Meghan's Musings

I'm hard pressed to believe that the passage of the most awful of seasons has been a.) NOT AWFUL and b.) so rapid. As far as weather goes, this summer has been absolutely blissful! The windows and French doors have been open nearly the whole time - the use of air conditioners has been minimal. Only a handful of days were akin to breathing through a wet blanket and the sunshine has kept the dopamine up! I only hope that mother nature is equally mild through the cooler months.... Isaac's first day of school is next Wednesday. Which also means I need to get Miss Thang on a school schedule at home - that will NOT be fun. Just one more year before she's on the school bus! I'd like to give a shout out (yeah, that's right!) to the Middleboro Public Library! Who knew that a library was more than just a book-borrowing building?! Everyone? Oh... Ahem... Anywho... Because of Isaac's mandatory summer reading schedule, we went to the library at the start of his vacatio...

There has never been a performer like Robin Williams. While visiting with my sister, BIL and their friends vacationing in Mattapoisett Moday night, sis greeted my return from the kitchen with: "Meghan, Robin Williams died." My immediate, profound, exclamation was, "No f*ing way!" In Slate's TV editor, Willa Paskin's article  "Robin William's Engergy Was so Powerful He Didn't Know How Turn It Off." she makes some interesting points: A celebrity's unnatural demise can tarnish their image, at least for a while. Robin Williams was always "on" - unable to not endeavor to elicit laughter from those around him (I'm paraphrasing here). I'll let the pros pontificate the greater depths of this tragic loss. Even though he turned in some spectacular performances of a dark nature ( One Hour Photo , Insomnia ) laughter was obviously his life's driving force. My two favorite guffaw-enducing, quintessential Robin William...

Ready Player One,  by Ernest Cline, takes place in 2044 - a depressingly realistic future if humanity remains on it's current trajectory. The unlikely hero is dumpy, clever and sarcastic Wade Watts. He's orphaned and lives in a trailer park with his aunt, who has a Dickens-esque quality to her nastiness. He, like the multitude of the masses in this future, escapes his dreary surroundings each day into The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation (OASIS). (My favorite utilization of the OASIS is the public school system - the programming does't allow bullying or any other abusive behavior and language, and teachers can take students on virtual field trips, hence increasing the interest in their lessons.) In the OASIS, Wade's avatar is Parzival, and he's a gunter. Gunters are a subculture of "egg hunters" spawned because the mega-wealthy creator of the OASIS, James Donovan Halliday dies. He was an eccentric, borderline antisocial gen...

Channeling my inner Mel Gibson for just a moment - he's since been kicked to the curb! As mentioned previously, I am no longer in the employ of an institution which offers currency in exchange for services provided. While I'm thrilled to have cast off the chains of corporate servitude - I have exchanged those for the iron shackles (which, if I had any artistic proclivities, would probably be painted with some retro-new-agey-yogic pattern) of domesticity, which comes with its own challenges. I can no longer be sent to the principal's office - er HR manager's office - because I've shown too much cleavage. But because of the fighting, the screaming, and my personal favorite memory - the "nice hike" - which devolved into sobbing hysterics because Shiloh couldn't grasp "peeing in the woods" and Isaac flailing his arms about whilst screaming "All bugs must die!" - My gray matter is loosening from a tightly wound conduit that transmits...