Bryce Moore's Blog, page 22

TV Review: Slow Horses Season Three

Slow Horses is an excellent example of why Netflix is so shortsighted. It started on AppleTV+ a while ago, and it made a bit of a splash, but not really that much. It was a good show, and I enjoyed it a lot, but it wasn’t a show that was getting much in the way of buzz. It’s right in line with a number of other Netflix shows that have come out over the last while. Lockwood & Co and 1899 leap to mind. Both of them were great shows, but didn’t immediately have everyone chattering about them like Wednesday or one of the other insta-hits on Netflix. And so Netflix canceled them.

Apple didn’t cancel Slow Horses. They stuck with it, and now that we’re three seasons in, the show has really come into its own. This last season was a complete blast from start to finish. It demanded to be watched as soon as I’d started it, and it didn’t let up. Better yet, it got to the end and left me wanting more. 6 episodes long allows it to be snappy and ditch any bloat.

If you don’t know what the show’s about, it’s Gary Oldman playing an old spy who’s sort of shambled off the stage to be left alone, tasked with keeping track of the “Slow Horses,” a group of rejects from MI5. Not quite bad enough to fire, but not good enough to be wanted near anything important. But Oldman, had he wanted to be, could have been the head of MI5 himself. He just had become so disillusioned and jaded that he wanted no part of it.

With that premise, you’ve got some great spy thrillers that branch off from it. A solid supporting cast, and season three was easily my favorite of the three so far, which means it’s only gathering steam. It’s been renewed through season 5 now, and it’s no wonder why. Suddenly I’m hearing more and more people chatter about it, and I think Apple has a bona fide hit on its hands.

Not all shows immediately catch fire. That doesn’t mean they should be cancelled. That just means they need time to hit their stride. Netflix is making me very leery of starting anything they produce, because I’ve now been burned too often by them pulling the rug out from under me.

Bottom line is that if you’re looking for a great spy series, you owe it to yourself to catch Slow Horses. I gave this season a 9.5/10.

2023 Media Review

And so we come to another look back on everything that I watched and read over the course of the last year. I reached my goal of 52 books again (21,154 pages), which made me happy. I also watched 23 television series in their entirety and 88 movies. That’s 4 fewer TV shows than last year, and 15 fewer movies, for reference. It’s definitely felt like I haven’t been watching as much, but I don’t think I need to set a goal for that or anything. (Though I would like to watch a bit more, just to stay up on what’s out there.)

And as I usually do, I present to you the highlights of the year:

BOOKS

I only gave one book a 10/10 this year: The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. A jaw-dropping memoir about growing up in extreme poverty. Very moving, and so well written. Definitely check it out.

I gave four books a 9.5/10:

Tress of the Emerald Sea: Unlike most other Brandon Sanderson books, but for some people that’s a good thing. It’s very readable and very approachable, and also works great as a standalone. Loved it.Uncrowned, Wintersteel, and Bloodline: Three of Will Wight’s Unsouled series, which I read in its entirety, now that it’s finished. Are they the world’s finest literature? Nope. But they’re a whole lot of fun.

I gave 13 books a 9/10:

Well of Ascension, Hero of Ages, and The Lost Metal: All from Sanderson’s Mistborn series, which I also read in its entirety again. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook: Another Sanderson book. Not everyone’s favorite, but right up my alley.Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: Really loved this YA murder mystery in first person. The Institute: A Stephen King book that had a great beginning, middle, AND end? Sign me up.Blackflame, Ghostwater, Underlord, Waybound: More of Will Wight’s series.The Sunlit Man: Another Brandon Sanderson, this time written more in the vein of an adventure novel. Great fun.

See a theme? I read 12 Will Wight books, 11 Brandon Sanderson books, and 5 by Stephen King. Did I read anything lower than a 5/10? Nope. Just two 6/10’s. One of them was a lesser-known Michael Crichton, and the other was the third book in a very popular trilogy, which really disappointed me, but was still decent.

TV SEASONS

I only watched one season I gave a 10/10 to: Welcome to Wrexham season 2. If you haven’t seen this documentary focused around Ryan Reynolds buying a Welsh soccer team and doing his best to bring it back to its glory days, you are really missing out. Loved loved loved it.

I also gave only one 9.5/10, this one to the first season of Silo on AppleTV+. Great adaptation of Wool, by Hugh Howey.

