I gotta say, yesterday was a pretty good day for socially distant smiles.
- Old technology made me smile: I dug out our old Hi8 video camera that recorded on actual analog tapes. Tapes! And when I say “old,” I mean it was still a fairly new camera about 10-11 years ago, before I got my first iPhone. Which means the boys were babies. I’m actually searching for the tape where I caught the boys walking for the first time, but haven’t found it yet. But we did find tons of footage of baths and diaper changes and feedings and tiny boys playing on the floor and laughing at our dog. We even had some heart-melting footage of my late grandmother, who was in her 90s at the time, singing a lullaby to the boys when they were three months old. Most of you, if you watched these tapes, would say the footage is about 25 times longer than it needs to be. But we just wanted more.
- Dispatches from Elsewhere made me smile: I’m almost caught up on this AMC show masterfully created by (and starring) How I Met Your Mother’s Jason Segel. It makes me so happy. It’s brainy and fun and real and mysterious and inclusive and full of memory palaces and divine nonchalance and it’s mother-flipping WEIRD. Every once in a while a show comes along that makes me feel inspired, makes me feel alive, and this is one of those. And let me tell you something super weird and serendipitous. Yesterday, immediately after I thought the words, “This show makes me feel alive,” one of the characters on the show asked another, “Do you feel alive?” No joke.
- Dear Rouge made me smile: I love Dear Rouge. Their mere existence makes me happy. I consider the married duo my CanRock pals because they’ve been so nice to me over the years, both online and the few times we’ve met in person. Yesterday I watched a little at-home acoustic concert they broadcasted live on YouTube a few days ago (check it out below). During the show, they played a song called “Stolen Days,” which is an intensely personal song for them, but guitarist Drew McTaggart suggested there’s a kind of double meaning to the song’s title right now, because in a sense our current situation feels like stolen days – all of our social gatherings have been stolen from us. But before we get too down about that, the show really did put a smile on my face because their music and their spirits are so uplifting. They’re so sincere and fun and full of love. I said after their last concert that their energy is addictive, and, for me, it really is. And I also learned while watching this video that singer Danielle McTaggart is probably a wizard.
My Shuffled Life 