The best thing about saying good-bye to August (one of my least favorite months) is saying hello to the fall season, and we definitely got a taste of it weather-wise near the end of the month. It rained a lot, and the temps were in the 80’s during the last week of August.

The month was a blur, but looking back, a lot of things were accomplished. Back to school time is my busiest time of year at my day job so that can make the days all seem the same, much like July. Here’s what else happened…

Television

We finished The Boys on Amazon. What a crazy, unpredictable ride! It’s very anti-hero and says a lot about figures which we do put on a pedestal. It’s also very violent, but worth a look. I’m looking forward to another season.

We finished the final season of Orange Is The New Black on Netflix. I wasn’t sad to see it go. The last season focuses a lot on the current topic of detaining immigrants, which tended to upstage the final story arc of some of the other long-standing characters. Still a decent ending though.

We watched the movie Alita The Battle Angel. I’m not a big sci-fi person, but this movie was great.

We started the third season of 13 Reasons Why on Netflix. I won’t be surprised if this is the last season. It’s just as intense as the first two seasons. Gosh, I don’t miss high school at all, but I’ve really grown to care about these characters through the seasons. Being a teenager certainly hasn’t gotten any easier.

The last weekend of the month we watched the new Godzilla movie. Eh, it was okay.  I think they spent all of their budget on creating the monsters and forgot to pay someone to write a good script.

Several of our regular cable shows wrapped up their seasons this month. “Pose” was excellent as always. “The In Between” wasn’t bad for its first season. We’re also still enjoying “Songland.” I’m looking forward to “American Horror Story” next month and hoping for a good season. We’ve checked out halfway through for about the last three seasons’

Books

I finished Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin. God, it was so dull. What a disappointment for me. It was like meeting a celebrity you’ve admired and liked for a long time, only to discover they are a real asshole.

I finished Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz on audible. I’d never heard of him before seeing a post about him on the AIDS Memorial page on Facebook. He was a young artist and writer that succumbed to the AIDS epidemic in New York in the 80s. This book is a memoir about those years. It’s a very angry, but heartfelt read.

In anticipation of the new Stephe King book due out next month, I started King’s End of Watch, which is the last book in his Mr. Mercedes trilogy. Up until now, I had only read the first book. I also started listening to Finders Keepers on audiobook, which is the second book in the series. I’m enjoying the second book much more.

Writing

In last month’s post, I mentioned the novella I was working on as a follow-up to a character in my first book. It’s now available on Amazon!

On August 12th, I went back to working on my historical fiction piece about the piano maker…again. I’m obsessed with using Grammarly now, and it’s taught me a lot, so I started over from the beginning and have been giving the manuscript a scrub. I’ve only got about 57K in words so far and had gotten stuck in June because I didn’t really know how to end it. Taking a break from it to work on the novella helped. I’ve got some new insight into it now, and I think I can finally finish this book by the end of the year. (I’ve been writing it off and on since 2009.)

I only wrote two poems this month, but have still been keeping up my daily devotion to reading a poem a day thanks to purchasing a used copy of The Best American Poetry 1997.

Other Stuff

My family came up from Tennessee for a quick weekend trip, which was a weekend of many firsts. It was the first time any of us had been to Grant’s Farm here in St. Louis, which we all enjoyed. It was also the first time I’d ever been to an outdoor country-rock concert, their reason for coming up. My niece bought tickets to see Cane Brown and Jason Aldean. This was her very first concert ever! I didn’t care much for the music, but with twenty-five thousand people in attendance, there was some excellent people watching.

I’m still working Instacart though hours were light for two weeks because I got my weekends mixed up thinking my family was coming up the week before they actually did. I’ve been using the money from Instacart to pay off credit card debt, and I can proudly say that now after three months of working Instacart on the weekends, I’m just one payment away from paying off a credit card that I owed two thousand dollars on!

That was my August! Quite the busy month. Though the fall season grows light at the day job, things will still be active outside of work. I have a trade show to attend for work in Orlando coming up in three weeks. Then, the holidays will be fast upon us. What can I say for now besides….See you in September!