princeton
I had made tentative plans with Tracy to come by and play ping pong with me at the public table in the tiny park in front of the Bullitt Center a block away . . . but, although it looked on Friday like the weather might cooperate on Monday, by the time Monday arrived, it did not. The weather was quite nice and warm, mid- to upper-seventies between Friday and Sunday, but by yesterday, we had wind gusts under overcast skies and by mid-evening it was even raining.
So much for ping pong! Dammit. So, I still haven’t been able to open the package of paddles Shobhit gave me for Christmas (at my request). Someday . . . someday soon!
I didn't even get to ride my bike as I'd hoped. Too chilly, too much potential for getting soaked. So, as soon as my work day was done, I took the car and drove to the office to swap out my stack of paperwork.
I listened to Prince on my AirPods along the way. I recently bought the last two, of four, Prince albums that had long ago been available only as downloads for "NPG Music Club" members, but I discovered just last month are now available on iTunes. So what does this mean? Finally, for the first time ever, I have all of Prince's forty studio albums (or 38, depending on how you count them: a couple of them are "different album" releases part of the same package). Until this year, I had all but four of them, and had for ages.
These "NPG Music Club" releases, all four of them, are concentrated from just three years: 2002, 2003, and 2004. This is from a period that otherwise seemed like it was the longest he ever went without any traditional album releases—after his blah 2001 album The Rainbow Children (which inexplicably got rave reviews from music critics), he released no CDs to actual music stores in 2002, and in 2003 released N.E.W.S., which was just four, 14-minute instrumental tracks. It wasn't until 2004 when he released Musicology that he managed a comeback of sorts. Turns out his NPG Music Club digital releases The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse, released simultaneously all of two days later, are arguably even better albums. I'm only listening to them the first time this month, 17 years later. And I like them a lot.
The other two are One Nite Alone..., a collection of tracks almost exclusively just him and a piano from 2002; and Expectation, another instrumental album very similar to N.E.W.S. and released the same year in 2003. Those ones are all right.
But, whatever. I am a completist. A little while back I also got 20Ten, which was never released in music stores either but is also one of all of his albums now available, presumably thanks to his estate, on iTunes. There is also an album he apparently had shelved an album from 2010 called Welcome 2 America which will be released on July 30. You can bet I'll be getting that as well. Between all this and the expanded special editions of 1999 and soon hopefully Sign 'O' the Times that I've gotten from the library, I've had Prince on my mind—and in my ears—an unusual lot this year.
When I got back from the office, I had some of the delicious dinner concoction Shobhit made for dinner: a bag of kale salad mix, mixed with one of the frozen vegetable bag samples I brought home from work, and some chopped veggie sausage. It worked out very well. I also baked some Pillsbury crescent rolls to go with it, which I ate too many of. I was back up above 160 lbs this morning. Fun!
We watched some TV: Pose, a show I really enjoy even though the dialogue is almost oppressively contrived; then two episodes of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, because we discovered we never watched it last week. This week had a very good segment on the heinous war crimes being committed (again) by Israel against Palestine—acknowledging that Palestine has also committed war crimes, but the Israeli response has been (again) exponentially out of proportion.
I was in bed somewhat earlier than usual. So was Shobhit: he decided to come to bed to read. I hate going to sleep with the light on, but somehow I managed it last night. I got a pretty nice, solid seven hours of sleep last night, which I do not often get.
[posted 12:31 pm]