Pleasant surprises

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This weekend has included several small, delightful moments that I noticed and appreciated. And at least two you can share, too, so I’m here to try to bring some little moments of fun to your day.

First, a friend came over last night, and in addition to our standard bread, cheese, and chocolate, she convinced me to put away my spicy, earthy pinot noir in favor of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau. I never like that stuff. It’s too fruity, too hot with new alcohol, too light for me. But not this year. The 2015 Beaujolais Nouveau surprised me with a complexity and calmness I had never associated with this wine style.

Second, I gouged the crap out of my finger yesterday, and when my bandage slipped off during a shower this morning, not only did the wound not hurt, but the bandaid also had a rainbow.

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Finally, I don’t believe I’ve ever posted a recommendation for a podcast before, but this weekend I had such a lovely experience with a particularly good episode of a favorite podcast that I want to share.

I subscribe to dozens of podcasts, and one of the first I found, on the urging of a friend, is “Snap Judgement.” I listen every week, because the storytelling is compelling, the voices (metaphorical not technical) are interesting, and the pacing is strong enough for a car ride or brisk walk.

This week’s episode, #630 – Dirty Work is lovely. The premise of people having to do unsavory work is too neat a package into which to cram the episode, which is really about leaps of faith and the detective work fundamental to both journalism and criminal defense. It’s not gross, it’s not dirty. It’s just a genuinely lovely episode that I would argue is a more satisfying, 53-minute version of “Serial.”

If you have podcast recommendations, let me know. I regularly listen to 99% Invisible, Freaconomics, Double X, the Slate agglomeration of gabfests, SciFri, Things Mom Never Told You, How Stuff Works, Stuff to Blow Your Mind, TWiT, Whistlestop, RadioLab, and This American Life. I’m waiting for Invisibility to come back. I dropped Lexicon Valley after the misogyny of the vocal fry episode, but otherwise enjoyed it. What do you listen to?

And have you ever had a bandage rainbow? Seriously, that totally made my weekend.

 

9 thoughts on “Pleasant surprises”

  1. The bandage rainbow is trippy. Until you explained what it was and I looked again, I was seeing it as some sort of chrome lozenge and wondered what the heck it was.

    Re podcasts, I’ve listened only to the first episode so far, but Bucher and some other guy have started a new DFW one called “The Great Concavity” that might be worth trying out.

  2. Thanks for the podcast recommendations. You mentioned listening to books on a different blog post and it got me thinking….there are so many minutes of my day that I could use to learn new things if I listened to books or podcasts while working around the house. Anyway….right now I only usually check out the TED talks and Tim Keller podcasts. I’ll take a look at some of the ones you mentioned. Thanks.

  5. it took me WAY TOO LONG to understand how that crazy rainbow glass chunk was actually a bandaid with a delicate rainbow bubble forming inbetwixt its parameters! amazeballs! hi nappy!

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