Lockdown Stocktake
Sounds Good!
Alright, I promise after today - bonus content! - to stop using “lockdown” in the title to these newsletters.
This is just a quickie to ask how you’re doing. To hope that you’re going okay. And to make a couple of quick mentions of a a couple of things - including some commerce.
I’m sending the newsletter out three times a week and I’ve all but stopped the weekend updates because originally those were for free-subscribers, to try entice you into signing up. Then I started sharing a lot of the weekly content for free too.
As a “Lockdown Special” I wanted to drop the price of the newsletter, but the cheapest I can offer it is $5 a month. That’s the low-low price. I can’t drop it to $2 or $3 - so instead I’ve dropped the annual optional sub by $10. That means you can currently sign up for a year for just $40 (instead of the usual $50). So if you’re already receiving this you might want to consider upgrading to the annual for a one-off cheap price, or sharing to a friend and recommending it to them.
I’ve also dropped the price on all of my e-books. Last year’s two - one about drumming and a collection of interviews are now just $0.99 US (or a bargain $1.14 NZ) and this year’s two brand new ones - the first about wrestling and a really new set of short stories and prose pieces are $1.99 US (or a bargain $2.29 NZ).
We had a pretty good weekend here in our little bubble - me, Katy, Oscar plus Bowie the dog & Sylvie the cat. We watched Groundhog Day because, well, why not. Might as well leave it on a loop eh…seriously great film though. And when Oscar retired to his room for some Simpsons re-watching we started in on Nine Perfect Strangers which appears already to be a very weak effort when compared alongside White Lotus or even Big Little Lies but it’s arrived at a good time, as snackable TV…
The books are going well - I finished the Woody Allen already, and a couple of volumes of poetry and a couple of graphic novels. And music continues to be a salve, though it’s not always feeling like it’s Lockdown-themed now. We made a family playlist where we picked ten songs each then put it on shuffle, while we did some drawings, baked biscuits and scones and leafed through pages of books we’ll go back to read with more commitment some other time perhaps.
The playlist idea is a good one - and it might work for you and yours in whatever family/shared-living arrangement you have. You each pick the same amount of songs then shuffle it - so everyone gets a turn. You learn some new songs, or grow an appreciation for music you might not normally love. Or, you know, you just really enjoy it when it’s your turn, when your anthem arrives.
Oscar put the playlist together for us - and some of the hip-hop selections are his (Eminem, Kendrick Lamar) but some are mine (2pac). It was a nice set of tunes all up.
It’s back to work tomorrow - and home-schooling kicks off in earnest. So the weekend felt like a nice reprieve, albeit locked-in. We managed a decent Saturday team walk about the neighbourhood. And earlier on Sunday we went and shot some hoops at the park down the road then explored a different side of the neighbourhood.
The dog is very happy we are home a lot more.
The cat is very demanding about food.
How are you all getting along? Do let me know. The newsletters will continue Mon-Wed-Fri and I’ll keep the themes going of film/TV (Monday), books/writing (Wednesday) and music - with at least one playlist (Friday). And by all means take advantage of the cheap e-books and the reduced annual sub to the newsletter. If that’s of interest. Or tell someone in your bubble, or in your ZOOM-land network, if you think it’ll be of interest to them.
Keep to the rules, rest as well as you can and continue on with kindness as the ideal.
Kia Kaha
