From e52e56c412b9d143fca8cf52c1709d0179ed2db7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: cassie Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 00:37:59 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] vault backup: 2025-08-08 00:37:56 --- content/week-notes/027.md | 15 +- public/an-ode-to-gitsync/index.html | 3 +- public/breaking-silences/index.html | 3 +- public/cassie-ink-is-my-new-home/index.html | 3 +- public/coming-out/index.html | 3 +- public/css/main.css | 16 +- public/dad/index.html | 3 +- .../i-finished-lord-of-the-rings/index.html | 3 +- public/index.html | 129 ++++++++++------ public/index.xml | 62 +++++--- public/posts/2024-11-25-23-06-55/index.html | 3 +- public/sitemap.xml | 18 ++- public/tags/index.xml | 4 +- public/tags/week-notes/index.html | 58 ++++--- public/tags/week-notes/index.xml | 62 +++++--- public/week-notes/001/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/002/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/003/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/004/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/005/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/006/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/007/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/008/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/009/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/010/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/011/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/012/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/013/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/014/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/015/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/016/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/017/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/019/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/020/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/022/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/024/index.html | 4 +- public/week-notes/025/index.html | 12 +- public/week-notes/026/index.html | 128 ++++++++++++++++ public/week-notes/027/index.html | 145 ++++++++++++++++++ public/week-notes/index.xml | 62 +++++--- public/write-brief/index.html | 3 +- themes/neverhungoveragain/assets/css/main.css | 16 +- themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/home.html | 6 + themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/page.html | 3 +- 44 files changed, 618 insertions(+), 226 deletions(-) create mode 100644 public/week-notes/026/index.html create mode 100644 public/week-notes/027/index.html diff --git a/content/week-notes/027.md b/content/week-notes/027.md index 09a0cf0..c073760 100644 --- a/content/week-notes/027.md +++ b/content/week-notes/027.md @@ -4,27 +4,32 @@ date: 2025-08-06 tags: - week-notes draft: true +url: week-notes/027 --- ## Doing I'm still working on planning for the college class I'm teaching in a few weeks. I *need* to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don't really plan that way, so I'm going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It's a lot of work, but I'm [feeling a lot better than I was last week](https://cassie.ink/week-notes/026/). I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor's syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I'm moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it's just a matter of doing the work. -I've been playing with the idea for a while now of buying a new monitor for my desk at work — the school issues me one (and I asked for a second to have a dual monitor setup, which they did give me), but they're pretty bottom of the barrel office displays. They're not even 1080p, which is a real pain for grading on our archaic LMS. I hunted around for deals on a cheap display, but I found that anything worth spending money on far outpaced my displays at home (a Dell S2340M that I bought in 2015 and an ASUS VZ239H-W from 2016 that I inherited from my sister). I ended up cashing in some of my credit card rewards points and taking advantage of a sale[^1] to get a KTC H27T22C-3, which will be a big upgrade for me (23" to 27"; 1080p to 1440p; much higher refresh rate and a new IPS panel). Then I got on my bullshit and started researching monitor arms — I've always wanted one, but neither of my previous displays were VESA compatible. I found a crazy deal for a white Ergotron MXV dual monitor mount on eBay (a little over $100 shipped), bought a VESA adapter for the Dell and a plate to distribute the weight on my desk, and now I'm just waiting for everything to come in. I really want this school year to stop staying so late at school and just do work at home, where I have a much more comfortable and quality set up[^2] (including a Steelcase Leap v2, which I recently found on Facebook Marketplace in mint condition for $175). I'm justifying my recent exorbitant spending on my office as a way to stop spending so much fucking time on my phone and instead put that energy into building websites, playing games, and maybe getting back into content creation.[^3] +I've been playing with the idea for a while now of buying a new monitor for my desk at work — the school issues me one (and I asked for a second to have a dual monitor setup, which they did give me), but they're pretty bottom of the barrel office displays. They're not even 1080p, which is a real pain for grading on our archaic LMS. I hunted around for deals on a cheap display, but I found that anything worth spending money on far outpaced my displays at home (a Dell S2340M that I bought in 2015 and an ASUS VZ239H-W from 2016 that I inherited from my sister). I ended up cashing in some of my credit card rewards points and taking advantage of a sale[^1] to get a KTC H27T22C-3, which will be a big upgrade for me (23" to 27"; 1080p to 1440p; much higher refresh rate and a new IPS panel). Then I got on my bullshit and started researching monitor arms — I've always wanted one, but neither of my previous displays were VESA compatible. I found a crazy deal for a white Ergotron MXV dual monitor mount on eBay (a little over $100 shipped), bought a VESA adapter for the Dell and a plate to distribute the weight on my desk, and now I'm just waiting for everything to come in. This coming school year, I really want to stop staying at work so late and just do my grading and planning at home, where I have a much more comfortable and quality set up[^2] (including a Steelcase Leap v2, which I recently found on Facebook Marketplace in mint condition for $175). + +I'm also justifying my recent exorbitant spending on my office as a way to stop spending so much fucking time on my phone and instead put that energy into writing, building websites, playing games, and maybe getting back into content creation.[^3] I'll take the ASUS to school; maybe a few years down the line when they get to be reasonably priced, I'll get an OLED and replace the Dell, but for now, it works just fine for a secondary display. ## Reading Most of my reading from here on out is going to be prep work for my college class and for the coming school year. I'm almost done with *Speak* by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I'm glad to say is as good as I remember it — it was a favorite of mine as a teen. I also recently learned that there's a graphic novel version that I'd like to get my hands on one day. Frankly, I'd love to teach this book one day in the classroom (not for a college course) — even if it is dated in terms of publication year (the themes are perennial) — but that's not really possible with the age group that I teach right now. -I'm also refreshing myself on chapters from *Literature for Young Adults: Books (and More) for Contemporary Readers* by Joan L. Knickerbocker and James A. Rycik, which is our textbook for the course. I know *The House on Mango Street* by Sandra Cisneros well enough that I was able to plan all of that from memory, but I pulled two poems from *Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood* by Judith Ortiz Cofer to pair with it. I first read the better part of *Silent Dancing* in undergrad — I think for a world lit class — and really loved it; the title story is particularly resonant and haunting. I'd like to go back and read it in full when I'm less bogged down with work. +I'm also refreshing myself on chapters from *Literature for Young Adults: Books (and More) for Contemporary Readers* by Joan L. Knickerbocker and James A. Rycik, which is our textbook for the course and is about as exciting as it sounds (though useful). I know *The House on Mango Street* by Sandra Cisneros well enough that I was able to plan from memory, but I pulled two poems from *Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood* by Judith Ortiz Cofer to pair with it. I first read the better part of *Silent Dancing* in undergrad — I think for a world lit class — and really loved it; the title story is particularly resonant and haunting. I'd like to go back and read it in full when I'm less bogged down with work. ## Watching -Joe and I are still watching old seasons of *Survivor* — we're on *Caramoan* right now. There are no returning players for 50 on it, but we enjoyed *South Pacific*, and I see *Caramoan* as kind of part two of that season. We're still following [Austin Walker's Let's Play of *Knights of the Old Republic II* ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzb96hSa04DPbyVmGawLPUYr9DUG99k8Q) and then watching [Friends at the Table Ali's *Mistria* Mondays](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIAGhNc7IWXxCHc55BwOsuTgMrDM8smSU) when we need turn off our brain content. +Joe and I are still watching old seasons of *Survivor* — we're on *Caramoan* right now. There are no returning players for 50 on it, but we enjoyed *South Pacific*, and I see *Caramoan* as kind of part two of that season. We're still following [Austin Walker's Let's Play of *Knights of the Old Republic II* ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzb96hSa04DPbyVmGawLPUYr9DUG99k8Q) and then watching [Friends at the Table Ali's *Mistria* Mondays](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIAGhNc7IWXxCHc55BwOsuTgMrDM8smSU) when we need turn off our brain content. I've pushed into season four of *Downton Abbey*, but it's losing its luster. I would like to maybe finish it, though... again, maybe when I'm less busy with work. ## Playing -I'm back on my *Fields of Mistria* bullshit now that we're home. At this point, I've exhausted a lot of the content currently available, which isn't a bad place to be — I've *seen* just about everything (except heart events, which I really don't interact with in these types of games) and now can focus on 100% things and beautifying my farm. There's still a few things that will unlock at higher town ranks, and I can keep looking forward to the regular updates. +I'm back on my *Fields of Mistria* bullshit now that we're home. At this point, I've exhausted a lot of the content currently available, which isn't a bad place to be — I've *seen* just about everything (except heart events, which I really don't interact with in these types of games) and now can focus on 100%ing things and beautifying my farm. There's still a few things that will unlock at higher town ranks, and I can keep looking forward to the regular updates. ## Listening I listened to *Tapestry* by Carole King. I'm not really sure why — I knew it wasn't really going to be for me. It's a legendary album and I'm sure deserves its place in music history, but as an individual listener in 2025, I found it a bit ho-hum. -I also listened to [*I Love My Computer* by Ninajirachi](https://ninajirachi.bandcamp.com/album/i-love-my-computer), which fucking bangs. Recommended for fans of Charli XCX's earlier, more PC music-adjacent era[^4], and general hyperpop/EDM folks. Listen to "Fuck My Computer," "Delete," and "All I Am" for a taste of what the whole album is like; I'm particularly enamored with "Sing Good," but the whole album feels like an ode to teenage creativity and terminally online behavior, both of which I am deeply nostalgic for. +I also listened to [Outside the Lobby]([https://pca.st/5wv7133q](https://pca.st/5wv7133q "https://pca.st/5wv7133q")'s episode on *The Order 1886* after one of the hosts shared it in a Discord group I'm in. It was a great, funny episode that I enjoyed despite being an *Order* sicko (they were quite negative about the game). I'm so fucking into music lately that I don't make much time for podcast listening, but I would like to listen to more of their episodes. + +I also listened to [*I Love My Computer* by Ninajirachi](https://ninajirachi.bandcamp.com/album/i-love-my-computer), which fucking bangs. Recommended for fans of Charli XCX's earlier, more PC music-adjacent era[^4], and general hyperpop/EDM folks. Listen to "Fuck My Computer," "Delete," and "All I Am" for a taste of what the whole album is like; I'm particularly enamored with "Sing Good," but the whole album feels like an ode to teenage creativity and terminally online behavior, for which I am squarely in the audience. [^1]: I've been slowly cutting down on my Amazon purchasing — I'm hoping to be almost entirely off of it soon — but I don't have any brick and mortar electronics stores around me aside from Walmart, which feels like a lateral move... and a bitch needs a discount every now and then. [^2]: Ideally I would be doing no work outside of the school day, but that's not the reality of teaching — and also I am a workaholic and perfectionist. Let me live. diff --git a/public/an-ode-to-gitsync/index.html b/public/an-ode-to-gitsync/index.html index 3687d24..45e04cd 100644 --- a/public/an-ode-to-gitsync/index.html +++ b/public/an-ode-to-gitsync/index.html @@ -46,8 +46,7 @@
- - +

an ode to gitsync

diff --git a/public/breaking-silences/index.html b/public/breaking-silences/index.html index 05baf43..1244ec0 100644 --- a/public/breaking-silences/index.html +++ b/public/breaking-silences/index.html @@ -47,8 +47,7 @@ I am the faculty advisor for my middle school’s GSA. I have been for years
- - +

breaking silences

diff --git a/public/cassie-ink-is-my-new-home/index.html b/public/cassie-ink-is-my-new-home/index.html index 40388c1..957ed96 100644 --- a/public/cassie-ink-is-my-new-home/index.html +++ b/public/cassie-ink-is-my-new-home/index.html @@ -47,8 +47,7 @@ This blog started on bearblog.dev as cassie.land. Bearblog is a great platform,
- - +

cassie.ink is my new home

diff --git a/public/coming-out/index.html b/public/coming-out/index.html index 9219cdf..679b4c4 100644 --- a/public/coming-out/index.html +++ b/public/coming-out/index.html @@ -47,8 +47,7 @@ My relationship with my bisexuality has been fraught. I can pinpoint in specific
- - +

Coming Out

diff --git a/public/css/main.css b/public/css/main.css index 09e0585..f919832 100644 --- a/public/css/main.css +++ b/public/css/main.css @@ -170,8 +170,9 @@ nav ul { } a { + color: var(--text); text-decoration: none; - border-bottom: medium dotted var(--blue); + border-bottom: medium dotted var(--text); } } @@ -225,6 +226,19 @@ nav ul { text-align: center; } +.home article .jump { + text-transform: uppercase; + font-family: 'Domaine Display', Georgia, serif; + font-weight: 700; + display: flex; + justify-content: center; + + svg { + width: 20px; + margin-right: 5px; + } +} + .home .all { text-align: center; diff --git a/public/dad/index.html b/public/dad/index.html index 36c5010..80353c7 100644 --- a/public/dad/index.html +++ b/public/dad/index.html @@ -46,8 +46,7 @@
- - +

dad

diff --git a/public/i-finished-lord-of-the-rings/index.html b/public/i-finished-lord-of-the-rings/index.html index add02e4..726e4be 100644 --- a/public/i-finished-lord-of-the-rings/index.html +++ b/public/i-finished-lord-of-the-rings/index.html @@ -46,8 +46,7 @@
- - +

Climbing my personal Mount Doom (I finished reading Lord of the Rings)

diff --git a/public/index.html b/public/index.html index 5c65622..a023e02 100644 --- a/public/index.html +++ b/public/index.html @@ -48,16 +48,77 @@
+

I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027)

+
+ week-notes/027 +
+

Doing

+

I’m still working on planning for the college class I’m teaching in a few weeks. I need to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don’t really plan that way, so I’m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It’s a lot of work, but I’m feeling a lot better than I was last week. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor’s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I’m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it’s just a matter of doing the work.

+
+ + + Read More + +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+ +

I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26)

+
+ week-notes/026 +
+

Doing

+

I’m teaching (adjunct lecturing) a college class in the fall for the first time. I’m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I’m also trying to do my own thing. It’s a lot of work and I’m very stressed about it.

+

I know it’s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It’s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)

+
+ + + Read More + +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+ +
+

i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25)

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 with my history with the series and my thoughts.

+

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. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!

+
+ + + Read More + +
    @@ -80,6 +141,12 @@

Once upon a time ago (and a time, and a time), I had a podcast. I miss podcasting dearly and think about going back often — otherwise, what am I to do with a partial, flawed understanding of normalizing to a target loudness and editing around the disgusting noises my mouth makes? Well, share it with others, of course.1

In case it was not clear, I am not a professional. I am a blockhead who likes to tinker and who has watched a lot of YouTube videos. These are the FX chains I use for my voice, which may or may not be helpful to other people who do not have my voice. This is also not an exhaustive audio guide or overview of how I edit my audio. Maybe another time.

+
+ + + Read More + +
    @@ -109,6 +176,12 @@ i-finished-lord-of-the-rings

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring released in 2001 when I was seven years old. At the time, my media diet consisted mostly of The Powerpuff Girls and obsessively reading and re-reading the first four Harry Potter books.1 I would like to say that my father was thoughtful and felt that I would have enjoyed another fantasy series with wizards and magic but knew that a three-plus-hour theater experience was tall ask for a seven year old. Unfortunately, I know him, and I think it more likely that he is cheap and thought the movie looked cool, so when Fellowship released on home media, we trucked to the neighborhood knock-off and rented it on VHS. That night, I crowded with my two older siblings around a (by today’s standards) laughably small tube TV. We tucked in with no expectations or understanding of what the movie would be about.

+
+ + + Read More + +
    @@ -121,51 +194,6 @@
-
- -

cassie.ink is my new home

-
- cassie-ink-is-my-new-home -
-

I moved domains, again.

-

This blog started on bearblog.dev as cassie.land. Bearblog is a great platform, but I wanted a challenge in my life, I guess, so I taught myself to use Hugo and moved to esotericbullshit.net (cassie.land was repurposed for my NAS). I love the esotericbullshit moniker and URL — it makes me laugh — but as it turns out, it’s kind of hard to share your link when it contains profanity.1 Perhaps that’s copium for a growing domain purchasing addiction, but I intend to make this one stick.

