Saturday, October 26 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone. It's a beautiful, brisk Saturday morning. I just ran out to get some coffee, and after setting up Rodney with some Blippi I decided to knock out my journal entry before making some breakfast.

All week Marissa and I have been staying up a little late all this week, and those missing 30 or 60 minutes of sleep catch up with you. Last night before drifting off to sleep, I deleted my Saturday alarm. That's the mood this morning.

Yesterday was a pretty wonderful day. For work lunch, we went out for sushi, and upon returning I found out Kanye finally dropped his new album. Beaming, I grabbed my laptop and found a quiet place for my first listen. I love when Kanye releases new albums. They take an entire weekend to listen to. To use a tired analogy, Kanye albums are like a bottle of wine. They change over time, and you have to let them breath before you form any final opinions. And the hardest thing of all is how quickly he moves and changes directions. Kanye is the kind of artist that makes you sprint after him. Usually, by the time you've fully come to appreciate an album, he's already changed directions for the next one.

I should have known better, but I had low expectations hearing he'd be christianizing the lyrics. I regularly listened to the Yanhdi bootleg, and really grew to love some of these tracks in their raw, less godly state, and when the lyrics finally made it to the Internet I remember looking at them with Marissa in horror. My imagination fell short in trying to imagine lyrics like put the 'gram away, hold hands an pray in a quality hip hop album.

But for twenty-seven minutes yesterday I couldn't stop smiling. It's an absolute mess, and utterly confusing, but it has everything. Following discussion on reddit and twitter, it's getting a lot of hate, but honestly that just makes the album more fun. People hate every new Kanye album, but a few months from now I have confidence that it will be touted as another classic.

I came home from work to Marissa taking a well-deserved nap on the couch, and Rodney sleeping in his room upstairs. Marissa's phone was blowing up from Instagram comments and messages - sometimes I'm amazed she can sleep through that. If I had half as many followers as her, I'd need to take the battery out of my phone before taking a nap. I put Jesus Is King on our tv and unapologetically blasted it. Marissa stirred, and smiled.

"IT'S TIME TO GO BOWLING," I announced. Yesterday night was the official Astuary Art float frame release bowling & pizza party. I put it on our family calendar a week ago, and we've been hyping it for a few days. Rodney ran down the stairs in excitement.

We put the dogs away and jumped in the car, heading just a few miles east of our house to Dream Lanes. We rented a lane, and for collateral they took one shoe from each of us to store in the back. Have you ever heard of a bowling alley taking precautions against bowling shoe theft? I just assumed that the bowling shoe itself would be enough of a deterrent. How much money could you get from a stolen bowling shoe? I bet Goodwill would even have a hard time accepting that.

Dream Lanes was a real bowling alley. Earlier at work, I was asking about it over lunch, and one coworker of mine who used to bowl in a league gave me the rundown. "It's perfect," he said. "Kind of rundown, just a touch of sadness, but you kind of want that in a bowling alley, right?" he laughed. "Get the pig wings. Don't try to figure them out, just order them."

I bought a beer while Marissa and Rod put in an order for pizza and pig wings. Our lane lit up, and somebody from the counter brought out a small ball and a metal ramp for Rodney. We played two games, intermittently stopping to snack on pizza. I teased Marissa because she kept bowling gutterballs and was convinced that she just hadn't found the right ball. By the time we were into the second game, we had accumulate seven of them. The only real competition was between me and Rodney. Even though Rodney had a metal ramp to roll the ball, his ball was rough and seemed to hook in a random direction, so we were just about even. I eeked ahead in the end.

And the big wings were delicious. I couldn't figure them out - it was like someone made braised ribs, took them off the bone, then figured out how to re attach them to tiny PVC pipes. "They don't look natural," laughed Marissa. "But they don't need to, they're strange and perfect" I added. Perfectly strange, just like Kanye's Jesus Is King.

We bowled through the toddler witching hour, then head home to put Rodney down to bed. Marissa conducted his bedtime routine upstairs while I started editing together a video for her paintings. After the video was done, we met on the couch to watch Indiana Jones. "I want to make a cocoon of blankets," she announced as the dogs eagerly joined us on the couch.

Today, Marissa has an agility trial, and while she has the car, the Rod man and I are going to hold down the fort at home. We have a big grocery trip today, and at some point I need to deal with the thawing salmon filet in my fridge that I bought on a whim.

This weekend, here's to relaxing, grocery shopping, smoking fish, and listening to new music. There are a few productive things we can do around the house, but it won't be the end of the world if those don't get done. Hope you have a wonderful and restful weekend. I'm going to go cook some eggs, then try to get Rodney to wake up Mom with his recorder.