reduce the mist to mere streamers and tatters, and Smith could soon see, tilting above him, a continual blanketing thicket of bare trees in spidery grey filigree, all strung with tresses of dead creeper, the strange colour explaining itself as a kind of autumn tinge in the bark that (repeated a millionfold) made the whole wood glimmer faintly maroon. The rocks at the Hudson's edge were drawing a little too close for comfort. Two more of the sailors joined the steersman to lean hard on the tiller. Smith and Tabitha moved out of the way and fetched up together against the right-side rail. Creaking, groaning, the lugger's prow came round, and they eased back more comfortably offshore into the deeper channel; but Tabitha and SMith stayed, side by side, at the rail, looking out. The strange noiseless flight, the unexpected height and grandeur of the scene, the colour unknown in all his previous experience of country views, lulled Mr Smith into an awed, almost an enchanted state, and perhaps something of the same quieting effect operated on Tabitha, despite the familiarity of her home river, for her agitation seemed to be soothing away. She too seemed content to gaze at each new sight the thinning mist disclosed."
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