Two shows got a 9/10 from me:

1883: I love that they’re making new, quality Western TV series, even if they’re usually more along the lines of a mini-seriesYellowjackets: Take Lord of the Flies, gender swap it, and put it in the middle of a brutal winter. Also, cannibalism.

MOVIES

I gave four movies a 10/10, two new to me and two repeat watches:

Matilda: The Netflix adaptation of the Broadway musical was so, so good. Tetris: If anyone had told me it was possible to make a fantastic movie about the making of Tetris, I’d have laughed in their face. I’d have been wrong, though.Groundhog Day: Yes. It’s on here again. It will always be on here. Every. Single. Year. Deal with it.White Christmas: The epitome of classic Christmas movies.

No movies got a 9.5/10 from me, but 30 got a 9/10:

Top Gun: Maverick: Loads of fun. Better than the original, easily.The Menu: Horror and fine dining? Who knew?3:10 to Yuma: the Russel Crowe remake. Great western.Everything Everywhere All at Once: A movie that sounds terrible when you try to describe it in detail, but somehow works beautifully.The Prestige: A new classic.The Edge of Tomorrow: An overlooked sci-fi gemPaths of Glory: A war movie and a legal thriller. How many films can say that? (Sorry, A Few Good Men: you don’t count as a war movie.)Grease: ClassicThe Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes Anderson and claymation? Yes, please.The Court Jester: Danny Kaye bliss, plus old school Angela Lansbury and Basil Rathbone? How can you go wrong?Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Such a relief to end the series on such a strong note. One of the last Marvel movies I’ve actually cared to watch.The Darkest Hour: Churchill done by Gary Oldman? Fantastic.Braveheart: Still works wonderfully.One Two Three: Zany antics in black and white. You owe it to yourself to watch this one, if you haven’t seen it. Just give it time to really get going, and then step back and enjoy.Dune: Seeing it a second time made a huge difference. Go figure.Raiders of the Lost Ark: SuperbHow to Steal a Million: Another one that might have been missed by people who haven’t gone as far back in films as they ought to have. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris: Lovely, heartwarming film about fashionRudy: Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!Seabiscuit: Is there a better horse racing movie?Bullets Over Broadway: One of my personal favorite Woody Allen movies.A League of Their Own: There’s no crying in baseball!Doctor Sleep: I was really impressed by how good this direct sequel to The Shining turned out to be.Knives Out: Daniela will be so disappointed I didn’t give this one a 10/10. Still fantastic.Planes Trains and Automobiles: The few. The proud. The Thanksgiving movies.Elf: It’s gone on to be a great Christmas movie that stands up to repeat viewingsChristmas Vacation: See above.Battle of the Five Armies, Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers: It’s so hard for me to accurately gauge these movies any more. Ratings really don’t matter. I probably should have them higher. Certainly the LOTR series as a whole is a 10/10 for me.

What about the worst things I watched?

The Willow TV series got a 5/10. Some of my friends really liked it. I don’t understand why, but I respect that. I did not like it much at all. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was another 5/10. I’d never seen it. Now I know why.Going in Style was also a 5/10. An old George Burns movie I took a chance on and then wished I hadn’t.Picard season 2 got a 3/10. I hated it. Meg 2 got a 5/10. I have no idea why I watched this movie. I think I was feeling brain dead? Friday the 13th Part III was a 5/10 and made me comfortable not watching any more of that franchise.Nightmare on Elm Street 2 managed to one up it, though, by getting a 3/10 and bringing that franchise to a close that much faster.

And there you have it. Any of you have anything you’d like to really recommend? (Or warn about?)

Lord of the Rings in 4k

Hiya everybody! Did you miss me? I’ve been off on vacation for the last two weeks, but I’m back now and gearing up to get into the swing of things again. Not too much time today to post, but I wanted to report out on an experiment of sorts I did over the break.

Each Christmas vacation for the past long while, we’ve picked a movie series to binge. We’ve done The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings twice before, actually, but it’s a favorite, so we decided to do it one more time. (All 6 movies. The extended versions.) Doing something like that is actually harder than it sounds, just because they’re so long. We’re talking over 21 hours of movies. But when you’re dedicated enough, anything’s possible.