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- -

(week notes 25)

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Doing

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Reading

-

And Then? And Then? What Else? has become a slog, but I press on nonetheless. There’s little here to amuse or excite; even devout Lemony Snicket fans will be disappointed I think by the lack of new information or even commentary concerning the books. Handler confirms that the Baudelaires are named for the poet, that the melodrama of the books is inspired by Edvard Gorey, and that he openly disdains the film — hardly revelations by any means. Most egregiously, he seriously downplays the accusations of sexual inappropriateness against him and attempts to use his own childhood sexual assault as a shield against them.

- -
- -
- -
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view all @@ -214,5 +242,4 @@

- - +Recent content on cassie.ink Hugo en-us - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + + I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m still working on planning for the college class I&rsquo;m teaching in a few weeks. I <em>need</em> to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don&rsquo;t really plan that way, so I&rsquo;m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It&rsquo;s a lot of work, but I&rsquo;m <a href="https://cassie.ink/week-notes/026/">feeling a lot better than I was last week</a>. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor&rsquo;s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I&rsquo;m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it&rsquo;s just a matter of doing the work.</p> + + + I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m teaching (<em>adjunct lecturing</em>) a college class in the fall for the first time. I&rsquo;m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I&rsquo;m also trying to do my own thing. It&rsquo;s a lot of work and I&rsquo;m very stressed about it.</p> <p>I know it&rsquo;s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It&rsquo;s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)</p> + i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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.</p> <h2 id="reading">Reading</h2> <p>I finished reading <em>Return of the King</em> this week, completing a long-standing personal mission to read <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. I <a href="https://git.32bit.cafe/cassie/cassiedotink.git">wrote up a big long post</a> with my history with the series and my thoughts.</p> + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!</p> FX chains by the utterly inept @@ -44,7 +58,7 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <p><em>And Then? And Then? What Else?</em> has become a slog, but I press on nonetheless. There&rsquo;s little here to amuse or excite; even devout Lemony Snicket fans will be disappointed I think by the lack of new information or even commentary concerning the books. Handler confirms that the Baudelaires are named for the poet, that the melodrama of the books is inspired by Edvard Gorey, and that he openly disdains the film — hardly revelations by any means. Most egregiously, he seriously downplays the accusations of sexual inappropriateness against him and attempts to use his own childhood sexual assault as a shield against them.</p> - listen to my story (week notes 024) + listen to my story (week notes 24) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ @@ -58,7 +72,7 @@ finishing Euphoria instead of reading classic literature - I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022) + I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 22) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ @@ -72,14 +86,14 @@ <p>I recently discovered some weirdness with my hard drives in my PC. It&rsquo;s a long story that isn&rsquo;t worth telling, but the end of it is that I bought an NVMe drive and am starting fresh with a clean install of Windows. It&rsquo;s fairly painless now that I have a drive that&rsquo;s <em>just</em> my files with a separate OS drive. I do have to reinstall and set up some apps again, but it has been a good opportunity to reassess the cruft I&rsquo;ve let build up on there over the years.</p> - hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 020) + hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 20) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ <p>I had a friend over one evening for pizza and card games — mostly Fan Tan and Blackjack, which are almost the only card games I like. My volleyball rec league started up again this week; I haven&rsquo;t made time for physical exercise lately, and volleyball is a good commitment. I&rsquo;d like to start running again soon too, but I&rsquo;m nursing a minor foot injury that I&rsquo;d like to see cleared up before I put too much stress on it. Thursday was the school spelling bee, which is both fun and heart-wrenching to watch.</p> - stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 019) + stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 19) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ @@ -100,14 +114,14 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>Unfortunately I haven&rsquo;t been able to exercise much; partly, this is because I haven&rsquo;t been making the time for it, but I also tweaked my right shoulder somehow and it&rsquo;s been quite painful to use in every day tasks. <em>Ring Fit</em> is therefore off the table. The trouble is that I genuinely don&rsquo;t know what I did to it! This week is my last before our holiday break, and I&rsquo;m hoping to get back on the horse over the course of my 16 (!!) days off.</p> - sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 017) + sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 17) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>I <strong>bought a new domain name</strong> — I&rsquo;m not going to post it just yet — but I&rsquo;m considering switching this site over to it. I love esotericbullshit, but I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s the energy I want to put out there. It makes the URL a little hard to share. But it also feels remarkably stupid when I <em>just</em> moved this over from another domain (which is incidentally quite similar to the new one&hellip;).<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> - to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 016) + to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 16) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ @@ -121,7 +135,7 @@ <p>Since I <a href="https://cassie.ink/what%27s-this-%28and-how-it-works%29/">moved this site to Hugo</a>, I&rsquo;ve been using an app called GitJournal to post from my phone. I have a beautiful desk setup with a clacky mechanical keyboard that&rsquo;s a joy to write on, but the simple fact is that I&rsquo;m a lazy shit and want to update my blog from the couch. It&rsquo;s all mostly worked fine, with some headaches. I originally intended to use GitJournal to store my Github repo to my phone&rsquo;s filesystem and then point an Obsidian<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> vault at that.</p> - my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 015) + my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 15) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ @@ -135,7 +149,7 @@ <p>My thirtieth birthday party, the day before my actual turn from one decade to the next, was a beautiful night. My mom, both pre-emptively staking out her territory as an Italian-American grandmother and (past but an adverb?) fulfilling regrets at never having been able to throw me a childhood party, brought too much food and snacks and love — or staying up and out past the early afternoon, which is a kind of love for us; my friends, older than me in years and with busy families and schedules, brought wisdom and comfort in growing older gracefully; and my friends closer in age drove great distances to celebrate <em>me</em> — or at least, with me.</p> - it's second nature to love you (week notes 014) + it's second nature to love you (week notes 14) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ @@ -149,49 +163,49 @@ <p>2016 was the first year I was eligible to vote in a presidential election. I was away at college, so I completed an absentee ballot, and, like most, felt confident in what I thought would be the result. I was no big fan of Clinton&rsquo;s — I voted for Bernie in the primaries — but the other option was laughable: I couldn&rsquo;t believe that a major political party put such a clown up as their candidate, and I thought the electorate was smart enough to see him for the fraud (and fascist) he was.</p> - spend my days running in circles (week notes 013) + spend my days running in circles (week notes 13) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I presented to pre-service teachers at my alma mater with a colleague! Emotionally, I still feel like I was in their spot not that long ago — and then I remember I graduated over six years ago (and into a vastly different world and job market).</li> <li>I&rsquo;m finding myself using ellipses a lot and I do not like it. Is this growing old? Am I becoming a boomer?</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about maintaining some kind of daily log — just simple, passing notes on what I did, what I thought about. Obsidian has this feature built in and it might be a good way to start. I like the idea of it being searchable and (theoretically) infinite in size, but I also want an excuse for another notebook. <ul> <li>I used to do daily reflections at the end of my work day. Slowly, those became every few days, then every week, then rarely. It was a good practice that I wish I had maintained, but there&rsquo;s already so much I&rsquo;m packing into my work day — and my goal in daily notes is to be more mindful about what I&rsquo;m doing and thinking in my free time.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I attended my state-wide English teacher conference; this is something like my sixth or seventh time attending and I still find it valuable. I left with a lot of great ideas on how to diversify my practice and better empower my students.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Percy Jackson and the Olympians.</em></strong> Joe and I have watched a few episodes. I liked the book fine, but the TV show has yet to grab me. It lacks Percy&rsquo;s narrative voice (and personality), and while it&rsquo;s good that Percy is played by an actual child, his pre-pubescent voice freaks me out.</li> <li><strong><em>Broad City</em></strong>. Joe and I watched a lot of <em>Broad City</em> early in our relationship, but we never finished it. We are starting it over from the beginning. Still funny!</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Charli XCX, <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>.</strong> Every re-release and new drop for <em>brat</em> innovates, co-exists, and complements. The features on this remix album feel like an ode to the remarkable original release and a statement of how pivotal the album has been personally and for the industry writ large. This version of &ldquo;Everything is romantic&rdquo; is as much a remix as an iteration; the original captures a single moment in beautiful, mimetic detail, and this one is another artist following the theme and form with their own experiences. <em>brat</em> is undoubtedly a project we&rsquo;ll all be talking about when we discuss the music of the 2020s; I love witnessing its creation in real time. <ul> <li>For the haters, a friend of mine said the mixing was bad and that it &ldquo;just sounds like noise.&rdquo; I still like her (Charli and the friend, in that order<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>).</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>Foxholes, <em>Foxholes</em>.</strong> I found &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; while going through Daytrotter archives and loved it; the rest of the album is pleasant listening, but &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; is the stand out.</li> <li><strong>Yung Lean, <em>Stardust</em>.</strong> I loved Yung Lean&rsquo;s feature on <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>; imagine my surprise when I discovered that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stgrSjynPKs&amp;pp=ygUJeXVuZyBsZWFu">the esoteric bullshit (or so I thought) I was listening to ten+ years ago as a joke but not really</a> went on to be a critically recognized artist. I thought it was just a weird fucking song. <ul> <li><em>Stardust</em> is a much more polished and, dare I say, coherent and digestible<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> product than &ldquo;Hurt&rdquo;; I like it, but I&rsquo;m not sure any of the songs will earn the coveted ⭐ on Plex.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> It&rsquo;s music I&rsquo;d have to be in a mood for — although the mumble-y nature of it makes it good background music while working. Maybe it just needs to sit with me a little more.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>just kidding :-)&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 012) + what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 12) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing a condensed post this week because I have been so busy with work!</p> <ul> <li> <p>Joe and I finished our rewatch of <strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, and I&rsquo;m happy to say that I still love the show. It goes downhill in season six and is borderline unwatchable in season seven, but I have such affection for all before that — especially the warm blanket, cozy autumn early seasons.</p> </li> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m watching Joe play <strong><em>The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom</em></strong>.</p> - but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 011) + but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 11) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing two weeks in one post. Last week I was dead sick and working too much so I didn&rsquo;t assemble a post throughout the week as I normally do.</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I drove back to ___ for a funeral&hellip; and then back, all in one day. Eight hours on the road, but it was nice to spend some time together, singing and talking about heavy things.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I ran four miles in one go! Not without stopping and walking, and I&rsquo;m far from my best times, but I&rsquo;m trying to rebuild my endurance and speed after taking a long time off.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying to get back into skin care. I&rsquo;ve never had a thorough routine, but I&rsquo;ve been slacking even on the meager bit I do. I looked in the mirror and saw an old person looking back at me, so I&rsquo;ve been cleansing and moisturizing on a near-daily basis now.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em> by Elizabeth Tova Bailey.</strong> I&rsquo;m reading this on recommendation of a friend and coworker. The writing has a beautiful directness, but I&rsquo;m not exactly fascinated by (or at all interested in) snails. It is eye-opening to read something so scientific in approach that is still a work of literature, however; it leaves me to consider how our different disciplines — me as an English teacher and my coworker a Science teacher — change the way we think and look at the world.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://platinumtulip.bearblog.dev/a-ranking-of-imac-g3-colors/">a ranking of iMac G3 colors</a> by tulip.</strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://thebirdhouse.bearblog.dev/field-notes-cured-my-twitter-addiction/">field notes cured my twitter addiction</a> on The Birdhouse.</strong> A lovely ode to a notebook.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season six.</strong> Joe and I have reached about the end of the season. I think six has some good moments and episodes but is, on the whole, drudgery. Luke&rsquo;s character takes a bizarre turn, and I somehow have even less patience for Rory and Logan&rsquo;s relationship this time around.</li> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle five.</strong> Passive rewatches while folding laundry; the actual modeling and photoshoots are a low for the UPN seasons, but the personalities make it an entertaining season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I have played more of <strong><em>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II</em></strong>, which is really him watching me play and selecting dialogue options with me. He really does not care for the combat; I don&rsquo;t love it either, but having played so much of this game and the first as a kid, I know my way around it much better. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to like any of the characters yet; on one hand, I get that, because I think the <em>KotOR II</em> characters are much more complex and harder to initially like than the first game&rsquo;s, but maybe the series just isn&rsquo;t for him&hellip; <ul> <li>We&rsquo;ve been playing as a female Exile, but Joe was interested in the Handmaiden, and I prefer her to the Disciple, so I decided to roll back a save and use the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/544-partyswap/">PartySwap mod</a>&hellip; until I realized that I have Steam Workshop mods mixed with the <a href="https://kotor.neocities.org/modding/mod_builds/k2/full">KotOR II Mod Build</a>.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Apparently, because I used the Workshop 13 years ago when I last played this game, Steam decided I definitely wanted those installed again. Ugh. The solution was to start from the beginning with cheats that will let me zip through and get back to where we were. It took the better part of five hours to re-install all the mods and play back through Peragus and Telos.</li> <li>That all said, I really love this game. I love the way the narrative places you in a backstory rather than the &ldquo;blank slate&rdquo; approach of the first game.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> The player then gets to decide the Exile&rsquo;s reasons for going to war, their outlook on the Jedi, and there&rsquo;s a lot of gray area to be found.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Mr. Anyway’s Holey Spirits Perform! One Foot in Bethlehem</em> and <em>Pure Particles</em> by The Bug Club.</strong> More recommendations from a former student of mine. I&rsquo;m really enjoying them! <em>One Foot in Bethlehem</em> very clearly has some religious satire, but I&rsquo;ve not had a chance to parse for sub-text&hellip; At this point, I&rsquo;m on a basal, what&rsquo;s catchy level (the answer is a lot).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>religion, marriage, the future&hellip; the usual, at this point. I hate getting old.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 010) + I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 10) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ Sun, 22 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My volleyball rec league started back up! I&rsquo;m awful and uncoordinated on the court, but it&rsquo;s fun to play with friends, and I have learned the hard way that I&rsquo;m a lot less depressed when I&rsquo;m active.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m enjoying reading ex-cohost folks on the bearblog discovery feed. The trending feed can get a little stale.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I hope they stick around.</li> <li>I took a walk (and a run) with a dear friend that I&rsquo;ve been trying to get together with for a while. She&rsquo;s decades older than me, but we are incredibly like-minded. Kindred spirits. I appreciate her wisdom and guidance and friendship immensely as she listens to all my neuroses.</li> <li>On Sunday night, Joe and I went to a wedding for two of our best friends. Maybe I&rsquo;ll make a longer post with all that stirs up for me — thoughts on marriage and commitment&hellip;</li> <li>Unfortunately, I left the wedding feeling sick. COVID test was negative so here&rsquo;s hoping it&rsquo;s just allergies from the changing season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You,</em> Miranda July.</strong> I stand by what I said last week. I think I need a break from the sexual deviants I&rsquo;m apparently (and unconsciously) selecting lately. I&rsquo;m glad to be done with this; I appreciated July&rsquo;s occasional wit and found it Handler-esque, but those touches were few and far between, and the rest of it mostly just grossed me out.</li> <li>My next books will be <em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em>, recommended by a friend and coworker, and, I think, <em>Into the Wild</em>, which I&rsquo;ve always meant to read. It might not seem like much for an English teacher, but these past few months I&rsquo;ve been reading for pleasure more than I have in years and it has me feeling so full. It&rsquo;s great to rediscover that joy.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li><strong><a href="https://netigen.com/read/linkin-park-from-zero">&ldquo;Linkin Park, From Zero&rdquo;</a> by n3verm0re.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a Linkin Park fan by any means, but I have been interested in seeing how a group reawakens after such a tremendous loss. I really enjoyed this piece about it.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Green Dream in F#</em> and <em>Rare Birds</em>, The Bug Club.</strong> I asked a student of mine what kind of music she listened to; she said her music was too weird and I&rsquo;d probably never heard of it. I took that as a personal challenge. But it&rsquo;s not that weird — although, as an (ex?) Xiu Xiu listener, my barometer is off. I liked both albums! They&rsquo;re light, fun listening, and absolutely up my alley.</li> <li><strong><em>Romance is Boring</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> Listening to the music students of mine like has me thinking about the music I was in love with at their age. <em>RiB</em> came out at the exact right time for me and holds a special place in my heart. I listen to tracks from it often, but this was the first time I&rsquo;d revisited some deeper cuts, like &ldquo;Who Fell Asleep In,&rdquo; in years.</li> <li><strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> I&rsquo;m still forming my larger thoughts on <em>All Hell</em>, but it was interesting to compare side-by-side with <em>RiB</em>. It is far more even and consistent in quality — <em>RiB</em> has some all-timers but also some real duds (&ldquo;Plan A&rdquo;) — but there is a visceral, adolescent melodrama to <em>RiB</em> that <em>All Hell</em> lacks. <em>All Hell</em> is instead grown up and wistfully forlorn, especially compared to juggernauts like &ldquo;I Just Sighed.&rdquo; Both are good and appropriate for me at different times and headspaces, but <em>RiB</em> holds more of hook — although I have fifteen years of relationship and baggage with it compared to <em>All Hell</em>.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about a recurring theme in songs I am or have been fixated on — <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;Drops (reprise),&rdquo; The Peripheral Ones</strong> - &ldquo;I know if I don&rsquo;t go now I won&rsquo;t make it out&rdquo; <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;The Whale Song,&rdquo; Modest Mouse</strong> - &ldquo;I guess I am a scout / so I should find a way out / so everyone can find a way out&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Ave Maria,&rdquo; Mac Miller</strong> - &ldquo;Have you found a way out?&rdquo; &amp; <strong>&ldquo;Come Back to Earth&rdquo;</strong> - &ldquo;I just need a way out of my head / I&rsquo;ll do anything for a way out of my head&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li>— the idea of making it out is, of course, not a unique theme, but perhaps it&rsquo;s why <em>The House on Mango Street</em> resonated with me: <em>&ldquo;For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I think posts don&rsquo;t decay quickly enough from the feed, and the top page or two of trending posts are all by the same handful of people. There&rsquo;s a handful of very active posters, which is a great thing, but I like to see variety there.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - 666 with a princess streak (week notes 009) + 666 with a princess streak (week notes 09) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Working on getting off big corporate social media, still. I&rsquo;m almost entirely off Twitter; I keep the app just because I have a few notifications set for when specific people tweet (mostly bands who tweet out tour dates), but I&rsquo;m otherwise mostly on Mastodon (social.lol) and Discord. Cohost going down was sad to see even if I was never an active user and there were problems with it, but its downfall impressed on me even further the importance of owning your content — and it made me really happy to have this space for my thoughts and writing.</li> <li>I got my COVID booster and flu shot on Friday, which put me out of order for some time. Glad to have them done, however; one day of discomfort is worth it!</li> <li>The weight of being a teacher really set on me this week — not the teaching work, which I love, but the emotional weight of my students&rsquo; lives. It&rsquo;s especially hard to see kids that remind me of myself at their age and wish I could impart all that I&rsquo;ve learned — but knowing that there are no shortcuts and that the only way out for them is through. I can&rsquo;t pluck them out; they have to live it. I can only hope to be there for them as they do.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You</em>, Miranda July.</strong> This has been in my Amazon wishlist for I don&rsquo;t know how long — long enough that I&rsquo;ve forgotten where I&rsquo;d found it or why I&rsquo;d wanted to read it. I liked the cover a lot, I guess. Anyway, I feel this is suffering from my reading it so soon after <em>Death Is Not an Option</em> as I have much of the same opinion: excellent prose but turned off by all the weird sex.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I find July&rsquo;s narrators and conceits to be far more varied than Rivecca&rsquo;s, but Rivecca never made me read about an old man who fantasizes about teenage girls, so I automatically like her better.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/meet-lochlan-oneil-the-creator-of">Meet Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, the creator of DashCon</a> on Garbage Day.</strong> <em>&ldquo;I had to go to extensive therapy because I was like, “oh my god, I, Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, single-handedly destroyed fandom culture?”</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon 4Ever.</em></strong> Joe and I got our shit rocked by the COVID and flu shots and decided to watch this. Middling, but a surprising environmentalist message. I&rsquo;m realizing how much of who Joe is goes back to Pokémon, of all things.</li> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season five.</strong> Joe and I went back in for a few episodes in our shot stupor. Still enjoyable, but we are quickly gaining on the last of the good episodes in my opinion.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>i,i</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> Not bad, but I like <em>For Emma</em> and <em>22, A Million</em> far more.</li> <li><strong><em>Chants</em>, The Peripheral Ones.</strong> I&rsquo;ve said before that this album is perhaps the most esoteric of my bullshit; it&rsquo;s a cover album of a little-known<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Myspace-era band, <a href="https://themiddleones.bandcamp.com/">The Middle Ones</a>, done by <a href="https://pigthe.bandcamp.com/music">pigthe</a> (the guitarist for <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/music">Trust Fund</a>). The album is obscure enough that it&rsquo;s not on MusicBrainz (I&rsquo;m aware that I could add it) and the band has 23 listeners on last.fm. I love it and go back to it often.</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>reading these books back to back has left me wondering if I&rsquo;m somehow unconsciously selecting books only written by deviants or if I&rsquo;m just so vanilla that my gauge for sexual content is skewed&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - the birds remember how to come home (week notes 008) + the birds remember how to come home (week notes 08) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>School is officially back in session, so my free time is much more limited now. I&rsquo;m optimistic for the year, though!</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> Finished at last. I have not much new to say compared to last week. I felt a notable sense of relief to be done with it and free to move on.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marisabel.nl/public/blog/Write_as_you_wish:_a_call_to_bring_back_the_prose">Write as you wish: a call to bring back the prose</a> by Marisabel.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a good enough writer for this to be applicable, so call this aspirational reading.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://itskristin.bearblog.dev/back-at-it-social-media-free/">back at it &amp; social media free</a> by kristin.</strong> I&rsquo;ve pretty much dropped Twitter in the last few weeks — I really want to separate myself from toxic online spaces.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://gkeenan.co/avgb/please-please-please-please-please-please-share-your-big-dumb-beautiful-self-with-the-world/">Please please please please please please share your big dumb beautiful self with the world</a> by Keenan.</strong> <em>&ldquo;What does it look like to put yourself on a page, or in a photo, or a brushstroke, or a string plucked and reverberating harmoniously out into the room? When does the screaming inside become loud enough, so all-encompassing that you open up the door to let it pour out of you?&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle three.</strong> <em>Top Model</em> is my comfort show right now. I love the first seven cycles best, but cycle three has a special place in my heart. It&rsquo;s one of the first cycles I ever saw and has one of the most entertaining casts. The modelling itself is pretty poor, but that&rsquo;s not really what <em>Top Model</em> was about.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ei6dNr3RkY&amp;list=PLipgnTt01UGXDW2B_eJMKSSi12Y7koJ9O&amp;pp=iAQB">Run Button&rsquo;s <em>Star Wars Outlaws</em> streams.</a></strong> I&rsquo;m really interested in <em>Outlaws</em> based on what I&rsquo;ve seen; Keith has been complaining about the stealth a lot in the streams, but I think a good amount of that has been player error.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.</em></strong> I&rsquo;ve tried to get Joe to play <em>KotOR</em> for years, but he was turned off by the combat. We listened to A More Civilized Age&rsquo;s coverage together, though (he&rsquo;s a big Friends at the Table fan), and it got him interested in <em>KotOR II</em> (despite my insisting for years that it is the finest piece of <em>Star Wars</em> media). We&rsquo;re playing through together — me with the controller but collectively making decisions. We&rsquo;re still on Peragus (gross), but I&rsquo;m enjoying revisiting it. This will be my first time playing it in at least ten years and my first time with the restored content mod.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Life&rsquo;s a Riot With Spy vs Spy</em>, Billy Bragg.</strong> I like &ldquo;A New England&rdquo; a whole lot; the rest was good but didn&rsquo;t grab me. There&rsquo;s a sparseness and intimacy that struck me when I first heard &ldquo;A New England,&rdquo; but the novelty had worn off for the other tracks.</li> <li><strong><em>For Emma, Forever Ago</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> I listened to this all the way through one night and it unfortunately really spoke to me. I know I&rsquo;ve listened through it before, years ago, and I didn&rsquo;t care for anything except &ldquo;Skinny Love&rdquo;; this time around, every track hit.</li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Bishop, CA&rdquo;</strong> and <strong>&ldquo;Wig Master,&rdquo; Xiu Xiu.</strong> I swore off Xiu Xiu back in 2013 or so after listening to them heavily during a deep depression; I&rsquo;m not cold turkey on them anymore, but they&rsquo;re not in my regular rotation either. I&rsquo;ve been thinking of these two, some of my favorites then.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>in so far as any Xiu Xiu song is a &ldquo;favorite&rdquo; and not &ldquo;a desperate cry for help&rdquo;&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 007) + I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 07) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ @@ -212,14 +226,14 @@ <p>Welcome to cassie.ink, the new home of my blog and web stuff.</p> <p>Previously, this blog was hosted at bearblog under the domain cassie.land. Now, I&rsquo;m using the SSG Hugo to create the site, which deploys to Github Pages for hosting.</p> <p><strong>So why the move?</strong> I love bearblog and recommend it to just about anyone who wants to get into blogging and the small web — it&rsquo;s dead simple for folks with no web expertise, it has an awesome community, and the discover page allows you to share your content and connect with folks also using the platform. Unfortunately, I am, at heart, a tinkerer — bearblog felt a little <em>too</em> easy, and a little limiting for some of the visions I have. And, ultimately, I just want to <strong>own my content</strong> and <strong>embrace new technologies and challenges</strong>.</p> - I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 006) + I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 06) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I was at school one day this week for an orientation for some student leaders.</li> <li>I went to Six Flags and realized I&rsquo;m old; my tolerance for roller coasters is, suddenly, shockingly low.</li> <li>Feeling extreme relief but also guilt for being such an introvert — lately I feel I&rsquo;m an anti-social loner, but friends have reassured me that these feelings are normal and everyone enjoys and protects their alone time (to an extent, depending on the person). All I really want to do is be alone in my house, left to do my silly little projects.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying still to move away from big, corporate social media — I have been spending more time on Mastodon and the bearblog discover feed. I&rsquo;ve scarcely opened Twitter, and I&rsquo;ve set 30m app timers for Facebook and Instagram. I rarely hit it for either, but something about knowing the timer is there makes me more conscious of the time I&rsquo;m wasting on them. I&rsquo;m not happy yet with my screen time as a whole, but at least I feel I&rsquo;m seeing more of real people (and people I choose to follow) than algorithms and dark patterns.</li> <li>On Friday, I went to IKEA with a friend and my sister to get some things for the house and a few items for my classroom.</li> <li>I intended to go into school on Saturday and begin some of the physical setup I need to do, but I felt sick and exhausted. I took a COVID test (negative) — I&rsquo;m hoping it&rsquo;s just holdover from a long day of driving on Friday.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://a-demain.bearblog.dev/studying-to-be-a-teacher-in-the-modern-day/">Studying to be a teacher in the modern day</a> by Sparrow.</strong> I feel the same about teaching as Sparrow: it&rsquo;s a hard career to choose in today&rsquo;s education system and economic climate, but teaching is so intrinsically part of me that I can&rsquo;t see myself doing anything else. Even with the stress, the low pay, the poor working conditions, I love it.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marblethoughts.bearblog.dev/what-a-demure-mindful-and-brat-summer/">What a demure, mindful, and brat summer</a> by Kayla.</strong> Great introspective piece on trends and shifting mindsets. As I get older, I&rsquo;m less connected to fads (especially because I&rsquo;m not on TikTok and have curated my social media feeds), but I do try hard to understand them — I never want to be someone who brushes things off as &ldquo;kids these days&rdquo; absurdity and who blames the younger generation for every societal woe. Brat summer and demure sound silly, but there&rsquo;s importance in trying to understand what matters to young people<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> — and we can only reach state of cooperation and harmony through mutual understanding and respect.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://slate.com/advice/2024/08/dear-prudence-coworkers-too-personal.html">Help! I Invited My Coworkers Into a Very Personal Part of My Life. Now I Really Regret It.</a> by Hillary Frey.</strong> I read Dear, Prudence often to satisfy my busybody tendencies and, occasionally, to talk through social quandaries with my partner. The first letter here hit particularly hard; I am a teacher and regularly have coworkers ask super invasive questions about my family planning. I&rsquo;m friends with someone who went through IVF and she&rsquo;s opened my eyes to how these &ldquo;innocent questions&rdquo; (they&rsquo;re not) can hurt folks dealing with infertility. I&rsquo;m not, but even I find questions about whether I&rsquo;m trying for a baby super invasive!</li> <li><strong><a href="https://blog.avas.space/kindness-online/">finding kindness online</a> by ava.</strong> A great piece about connection in gaming. I have baggage with video game-centric spaces online, but this gives me some hope.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Too Model,</em> cycle 1.</strong> Mostly passive viewing while folding laundry, but cycle 1 has a special quality. It feels less like a reality show and more like a documentary about what it&rsquo;s like to be on a reality show. The budget is clearly low and the show hadn&rsquo;t established its structure just yet, so the contestants learn how the show works along with us. It feels grounded and authentic — for a season of <em>Top Model</em>, that is.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYvqnTvUCg&amp;list=PLe_AuQUfBKl5R3Sc7Erpq3Y2me6q6uZ0R">Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke</a></strong> Joe and I are continuing this and still really loving it!</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Final Fantasy XIV.</em></strong> I&rsquo;m slowly working through the post-<em>Stormblood</em> patch content. Joe is still playing through <em>A Realm Reborn</em>, so I&rsquo;m levelling Warrior to do dungeons alongside him as a new class. I&rsquo;m enduring the slow, painful grind of levelling my Squadrons, too. I like the concept of Squadrons — they remind me of my beloved <em>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance</em>,<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> but unfortunately there is very little variety and a lot of waiting involved here.</li> <li><strong><em>Pokémon White Version</em></strong>. I was inspired to jump into a Pokémon game by the Nuzlocke Joe and I are watching. I&rsquo;ve never really played <em>White</em>; maybe a year ago I did the first three gyms, but I remember none of it. I started it over on Saturday night.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <p>Nothing really specific — just some shuffles. I have, however, <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/user/babyspace/">started tracking my listening data to listenbrainz</a>!</p> - the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 005) + the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 05) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ @@ -233,7 +247,7 @@ <p>Spoilers to follow.</p> <p>I wrote in my week notes:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong><em>The Basic Eight</em> by Daniel Handler.</strong> Handler&rsquo;s <em>Adverbs</em> is often what I cite when folks ask what my favorite book is, and I loved <em>Watch Your Mouth</em>, too. I need light reprieves from <em>The Odyssey</em>, too, so this seemed an excellent time to round out my reading of Handler&rsquo;s bibliography. I&rsquo;m about halfway through and enraptured by the narrative voice. It&rsquo;s pretentious, as a story narrated by a precocious high school senior should be, without being cloying, and with Handler&rsquo;s charming humor throughout. I love it so far and have faith that the feeling will continue. I normally hate books set in high school, but this one takes me back to my high school self — somehow, in a good way, which I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever felt before.</p> - I love when you invoke my death (week notes 004) + I love when you invoke my death (week notes 04) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ @@ -247,7 +261,7 @@ <blockquote> <p>Write a blog post about words of wisdom your younger self would have appreciated hearing. (via <a href="https://blogprompts.fyi">blogprompts</a>)<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p></blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m trying out doing blog prompts in an effort to populate this blog with more than just weekly round-ups and to get more comfortable writing about personal things.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></p> <p>I&rsquo;m going to select two quotes — both song lyrics — that have resonated for me.</p> <p>The first is from &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo; by Animal Collective, which I first heard in my late teens (maybe 16?) and still consider one of my favorite songs.</p> - clean as paper before the poem (week notes 003) + clean as paper before the poem (week notes 03) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ @@ -261,14 +275,14 @@ <p>I wrote a post a few months ago <a href="http://localhost:1313/moving-my-home-server-to-a-new-chassis/">cataloguing moving my home server</a> from the old NZXT case I had leftover from my old PC into a Rosewill chassis that would let me, eventually, move to a proper rack setup. This past Prime Day, I purchased a Riveco 15U rack and then some sliding rails to go along with it, with the hope of finally moving the loud and hot NAS into the basement where it belongs.</p> - ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002) + ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 02) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ <p>I&rsquo;m continuing to try out doing Week Notes instead of monthly wrap ups. So far, so good! As a callback to my livejournal days, I&rsquo;m trying out using a random quote from something I&rsquo;m enjoying this week as my title (most likely, and true to my livejournal heart, cryptic song lyrics).</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My district is finally paying me to organize <strong>Safe Space trainings</strong>. This week, I got together with two other teachers to collaborate on plans, then delivered the training to a group of folks who we also prepared to do the training themselves. An immensely rewarding experience that felt like the culmination of four years of anger and despair and turned those feelings into something positive and productive.</li> <li>Trying to <strong>get organized and get on a better schedule</strong>. I woke up on Friday at 2:14pm (!!!) and felt awful about it. I spent a lot of time that day organizing my calendar (digital on Todoist, and I keep a physical planner) and setting some goals for myself so I don&rsquo;t spend the whole summer sleeping like a teenager.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I also want to <strong>cut down on my screen time for big social media apps</strong> (like Instagram and Facebook) — the ones that have no value other than to waste my time. I put a big ol&rsquo; screen time widget on the homescreen of my phone as a way to try to curtail the scrolling; I&rsquo;m hoping that, when I unlock my phone, I&rsquo;ll see that I&rsquo;ve already spent a substantial amount of time on these apps and choose something else instead. I love to be online, but I&rsquo;d rather <strong>spend that time on indie web spaces</strong> like bearblog, Mastodon (I need to find folks to follow! Please send me recs and/or your account, fellow bearbloggers — my email is in the footer), and 32bitcafe.</li> <li>This is a very long-term goal, but I want to <strong>migrate my curriculum map from Notion to Obsidian</strong>. I&rsquo;m increasingly trying to move to open source programs (to, hopefully, stave off enshittification). The <a href="https://github.com/marcusolsson/obsidian-projects">Obsidian Projects plugin</a> is helping to make this a reality, but I&rsquo;m still looking for a good way to create a rollup of my tags that includes the full standard text and a heatmap of how frequently the tag is used. I played a bit with <a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo</a> and <a href="https://getgrav.org/">Grav</a> for this but found I was going <em>web first</em> in my approach when really I just wanted a content management system (which Obsidian is, in a way, albeit a private one).<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li>I <strong>moved my server into a rack setup</strong> and relocated it to my basement. I&rsquo;ll probably put together a full post cataloguing that.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>How to Talk So Teens Will Listen &amp; Listen So Teens Will Talk</em> by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish</strong>. I&rsquo;ve read many recommendations for this book and thought it might help me in the classroom. I started and finished the book in two days — it&rsquo;s a quick but valuable read. Right now, all the ideas are theoretical, as I won&rsquo;t get to try them out until September, but I love the approach. The authors put into explicit steps the feeling that I&rsquo;ve always had: interactions with anyone, but especially children, need to be based on mutual respect, and adults cannot expect children to control their emotions if they are not willing to do the same. I&rsquo;d love to make this a book study among co-workers.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://louplummer.lol/computer-people/">Computer People</a> by Lou Plummer</strong>. A thoughtful piece about the evolution and entry of tech into our lives, particularly in education. Unfortunately I don&rsquo;t share Lou&rsquo;s rosy outlook: I still have lots of coworkers who don&rsquo;t regard themselves as &ldquo;computer people&rdquo; and resist any new technology (and call me for help when something is unplugged).</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, continued from last week (<strong>season four</strong>)</li> <li><strong><em>Easy A</em> (2010)</strong>. I never saw this when it came out but always read positive talk about it. It was awful; few laughs and all the character&rsquo;s motivations and actions were puzzling. It seemed to exist only to sell the viewer on Emma Stone and to have her parade around in lingerie.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Stardew Valley</em>, update 1.6</strong>. I&rsquo;m playing a co-op save with Joe and my friend Nick. I love <em>Stardew</em> and am enjoying discovering some of the new changes and additions, but I&rsquo;m struggling with the chaos of a shared farm — Joe in particular has some very different organizational priorities than me.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Youth Novels</em>, Lykke Li.</strong> I listened to this album for the first time in 2012 (&ldquo;Melodies &amp; Desires&rdquo; and &ldquo;Little Bit&rdquo; being the two I listened to with any regularity); it came up in a library shuffle and I realized I was listening to it in 160kbps. I replaced it with a higher quality rip and enjoyed hearing instruments and layers I didn&rsquo;t know existed before. I&rsquo;ve also a new appreciation for &ldquo;Breaking It Up,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hanging High,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Good, I&rsquo;m Gone.&rdquo;</li> <li>I&rsquo;d like to be listening to <strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong>, the latest release by my favorite band, but I preordered it on vinyl and it still hasn&rsquo;t come in&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know how much longer I&rsquo;ll hold out.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup></li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Red Leather&rdquo; by Future &amp; Metro Boomin</strong>. I still don&rsquo;t listen to much rap outside of Mac (a bit of Vince Staples, some Stormzy, some Princess Nokia), but I&rsquo;d like to branch out. I heard this in the background of (probably) an Instagram Reel and dig it (I hate that this is how folks, myself included, are discovering music these days).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>In my heart of hearts, I am a lazy fucker, and I don&rsquo;t intend to change that. However, there&rsquo;s a lot I want to do during my summer break, and I know I&rsquo;ll be disappointed in myself if I waste away the <em>whole</em> summer being a lazy fucker. I want to allow myself time to relax, but balance is important.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - Week Notes 001 + Week Notes 01 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ Sun, 21 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ diff --git a/public/posts/2024-11-25-23-06-55/index.html b/public/posts/2024-11-25-23-06-55/index.html index 4659c4d..c7e6033 100644 --- a/public/posts/2024-11-25-23-06-55/index.html +++ b/public/posts/2024-11-25-23-06-55/index.html @@ -46,8 +46,7 @@
- - +

