Birthdays

On Wednesday night we went to the Indie Memphis screening of Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (documentary about the only bank that got prosecuted by the feds after the 08 financial crisis, a small family-owned bank serving the Chinese immigrant community...). It was good, what you expect going into it but a good story. And (spoiler alert?) the outcome was nice. Interesting they got the one juror to interview about it (even though she was one of the few strongly holding out against the bank til almost the very end, where it almost went to mistrial). I mean, you know anyway, but it's insane just how long a trial can go on. Jesus. What else? Okay, Thursday was Mary Beth's birthday. Well, I got word from my manager that I will be able to take my vacation coming up (complications of switching over and being hired on and being in the no-vacation first three months and all my time starting over and Cook not paying out my accrued vacation time, fuckers) but it's sort of a hush-hush thing. After work Mary Beth and I went and had dinner at Red Fish, that new sushi place at that mansion on union. Later we watched Tampopo. It was good though I started getting really tired and was having trouble staying awake the last half or so (my physical condition, nothing to do with the movie). Then yesterday was my birthday. Had some slight triumphs with a production deployment at work that hadn't gone well the day before. Came home to some presents from my lovely wife: Deep Listening: a Composer's Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros and Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992-2009 by Pauline Oliveros! Two books by my hero so I'm pretty excited about that. We went on a little adventure down to Mississippi to eat at this shack called Sidestreet Burgers in Olive Branch. Really good stuff and we also got these nachos that were incredible. Back at home we ate some rich chocolate bundt cake that she'd made on the deck outside. And we just hung out and had some fun together. Not a whole lot else, low key birthdays but they were nonetheless good. I did have a somewhat sad realization this morning: there's not enough room in my case for the eurorack module I next most want. Yeah yeah, "boo hoo" but still...