This was the first time we’d be watching them on my new sound system and projector, meaning I could do Dolby Atmos and 4k. They have them on HBOMax in 4k, but my research said that getting the movies on disc would end up with a better picture and sound than streaming them. (In theory, it’s due to the compression the platforms use to stream the movie. Stream a film, and it might end up taking around 5GB of data. That same movie on disc can be over 50GB or more. All of that information doesn’t just magically disappear without an impact. That’s what I’d read, at least. To put it to the test, I’d have to actually buy the discs and find out.

In the name of science, I decided buying the discs was the way to go.

Having now watched all 21 hours of footage, and comparing it to a few spots on the streaming version, I can confirm that watching it on disc is a much, much better experience. The picture looks fuller, and the sound is incredible. (I think they skimp on the subwoofer tracks in particular in the streaming versions.) These were the first movies I watched on this new set up that really put my system through its paces. I had no idea just how good it could be, and I’m now a firm believer in physical media being the way to go for spectacle films. (Ironically just at the time when companies are thinking about not selling physical media anymore.) That said, internet speeds are increasing every year, and the amount of data it takes to store 50GB always stays the same, which means that in a few more years, I could easily see streaming getting to the point where there’s no difference any more.

In any case, there you have it. This watch through was the best one I’ve ever had, though experience-wise it still doesn’t compare to seeing them on opening night in the theater, of course. With a packed audience of die hard fans, hoping against hope that Fellowship isn’t going to be awful. Kids these days don’t know what it was like back before fantasy was taken seriously as a genre. Peter Jackson did so much for us. (And for the record, I continue to be a big fan of all three Hobbit movies. Are they as good as the LOTR? No. But they’re a blast to watch, and they fit together so well. This is a hill I will defend to the bitter end.)

Anyway. Hope you’re off to a good new year, and I look forward to posting more again.

Tomas Update: Week 3 in Plzeň

Ahojte! Just a few quick updates:

– I’m in Czechia now, all the way out in the west in Plzeň (Pilsen)

– No idea if the beer is as good as everyone says

– officially learning language #3 (Czech)

– almost got lost in Blava by myself

– I can go “ř” now (very cool)

– Kiwi Christmas

– saw a cool little place called Český Krumlov

– left a part of my heart in Trenčín

– also left my guitar (sad)

– officially made call #1000 as a missionary 

– this new apartment has nothing to hold the showerhead so it’s like showering on manual mode

– we have like 20 people on avg to church though!

– still playing my violin weekly (it’s 2 years old now!)

– let my companion cut my hair (again?)

– finally tried the Ukrainian food pelmeni

– a while ago read the whole book of Mormon in 2 days

– almost got COVID (!)

– baked potato Christmas dinner

Anyways, I know I’ve been pretty quiet lately but man have I been busy. Some big changes here and I’m still getting used to them, but I’m very well out here and excited for the future still. No snow at all here though, little disappointed. Just rain and gray skies. But merry Christmas / Veselé Vánoce / щасливого Різдва / Veselé Vianoce!

Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/X1sPVnxXqkvExYDA6

S láskou,

Starší Cundick

Television Review: Welcome to Wrexham Season 2

Ted Lasso has gotten a ton of great word of mouth and attention. I think pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has heard about the show, since it’s permeated the general pop culture scene. Deservedly so. It’s a great series. However, I don’t think nearly enough people know about Welcome to Wrexham (both seasons streaming on Hulu now), and that’s a shame, because the people who liked Ted Lasso will almost certainly like Wrexham.

As a reminder, this one’s a documentary chronicling the efforts of Ryan Reynolds (of Deadpool fame) and Rob McElhenney (of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame) to buy a down-on-its-luck European soccer team and then try to bring it some success. The first season shows them selecting Wrexham, a Welsh team in the city of the same name, and shows all the effort they put into the team to make it have a better chance of moving up in the British soccer leagues. (I may be getting some of those terms wrong. I’m not an expert on how the UK works OR how soccer works, which makes things problematic when I try to talk about both.)

The second season starts right up again, showing how things go during the team’s second season under Ryan and Rob. They’re hiring coaches. Hiring players. Selecting uniforms. Getting sponsors. Upgrading the stands. You name it. But the show also goes into detail on the back story of the players and, just as importantly, the fans. Wrexham used to be in the top level of British soccer, and it’s steadily fallen from grace to the point that it’s been kicked to lower conferences multiple times. The fans, of course, are distraught, and dream of a brighter future.