diff --git a/public/sitemap.xml b/public/sitemap.xml index 6eb4395..40084b7 100644 --- a/public/sitemap.xml +++ b/public/sitemap.xml @@ -3,19 +3,25 @@ xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> http://localhost:1313/ - 2025-07-25T00:00:00+00:00 + 2025-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 - http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - 2025-07-25T00:00:00+00:00 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + 2025-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 http://localhost:1313/tags/ - 2025-07-25T00:00:00+00:00 + 2025-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 http://localhost:1313/tags/week-notes/ - 2025-07-25T00:00:00+00:00 + 2025-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/ - 2025-07-25T00:00:00+00:00 + 2025-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 + + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + 2025-07-29T00:00:00+00:00 + + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ + 2025-07-27T00:00:00+00:00 http://localhost:1313/tags/audio/ 2025-07-24T00:00:00+00:00 diff --git a/public/tags/index.xml b/public/tags/index.xml index 6e66830..8e54b2f 100644 --- a/public/tags/index.xml +++ b/public/tags/index.xml @@ -6,12 +6,12 @@ Recent content in Tags on cassie.ink Hugo en-us - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Week-Notes http://localhost:1313/tags/week-notes/ - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/tags/week-notes/ diff --git a/public/tags/week-notes/index.html b/public/tags/week-notes/index.html index 90f2748..69c4e99 100644 --- a/public/tags/week-notes/index.html +++ b/public/tags/week-notes/index.html @@ -51,10 +51,24 @@ + + + + @@ -66,7 +80,7 @@
-

