A March Update

I almost abandoned Pride and Prejudice early in the book. There was a scene where the “adults” were arguing about meaningless things like a bunch of middle-schoolers, but in formal early 19th century English. I reminded me of the banter my school friends had in fake English accents and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” quotes. It seemed like the whole book might be like that. I put it down, and in fact I read two other books before picking it back up and giving it another go. I ended up liking it fairly well, although it didn’t very well match what I remembered of the film. I’ll have to watch it again.

I saw a film in a theater for the first time since the pandemic. “Dune: Part Two” was alright, but kind of disappointing after the setup of the first part. I was looking forward to how the filmmakers would portray Paul’s superhuman mental capacity, a topic which is inherently difficult to show in film. This was done with a dream sequence, a short exchange of dialog with Jessica where he reveals he knows the past and all the possible futures, and a demonstration that he knows secrets of strangers (which exceeds the book’s intent). It really turned out to be largely an action film.

I have ridden my bike less than 150 miles so far this year. I rode my favorite 38 mile ride yesterday, and my poor condition was disturbing. My average speed was slow (14.0 mph), I had to engage my mental game to finish the last few miles, and my body complained for the next eighteen hours. This wouldn’t be terribly worrisome, except that I was hoping to bikepack across the state in about a month and a half. I guess I need to get cracking.