I don’t really need to say much more than that, really. The show is funny, touching, informative, and just a ton of fun to watch. Very easily bingeable. Like Ted Lasso, it’s got a fair bit of bad language, because that’s just how some of the soccer players speak, especially when they get riled up. But this is very much a documentary. The actual results of the games are out of the control of the producers. It’s incredible how well they’re able to take those and get a whole ton of tension and drama out of them.

Denisa and I just finished the second season now. 10/10. Loved loved loved it, and looking forward to season three. Go Wrexham!

Tomas Update

Bryce here. I realize it’s been a while since Tomas had a chance to send out an email, so I thought I’d step in and fill you all in on the details in a brief post. The short report is that he’s still doing great, just really busy.

Last week, he was transferred to the Czech Republic. (Sorry. I’m still not going to call it Czechia. I just can’t bring myself to do it.) He’s now in Plzen (Pilsen), home to world-famous beer and about 180,000 people, give or take. It’s in the far western part of the Czech Republic. Interestingly enough, his area’s borders go right up to Germany, and in fact when I was in my first city in Germany as a missionary (Schwarzenberg), I went to the Czech border and looked across it one day. It turns out when I looked across it, I was looking at Tomas’s new area. Go figure.

He’s not a district leader for now, though he’s still learning Ukrainian, since his company is another missionary called to speak that language. This means that neither one of them speaks Czech, since Tomas is brand new there. The good news is that his Slovak is good enough that he’s communicating with no real troubles, and everyone he meets just assumes he’s Slovak. (He was already getting that from some of the people in Slovakia, but now that he’s in a foreign country, they can’t tell the accent apart at all.)

It was a quick transfer. He found out Tuesday and was gone . . . Thursday? Something like that. Thankfully, he had enough time to say goodbye to everyone in Trenčin, but I think it was still hard to really leave the place, especially since he was also leaving behind family. (Though the good news is that he’ll be coming back for sure after his mission, because family.)

His new area technically has a ward, which in Latter-day Saint terms should mean it’s got a lot of members. (100+, typically.) However, only 20 people actually come to Sunday meetings, so . . . something’s really odd there. My guess is they used to have more, and things have really struggled for the last while, though I don’t know for sure.

In Trenčin, the work was going very well. They had a lot of people they were teaching, and they’d really built that up from almost nothing. In Plzen, it sounds like he’s back to the building phase. Not too many people they’re teaching, so he’s going to be working on finding people.

Anyway. Those are the basics. I do think he’s planning on writing again. Just don’t know when he’ll actually have time.

Binge Writing

I am anything but a binge writer. My approach is to make steady, consistent progress on a project until it’s done. Usually, that means I’m writing 1,000 words each day, six days a week. If I do that every day, I can get a 75,000 word draft done in about 3 months. It rarely works out that way, of course, because I end up ditching some of what I write, making false starts and mistakes that I have to backtrack to resolve, but it’s not too far off it. (There are sometimes when I make very big mistakes, and then it takes a month or so to get those taken care of.)

I do the 1,000 words/day routine because it helps me stay sane. I can feel like I’m on track without having to feel like the book will never be finished. Yes, I might still have 74,000 words to write, but I wrote 1,000 today, and so “I’m done.”

Friday afternoon, I had a meeting to discuss a potential book project I might be able to do. This would be different from my normal books, in that I’d essentially be writing it for a company. (It wouldn’t be ghost written. It would still have my name on it, and I’d still get royalties, but the specifics of the contract would be different.) I was very excited about the concept, but the company’s out actively looking at multiple authors for it even as we speak. They wanted to see a few sample chapters of how I would approach it. “No deadline,” they assured me. However, I also realized that if they found someone perfect before I got them any prose, then I might not even have a stab at landing the gig. So I decided to get my sample chapters done over the weekend.

(Of course, “over the weekend” in this case meant “by Saturday,” since I don’t write on Sunday as a rule, and I wasn’t willing to compromise on that one.)

