I love Schubert’s string quartet, Death and the Maiden, especially the second movement.

I discovered this morning that I prefer the string quartet version to a chamber string orchestra version I listened to. Interesting.  The lone instruments, especially the first violin, render this quartet so much more vulnerable and meaningful, at least to my ears.

Eileen is at an alto breakfast. She almost forgot it, but I asked her if it was today and she started madly preparing. I need to get some serious work done today. Eileen and I are going to Mark and Leigh’s for a couple of days and I want to get more planning done then and now.

I only treadmilled fifteen minutes yesterday. I mistimed our pizza. We forgot to buy frozen pizzas and decided to treat ourselves to delivery. The estimated delivery time of 45 minutes would have worked nearly perfectly for me. But instead it arrived when I had 30 minutes left on the treadmill. Of course I availed myself of this flimsy excuse to stop and shower and eat.

I listened to President Obama’s spotify playlist with headphones.

Listen to President Obama’s Summer Playlist: | whitehouse.gov

This sure makes a difference in what I can hear. I begin to understand his choices better. I think it’s very cool that he shares his preferences. I guess no one listens to classical music anymore. But still I find it interesting to see what the President likes in music.

An Abrupt Farewell to “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” – The New Yorker

Maybe I’m missing something, but this is the first account I’ve read or heard that mentions Wilmore’s Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner performance. This jumped to my mind when I first heard that the show was canceled.

“The Correspondents’ Dinner, in the Obama era, has demonstrated that journalists have even less of a sense of humor about themselves than politicians do.” Ain’t it the truf!