Week Notes 001

+

Week Notes 01

diff --git a/public/tags/week-notes/index.xml b/public/tags/week-notes/index.xml index 62ef073..069d10c 100644 --- a/public/tags/week-notes/index.xml +++ b/public/tags/week-notes/index.xml @@ -6,14 +6,28 @@ Recent content in Week-Notes on cassie.ink Hugo en-us - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + + I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m still working on planning for the college class I&rsquo;m teaching in a few weeks. I <em>need</em> to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don&rsquo;t really plan that way, so I&rsquo;m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It&rsquo;s a lot of work, but I&rsquo;m <a href="https://cassie.ink/week-notes/026/">feeling a lot better than I was last week</a>. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor&rsquo;s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I&rsquo;m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it&rsquo;s just a matter of doing the work.</p> + + + I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m teaching (<em>adjunct lecturing</em>) a college class in the fall for the first time. I&rsquo;m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I&rsquo;m also trying to do my own thing. It&rsquo;s a lot of work and I&rsquo;m very stressed about it.</p> <p>I know it&rsquo;s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It&rsquo;s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)</p> + i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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.</p> <h2 id="reading">Reading</h2> <p>I finished reading <em>Return of the King</em> this week, completing a long-standing personal mission to read <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. I <a href="https://git.32bit.cafe/cassie/cassiedotink.git">wrote up a big long post</a> with my history with the series and my thoughts.</p> + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!</p> (week notes 25) @@ -23,7 +37,7 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <p><em>And Then? And Then? What Else?</em> has become a slog, but I press on nonetheless. There&rsquo;s little here to amuse or excite; even devout Lemony Snicket fans will be disappointed I think by the lack of new information or even commentary concerning the books. Handler confirms that the Baudelaires are named for the poet, that the melodrama of the books is inspired by Edvard Gorey, and that he openly disdains the film — hardly revelations by any means. Most egregiously, he seriously downplays the accusations of sexual inappropriateness against him and attempts to use his own childhood sexual assault as a shield against them.</p> - listen to my story (week notes 024) + listen to my story (week notes 24) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ @@ -37,7 +51,7 @@ finishing Euphoria instead of reading classic literature - I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022) + I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 22) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ @@ -51,14 +65,14 @@ <p>I recently discovered some weirdness with my hard drives in my PC. It&rsquo;s a long story that isn&rsquo;t worth telling, but the end of it is that I bought an NVMe drive and am starting fresh with a clean install of Windows. It&rsquo;s fairly painless now that I have a drive that&rsquo;s <em>just</em> my files with a separate OS drive. I do have to reinstall and set up some apps again, but it has been a good opportunity to reassess the cruft I&rsquo;ve let build up on there over the years.</p> - hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 020) + hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 20) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ <p>I had a friend over one evening for pizza and card games — mostly Fan Tan and Blackjack, which are almost the only card games I like. My volleyball rec league started up again this week; I haven&rsquo;t made time for physical exercise lately, and volleyball is a good commitment. I&rsquo;d like to start running again soon too, but I&rsquo;m nursing a minor foot injury that I&rsquo;d like to see cleared up before I put too much stress on it. Thursday was the school spelling bee, which is both fun and heart-wrenching to watch.</p> - stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 019) + stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 19) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ @@ -72,119 +86,119 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>Unfortunately I haven&rsquo;t been able to exercise much; partly, this is because I haven&rsquo;t been making the time for it, but I also tweaked my right shoulder somehow and it&rsquo;s been quite painful to use in every day tasks. <em>Ring Fit</em> is therefore off the table. The trouble is that I genuinely don&rsquo;t know what I did to it! This week is my last before our holiday break, and I&rsquo;m hoping to get back on the horse over the course of my 16 (!!) days off.</p> - sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 017) + sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 17) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>I <strong>bought a new domain name</strong> — I&rsquo;m not going to post it just yet — but I&rsquo;m considering switching this site over to it. I love esotericbullshit, but I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s the energy I want to put out there. It makes the URL a little hard to share. But it also feels remarkably stupid when I <em>just</em> moved this over from another domain (which is incidentally quite similar to the new one&hellip;).<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> - to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 016) + to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 16) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I went for a run with a good friend at an indoor track near me. The track itself is quite short, so the run is a little awkward, but it&rsquo;s a super soft flooring which made the run easy on my joints. It&rsquo;s nice to have a new run buddy, too!</li> <li>Saturday I felt angry and sick and exhausted all day; I&rsquo;d intended to go out and do holiday shopping but instead just rotted at home. I know I needed the rest, but seemingly everything put me in a bad mood. It&rsquo;s maybe just PMS — I haven&rsquo;t been good about tracking my cycle lately, though — or just the seasonal depression. It&rsquo;s shit no matter what it is.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><a href="https://lanadelrue.bearblog.dev/hometown-visit">Hometown Visit</a>. I love reading folks who blog about their loves. It&rsquo;s probably voyeuristic — I don&rsquo;t know that it reflects well on me — but it makes me wish I had the courage to do the same.</li> <li><strong>Sandra Cisneros, <em>Woman Hollering Creek</em>.</strong> I&rsquo;m waiting for <em>Villette</em> to come in, so I wanted something that would be easy to jump in and out of. This fits the bill; I love <em>Mango Street</em> dearly and this simply feels like more of it (albeit not following one character, but then, Cisneros&rsquo;s stories all seem to co-exist).</li> <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/owala-freesip-review/">25 Wirecutter Journalists Can’t Be Wrong: How Owala Became an Official Water Bottle Pick</a>. What a ridiculously self-important, self-absorbed article. I generally like and use Wirecutter; some of their recommendations are ridiculously decadent and detached from reality, but they are one of the few reliable online sources for product reviews and recommendations. I am all for an ode to something you love and that makes your life better, but this read not as &ldquo;we tested and compared a lot of products&rdquo; but more &ldquo;we all have good taste and have this water bottle so it must be good, right?&rdquo;</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9OhTB5eBqQ">Evermore: The Theme Park That Wasn&rsquo;t - YouTube</a> by Jenny Nicholson.</strong> I love Jenny&rsquo;s videos but hadn&rsquo;t watched this one yet; I dozed through portions but enjoyed it all the same.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pride &amp; Prejudice The Board Game</em></strong>. My brother gifted this to me years ago and I&rsquo;ve never found an opportunity to play it. A student of mine is listening to the audiobook of <em>P&amp;P</em> on my recommendation and I told her about the board game; I thought I should play it first myself, so I convinced Joe to play with me.</li> <li><strong><em>Fabledom</em></strong>. This has been in my Steam wishlist for ages, and I wanted a cozy game to try to quell my Saturday mood. It&rsquo;s OK. I enjoyed the time I put into it, but I don&rsquo;t think I will go back to it. City builders tend to entertain me for a few hours, but then I reach the later points of the game (or it becomes a chore to manage everything) and get bored.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <p>I&rsquo;ve had three songs in rotation this week: &ldquo;Clown Blood/Orpheus&rsquo; Bobbing Head&rdquo; by Los Campesinos!, &ldquo;up&rdquo; by Pigthe, and &ldquo;You Good? (In Medias Res)&rdquo; by Proper.</p> - my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 015) + my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 15) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I ran a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. My time was not good (40:38), but there was wet, heavy snow coming down, so I was mostly focused on not eating shit. I think mid-November might be my 5K cutoff. We otherwise stayed home for the holiday and spent some much needed time relaxing together.</li> <li>With the holiday season upon us, this is usually around the time that I take a big trip out to a nearby mall to get gifts for everyone. I want to commit this year to shopping mostly (entirely?) from local small businesses or buying handmade and secondhand goods. I&rsquo;m happy to live in a town with a great Main Street, and I want to stop dumping my money into corporations. <ul> <li>I did order a bunch of rechargeable batteries from Amazon for Black Friday, but that was the extent of my shopping.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I miss podcasting again. I&rsquo;ve run a few podcasts over the years, which all petered out for various reasons, but I&rsquo;m feeling the itch again. I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;d podcast about, though, which runs contrary to popular logic: you should have something to say, not just the desire to say things. I love audio production and the sound of my own voice, though. <ul> <li>Maybe I record audio versions of my blog posts and turn that into a podcast? I want to write more, after all. I don&rsquo;t think my week notes would be conducive to an audio format, but maybe my longer form writing (what little of it exists).</li> </ul> </li> <li>I bought a camera (Panasonic Lumix G7) on a bit of a whim. I film a lot of videos for my school, so I guess there&rsquo;s professional utility in using something other than my phone, but I also want to get better about taking pictures to preserve memories.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li>On Saturday, I felt sick and rotted on the couch and watched YouTube junkfood: mostly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@outsidexbox">outsidexbox</a>&rsquo;s seven things videos and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@MachoNachoProductions">Macho Nacho</a> console mod videos. <ul> <li>I don&rsquo;t mod consoles. I like to tinker with electronics, but I&rsquo;ve never soldered anything. Somehow, however, I find myself watching a lot of these sorts of videos. I think I admire the production value and Tito&rsquo;s calm, measured approach.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I&rsquo;m about done with <strong><em>Daria</em></strong>, but I haven&rsquo;t watched the movies yet.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Into the Wild</em> by John Krakauer.</strong> As a kid, the film adaptation was on frequent rotation in my house; my mom often fixated on one movie and watched it over and over, and she was a big fan of the soundtrack as well. I&rsquo;ve always wanted to read the book since, and I&rsquo;m trying again to commit to reading more now that the start of school year frenzy has died down for me. I&rsquo;m enjoying following McCandless&rsquo;s story and don&rsquo;t think Krakauer too effusive (though his biases are clear), but some of the tangents feel extraneous. <ul> <li><strong>Finished on November 28.</strong> A humanizing and sympathetic account of a controversial figure. A few meandering chapters, but there are — in McCandless&rsquo;s case especially — wrong turns taken in pursuit of truth, meaning, and beauty.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I&rsquo;ve ordered Charlotte Brontë&rsquo;s <strong><em>Villette</em></strong> through my local bookstore as an upcoming read on the recommendation of a student&rsquo;s parent. I&rsquo;m also interested in getting my hands on <strong><em>The Dead Father</em></strong> by David Barthelme after reading an excerpt in <em>Into the Wild.</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Satisfactory.</em></strong> Just a few months before the pandemic, while I was in grad school, I fell deeply in love with <em>Satisfactory</em> and attempted in vain to explain to my literary and well-rounded colleagues that I was spending my free time balancing my iron production pipelines and converting from biomass energy to coal. I dipped my toe in a few more times after my mania but resolved to wait until 1.0 as many of my production lines would need to be seriously re-tooled. Joe suggested we start a co-op save this week and I am back and thriving. <ul> <li>We did get into a brief, heated conflict over manifold (my preference) versus balanced production, an argument all couples experience at some point in their relationship, I&rsquo;m sure.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I played a little but more of <strong><em>Pokémon Crystal</em></strong>, but I&rsquo;m at a point where I have to grind out levels to take on the next gym, which I&rsquo;m supremely uninterested in doing. Maybe I&rsquo;ll just hack my save.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>I downloaded the <em>Satisfactory</em> soundtrack and have had that on in the background — it&rsquo;s very good. Otherwise, I&rsquo;m mostly still listening to <strong>Rainbow Kitten Surprise</strong>.</li> </ul> - it's second nature to love you (week notes 014) + it's second nature to love you (week notes 14) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ <p>first week notes in a while so some of this might not be strictly &ldquo;this week&rdquo;</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I turned 30. I had a big party with lots of friends — and I feel grateful to have so many folks who want to celebrate with me, including some who drove substantial distances. I still have a bunch of mixed up feelings about crossing this threshold, but I&rsquo;m trying to remember the advice of a friend: it&rsquo;s a gift to grow older.</li> <li>This maybe belongs under a playing heading, but maybe not: I picked up <strong><em>Ring Fit Adventure</em></strong> for the first time since the pandemic. It&rsquo;s getting to be too cold out to run, so I need an alternate fitness option. My most reliable gym buddy moved away, so I&rsquo;m seeing if I can get <em>Ring Fit</em> to stick again. I am definitely in way better shape than when I was playing years ago; I would feel faint after 20-30 minutes in the game, but my first session was over 30 minutes and I felt fine (albeit sweaty) after. Turning 30 feels like an inflection point where I need to get serious about losing weight.</li> <li>I also went to the gym for the first time in months to run on the treadmill. With snow season upon us, I need to transition to indoor running. I like it quite a bit less, but I don&rsquo;t want to lose progress.</li> <li>We had our first big snow of the season on Friday, which meant a (much-needed) lazy snow day at home.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Daria</em>, season four.</strong> I started rewatching Daria around Halloween because I dressed as her for the holiday. I still love it and I still hate Tom.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzdTG0JyblU&amp;list=PLIAGhNc7IWXxCHc55BwOsuTgMrDM8smSU&amp;index=18&amp;pp=iAQB">Friends at the Table&rsquo;s <em>Fields of Mistria</em> streams.</a></strong> I&rsquo;m not a FatT fan — actual play podcasts do not appeal to me at all — but Joe is, and I otherwise like a lot of the personalities on the show. Ali is probably my favorite and Joe and I love farming games like <em>Mistria</em> a whole lot.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon Crystal Legacy.</em></strong> I had a hankering of Gen 2 nostalgia hit me, so I&rsquo;ve been working my way through this ROM hack. I know a lot of my love for Gen 2 stems from it being my first Pokémon — and, indeed, one of the first <em>games</em> I really ever played — but I&rsquo;m happy to report that it&rsquo;s just as charming as I remember.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Rainbow Kitten Surprise, <em>RKS</em>.</strong> Listened on the recommendation of a friend; I was concerned initially because I really didn&rsquo;t like the first track (my words: &ldquo;Big garage vibes. Like shit you listen to while you work on your motorcycle&rdquo;), but after that hump, I really loved the album. My tops are &ldquo;Cold Love,&rdquo; &ldquo;Wasted,&rdquo; &ldquo;All&rsquo;s Well That Ends,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Lady Lie.&rdquo; &ldquo;Cold Love&rdquo; in particular has really hung around in my head.</li> </ul> - spend my days running in circles (week notes 013) + spend my days running in circles (week notes 13) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I presented to pre-service teachers at my alma mater with a colleague! Emotionally, I still feel like I was in their spot not that long ago — and then I remember I graduated over six years ago (and into a vastly different world and job market).</li> <li>I&rsquo;m finding myself using ellipses a lot and I do not like it. Is this growing old? Am I becoming a boomer?</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about maintaining some kind of daily log — just simple, passing notes on what I did, what I thought about. Obsidian has this feature built in and it might be a good way to start. I like the idea of it being searchable and (theoretically) infinite in size, but I also want an excuse for another notebook. <ul> <li>I used to do daily reflections at the end of my work day. Slowly, those became every few days, then every week, then rarely. It was a good practice that I wish I had maintained, but there&rsquo;s already so much I&rsquo;m packing into my work day — and my goal in daily notes is to be more mindful about what I&rsquo;m doing and thinking in my free time.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I attended my state-wide English teacher conference; this is something like my sixth or seventh time attending and I still find it valuable. I left with a lot of great ideas on how to diversify my practice and better empower my students.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Percy Jackson and the Olympians.</em></strong> Joe and I have watched a few episodes. I liked the book fine, but the TV show has yet to grab me. It lacks Percy&rsquo;s narrative voice (and personality), and while it&rsquo;s good that Percy is played by an actual child, his pre-pubescent voice freaks me out.</li> <li><strong><em>Broad City</em></strong>. Joe and I watched a lot of <em>Broad City</em> early in our relationship, but we never finished it. We are starting it over from the beginning. Still funny!</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Charli XCX, <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>.</strong> Every re-release and new drop for <em>brat</em> innovates, co-exists, and complements. The features on this remix album feel like an ode to the remarkable original release and a statement of how pivotal the album has been personally and for the industry writ large. This version of &ldquo;Everything is romantic&rdquo; is as much a remix as an iteration; the original captures a single moment in beautiful, mimetic detail, and this one is another artist following the theme and form with their own experiences. <em>brat</em> is undoubtedly a project we&rsquo;ll all be talking about when we discuss the music of the 2020s; I love witnessing its creation in real time. <ul> <li>For the haters, a friend of mine said the mixing was bad and that it &ldquo;just sounds like noise.&rdquo; I still like her (Charli and the friend, in that order<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>).</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>Foxholes, <em>Foxholes</em>.</strong> I found &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; while going through Daytrotter archives and loved it; the rest of the album is pleasant listening, but &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; is the stand out.</li> <li><strong>Yung Lean, <em>Stardust</em>.</strong> I loved Yung Lean&rsquo;s feature on <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>; imagine my surprise when I discovered that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stgrSjynPKs&amp;pp=ygUJeXVuZyBsZWFu">the esoteric bullshit (or so I thought) I was listening to ten+ years ago as a joke but not really</a> went on to be a critically recognized artist. I thought it was just a weird fucking song. <ul> <li><em>Stardust</em> is a much more polished and, dare I say, coherent and digestible<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> product than &ldquo;Hurt&rdquo;; I like it, but I&rsquo;m not sure any of the songs will earn the coveted ⭐ on Plex.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> It&rsquo;s music I&rsquo;d have to be in a mood for — although the mumble-y nature of it makes it good background music while working. Maybe it just needs to sit with me a little more.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>just kidding :-)&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 012) + what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 12) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing a condensed post this week because I have been so busy with work!</p> <ul> <li> <p>Joe and I finished our rewatch of <strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, and I&rsquo;m happy to say that I still love the show. It goes downhill in season six and is borderline unwatchable in season seven, but I have such affection for all before that — especially the warm blanket, cozy autumn early seasons.</p> </li> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m watching Joe play <strong><em>The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom</em></strong>.</p> - but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 011) + but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 11) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing two weeks in one post. Last week I was dead sick and working too much so I didn&rsquo;t assemble a post throughout the week as I normally do.