Things were made even more complicated by the fact that I’d be writing something entirely new. What did the setting look like? What were the characters? How did the point of view sound? Worse yet, it was about a topic I didn’t 100% understand. (Sorry for the vagueness here. I don’t feel I’m able to go into too much detail just yet.) So I’d need to do a bunch of brainstorming as well as a ton of research. I started in on it as soon as the meeting was done Friday. By Saturday evening, I had 10,000 words written. 3 chapters that I was pretty happy with. (They’re with my agent now. We’ll see what he thinks before I tweak them some more and then send them on to the company later this week.)

So, I learned that I can write a lot of prose quickly if I have to. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I learned it takes a lot out of me. You wouldn’t think just sitting around typing would be that difficult. I mean, I do a ton of typing every day. How would this be any different?

I think it’s just the amount of focus it requires, plus the amount of creativity, that make it feel very draining. (It didn’t help that this was for a straight up horror book. There’s a part of me that wonders if it wouldn’t work better with a bit of humor thrown in, but that wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to try just yet for this part of the process. We’ll see what my agent thinks. Maybe it’ll need it. Regardless, they were some pretty intense scenes.)

Writing that much at one go will not be on my To Do list again anytime soon. It took me most of yesterday to recuperate to the point that I felt like a human being again. Could I do it? Sure. And perhaps if I worked my way up to more writing, it wouldn’t be as draining. All I know is that going from 1,000 words to 10,000 in a day was way too much, too quickly.

I have no idea if I’ll land the job on this project, but the good news is that I won’t have to second guess myself and wonder if I should have tried harder. Wish me luck!

Television Review: Squid Game: The Challenge

On paper, this seems like a terrible idea. “You know that game show where rich people watch poor people get killed? What if we did that for real?” Squid Game is great because of how horrific it is. How in the world would that even work?

Simple. Just make the people pretend to die, instead of actually die. Keep everything else (almost), but make it so people don’t have to get shot for the game to continue. Would it still be as tense and riveting?

The short answer is yes. For one thing, they put $4.56 million on the line. The game starts with 456 players. As each one is eliminated, the prize pool grows by $10,000. The math is easy. The last person standing gets all of it. Ken Jennings has won $4.5 million at Jeopardy, but the winner of this game would get it all at once, and they wouldn’t even have to phrase it as a question.

I initially was still skeptical. After all, money might be on the line, but that was really about it. In the show, the players have everything to gain, and everything to lose, since losing involves, you know, dying. I would have thought there would be some sort of a buy in, so the players at least had something more to lose than just the time it took to film the series. (And the psychological trauma of having endured the series.) In the end, it didn’t really matter. It was a show I couldn’t turn away from.

They use many of the same games from the show. You watch as it all unfolds, and they pick up different people and follow their progress, peppering in snippets of interviews they’ve had before the show started. (The interviews are to an empty room, just facing a camera. I think people ended up saying more to that empty camera than they would have if there’d been a real person in the room.)

Obviously I’m not going to spoil the show, but I’ll say I really enjoyed it, and I was highly entertained throughout. Very binge-worthy. (It’s got a 5.5 on IMDB, but that’s because a whole ton of people gave it a 1/10, I assume just rating it without watching it. Yes, it sounds like a bad idea, but it actually works.) 9/10 from me.

Hawaiian Vacation: Maui Gold Pineapple Plantation Tour

I am not a pineapple expert by any means. I know what they look like. I know what they taste like. I wouldn’t be able to pick a ripe pineapple if my life depended on it.

Until.

I took a tour of the Maui Gold Pineapple Plantation. It took around an hour and a half, and we took a little bus all over that place. This might sound like something that was pretty boring. It was not. In fact, it’s a testament to the fact that if you know your subject really well, then practically anything can be super interesting.

Our tour guide was a pineapple god. I am convinced he knew everything one might know about the yellow fruit. We’re talking Bubba Gump Shrimp levels of pineapple knowledge. And as we drove around the property, we heard and saw everything. What did I learn? What didn’t I learn, more like it.

