It’s hard to have a birthday party for a cat who is known as the “imaginary” cat.
Dexter is very shy, and spends most of the day sunning himself when he thinks no one is watching, otherwise, he’s hiding under the bed.
My friend Robin dropped off decorations, and I even had birthday presents. But I couldn’t get Dexter to come join the party. It took a lot of treats, and patience, and then he disappeared again after 30 seconds.
In the future, I think I will skip having a birthday part for Dexter. At least the dogs seem to enjoy the attention!
Also, Happy Cinco de Mayo! I celebrated with some homemade guac and a paloma.
What a timely coincidence to read this book now. I believe my mom purchased it in early 2018, and since her Kindle library is shared with mine, I had access to it. However, I wasn’t really aware of it until I read Forward.
Forward is a collection of short stories curated by Blake Crouch. In the afterword, he highly recommends A Gentleman in Moscow. When I went to add it to my tbr list and purchase a copy, I discovered it was already on my Kindle! That’s always a nice surprise.
All of this happened back in January/February. I knew nothing about the plot, apart from the title. Since then, it’s come up in conversation a few times (or popped up online in some article or list of books to read), but I still didn’t know much about it.
I’m glad I didn’t know anything going in. Sometimes, the best way to ruin a book is to know too much beforehand. I like being surprised (most of the time). With that said, you can keep reading if you want with this warning — I’m going to talk, generally, about what this book is about. Hopefully, without spoilers.
Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest, at the Metropol hotel in Moscow. It’s 1922, and the Bolsheviks are in charge. As a “Former Person”, he has to adjust his world to the confines of the hotel. Kicked out of his lavish suite and relegated to a 100 sq. ft room in the attic, this is quite the adjustment.
Rostov considers himself a man of purpose. He’s lived an adventurous and somewhat glamorous life up to this point. The novel tells the story of how he comes to terms with his new reality, and how his life unfolds within the confines of the Metropol over decades, while life continues to evolve and change outside.
For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively.
The backdrop of Russia, the Kremlin, and communism is central to the novel, but not the heart of the novel. The heart of the novel is Rostov, his transformation, his journey to understand what it means to be a man of purpose given circumstances not of his choosing.
…if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.
So, after getting hacked yesterday, I got set-up with LastPass and started changing passwords.
Did you know if you go to https://passwords.google.com/checkup/ Google will give you the status of all the passwords you have saved in the browser? Let me tell you — it ain’t pretty.
I’ve updated the password on all the accounts marked “compromised”. For some of these, the websites didn’t exist anymore, or are things I do not use. Where I could, I deleted my account. Everything now has a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious strong password, no repeats! Wooooooo hoooooo.
And I even made progress on the puzzle today too. Maybe 5 pieces? Not much, but at the rate I’ve been going, I’ll be happy if I finish it this year.
And now, I’m off to finish S3 of Ozark. I got a little distracted on Friday watching “Never Have I Ever” on Netflix. I thought it was a movie — turns out it’s a series, with 10 ~25 minute episodes. And yes, I did watch it like it was movie, start to finish in one sitting (with some intermissions for food and bathroom). Mindy Kaling does not disappoint, except for the fact that she is no where to be seen in the series (at least in S1).
My Hulu account was hacked! I got an email this evening saying I had a new login to my account… but I haven’t used Hulu today, and certainly not on a new device, and definitely NOT from Stoney Creek, Ontario, CA.
Stupid SHIT HEADS. GET YOUR OWN HULU ACCOUNT! Also — I thought Hulu was USA only?
Looks like I have a project tomorrow to change all my passwords and look into a more secure solution so I’m not using the same password on any two sites. I’ve gotten lazy over the years.
Ugh. Something I know I should be doing, but not how I wanted to spend my weekend. In the meantime, Hulu has been logged out of all devices and secured temporarily with a new password.
