---
title: i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25)
date: 2025-07-25
tags:
  - week-notes
draft: true
url: week-notes/025
---
## Doing
Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer's tan became more and more pronounced. I also "worked" two days this week: I had committee meetings on Thursday and then a joint meeting to coordinate middle school/high school/college GSAs in my area.

## Reading
I finished reading *Return of the King* this week, completing a long-standing personal mission to read *The Lord of the Rings*. I [wrote up a big long post](https://git.32bit.cafe/cassie/cassiedotink.git) with my history with the series and my thoughts.

Originally, I planned to read *Perdido Street Station* by China Miéville next, but I wanted something breezy after the *RotK* gauntlet, so I picked up *Ghost Boys* by Jewell Parker Rhodes and burned through it in a day. It was amazing. I'm adjuncting at my local college in the fall — it's a course for future English teachers about young adult literature. I'm considering offering students a choice of this or *All American Boys*. Both deal with a similar subject matter, but *Ghost Boys* is better suited for middle school. I'd love to teach the book to my middle schoolers, too, but I think that will be an uphill battle...[^1]

My next read is *Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist* by Liz Pelly. I'm about 100 pages in and really enjoying it — I'm not usually one for non-fiction, but I also am a noted Spotify hater (and have been for a long time), so this felt like a good way to dip my toe in. Highly recommend!

## Watching

I've been rewatching *Downton Abbey*. I'm in season two right now; I'm debating whether to finish the series (I never watched past season five, I think) or if I'll stop when they kill off some major characters in season three. I am glad to confirm that I was always right: Mary is the main character and the best character. I am noticing more and more the ridiculous plotlines, however — I maintained for years that seasons one and two were actually good and after that it descended into soap opera melodrama, but I am older and wiser now. I think I'd still recommend the first season, but stop there.
## Playing

## Listening
I've been listening to a lot of **Rainbow Kitten Surprise** lately as a lead up to seeing them in concert. I really enjoy them — when I last mentioned them, I think I'd only listened to *RKS*, on a friend's recommendation; I've since rounded out their discography. Here is my slipshod and unscientific personal ranking of their discography:

1. *RKS* - their best and most consistent; this is an *album*, an entire vibe, worth listening through in one sitting. Listen to "Cold Love" and "Wasted."
2. *Seven + Mary* - a rough sketch of what they would eventually realize on *RKS,* but I like it — I think I have a lot of 2013 nostalgia. Listen to "First Class" and "American Hero."
3. *How to: Friend, Love, Freefall* - Great moments and some real stand out tracks, but it gets too same-y for me in places. Listen to "Moody Orange" (maybe my favorite song by them) and "Fever Pitch" (add in "Possum Queen" if you want a weird one that will stick in your head)
4. *Love Hate Music Box* - I've had a lot of ups and downs with this one: I think it has too many songs and the good ones maybe didn't get to bake long enough. But the more I sit with it and take the songs as they are, the more I like it. Listen to "Lucky" and "Sickset."

I also, for some reason, thought about the band **The Madrigals** for the first time in a long time, which I'm sure I discovered on MySpace or last.fm or some other defunct platform. There's very little remaining about them online, but I have a few MP3s of theirs that I probably downloaded from one of the aforementioned sites. There's a [cool as fuck old radio archive website that mentions them](https://dandelionradio.com/tracklists/2008-04/index.htm) (and has a radio show with one of their songs still archived!), and I  [stumbled on a music blog from 2011](http://thestreetlampdoesntcast.blogspot.com/2011/02/griff-says-land-ahoy-its-columbus.html) that mentioned some of the members' later bands, which led to me downloading [*Horizon* by **Trash Kit**](https://upsettherhythm.bandcamp.com/album/horizon). I haven't sat down to give it a good listen yet, but I will.

I listened through to [*EELS* by **Being Dead**](https://beingdead.bandcamp.com/album/eels) as well, which is a real rad vibe all throughout. "Love Machine" might be my favorite song I've heard this year; "Van Goes" also has big "Bela Lugosi's Dead" vibes.


[^1]: But one worth climbing