Update for 11/25/2018

Thanksgiving

🙂

I ended up visiting my brother and his church friends for Thanksgiving. I met his friends a month ago when I was there for my coworker’s wedding. I didn’t talk a lot either time, but compared to my experiences with most random groups of strangers, I feel remarkably at home with them, so I was glad to be there.

Friday morning Michael joined me for the drive back to Illinois so we could see the David Wallace Haskins exhibit at the Elmhurst Art Museum. I like having Haskins mess with my perceptions. This time we got to live in a Tron world of foggy light shapes for a few minutes. I’m not sure Tron was what he was going for, but that’s where I went.

We don’t go to the museum often, so we looked through the rest of it too. That included the McCormick House, a relocated house designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. So after visiting a synthwave future, we walked into the 1950s. I found that even though that era’s style bores me when I’m looking at photos, physically being there in a reproduction made me appreciate it more.

Over dinner we watched Moana. We mostly liked it but wondered about the cultural appropriation, which led to a good discussion.

Saturday morning I drove Michael to the bus station. I was a little too wrapped up in our conversation to navigate well, so the trip took longer than expected. But he made it to the bus in time, and he fortunately didn’t have to deal with the blizzard that was supposed to be coming Sunday night.

Christmas

🙂

I mostly met my goal for last week’s work on my secret Christmas labels project, despite going a little overboard and despite Thanksgiving. The next couple of weeks will take more careful planning and execution.

Health

🤔

After my accidental break from my supplemental ulcerative colitis medicine, my symptoms flared up a bit, and it’s taken them a while to calm back down. I was hoping for better, since things went so well for a week, but oh well. Maybe I’ll stick to my usual regimen instead of decreasing it like I’d planned.

Music

🙂

For most of the past ten years I’ve joined our church’s December orchestra assemblage. I play the French horn. My friend who used to run those has moved out of the area, but it turns out the tradition will continue. They sent out an invitation last week, so I signed up.

The first rehearsal is this Thursday, so I don’t have much time to get my lips in shape. Hopefully my new neighbors won’t mind my muted practicing. I use the Yamaha Silent Brass system to keep things quiet.