Odds & ends (& whines, lol)

• "This Valentine's Day, show some love to the one who’s always there." Katie at My Sweet Dumb Brain makes the excellent point that "The only constant in your life is you." 
• Here we go again? Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band just announced some Canadian dates this fall, including two nights here in Toronto in November. (He's also going to be in Winnipeg, for the first time ever! -- 40+ years after dh first romanced me with his music in his dorm room, lol)(on a cassette played on a boombox, lol).  I signed up for verified fan status with Ticketmaster -- which entitles me to the CHANCE to buy tickets when they go on sale (I'll find out next week if I'm going to be allowed to try...!).  
• I'm of two minds:  
• On the one hand:  Bruce isn't getting any younger (and neither are we...!). He's 73.  Who knows how many more chances we'll get to see him again?  He & his music played a key role in our early relationship :)  (as I've written on this blog several times before), and we've seen him together twice in the past in Toronto, in 1985 and 1992 (without the E Street Band) -- dh saw him a couple of times before he met me, and we tried but failed to get tickets for other times he's played in Toronto. (I also tried -- and failed -- to get tickets to see his "Springsteen on Broadway" show in New York City a few years back. A great excuse for a trip to NYC, right? Oh well...!)  He always puts on a GREAT show. 
• On the other hand: I'm mindful of the Elton John tickets saga, and how well THAT turned out...! (and how will SIL feel if we buy tickets to Bruce, after she & I decided to cash in our Elton tickets after repeated postponements and cancellations amid pandemic uncertainty?). I'm also very mindful that (contrary to what some might think), covid is still very much alive and well -- and the prospect of sitting in a crowded arena with 20,000+ other, mostly maskless, singing & cheering people, is not as appealing as it might have been three years ago, to me or to dh...!  (In fact, I recently read that several members of the E Street Band are currently out with covid themselves!) There's also been a sharp increase in crimes on the transit system, which is how we'd normally head downtown. Parking there is both hard to find and astronomically expensive, especially when there's a big event on. 
• (This is assuming we're able to get tickets in the first place... and even if we're able, are we willing to pay the exorbitant prices that will likely be charged?)(Pricing hasn't been announced yet, but as the Toronto Star pointed out, it's likely a far cry from the $10 dh paid to see him in 1978...!)  
• (Why does life have to be so complicated?) 
• A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how developers are proposing to build a 12-storey condo building right next door to ours (and directly across the street from another, larger 10-storey condo building) -- replacing three houses on/adjacent to the corner of a main road and a residential street, and facing and exiting onto the residential street.  
• Last week, I tuned in online to a recent meeting of our city council where members of the public had their say about the proposed application. There were 45 written submissions (available to read on the city's website) and about 10 local residents speaking at the meeting or via Zoom.  It was fascinating and quite an eye-opener in some respects to watch the process unfold and listen to what they all had to say. It's quite obvious to anyone who sees the site that it's a completely inappropriate place to put up a 12-storey building, but it was informative and validating to hear all the arguments presented in such an articulate way. (I won't list them all here but let's just say the proposed design violates existing zoning laws in more ways than one, not to mention urban planning principles and simple common sense.)  
• Whether that was enough to stop the project -- or at least scale it back to a more reasonable size -- remains to be seen. To their credit, the councillors were unanimous in their opposition -- but they also pointed out that the appeals process is stacked solidly in favour of the developers, enabled by a pro-development provincial government and premier. Sigh. 
• The BBC had what I thought was a surprisingly thoughtful article about the growing number of people choosing not to have children. They point out the difference between childFREE and childLESS, discuss the many reasons why people might not have children, the fact that people tend to lump childless and childfree people together -- AND they talk about how the choice to live without children is still not well understood and accepted  -- a point that I don't think gets enough attention outside the childless/free community. Worth a read!  
• The article uses the term "backlash," which I don't think I've ever heard in a discussion related to childless/free living before.  I read Susan Faludi's classic book on the subject when it first came out in the early 1990s -- and I see there's a new edition available (from 2006).  Time for a re-read, perhaps...!  
• "Freeze now, sell later":  Alison Motluk , who writes the Substack newsletter Hey ReproTech, speculates that some women who freeze their eggs but never use them might eventually try to sell them as a way to recoup their significant financial outlay.  
• Yael Wolfe in Medium:  "This Gen Xer Doesn’t Understand TikTok."  
• This late Boomer/early GenXer doesn't either, lol, and Yael perfectly voices my gripes with trying to keep up with technology (and some of the reasons why I've never sought to expand the "reach" of this blog onto social media and become an "influencer"). (Trust me, some day it will happen to you -- if not with TikTok then some other newfangled app that you don't "get" and have no interest in learning how to use...!) 
• In a similar vein, Anne Helen Petersen recently announced that she is winding down the Discord community she created as an extension of her Culture Study Substack newsletter. Like many online community leaders, she found it was taking up a lot more time and energy than she bargained for.  
• I've been on message boards since 1998, and on the CS Discord for the better part of a year, although I rarely visited there. There were a lot of similarities to old-style message boards -- and yet, I just couldn't figure out how it was organized or how to follow threads, etc.  I guess I really am getting old...??  :p  
• I debated over whether to watch "Not Dead Yet," the TV version of Alexandra Potter's delightful novel "Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k-Up," which I read, loved and reviewed here. Then I forgot all about it. Oh well. 
• I may still watch (I found I can catch up online) -- but from what I've read, I didn't miss out on much. "Struggles to Show Signs of Life," says the Hollywood Reporter. Ominously, the Reporter also says the show is "adapted by David Windsor and Casey Johnson in almost no recognizable way from Alexandra Potter’s novel." ("A loose adaptation," says Slant.)  
• The only real similarities between the book and the TV show seem to be a lead character named Nell who returns home from abroad after her relationship implodes and lands a job writing obituaries.  But in the Hollywood version, the setting has changed from England to California (not surprising, but very disappointing), and... the dead people Nell writes about... talk to her.  A cutesy twist that's definitely not in the book. Sigh. 
• Have you watched it? (If you have, have you read the book first?)  What did you think? 
• I have virtually zero interest in American college or NFL football or the Super Bowl -- but I did watch the halftime show on Sunday... and noticed that Rihanna seemed to be sporting a bit of a tummy. I knew she'd had a baby recently and figured maybe it was leftover pregnancy weight? 
• But then dh told me "Rihanna pregnant" was trending on Twitter, so I Googled and found out she'd had her son back in May 2022.. so...!. (You can see how closely I follow celebrity gossip these days, lol.)  Her management confirmed the pregnancy before the show was over. 
• The childless forums and accounts I follow were full of eyerolls and angst the next morning. CNBCers in the UK reported that Rihanna's pregnancy was the headline news, with who won the Super Bowl coming a distant second/afterthought. 
• Personally, while I did some eye-rolling myself, I found this far less triggering/enraging than Beyonce's ultra-smug reveal of her first pregnancy at the VMAs some years back (ripping off camouflaging clothing and then caressing her belly with a self-satisfied smile, to make sure we got the message)... followed by her photo shoot and then "fertility goddess" routine at the Grammys while heavily pregnant with twins a few years later (which I wrote about here). Oy. 
• (Does anyone actually sing LIVE at these events anymore? It was obvious several times that Rihanna wasn't even trying to lip sync...)