</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I drove back to ___ for a funeral&hellip; and then back, all in one day. Eight hours on the road, but it was nice to spend some time together, singing and talking about heavy things.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I ran four miles in one go! Not without stopping and walking, and I&rsquo;m far from my best times, but I&rsquo;m trying to rebuild my endurance and speed after taking a long time off.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying to get back into skin care. I&rsquo;ve never had a thorough routine, but I&rsquo;ve been slacking even on the meager bit I do. I looked in the mirror and saw an old person looking back at me, so I&rsquo;ve been cleansing and moisturizing on a near-daily basis now.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em> by Elizabeth Tova Bailey.</strong> I&rsquo;m reading this on recommendation of a friend and coworker. The writing has a beautiful directness, but I&rsquo;m not exactly fascinated by (or at all interested in) snails. It is eye-opening to read something so scientific in approach that is still a work of literature, however; it leaves me to consider how our different disciplines — me as an English teacher and my coworker a Science teacher — change the way we think and look at the world.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://platinumtulip.bearblog.dev/a-ranking-of-imac-g3-colors/">a ranking of iMac G3 colors</a> by tulip.</strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://thebirdhouse.bearblog.dev/field-notes-cured-my-twitter-addiction/">field notes cured my twitter addiction</a> on The Birdhouse.</strong> A lovely ode to a notebook.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season six.</strong> Joe and I have reached about the end of the season. I think six has some good moments and episodes but is, on the whole, drudgery. Luke&rsquo;s character takes a bizarre turn, and I somehow have even less patience for Rory and Logan&rsquo;s relationship this time around.</li> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle five.</strong> Passive rewatches while folding laundry; the actual modeling and photoshoots are a low for the UPN seasons, but the personalities make it an entertaining season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I have played more of <strong><em>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II</em></strong>, which is really him watching me play and selecting dialogue options with me. He really does not care for the combat; I don&rsquo;t love it either, but having played so much of this game and the first as a kid, I know my way around it much better. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to like any of the characters yet; on one hand, I get that, because I think the <em>KotOR II</em> characters are much more complex and harder to initially like than the first game&rsquo;s, but maybe the series just isn&rsquo;t for him&hellip; <ul> <li>We&rsquo;ve been playing as a female Exile, but Joe was interested in the Handmaiden, and I prefer her to the Disciple, so I decided to roll back a save and use the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/544-partyswap/">PartySwap mod</a>&hellip; until I realized that I have Steam Workshop mods mixed with the <a href="https://kotor.neocities.org/modding/mod_builds/k2/full">KotOR II Mod Build</a>.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Apparently, because I used the Workshop 13 years ago when I last played this game, Steam decided I definitely wanted those installed again. Ugh. The solution was to start from the beginning with cheats that will let me zip through and get back to where we were. It took the better part of five hours to re-install all the mods and play back through Peragus and Telos.</li> <li>That all said, I really love this game. I love the way the narrative places you in a backstory rather than the &ldquo;blank slate&rdquo; approach of the first game.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> The player then gets to decide the Exile&rsquo;s reasons for going to war, their outlook on the Jedi, and there&rsquo;s a lot of gray area to be found.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Mr. Anyway’s Holey Spirits Perform! One Foot in Bethlehem</em> and <em>Pure Particles</em> by The Bug Club.</strong> More recommendations from a former student of mine. I&rsquo;m really enjoying them! <em>One Foot in Bethlehem</em> very clearly has some religious satire, but I&rsquo;ve not had a chance to parse for sub-text&hellip; At this point, I&rsquo;m on a basal, what&rsquo;s catchy level (the answer is a lot).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>religion, marriage, the future&hellip; the usual, at this point. I hate getting old.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 010) + I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 10) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ Sun, 22 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My volleyball rec league started back up! I&rsquo;m awful and uncoordinated on the court, but it&rsquo;s fun to play with friends, and I have learned the hard way that I&rsquo;m a lot less depressed when I&rsquo;m active.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m enjoying reading ex-cohost folks on the bearblog discovery feed. The trending feed can get a little stale.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I hope they stick around.</li> <li>I took a walk (and a run) with a dear friend that I&rsquo;ve been trying to get together with for a while. She&rsquo;s decades older than me, but we are incredibly like-minded. Kindred spirits. I appreciate her wisdom and guidance and friendship immensely as she listens to all my neuroses.</li> <li>On Sunday night, Joe and I went to a wedding for two of our best friends. Maybe I&rsquo;ll make a longer post with all that stirs up for me — thoughts on marriage and commitment&hellip;</li> <li>Unfortunately, I left the wedding feeling sick. COVID test was negative so here&rsquo;s hoping it&rsquo;s just allergies from the changing season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You,</em> Miranda July.</strong> I stand by what I said last week. I think I need a break from the sexual deviants I&rsquo;m apparently (and unconsciously) selecting lately. I&rsquo;m glad to be done with this; I appreciated July&rsquo;s occasional wit and found it Handler-esque, but those touches were few and far between, and the rest of it mostly just grossed me out.</li> <li>My next books will be <em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em>, recommended by a friend and coworker, and, I think, <em>Into the Wild</em>, which I&rsquo;ve always meant to read. It might not seem like much for an English teacher, but these past few months I&rsquo;ve been reading for pleasure more than I have in years and it has me feeling so full. It&rsquo;s great to rediscover that joy.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li><strong><a href="https://netigen.com/read/linkin-park-from-zero">&ldquo;Linkin Park, From Zero&rdquo;</a> by n3verm0re.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a Linkin Park fan by any means, but I have been interested in seeing how a group reawakens after such a tremendous loss. I really enjoyed this piece about it.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Green Dream in F#</em> and <em>Rare Birds</em>, The Bug Club.</strong> I asked a student of mine what kind of music she listened to; she said her music was too weird and I&rsquo;d probably never heard of it. I took that as a personal challenge. But it&rsquo;s not that weird — although, as an (ex?) Xiu Xiu listener, my barometer is off. I liked both albums! They&rsquo;re light, fun listening, and absolutely up my alley.</li> <li><strong><em>Romance is Boring</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> Listening to the music students of mine like has me thinking about the music I was in love with at their age. <em>RiB</em> came out at the exact right time for me and holds a special place in my heart. I listen to tracks from it often, but this was the first time I&rsquo;d revisited some deeper cuts, like &ldquo;Who Fell Asleep In,&rdquo; in years.</li> <li><strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> I&rsquo;m still forming my larger thoughts on <em>All Hell</em>, but it was interesting to compare side-by-side with <em>RiB</em>. It is far more even and consistent in quality — <em>RiB</em> has some all-timers but also some real duds (&ldquo;Plan A&rdquo;) — but there is a visceral, adolescent melodrama to <em>RiB</em> that <em>All Hell</em> lacks. <em>All Hell</em> is instead grown up and wistfully forlorn, especially compared to juggernauts like &ldquo;I Just Sighed.&rdquo; Both are good and appropriate for me at different times and headspaces, but <em>RiB</em> holds more of hook — although I have fifteen years of relationship and baggage with it compared to <em>All Hell</em>.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about a recurring theme in songs I am or have been fixated on — <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;Drops (reprise),&rdquo; The Peripheral Ones</strong> - &ldquo;I know if I don&rsquo;t go now I won&rsquo;t make it out&rdquo; <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;The Whale Song,&rdquo; Modest Mouse</strong> - &ldquo;I guess I am a scout / so I should find a way out / so everyone can find a way out&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Ave Maria,&rdquo; Mac Miller</strong> - &ldquo;Have you found a way out?&rdquo; &amp; <strong>&ldquo;Come Back to Earth&rdquo;</strong> - &ldquo;I just need a way out of my head / I&rsquo;ll do anything for a way out of my head&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li>— the idea of making it out is, of course, not a unique theme, but perhaps it&rsquo;s why <em>The House on Mango Street</em> resonated with me: <em>&ldquo;For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I think posts don&rsquo;t decay quickly enough from the feed, and the top page or two of trending posts are all by the same handful of people. There&rsquo;s a handful of very active posters, which is a great thing, but I like to see variety there.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - 666 with a princess streak (week notes 009) + 666 with a princess streak (week notes 09) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Working on getting off big corporate social media, still. I&rsquo;m almost entirely off Twitter; I keep the app just because I have a few notifications set for when specific people tweet (mostly bands who tweet out tour dates), but I&rsquo;m otherwise mostly on Mastodon (social.lol) and Discord. Cohost going down was sad to see even if I was never an active user and there were problems with it, but its downfall impressed on me even further the importance of owning your content — and it made me really happy to have this space for my thoughts and writing.</li> <li>I got my COVID booster and flu shot on Friday, which put me out of order for some time. Glad to have them done, however; one day of discomfort is worth it!</li> <li>The weight of being a teacher really set on me this week — not the teaching work, which I love, but the emotional weight of my students&rsquo; lives. It&rsquo;s especially hard to see kids that remind me of myself at their age and wish I could impart all that I&rsquo;ve learned — but knowing that there are no shortcuts and that the only way out for them is through. I can&rsquo;t pluck them out; they have to live it. I can only hope to be there for them as they do.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You</em>, Miranda July.</strong> This has been in my Amazon wishlist for I don&rsquo;t know how long — long enough that I&rsquo;ve forgotten where I&rsquo;d found it or why I&rsquo;d wanted to read it. I liked the cover a lot, I guess. Anyway, I feel this is suffering from my reading it so soon after <em>Death Is Not an Option</em> as I have much of the same opinion: excellent prose but turned off by all the weird sex.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I find July&rsquo;s narrators and conceits to be far more varied than Rivecca&rsquo;s, but Rivecca never made me read about an old man who fantasizes about teenage girls, so I automatically like her better.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/meet-lochlan-oneil-the-creator-of">Meet Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, the creator of DashCon</a> on Garbage Day.</strong> <em>&ldquo;I had to go to extensive therapy because I was like, “oh my god, I, Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, single-handedly destroyed fandom culture?”</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon 4Ever.</em></strong> Joe and I got our shit rocked by the COVID and flu shots and decided to watch this. Middling, but a surprising environmentalist message. I&rsquo;m realizing how much of who Joe is goes back to Pokémon, of all things.</li> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season five.</strong> Joe and I went back in for a few episodes in our shot stupor. Still enjoyable, but we are quickly gaining on the last of the good episodes in my opinion.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>i,i</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> Not bad, but I like <em>For Emma</em> and <em>22, A Million</em> far more.</li> <li><strong><em>Chants</em>, The Peripheral Ones.</strong> I&rsquo;ve said before that this album is perhaps the most esoteric of my bullshit; it&rsquo;s a cover album of a little-known<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Myspace-era band, <a href="https://themiddleones.bandcamp.com/">The Middle Ones</a>, done by <a href="https://pigthe.bandcamp.com/music">pigthe</a> (the guitarist for <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/music">Trust Fund</a>). The album is obscure enough that it&rsquo;s not on MusicBrainz (I&rsquo;m aware that I could add it) and the band has 23 listeners on last.fm. I love it and go back to it often.</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>reading these books back to back has left me wondering if I&rsquo;m somehow unconsciously selecting books only written by deviants or if I&rsquo;m just so vanilla that my gauge for sexual content is skewed&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - the birds remember how to come home (week notes 008) + the birds remember how to come home (week notes 08) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>School is officially back in session, so my free time is much more limited now. I&rsquo;m optimistic for the year, though!</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> Finished at last. I have not much new to say compared to last week. I felt a notable sense of relief to be done with it and free to move on.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marisabel.nl/public/blog/Write_as_you_wish:_a_call_to_bring_back_the_prose">Write as you wish: a call to bring back the prose</a> by Marisabel.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a good enough writer for this to be applicable, so call this aspirational reading.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://itskristin.bearblog.dev/back-at-it-social-media-free/">back at it &amp; social media free</a> by kristin.</strong> I&rsquo;ve pretty much dropped Twitter in the last few weeks — I really want to separate myself from toxic online spaces.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://gkeenan.co/avgb/please-please-please-please-please-please-share-your-big-dumb-beautiful-self-with-the-world/">Please please please please please please share your big dumb beautiful self with the world</a> by Keenan.</strong> <em>&ldquo;What does it look like to put yourself on a page, or in a photo, or a brushstroke, or a string plucked and reverberating harmoniously out into the room? When does the screaming inside become loud enough, so all-encompassing that you open up the door to let it pour out of you?&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle three.</strong> <em>Top Model</em> is my comfort show right now. I love the first seven cycles best, but cycle three has a special place in my heart. It&rsquo;s one of the first cycles I ever saw and has one of the most entertaining casts. The modelling itself is pretty poor, but that&rsquo;s not really what <em>Top Model</em> was about.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ei6dNr3RkY&amp;list=PLipgnTt01UGXDW2B_eJMKSSi12Y7koJ9O&amp;pp=iAQB">Run Button&rsquo;s <em>Star Wars Outlaws</em> streams.</a></strong> I&rsquo;m really interested in <em>Outlaws</em> based on what I&rsquo;ve seen; Keith has been complaining about the stealth a lot in the streams, but I think a good amount of that has been player error.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.</em></strong> I&rsquo;ve tried to get Joe to play <em>KotOR</em> for years, but he was turned off by the combat. We listened to A More Civilized Age&rsquo;s coverage together, though (he&rsquo;s a big Friends at the Table fan), and it got him interested in <em>KotOR II</em> (despite my insisting for years that it is the finest piece of <em>Star Wars</em> media). We&rsquo;re playing through together — me with the controller but collectively making decisions. We&rsquo;re still on Peragus (gross), but I&rsquo;m enjoying revisiting it. This will be my first time playing it in at least ten years and my first time with the restored content mod.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Life&rsquo;s a Riot With Spy vs Spy</em>, Billy Bragg.</strong> I like &ldquo;A New England&rdquo; a whole lot; the rest was good but didn&rsquo;t grab me. There&rsquo;s a sparseness and intimacy that struck me when I first heard &ldquo;A New England,&rdquo; but the novelty had worn off for the other tracks.</li> <li><strong><em>For Emma, Forever Ago</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> I listened to this all the way through one night and it unfortunately really spoke to me. I know I&rsquo;ve listened through it before, years ago, and I didn&rsquo;t care for anything except &ldquo;Skinny Love&rdquo;; this time around, every track hit.</li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Bishop, CA&rdquo;</strong> and <strong>&ldquo;Wig Master,&rdquo; Xiu Xiu.</strong> I swore off Xiu Xiu back in 2013 or so after listening to them heavily during a deep depression; I&rsquo;m not cold turkey on them anymore, but they&rsquo;re not in my regular rotation either. I&rsquo;ve been thinking of these two, some of my favorites then.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>in so far as any Xiu Xiu song is a &ldquo;favorite&rdquo; and not &ldquo;a desperate cry for help&rdquo;&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 007) + I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 07) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li><strong>I re-did my website!</strong> I&rsquo;ve detailed it all <a href="http://localhost:1313/what%27s-this-%28and-how-it-works%29/">in a separate post</a>, but I&rsquo;m really excited about making weird stuff online here. I will miss being on the bearblog discovery feed, but this is also a push for me to get involved more on webrings &amp; other small web communities.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I&rsquo;m <strong>starting to get my classroom ready</strong> for the school year. I&rsquo;m really excited about some of the changes I&rsquo;m making — the physical layout of the room, curricular changes, routines, and philosophies. We go back to school on Tuesday, so this is really the end stretch of summer.</li> <li>I was pretty social this week! I had a friend and coworker over to help us identify some of the plants we have on our property; had a different friend over to play some games; went to see a Fleetwood Mac cover band with some of my partner&rsquo;s coworkers; and had my sister and her boyfriend over to go hiking and out to lunch.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://gkeenan.co/avgb/an-unrelenting-sense-of-longing/">An unrelenting sense of longing (or: “Maps”)</a> by Keenan.</strong> &ldquo;Maps&rdquo; rocks and I love reading fellow music sickos.</li> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> Plugging along, slowly. Rivecca&rsquo;s prose is excellent but none of the stories have really gripped me; all the protagonists are of a singular type that I don&rsquo;t really connect to.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYvqnTvUCg&amp;list=PLe_AuQUfBKl5R3Sc7Erpq3Y2me6q6uZ0R">Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke</a></strong> We finished it this week — a tragic end to a great series. RIP TONYSOPRAN.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon White Version</em>.</strong> Played here and there; I think I&rsquo;m losing my enthusiasm for it.</li> <li>We had a friend over and played a little <em><strong>Rock Band</strong></em> and <em><strong>Mario Party Superstars</strong>.</em></li> <li><em><strong>Final Fantasy XIV.</strong></em> Just a bit on Sunday night; focusing on leveling my Marauder (almost to 50!) and my Squadrons. I&rsquo;ve also started doing my Sylph Beast Tribe quests again because I want the Goobbue Mount.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Oblivion Will Own Me and Death Alone Will Love Me (Void Filler)</em>, <em>Every Moment of Every Day</em>, and <em>Fates Worse Than Death</em>, Short Fictions.</strong> I saw Short Fictions at Warsaw when they opened for Los Campesinos! I really enjoyed them live and sat down to listen to a few of their albums (they were kind enough to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/loscampesinos/comments/1dia0oy/comment/l92otja/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">post their setlist!</a>). Their music lacks some novelty compared to the live performance, but I still like a few songs — notably, &ldquo;Anymore,&rdquo; &ldquo;Nothingness Lies Coiled at the Heart of Being (It’s Such a Good Feeling),&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forever Endeavor.&rdquo;</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRRR3vRroA">&ldquo;Feather Test&rdquo;</a> by A Weather.</strong> This may be my song this year.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> I fell in love with it a few months ago and returned to it this week. I love, I love, I love (<em>I will, I will</em>). A beautiful, breathy mix of fleeting, intersecting harmonies with a rich and simplistic production. Every line strikes. (&ldquo;Brush your hand / Across where you felt me / Do I pass the feather test?&rdquo;)</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Also, importantly, I blog to write, not to be read. I guess.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 006) + I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 06) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I was at school one day this week for an orientation for some student leaders.</li> <li>I went to Six Flags and realized I&rsquo;m old; my tolerance for roller coasters is, suddenly, shockingly low.</li> <li>Feeling extreme relief but also guilt for being such an introvert — lately I feel I&rsquo;m an anti-social loner, but friends have reassured me that these feelings are normal and everyone enjoys and protects their alone time (to an extent, depending on the person). All I really want to do is be alone in my house, left to do my silly little projects.