Week 42, 2024

When House and The Big Bang Theory came to their ends after six and twelve seasons, respectively, I felt like someone thrown at an unknown place, clueless about where I should go next, feeling orphaned by these great shows.

Never again I felt this way, until we watched Ted Lasso's last episode this week. Although it was possible for us to see how the whole plot was conceived with a three-season arc in mind — and they've done a good job in it —, I'll certainly miss it a lot. The characters and the story were just awesome.

I heard rumors about a fourth, upcoming season, which although Apple has not yet officially confirmed, seems to be scheduled to begin shooting in January 2025, apparently with Jason Sudeikis blessings. And this causes me many mixed feelings. I fear mostly the known phenomenon where shows simply don't know it's time to end. I mean, Ted Lasso was meant for three seasons, not four. Just like Once Upon a Time, a great show led by Jennifer Morrison, who, after six seasons decided to leave, to spend more time with her family — if I'm not mistaken. There was a great wrap up but ABC pushed a seventh season on us, of which I could only bear to watch a single episode. It flopped for me and I preferred to leave it be. I really hope Ted Lasso is not spoiled for their responsibles wanting to create more storytelling where it simply should not be.

Per suggestion of my older son, we have watched The Greatest Showman, a musical released in 2017, with names such as Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron and Zendaya starring.

I'm not a person to be normally into musicals, but this story — a fictionalized version of the life of American showman P.T. Barnum, founder of the famous traveling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses — proved to be quite enjoyable, actually.

With my reading goal behind me, I mentioned last week I picked up The Overstory by Richard Powers for reading. I'm still loving his writing style, but I have to admit that with so many trees' and nature's descriptions among the narratives, sometimes the book has resembled a biology class... and not an 101 class, by the way. This, associated with the fact that I've been reading in English — which, as my second language, regardless of me being fluent, makes me read slower than if I was reading in Portuguese —, has made the read somewhat tiresome at times.

I don't intend to drop the book, though — at least, not yet. But in the meantime I have picked two other books to also keep me company. One of them is a translation of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, to Brazilian Portuguese, a book that, although released in 1605, has surprised me in many ways, specially for making me laugh at times, being lots of fun. As both a timeless literature classic and a thick, doorstop book, I was sincerely expecting many different things from this read, but I never imagined it could be this amusing.

The other book is Age of Myth, the first of The Legends of the First Empire series, written by Michael J. Sullivan. This book has shown to be very fluid in terms of reading and, although also in English, doesn't contain any Biology classes syllabus, so it's easier on the reader — in this case, me.

This week also came with my birthday, yay! 🥳

I have to say last year wasn't exactly the best one of my life — although I'm far from having something to actually complain about, fortunately. The thing is, some things were very hard to deal with, and some of the things that happened to me and my family I could definitely have done without. So my personal wish is that this new year in my life is easier and calmer on me. I hope this wish comes true... 🙏

As per my birthday's occasion, we had a family lunch, and I really love these. It's when, besides being around my wife and children, I'm also joined by my parents and by my sister and brother-in-law, and it usually renders into very agreeable times.

For example, my sister finally met with my son, what had not been possible to accomplish till then, since he came back from Japan. Also, the kids met Pimba, my sister's new cat, who's a very cute and good vibes cat (her exact words to describe him), and they had lots of fun with him, specially while they made him chase the laser, certainly a cat's all time favorite.

I do thank God for such memorable moments.