Best Things of 2023

Dec 26, 2023

These are all things that I enjoyed this year! If you have not enjoyed them yet, I hope you do! Fiction Bad Cree, Jessica Johns Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie Don’t Fear the Reaper, Stephen Graham Jones Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tocarczuk Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin Non-Fiction The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal, Laine Nooney Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media, Kevin Driscoll Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Moscow, Natasha Lance Rogoff Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, Sarah Polley Movies Asteroid City Barbie How to Blow Up a Pipeline The Killer Showing Up TV Series I Think You Should Leave, season 3 Poker Face, season 1 Reservation Dogs, season 3 The Righteous Gemstones, season 3 Slow Horses, season 3 Taskmaster, seasons 1-5 (thus far) Limited Series The Fall of the House of Usher A Spy Among Friends Podcasts Bonanas for Bonanza If Books Could Kill The Neighborhood Listen, season 5 This Had Oscar Buzz Games Movie Grid Wandersong do you really need me to link you to Tears of the Kingdom?


2023 Year in Review

Dec 22, 2023

At Work I wrote quite a bit last year about feeling stuck in a holding pattern at work, and boy did that feeling continue for quite a lot of 2023, until…August?


Best Things of 2022

Dec 22, 2022

While I’m definitely going to continue with this rundown of all my favorite things read, watched, played and listened to in the past year, a definite trend I have to shout out: the movies are back, baby!


2022 Year in Review

Dec 17, 2022

At Work To be perfectly honest - weird year! Living on grant funding has always been a bit squiffy of course, wondering where exactly I’ll be this time next year, or the next.


Puzzling

Jan 16, 2022

No, this is not a post about Wordle, and yes, this is a post about Wordle. Even before the latest viral word game swept across our social feeds, I was considering writing about my personal turn to constant puzzling in the pandemic (more inspired by the longevity of the previous viral word game that swept across our social feeds, the New York Times/Sam Ezersky’s Spelling Bee, which I am still dutifully shuffling through every day even if Twitter has largely moved on).


Best Things of 2021

Dec 21, 2021

Comparing this year’s recommendations to last year’s, it’s obvious that at least one difference for me between 2021 and 2020 was an ability to engage more significantly with new (to me) books, TV, and movies, including a few actually challenging works, rather than just slapping the same reruns and absolute trash nonsense on the screen to numb out.


2021 Year in Review

Dec 19, 2021

At Work What would a year look like where I actually stopped, slowed down, or otherwise invested myself less in work? That was sort of the running question in the back of my mind throughout 2021.


Adventures in Recreating iTunes c. 2005

May 24, 2021

I was an early adherent/adopter of Spotify - I want to say sometime in 2011, as a student in college, I think pretty much as soon as it was available in the U.


Zakharovich

Apr 30, 2021

A week of vacation has knocked loose a few thoughts about what, were I actually given the time, energy, and empty brain space to do something, what would I actually want to do with those blessings.


What is a Blaseball?

Mar 27, 2021

Blaseball is one of those things - like small-plate restaurants or monthly subscription boxes or cryptocurrencies - that really really likes to explain itself. So I’m already slightly annoyed at myself for writing this, since a quick search for “blaseball” (and you truly must include the quotation marks, to have any hope of relevant results) is more likely to give you ten different “what is blaseball” articles than it is to take you the actual Blaseball site.