Shipwrecked & Comatose

Most of my friends have heard this all before. I hate fall.  My friends also know that's inaccurate hyperbole.  I don't hate it. (I save actual hate for winter.) When I talk about my not-actual dislike of the season, it's more about the end of summer, the food, the dislike of the hype, and the endless social media memes.  In fact, since the advent of social media, the hype is what annoys me the most. And of course, my friends rightly say, "Rachel, shut up and let people like what they like. Stop acting like a whiny pick-me girl. Liking summer better doesn't make you better than anyone else." And of course, you're right, That's not what this post is about. Today I want to talk about the aspect of the season I truly take issue with, and it's high time the world woke up to it. Over the years, social media have driven (yes, media is a plural noun) an image of the season into all our heads - and there is something insidious about it. When August comes t

I thought I would write a life update post about What I Did This Summer after the long series of posts about my grand vacation. I think the Elvis Costello song title works well for the concept, but given the depressing nature of the song, it probably wasn't the best post title. Let me assure you this post is only about the other half of the Summer of 2023 and not about the dark side of my life. So what kind of stuff happened once my plane landed in New York and I had to go back to real life? Wait! I didn't go back to real life. The day after we returned from Iceland, Kevin and I packed our bags (actually, the bags were already pre-packed) and drove down to Chincoteague with Mom. I made no blog posts and didn't even post any food photos on Facebook because I decided it was time to learn how to stop feeling to compelled to share every detail of every vacation. Just because I don't share it on social media doesn't mean it didn't happen.  I still ate three meals a d

Here is a sign I am old and out of touch. I was playing Connections. The first word grouping I figured out quickly. The second one took some recall knowledge of old school literature lessons. The third was tricky and I had to do a bit of brain squishing to wrap my head around the common thread, but once I had it, the answer was obvious. The remaining four words haunted me. I could not understand the connection at all. Fortunately it was my process-of-elimination freebie, so I clicked the four remaining words and saw the answer. The answer was the words were all rapper titles. I recognized one rapper title, but the rest of them unknown to me.  All the titles seemed like mere random words. What's worse is Kevin knew them all. Apparently even though he's older than I am, he's not older than I am. Time to bring out the rocking chair. ### How many fellow nerds out there are wondering if 2042 will be the best year of the century? ### I decided the best way to deal with the spotte