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying still to move away from big, corporate social media — I have been spending more time on Mastodon and the bearblog discover feed. I&rsquo;ve scarcely opened Twitter, and I&rsquo;ve set 30m app timers for Facebook and Instagram. I rarely hit it for either, but something about knowing the timer is there makes me more conscious of the time I&rsquo;m wasting on them. I&rsquo;m not happy yet with my screen time as a whole, but at least I feel I&rsquo;m seeing more of real people (and people I choose to follow) than algorithms and dark patterns.</li> <li>On Friday, I went to IKEA with a friend and my sister to get some things for the house and a few items for my classroom.</li> <li>I intended to go into school on Saturday and begin some of the physical setup I need to do, but I felt sick and exhausted. I took a COVID test (negative) — I&rsquo;m hoping it&rsquo;s just holdover from a long day of driving on Friday.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://a-demain.bearblog.dev/studying-to-be-a-teacher-in-the-modern-day/">Studying to be a teacher in the modern day</a> by Sparrow.</strong> I feel the same about teaching as Sparrow: it&rsquo;s a hard career to choose in today&rsquo;s education system and economic climate, but teaching is so intrinsically part of me that I can&rsquo;t see myself doing anything else. Even with the stress, the low pay, the poor working conditions, I love it.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marblethoughts.bearblog.dev/what-a-demure-mindful-and-brat-summer/">What a demure, mindful, and brat summer</a> by Kayla.</strong> Great introspective piece on trends and shifting mindsets. As I get older, I&rsquo;m less connected to fads (especially because I&rsquo;m not on TikTok and have curated my social media feeds), but I do try hard to understand them — I never want to be someone who brushes things off as &ldquo;kids these days&rdquo; absurdity and who blames the younger generation for every societal woe. Brat summer and demure sound silly, but there&rsquo;s importance in trying to understand what matters to young people<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> — and we can only reach state of cooperation and harmony through mutual understanding and respect.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://slate.com/advice/2024/08/dear-prudence-coworkers-too-personal.html">Help! I Invited My Coworkers Into a Very Personal Part of My Life. Now I Really Regret It.</a> by Hillary Frey.</strong> I read Dear, Prudence often to satisfy my busybody tendencies and, occasionally, to talk through social quandaries with my partner. The first letter here hit particularly hard; I am a teacher and regularly have coworkers ask super invasive questions about my family planning. I&rsquo;m friends with someone who went through IVF and she&rsquo;s opened my eyes to how these &ldquo;innocent questions&rdquo; (they&rsquo;re not) can hurt folks dealing with infertility. I&rsquo;m not, but even I find questions about whether I&rsquo;m trying for a baby super invasive!</li> <li><strong><a href="https://blog.avas.space/kindness-online/">finding kindness online</a> by ava.</strong> A great piece about connection in gaming. I have baggage with video game-centric spaces online, but this gives me some hope.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Too Model,</em> cycle 1.</strong> Mostly passive viewing while folding laundry, but cycle 1 has a special quality. It feels less like a reality show and more like a documentary about what it&rsquo;s like to be on a reality show. The budget is clearly low and the show hadn&rsquo;t established its structure just yet, so the contestants learn how the show works along with us. It feels grounded and authentic — for a season of <em>Top Model</em>, that is.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYvqnTvUCg&amp;list=PLe_AuQUfBKl5R3Sc7Erpq3Y2me6q6uZ0R">Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke</a></strong> Joe and I are continuing this and still really loving it!</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Final Fantasy XIV.</em></strong> I&rsquo;m slowly working through the post-<em>Stormblood</em> patch content. Joe is still playing through <em>A Realm Reborn</em>, so I&rsquo;m levelling Warrior to do dungeons alongside him as a new class. I&rsquo;m enduring the slow, painful grind of levelling my Squadrons, too. I like the concept of Squadrons — they remind me of my beloved <em>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance</em>,<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> but unfortunately there is very little variety and a lot of waiting involved here.</li> <li><strong><em>Pokémon White Version</em></strong>. I was inspired to jump into a Pokémon game by the Nuzlocke Joe and I are watching. I&rsquo;ve never really played <em>White</em>; maybe a year ago I did the first three gyms, but I remember none of it. I started it over on Saturday night.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <p>Nothing really specific — just some shuffles. I have, however, <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/user/babyspace/">started tracking my listening data to listenbrainz</a>!</p> - the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 005) + the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 05) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>This week I learned that I&rsquo;m <strong>allergic to yellowjacket stings</strong> in the worst way possible (not that there&rsquo;s a good way). I was attacked by a nest of them while mowing the lawn and had to go to the ER.</li> <li>Contemplating my intense introversion.</li> <li>I was able to finally get together with a dear friend for a walk through the park — we have been trying to see each other for a while now but schedules and weather kept getting in the way. Talking to her, a kindred spirit, nourishes me.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>The Basic Eight</em> by Daniel Handler.</strong> Finished in the first hours of this week. I wrote up <a href="http://localhost:1313/the-basic-eight">a full post</a> with my thoughts.</li> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> I&rsquo;m about halfway through this. It&rsquo;s middling; there&rsquo;s a lot of weird sex that I simply do not connect to, and all of the narrators / protagonists feel the same even though this is a collection of unrelated short stories.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://apnews.com/article/harris-walz-apostrophe-possessive-grammar-967c0bbefc09be6c804588daabed7ec9">There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?</a> by Holly Tamer.</strong> This is the kind of presidential race news coverage I want to see in this world.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke.</strong> I really like Into the Aether and the TWG network, and Joe is a big fan of watching Pokemon challenges on YouTube. We are not far in, but we are enjoying it so far.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Rock Band 4.</em></strong> I have a friend visiting this week — it&rsquo;s a great party game.</li> <li><strong><em>Carcassone.</em></strong> A board game staple in my house.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>Nothing particular beyond some shuffles, but my mom came over with her old Fleetwood Mac records and we realized that my record player has been spinning <em>slightly</em> too fast (~33.7rpm instead of 33.3). I noticed it months ago with Mac Miller&rsquo;s <em>GO:ODAM</em>, but I thought it might just be the press. We fixed it and now I feel I have to re-listen to all my records.</li> </ul> - I love when you invoke my death (week notes 004) + I love when you invoke my death (week notes 04) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I <strong>went to the lake</strong> with two friends. We did some <strong>kayaking</strong><sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> and went <strong>swimming</strong>, then returned to our house to have a belated birthday celebration for Joe.</li> <li>I <strong>played around with Hugo</strong> and thought about moving this blog (back) there. I love the bearblog community and don&rsquo;t want to leave it, but I also want to build a personal site out more. I&rsquo;m conflicted, but for now, I&rsquo;m sticking on bearblog.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> I also bought a domain without a plan to use it — I love cassieland, but this one speaks to me, and it has an air of anonymity, which is appealing should I pursue my goal to blog more; anonymity feels safer.</li> <li>Joe and I went to visit family, so we&rsquo;re spending a weekend lake- and pool-side, and I&rsquo;m reminded for the ten thousandth time of how wonderful he is with children. The biological clock ticks.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://wavelengths.online/posts/how-did-this-new-harry-potter-ride-get-approved">How Did This New Harry Potter Ride Get Approved?</a> by Brendon Bigley.</strong> I used to be a tremendous <em>Harry Potter</em> fan but consciously decoupled from the series given J.K. Rowling&rsquo;s modern social campaign of hate. I&rsquo;ve gone to and enjoyed Universal&rsquo;s Wizarding World, but I agree with Brendon&rsquo;s stance: it is bizarre when Universal leans into the thinly veiled Nazism parallels for their theme park and ask attendees to rejoice in war crime trials.</li> <li><strong><em>The Basic Eight</em> by Daniel Handler.</strong> Handler&rsquo;s <em>Adverbs</em> is often what I cite when folks ask what my favorite book is, and I loved <em>Watch Your Mouth</em>, too. I need light reprieves from <em>The Odyssey</em>, too, so this seemed an excellent time to round out my reading of Handler&rsquo;s bibliography. I&rsquo;m about halfway through and enraptured by the narrative voice. It&rsquo;s pretentious, as a story narrated by a precocious high school senior should be, without being cloying, and with Handler&rsquo;s charming humor throughout. I love it so far and have faith that the feeling will continue. I normally hate books set in high school, but this one takes me back to my high school self — somehow, in a good way, which I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever felt before.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season five.</strong> Continuing on; we are reaching the point where Joe stopped watching years ago — I had him watch the show with me when we first started dating — so I&rsquo;m excited to get into fresh content. Unfortunately, the show goes downhill, in my opinion, by season six, so we are in the last of the good.</li> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle six.</strong> If I believed in guilty pleasures, <em>ANTM</em> would be mine. Fortunately I don&rsquo;t, so I can indulge all I&rsquo;d like in junk food TV. I think the first seven seasons are all gold, but I was in the mood for Jade&rsquo;s antics in six — truly one of the most unhinged individuals to ever appear on the show.</li> <li><strong><em>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.</em></strong> An incredible follow-up to a film I loved very much; I agree that the cliffhanger ending undercuts some of the story&rsquo;s structure, but if you frame it as Gwen&rsquo;s story — which I think it was in many ways — it&rsquo;s a lot more satisfying, like a sophomore sojourn into another major character. On a technical and artistic level, it&rsquo;s a remarkable achievement; the painterly visuals and use of color in Gwen&rsquo;s universe were particular standouts.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> My record finally came in. It&rsquo;s going to take time for me to form an opinion and weight it against their discography — I&rsquo;ve got to let it sink — but as of right now, I really like it. &ldquo;Clown Blood&rdquo; is an early favorite.</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Our friends brought their kayaks and Joe rented one. We would like to invest in our own, but most of our money this summer has gone to home repairs. Maybe next summer.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - clean as paper before the poem (week notes 003) + clean as paper before the poem (week notes 03) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I was <strong>in school for a few days this week</strong>: one for a school improvement team meeting, where we made plans for the upcoming school year that have me really excited; another DEI committee meeting; and an English curriculum planning day. I also started moving some of the furniture in my classroom into place — I&rsquo;m rearranging for next year.</li> <li>I <strong>received a postcard in the mail</strong> <a href="https://buymeacoffee.com/veronique/e/280562">from Veronique</a>! I love this idea to take the small web to snail mail (and am generally a big fan of her blog).</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://kelsey.bearblog.dev/what-its-like/">what it&rsquo;s like</a> by kelsey.</strong> Less reading and more admiring: is this what the notebooks and brains of the creative and artistic are like? Others admire mine for its neatness and consistency, small, even printing repeated across page and page, the same thoughts over and over again, like photocopies. I love the color, the doodles, the spontaneity kelsey has, and this is what I love about bearblog: the glimpses into the minds of others.</li> <li><strong><em>Cultural Competence Now</em> by Vernita Mayfield.</strong> Continued from <a href="http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001">a previous week</a>; this week, I read the third chapter for my district&rsquo;s DEI Committee.</li> <li><strong><em>The House on Mango Street</em> by Sandra Cisneros.</strong> I&rsquo;m integrating this book into my curriculum for the next school year. It&rsquo;s a beautiful, poetic, important text, and I&rsquo;m so excited to read it with my kids. It&rsquo;s heavy, and the unit I&rsquo;ve planned around it is challenging, but I want to be more rigorous in my curriculum, and I think the kids will really connect with Esperanza.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://blueberrylemonade.pika.page/posts/i-wanted-to-be-like-my-dad">&ldquo;I wanted to be like my dad.&rdquo;</a> by Kyle (on Blueberry Lemonade).</strong> A thoughtful piece on how adulthood shifts our relationships with our parents. It&rsquo;s interesting — I seem to have the inverse experience: moving out of my mom&rsquo;s house, I think, brought us closer in many ways. But I still connect with Kyle&rsquo;s thesis about how our views of parents evolve; perhaps the nature of parenthood is seeing your child grow beyond you.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li>A lot of <strong>Friends at the Table</strong> content on Twitch. Joe is a fan of their podcasts and the folks involved; I&rsquo;m not into actual play podcasts or anime, so I don&rsquo;t join in, but I like watching some of their streams. I&rsquo;ve particularly enjoyed their <em>Stardew Valley</em> series.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood</em></strong>. I&rsquo;m back on my bullshit after watching <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2205413826">Austin Walker stream <em>Final Fantasy XI</em></a>. I&rsquo;ve played on and off since release, but this week I finished <em>Stormblood</em> (which I&rsquo;m tepid on) and am working my way toward <em>Shadowbringers</em> (which I&rsquo;ve heard nothing but praise for). I conned Joe into playing with me too, so it&rsquo;s been fun to see him go back through the early game quests. I have a lot of love in my heart for <em>A Realm Reborn</em>.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>My <strong>Los Campesinos! <em>All Hell</em></strong> record has yet to arrive in the mail, so not that (but it did ship this week and is meant to be delivered tomorrow).</li> </ul> - ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002) + ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 02) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ <p>I&rsquo;m continuing to try out doing Week Notes instead of monthly wrap ups. So far, so good! As a callback to my livejournal days, I&rsquo;m trying out using a random quote from something I&rsquo;m enjoying this week as my title (most likely, and true to my livejournal heart, cryptic song lyrics).</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My district is finally paying me to organize <strong>Safe Space trainings</strong>. This week, I got together with two other teachers to collaborate on plans, then delivered the training to a group of folks who we also prepared to do the training themselves. An immensely rewarding experience that felt like the culmination of four years of anger and despair and turned those feelings into something positive and productive.</li> <li>Trying to <strong>get organized and get on a better schedule</strong>. I woke up on Friday at 2:14pm (!!!) and felt awful about it. I spent a lot of time that day organizing my calendar (digital on Todoist, and I keep a physical planner) and setting some goals for myself so I don&rsquo;t spend the whole summer sleeping like a teenager.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I also want to <strong>cut down on my screen time for big social media apps</strong> (like Instagram and Facebook) — the ones that have no value other than to waste my time. I put a big ol&rsquo; screen time widget on the homescreen of my phone as a way to try to curtail the scrolling; I&rsquo;m hoping that, when I unlock my phone, I&rsquo;ll see that I&rsquo;ve already spent a substantial amount of time on these apps and choose something else instead. I love to be online, but I&rsquo;d rather <strong>spend that time on indie web spaces</strong> like bearblog, Mastodon (I need to find folks to follow! Please send me recs and/or your account, fellow bearbloggers — my email is in the footer), and 32bitcafe.</li> <li>This is a very long-term goal, but I want to <strong>migrate my curriculum map from Notion to Obsidian</strong>. I&rsquo;m increasingly trying to move to open source programs (to, hopefully, stave off enshittification). The <a href="https://github.com/marcusolsson/obsidian-projects">Obsidian Projects plugin</a> is helping to make this a reality, but I&rsquo;m still looking for a good way to create a rollup of my tags that includes the full standard text and a heatmap of how frequently the tag is used. I played a bit with <a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo</a> and <a href="https://getgrav.org/">Grav</a> for this but found I was going <em>web first</em> in my approach when really I just wanted a content management system (which Obsidian is, in a way, albeit a private one).<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li>I <strong>moved my server into a rack setup</strong> and relocated it to my basement. I&rsquo;ll probably put together a full post cataloguing that.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>How to Talk So Teens Will Listen &amp; Listen So Teens Will Talk</em> by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish</strong>. I&rsquo;ve read many recommendations for this book and thought it might help me in the classroom. I started and finished the book in two days — it&rsquo;s a quick but valuable read. Right now, all the ideas are theoretical, as I won&rsquo;t get to try them out until September, but I love the approach. The authors put into explicit steps the feeling that I&rsquo;ve always had: interactions with anyone, but especially children, need to be based on mutual respect, and adults cannot expect children to control their emotions if they are not willing to do the same. I&rsquo;d love to make this a book study among co-workers.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://louplummer.lol/computer-people/">Computer People</a> by Lou Plummer</strong>. A thoughtful piece about the evolution and entry of tech into our lives, particularly in education. Unfortunately I don&rsquo;t share Lou&rsquo;s rosy outlook: I still have lots of coworkers who don&rsquo;t regard themselves as &ldquo;computer people&rdquo; and resist any new technology (and call me for help when something is unplugged).</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, continued from last week (<strong>season four</strong>)</li> <li><strong><em>Easy A</em> (2010)</strong>. I never saw this when it came out but always read positive talk about it. It was awful; few laughs and all the character&rsquo;s motivations and actions were puzzling. It seemed to exist only to sell the viewer on Emma Stone and to have her parade around in lingerie.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Stardew Valley</em>, update 1.6</strong>. I&rsquo;m playing a co-op save with Joe and my friend Nick. I love <em>Stardew</em> and am enjoying discovering some of the new changes and additions, but I&rsquo;m struggling with the chaos of a shared farm — Joe in particular has some very different organizational priorities than me.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Youth Novels</em>, Lykke Li.</strong> I listened to this album for the first time in 2012 (&ldquo;Melodies &amp; Desires&rdquo; and &ldquo;Little Bit&rdquo; being the two I listened to with any regularity); it came up in a library shuffle and I realized I was listening to it in 160kbps. I replaced it with a higher quality rip and enjoyed hearing instruments and layers I didn&rsquo;t know existed before. I&rsquo;ve also a new appreciation for &ldquo;Breaking It Up,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hanging High,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Good, I&rsquo;m Gone.&rdquo;</li> <li>I&rsquo;d like to be listening to <strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong>, the latest release by my favorite band, but I preordered it on vinyl and it still hasn&rsquo;t come in&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know how much longer I&rsquo;ll hold out.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup></li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Red Leather&rdquo; by Future &amp; Metro Boomin</strong>. I still don&rsquo;t listen to much rap outside of Mac (a bit of Vince Staples, some Stormzy, some Princess Nokia), but I&rsquo;d like to branch out. I heard this in the background of (probably) an Instagram Reel and dig it (I hate that this is how folks, myself included, are discovering music these days).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>In my heart of hearts, I am a lazy fucker, and I don&rsquo;t intend to change that. However, there&rsquo;s a lot I want to do during my summer break, and I know I&rsquo;ll be disappointed in myself if I waste away the <em>whole</em> summer being a lazy fucker. I want to allow myself time to relax, but balance is important.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - Week Notes 001 + Week Notes 01 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ Sun, 21 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ diff --git a/public/week-notes/001/index.html b/public/week-notes/001/index.html index dc66529..b0c2943 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/001/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/001/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -Week Notes 001 | cassie.ink +Week Notes 01 | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