Pineapples grow from bushes on the ground. Each bush grows a single pineapple at a time. They start out as these little furry pink blobs, and over the next 18 months they become a ripe pineapple. It takes 18 months to grow the first pineapple. You can harvest it, and then the same plant will grow another one in 16 months, and you can repeat that a third time (when it takes the plant a year to grow another one), and then you uproot the plant and start over. (I guess the fruit isn’t as good once the plant gets older.)The plantation plants hundreds of thousands of pineapple plants, by hand. They pick them every single week, by hand. It’s a really labor intensive process.There are different kinds of pineapples. Dole pineapple isn’t as sweet as Maui Gold, but you can only buy Maui Gold in stores on Maui. They ship to the mainland, but it costs $100 for 25 pounds of pineapple. (However, it is seriously tasty pineapple.)Pineapples are fully ripe when they turn dark green. Once they start turning yellow, they’re nearing the end of their shelf life. Waiting until they’re more yellow won’t make them sweeter.Dole pineapples have most of their sugar in the bottom of the fruit, so if you turn them upside down for a few days before you cut them, the sugar distributes itself more evenly.The spiny things on the end of a pineapple are much sharper when they’re younger.You can tell the pineapple is really good by looking at the shape of the little spike mounds on its side. I’m still not entirely sure how, though. He explained it three times. The fault is in the listener on this one. The vessel was weak.

We each got a pineapple to take home, prepackaged so it could clear customs. However, when you get to the Maui airport, you need to go through agriculture screening if you’re going to the states. If you’re going to Canada, you don’t have to screen anything. Once you’re in Canada, if you get to the border and explain that everything you bought on your trip came from Hawaii, they wave you through. I guess there’s not a lot of pineapple smuggling on the Vermont/Canada border. Maybe we can exploit this loop hole and make tens of dollars.

If you’re going to Maui, you should check out the pineapple tour. I for one found it super interesting.

A Chester Greenwood Adventure

Saturday was Chester Greenwood Day, a big event here in Farmington. For those who aren’t up on their Farmington history, Chester Greenwood invented earmuffs right here in our cozy town back in 1873 (at the ripe old age of 15!). It became quite the cottage industry here, and they still commemorate him each year with a parade. (Where everyone and everything wears earmuffs. I am not making this up. Daniela noted that one reason I might like Farmington is because it feels a lot like the Punxsutawney portrayed in Groundhog Day. She’s not wrong. Swap out Phil for Earmuffs, and you’ve pretty much got it.)

We commemorated the day with quite the packed schedule. First up was going off to get a tree. We always go to Gooley’s Tree Farm every year. Yes, you could just buy a tree that’s already been cut, but you can do that pretty much anywhere. I like to go pick out a tree that’s still growing, and then kill it personally. It really brings in the Christmas spirit. Also, they have cider and cocoa and cookies. Also also, they hide pickle ornaments in their trees, and if you find one, you win a candy bag. (After going for over a decade, we finally found one. MC did, and she was ecstatic.)

This year we were tight on time, so we had to go to a spot of the farm that was pretty picked over, but I was set on making it work. After combing through the entire area, we found a tree that looked perfect. It was only once we started to saw it down that we realize it might be a bit . . . big. (Seriously. That trunk was probably over 6 inches wide!) It took three of us to get it down to the main store, and by that time, I was pretty sure this wasn’t something I wanted to put on the roof of my Civic. So we phoned a friend with a truck (FWAT), who graciously agreed to drive it home for us later that day. (This is a major reason why I don’t have a truck. Better to call a FWAT than be a FWAT, is what I say.)

With that done, we were off to see the parade. The girls marched with the nordic teams, and Denisa and I just spectated. (Really big parade this year. We were both surprised at how many more people were involved.) We went from there to do the Taste of Farmington. (Always a favorite. You pay $10 and get to go to all the restaurants downtown and get something from each of them. Honestly, you end up eating sooooooo muuuuuuuuuch fooooooood. We went around with a group, which made it even more entertaining. (My favorite was the Beaver Lodge at UMF, which always offers a really good spread, though B&B Bakery was a close second.)

In the middle of that, Daniela had a Fiddler’s concert at the Festival of Trees, so we went off to watch her perform. (She did great, as always.)

You would think that after all of that, we would be more than tired enough to call it a day, but Denisa and I headed off in the evening to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra in Waterville. This was a concert I only heard about at the last minute, when a friend let me know he had extra tickets for sale. I love Glenn Miller, so I was all over that, and I wasn’t disappointed. Two hours of big band, with plenty of great Christmas arrangements thrown in? Great stuff.

So all told, we were going from 9 in the morning until 10 at night. It was a jam packed day, but it was also a really fun one.

I for one, credit the earmuff.