Weeknotes 2025-06
Happenings
During a team meeting: "If I have to use the word 'unprecedented' one more time."
Our Dione 🐈 has been crawling under the covers & pressing her four little cold paws against our skin. This time last year, she was dying. It's so good to have her still with us.
Submitted our tax returns. (I try to get it out of the way as soon as all the paperwork arrive.)
Went on a botanical garden night walk with the sister + V. The drive was three hours round trip, and the conversation was so good for my heart.
Listening
Reading
I read Division by Zero by Ted Chiang weeks ago, and it is still on mind. More accurately, how I felt upon finishing the story has stayed with me. And so I continued reading Story of Your Life. I learned a new word, teleological. Having loved the film Arrival, I am surprised that the short story it's based on is so much about a mother's love. It seems I've forgotten this in the film; I'll have to watch it again.
Puttering
I read the definition of the word aside: A parenthetical departure; a digression. I felt this captures the spirit of my blog well, so I'm trying these words out as names for my brain dump and sandbox.
My latest experiment is stuffing things into little frames & adding scrollbars everywhere: Little windows + Red window
Gaming
V + E both started playing Hogwarts Legacy and seem to be enjoying it. Since it's on sale for -70%, I also picked it up and installed it last night.
When I asked my sister if she'd be interested in playing:
J: i don't think harry potter-verse in game form is for me
S: i've never played something like this before, but i thought i'd give it a try
S: what got me was potion-making
S: i really like crafting in games
S: it is my favorite part of playing any game
J: well let me know how it goes i guess
J: i think some of it is too tedious
S: my perspective is when life is chaos
S: it's nice to be able to retreat into a game, where it's very controlled
S: you do a thing, there's a cause and effect, there are clear results
J: i'd rather feed into the misery by reading really sad books
Thinking
The Morning, 7 February 2025, The New York Times:
“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”