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I uploaded all of the 2025 Memphis Concrète performances to youtube so you can go watch them on our channel</>. I also made playlists for each day and I'll see if I can embed them when I get to the end of this post. I got some cds in the mail: Coil: Black Antlers and Drew McDowall: Lumina (a nice little box set). In the evening, I went to CVS and picked up some crutches for Mary Beth to use while she heals so she doesn't have to hop around on one foot around the house when she moves around (and maybe even possibly use them if she wants to go out, depending on how long all this takes). We ate dinner on the porch outside (she hadn't been able to really even step outside all week). Then after a little bit we were joined by Peanut and she was very sweet and cuddly and climbed on my lap a few times and after a while just slept on the table by us.
Saturday 6/7:

Sunday 6/8:

Yesterday Mary Beth's leg was maybe feeling worse. Could be from the healing process. Could also be from her getting impatient and trying to do more things the day before. She rested more overall again yesterday. We'll see how things are going today.

In the afternoon I went and mailed out a couple packages. Mary Beth was laid up all day so I went to pick up some food. I got some pho from Pho Saigon for her. Then I went and got my food at Five Guys (almost as much for the peach flavored Coke...memories of when I could get it in bottles and it was the best drink ever). Late at night I made another of those dumb listchallenges for the books that I read back in 2006. I think that's about it for now.

We were planning to meet Laura and Graham for lunch but then at the last minute they remembered to warn us that they'd recently had covid and Mary Beth wasn't feeling comfortable with that so we didn't end up doing that. But we'd just gotten dressed up to go out so we went and had lunch buffet at India Palace. I insanely overate and was painfully full the rest of the day. Uh, I'm still feeling full. In fast I was too full after waking up to even eat my usual bowl of cereal. So yeah, haven't eaten since then. In the evening Mary Beth did a lawn bath. I fixed up the hose. It had had the end cut off because a busted nozzle was stuck on it. Had gotten a replacement screw thing and finally got around to putting that on. So we did the thing in the front, her in the little tub and me on a chair next to her just hanging out and by the evening the weather was even feeling pretty nice. After a while Peanut came and hung out with us. At one point she climbed me only to get up on my shoulder and jump back on the ground from there. After hanging out a while Mary Beth wanted me to feed her so I went to the back with her and fed her. Then when she was done eating she was meowing at me. She didn't readily follow but I led her back to the front and then she settled back in to relaxing with us, so I guess she was telling me she was done eating and wanted to go back to our hangout. Also at a point I watched the first episode of the original Australian version of Review. There were some funny parts but it was a far cry from the American version I'm familiar with. The American version did keep one joke intact from the Stealing episode where he steals the bags of groceries from the old lady (otherwise though the general concept is the same and the progression of ramping it up is the same, the execution is quite different). Not much else. Back to today and back to feeling full, yeah!

Got to work half a day for this long holiday weekend...because of this shitty-ass holiday for this shitty-ass country. But hey, not working for a day (and a half) is always nice.

Not a whole lot. After work Mary Beth and I ran up to the post office to mail a package. We get there and the parking lot is completely empty so we're like, is it open? But it was. And by the time we were out a few more people were coming/going. No complaints as it was super-quick. I've been boring, that's really the only "noteworthy" thing I have.

In the afternoon Mary Beth and I went to the Brooks for another movie screening. This time it was How to Survive a Plague, the documentary about the AIDS crisis and ACT UP. It was good and there was another good discussion after it. The professor from LeMoyne-Owen who's led these is real good (Seth something). After that we went to Fresh Market to get a few things. One of them was going to be sushi but it didn't look the best. So instead we went home and ordered pizza from Slices which we ate while watching some Anthony Bourdain. Not much else. I did recently get started on a work-around for the video I issue I was having. I can convert the mts files to mp4 and then edit them. (Still not sure why the one file would work and then none of the others but whatever.) Still it's a super slow process as once I have the video edited it takes forever to render it down to the new file, but at least it's going.

During my lunch break I finished reading On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle (I have the second one in the series ready to read soon but didn't realize when I got them that there are so many more untranslated yet). Then in the evening we went to this Belvedere Chamber Music Festival that we just found out about. It's a concert every night from Wednesday through Saturday and then an extra afternoon concert on Friday and Saturday. So we'll at least make it to the couple we can. They feature a lot of contemporary composers plus some older ones. In this one I especially liked "Three Urban Scenes" (2022) by Ethan Resnik and "Watercolors" (1899) by Tor Aulin. The last piece they played had some parts that I genuinely liked a lot, but overall the effect was as if someone wrote a rock opera for a church band (I'm trying to find a way to put that that doesn't come across as bitchy but I guess that's the impression and I guess that's just the way it's gonna come across...). The group that runs this festival is called Luna Nuova Music. They've been around since 2002 and the festival has been around since 2007. Can't believe we'd never heard of it and I just happened to catch Alex Green posting a write-up he did about it just the other day! It's held over at Grace-St. Luke's so maybe the church thing had it off our radar? Anyway, enjoying it so far!

In the evening we did another neighborhood walk. Not a whole lot else. At night I was trying to edit out the video from Memphis Concrète and I got one performance all edited and ready. Not hard, but the re-rendering at the end takes forever. Anyway, I moved on the to try the next one but after that, whenever I loaded any of the subsequent larger files (and they're all the same size and length 'cuz the camera apparently chops it up into separate videos if it runs for more than like 45 minutes or so) they came into OpenShot as blank (the files still play normally in Media Player, etc.). I can tell it's something to do with resources being pushed to some limits, video editing is pretty intensive of course. But this is just loading and playing a video and while long-ish, not exceptionally long at all. I feel there may be some kind of cache that's gotten filled up or something but I can't find it. I even restarted my machine. The cache folders I can find don't have anything in them. Well, hopefully that problem goes away 'cuz that's kind of annoying.

I got a bunch of cds in the mail. The first package was an order from Thrill Jockey with Matmos: Metallic Life Review and The Body: The Crying Out of Things (the former being a pre-order and the latter having been released last year). The other package was a big order from a record store having a big clearance sale on their stock of stuff from the Klanggalerie label (wasn't even familiar with it before, but they had lots of good stuff): MX-80 Sound: Better than Life; Section 25: Jams from the Bardo; Chrome: Ghost Machine; Rhys Chatham/David Fenech: Tomorrowstartstonight; Section 25: Duette; Charles Hayward: Crossfade Estate; Andrea Centazzo/Elisabeth Harnik: Duophonic Landscape; Charles Hayward: (Begin Anywhere); Massimo Toniutti: Variation Séculaire Géomagnétique; Regular Music: s/t; Núria Andorrá/Fred Frith: Dancing like Dust; Annie Lewandowski/Fred Frith: Long as in Short, Walk as in Run; Fred Frith: Woodwork; Lol Coxhill & Fred Frith: French Gigs; Rapoon: These Are Dreams; and M. B.: Oirt Emo-Dne. So uh, lots of listening to get done. In the evening towards dusk Mary Beth and I went on a walk around the neighborhood. Then we watched the Anthony Bourdain episode with Obama, the later Vietnam one at the end of Obama's presidency. Whew, really feeling the exercise in my legs today.