Week Notes 001

+

Week Notes 01

diff --git a/public/week-notes/002/index.html b/public/week-notes/002/index.html index 7c879a7..81979f3 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/002/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/002/index.html @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Doing My district is finally paying me to organize Safe Space trainings. This week, I got together with two other teachers to collaborate on plans, then delivered the training to a group of folks who we also prepared to do the training themselves. An immensely rewarding experience that felt like the culmination of four years of anger and despair and turned those feelings into something positive and productive. Trying to get organized and get on a better schedule. I woke up on Friday at 2:14pm (!!!) and felt awful about it. I spent a lot of time that day organizing my calendar (digital on Todoist, and I keep a physical planner) and setting some goals for myself so I don’t spend the whole summer sleeping like a teenager.1 I also want to cut down on my screen time for big social media apps (like Instagram and Facebook) — the ones that have no value other than to waste my time. I put a big ol’ screen time widget on the homescreen of my phone as a way to try to curtail the scrolling; I’m hoping that, when I unlock my phone, I’ll see that I’ve already spent a substantial amount of time on these apps and choose something else instead. I love to be online, but I’d rather spend that time on indie web spaces like bearblog, Mastodon (I need to find folks to follow! Please send me recs and/or your account, fellow bearbloggers — my email is in the footer), and 32bitcafe. This is a very long-term goal, but I want to migrate my curriculum map from Notion to Obsidian. I’m increasingly trying to move to open source programs (to, hopefully, stave off enshittification). The Obsidian Projects plugin is helping to make this a reality, but I’m still looking for a good way to create a rollup of my tags that includes the full standard text and a heatmap of how frequently the tag is used. I played a bit with Hugo and Grav for this but found I was going web first in my approach when really I just wanted a content management system (which Obsidian is, in a way, albeit a private one).2 I moved my server into a rack setup and relocated it to my basement. I’ll probably put together a full post cataloguing that. Reading How to Talk So Teens Will Listen & Listen So Teens Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I’ve read many recommendations for this book and thought it might help me in the classroom. I started and finished the book in two days — it’s a quick but valuable read. Right now, all the ideas are theoretical, as I won’t get to try them out until September, but I love the approach. The authors put into explicit steps the feeling that I’ve always had: interactions with anyone, but especially children, need to be based on mutual respect, and adults cannot expect children to control their emotions if they are not willing to do the same. I’d love to make this a book study among co-workers. Computer People by Lou Plummer. A thoughtful piece about the evolution and entry of tech into our lives, particularly in education. Unfortunately I don’t share Lou’s rosy outlook: I still have lots of coworkers who don’t regard themselves as “computer people” and resist any new technology (and call me for help when something is unplugged). Watching Gilmore Girls, continued from last week (season four) Easy A (2010). I never saw this when it came out but always read positive talk about it. It was awful; few laughs and all the character’s motivations and actions were puzzling. It seemed to exist only to sell the viewer on Emma Stone and to have her parade around in lingerie. Playing Stardew Valley, update 1.6. I’m playing a co-op save with Joe and my friend Nick. I love Stardew and am enjoying discovering some of the new changes and additions, but I’m struggling with the chaos of a shared farm — Joe in particular has some very different organizational priorities than me. Listening Youth Novels, Lykke Li. I listened to this album for the first time in 2012 (“Melodies & Desires” and “Little Bit” being the two I listened to with any regularity); it came up in a library shuffle and I realized I was listening to it in 160kbps. I replaced it with a higher quality rip and enjoyed hearing instruments and layers I didn’t know existed before. I’ve also a new appreciation for “Breaking It Up,” “Hanging High,” and “I’m Good, I’m Gone.” I’d like to be listening to All Hell, Los Campesinos!, the latest release by my favorite band, but I preordered it on vinyl and it still hasn’t come in… I don’t know how much longer I’ll hold out.3 “Red Leather” by Future & Metro Boomin. I still don’t listen to much rap outside of Mac (a bit of Vince Staples, some Stormzy, some Princess Nokia), but I’d like to branch out. I heard this in the background of (probably) an Instagram Reel and dig it (I hate that this is how folks, myself included, are discovering music these days). In my heart of hearts, I am a lazy fucker, and I don’t intend to change that. However, there’s a lot I want to do during my summer break, and I know I’ll be disappointed in myself if I waste away the whole summer being a lazy fucker. I want to allow myself time to relax, but balance is important. ↩︎ "> -ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002) | cassie.ink +ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 02) | cassie.ink @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Doing My district is finally paying me to organize Safe Space trainings. This we -

ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002)

+

ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 02)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/003/index.html b/public/week-notes/003/index.html index e51ff35..2da0e3b 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/003/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/003/index.html @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -clean as paper before the poem (week notes 003) | cassie.ink +clean as paper before the poem (week notes 03) | cassie.ink @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ -

clean as paper before the poem (week notes 003)

+

clean as paper before the poem (week notes 03)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/004/index.html b/public/week-notes/004/index.html index 6f24d6b..917a480 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/004/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/004/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -I love when you invoke my death (week notes 004) | cassie.ink +I love when you invoke my death (week notes 04) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

I love when you invoke my death (week notes 004)

+

I love when you invoke my death (week notes 04)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/005/index.html b/public/week-notes/005/index.html index f32a30d..03001df 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/005/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/005/index.html @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 005) | cassie.ink +the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 05) | cassie.ink @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ -

the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 005)

+

the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 05)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/006/index.html b/public/week-notes/006/index.html index 1063c32..16a9892 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/006/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/006/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 006) | cassie.ink +I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 06) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 006)

+

I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 06)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/007/index.html b/public/week-notes/007/index.html index fa2d5ae..87e577d 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/007/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/007/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 007) | cassie.ink +I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 07) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 007)

+

I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 07)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/008/index.html b/public/week-notes/008/index.html index f2096c3..5b61598 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/008/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/008/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -the birds remember how to come home (week notes 008) | cassie.ink +the birds remember how to come home (week notes 08) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

the birds remember how to come home (week notes 008)

+

the birds remember how to come home (week notes 08)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/009/index.html b/public/week-notes/009/index.html index 77286ca..973a10c 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/009/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/009/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -666 with a princess streak (week notes 009) | cassie.ink +666 with a princess streak (week notes 09) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

666 with a princess streak (week notes 009)

+

666 with a princess streak (week notes 09)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/010/index.html b/public/week-notes/010/index.html index 6bd012f..286efc9 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/010/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/010/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 010) | cassie.ink +I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 10) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 010)

+

I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 10)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/011/index.html b/public/week-notes/011/index.html index d1acd21..56e73ec 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/011/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/011/index.html @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Doing Joe and I drove back to ___ for a funeral… and then back, all in one day. Eight hours on the road, but it was nice to spend some time together, singing and talking about heavy things.1 I ran four miles in one go! Not without stopping and walking, and I’m far from my best times, but I’m trying to rebuild my endurance and speed after taking a long time off. I’m trying to get back into skin care. I’ve never had a thorough routine, but I’ve been slacking even on the meager bit I do. I looked in the mirror and saw an old person looking back at me, so I’ve been cleansing and moisturizing on a near-daily basis now. Reading The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey. I’m reading this on recommendation of a friend and coworker. The writing has a beautiful directness, but I’m not exactly fascinated by (or at all interested in) snails. It is eye-opening to read something so scientific in approach that is still a work of literature, however; it leaves me to consider how our different disciplines — me as an English teacher and my coworker a Science teacher — change the way we think and look at the world. a ranking of iMac G3 colors by tulip. field notes cured my twitter addiction on The Birdhouse. A lovely ode to a notebook. Watching Gilmore Girls, season six. Joe and I have reached about the end of the season. I think six has some good moments and episodes but is, on the whole, drudgery. Luke’s character takes a bizarre turn, and I somehow have even less patience for Rory and Logan’s relationship this time around. America’s Next Top Model, cycle five. Passive rewatches while folding laundry; the actual modeling and photoshoots are a low for the UPN seasons, but the personalities make it an entertaining season. Playing Joe and I have played more of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, which is really him watching me play and selecting dialogue options with me. He really does not care for the combat; I don’t love it either, but having played so much of this game and the first as a kid, I know my way around it much better. He doesn’t seem to like any of the characters yet; on one hand, I get that, because I think the KotOR II characters are much more complex and harder to initially like than the first game’s, but maybe the series just isn’t for him… We’ve been playing as a female Exile, but Joe was interested in the Handmaiden, and I prefer her to the Disciple, so I decided to roll back a save and use the PartySwap mod… until I realized that I have Steam Workshop mods mixed with the KotOR II Mod Build.2 Apparently, because I used the Workshop 13 years ago when I last played this game, Steam decided I definitely wanted those installed again. Ugh. The solution was to start from the beginning with cheats that will let me zip through and get back to where we were. It took the better part of five hours to re-install all the mods and play back through Peragus and Telos. That all said, I really love this game. I love the way the narrative places you in a backstory rather than the “blank slate” approach of the first game.3 The player then gets to decide the Exile’s reasons for going to war, their outlook on the Jedi, and there’s a lot of gray area to be found. Listening Mr. Anyway’s Holey Spirits Perform! One Foot in Bethlehem and Pure Particles by The Bug Club. More recommendations from a former student of mine. I’m really enjoying them! One Foot in Bethlehem very clearly has some religious satire, but I’ve not had a chance to parse for sub-text… At this point, I’m on a basal, what’s catchy level (the answer is a lot). religion, marriage, the future… the usual, at this point. I hate getting old. ↩︎ "> -but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 011) | cassie.ink +but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 11) | cassie.ink @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Doing Joe and I drove back to ___ for a funeral… and then back, all in on -

but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 011)

+

but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 11)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/012/index.html b/public/week-notes/012/index.html index 0f8b034..e51c30c 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/012/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/012/index.html @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ Joe and I finished our rewatch of Gilmore Girls, and I’m happy to say that I’m watching Joe play The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. "> -what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 012) | cassie.ink +what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 12) | cassie.ink @@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ I’m watching Joe play The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. -

what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 012)

+

what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 12)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/013/index.html b/public/week-notes/013/index.html index 724d560..5de76ca 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/013/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/013/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -spend my days running in circles (week notes 013) | cassie.ink +spend my days running in circles (week notes 13) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

spend my days running in circles (week notes 013)

+

spend my days running in circles (week notes 13)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/014/index.html b/public/week-notes/014/index.html index dcb1bb5..075f982 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/014/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/014/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -it's second nature to love you (week notes 014) | cassie.ink +it's second nature to love you (week notes 14) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ Doing I turned 30. I had a big party with lots of friends — and I feel gratefu -

it's second nature to love you (week notes 014)

+

it's second nature to love you (week notes 14)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/015/index.html b/public/week-notes/015/index.html index fb6cfe8..49bde60 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/015/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/015/index.html @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 015) | cassie.ink +my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 15) | cassie.ink @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ -

my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 015)

+

my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 15)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/016/index.html b/public/week-notes/016/index.html index 45077d5..5ac50f8 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/016/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/016/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 016) | cassie.ink +to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 16) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 016)

+

to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 16)

week-notes/016 diff --git a/public/week-notes/017/index.html b/public/week-notes/017/index.html index 467637f..848ebec 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/017/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/017/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 017) | cassie.ink +sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 17) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 017)

+

sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 17)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/019/index.html b/public/week-notes/019/index.html index 59887f0..c34f4a1 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/019/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/019/index.html @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ I’ve burned through several seasons of Girls since my last week notes. I’m in the last season now, and my opinions have started to solidify. I think if I’d watched the show at the time of airing, I’d have found Lena et al. insufferably pretentious. Old age has softened me; instead I find it a charming (though still deeply problematic and limited in the perspectives it represents) contra point. TV was and is rife with the male perspective, shows at which many of the same critiques could be levied (Seinfeld, Always Sunny, etc.). I think Girls attracts the ire it does partly due to its creator’s frequent gaffes and problematic statements but also because it challenges the status quo simply by its existence and its featuring complex women who are hard to like. I don’t think there was a cultural crisis of any kind over the characters in shows like Always Sunny being unlikeable — it’s clear that they’re meant to be. Girls is the same, but our culture has far more trouble swallowing unlikeable women. I also think that, while the show has its ups and downs and some storylines that don’t work, it is pretty consistent in quality — something I don’t often say about shows that run for several seasons. "> -stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 019) | cassie.ink +stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 19) | cassie.ink @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ I’ve burned through several seasons of Girls since my last week notes. I&r -

stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 019)

+

stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 19)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/020/index.html b/public/week-notes/020/index.html index 2839d4a..4446e69 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/020/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/020/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 020) | cassie.ink +hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 20) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 020)

+

hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 20)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/022/index.html b/public/week-notes/022/index.html index cb02e16..7b0acf1 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/022/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/022/index.html @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022) | cassie.ink +I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 22) | cassie.ink @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ -

I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022)

+

I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 22)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/024/index.html b/public/week-notes/024/index.html index 844b9e3..56ce1fc 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/024/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/024/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ -listen to my story (week notes 024) | cassie.ink +listen to my story (week notes 24) | cassie.ink @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -

listen to my story (week notes 024)

+

listen to my story (week notes 24)

diff --git a/public/week-notes/025/index.html b/public/week-notes/025/index.html index b0ee16d..8d5a9bc 100644 --- a/public/week-notes/025/index.html +++ b/public/week-notes/025/index.html @@ -4,8 +4,7 @@ - i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25) | cassie.ink @@ -48,7 +47,7 @@ Reading I finished reading Return of the King this week, completing a long-stand
- +

i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25)

@@ -57,7 +56,7 @@ Reading I finished reading Return of the King this week, completing a long-stand

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.

+

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. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!

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 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

@@ -76,9 +75,10 @@ Reading I finished reading Return of the King this week, completing a long-stand
  • 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)
  • 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 listened through to EELS by Being Dead 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.

    +

    I saw them in concert on Sunday and thought they put on a fucking great show. Amazing setlist, minimal talking, and fantastic performance. I’ve been so wishy-washy with concerts in the past, so it was nice to have a win.

    +

    Otherwise, I listened through to EELS by Being Dead 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.

    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 (and has a radio show with one of their songs still archived!), and I stumbled on a music blog from 2011 that mentioned some of the members’ later bands, which led to me downloading Horizon by Trash Kit. I gave it a listen through — there are some great, skittery guitars in here, and the vocals remind me a lot of Ponytail. It gets a little too jam band for me in places, and the songs are quite same-y. I really like “Happy Sad,” though.

    -

    Plexamp recommended Random Spirit Lover and then Dragonslayer by* Sunset Rubdown as a similar album after I finished listening through to Horizon. I’ve had both in my library for ages — I think I downloaded Sunset Rubdown’s entire discography at some point because I like a few of their songs. I didn’t particularly like either as whole albums, but I have loved (and continue to love) “You Go on Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II).”

    +

    Plexamp recommended Random Spirit Lover and then Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown as a similar album after I finished listening through to Horizon. I’ve had both in my library for ages — I think I downloaded Sunset Rubdown’s entire discography at some point because I like a few of their songs. I didn’t particularly like either as whole albums, but I have loved (and continue to love) “You Go on Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II).”

      diff --git a/public/week-notes/026/index.html b/public/week-notes/026/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ca5d80 --- /dev/null +++ b/public/week-notes/026/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,128 @@ + + + + + + + + +I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26) | cassie.ink + + + + + + + + + +
      +

      + + cassie + + ink + +

      + + + + +
      +
      + +
      + + + + +

      I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26)

      + +
      + week-notes/026 +
      + +

      Doing

      +

      I’m teaching (adjunct lecturing) a college class in the fall for the first time. I’m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I’m also trying to do my own thing. It’s a lot of work and I’m very stressed about it.

      +

      I know it’s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It’s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)

      +

      Reading

      +

      I finished Mood Machine. It was fantastic — an illuminating look into the music industry and perhaps one of the great anti-capitalist works of this decade. Pelly offers no easy solutions (a problem this big and complex wouldn’t have any) but rather a call to action for a societal and economic shift toward collectivism and independence rather than a corporate machine that devalues artists and alienates individuals. Highly recommend!

      +

      I now need to start reading through the books for my syllabus — they’re all young adult lit and books I’ve read before, so they go fast. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is first up.

      +

      Watching

      +

      Joe and I watched through Austin Walker’s Let’s Play of Knights of the Old Republic II — or at least, what he has out right now, which is through Dxun.

      +

      Playing

      +

      I haven’t gotten to play Mistria at all this week because we’ve been in and out of town, but it is very much on my mind. I don’t use my Switch much, but I would play the hell out of this game in handheld — or perhaps on a Steam Deck…

      +

      Listening

      +

      I’m still coming down from the high of the Rainbow Kitten Surprise concert, so I’ve mostly been listening to them (and shuffles on car rides). Nothing new or notable!

      + + + +
      + +
      + +
      + + +
      + + + diff --git a/public/week-notes/027/index.html b/public/week-notes/027/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4bbf48 --- /dev/null +++ b/public/week-notes/027/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,145 @@ + + + + + + + + +I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027) | cassie.ink + + + + + + + + + +
      +

      + + cassie + + ink + +

      + + + + +
      +
      + +
      + + + +

      I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027)

      + +
      + week-notes/027 +
      + +

      Doing

      +

      I’m still working on planning for the college class I’m teaching in a few weeks. I need to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don’t really plan that way, so I’m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It’s a lot of work, but I’m feeling a lot better than I was last week. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor’s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I’m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it’s just a matter of doing the work.

      +

      I’ve been playing with the idea for a while now of buying a new monitor for my desk at work — the school issues me one (and I asked for a second to have a dual monitor setup, which they did give me), but they’re pretty bottom of the barrel office displays. They’re not even 1080p, which is a real pain for grading on our archaic LMS. I hunted around for deals on a cheap display, but I found that anything worth spending money on far outpaced my displays at home (a Dell S2340M that I bought in 2015 and an ASUS VZ239H-W from 2016 that I inherited from my sister). I ended up cashing in some of my credit card rewards points and taking advantage of a sale1 to get a KTC H27T22C-3, which will be a big upgrade for me (23" to 27"; 1080p to 1440p; much higher refresh rate and a new IPS panel). Then I got on my bullshit and started researching monitor arms — I’ve always wanted one, but neither of my previous displays were VESA compatible. I found a crazy deal for a white Ergotron MXV dual monitor mount on eBay (a little over $100 shipped), bought a VESA adapter for the Dell and a plate to distribute the weight on my desk, and now I’m just waiting for everything to come in. This coming school year, I really want to stop staying at work so late and just do my grading and planning at home, where I have a much more comfortable and quality set up2 (including a Steelcase Leap v2, which I recently found on Facebook Marketplace in mint condition for $175).

      +

      I’m also justifying my recent exorbitant spending on my office as a way to stop spending so much fucking time on my phone and instead put that energy into writing, building websites, playing games, and maybe getting back into content creation.3 I’ll take the ASUS to school; maybe a few years down the line when they get to be reasonably priced, I’ll get an OLED and replace the Dell, but for now, it works just fine for a secondary display.

      +

      Reading

      +

      Most of my reading from here on out is going to be prep work for my college class and for the coming school year. I’m almost done with Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I’m glad to say is as good as I remember it — it was a favorite of mine as a teen. I also recently learned that there’s a graphic novel version that I’d like to get my hands on one day. Frankly, I’d love to teach this book one day in the classroom (not for a college course) — even if it is dated in terms of publication year (the themes are perennial) — but that’s not really possible with the age group that I teach right now.

      +

      I’m also refreshing myself on chapters from Literature for Young Adults: Books (and More) for Contemporary Readers by Joan L. Knickerbocker and James A. Rycik, which is our textbook for the course and is about as exciting as it sounds (though useful). I know The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros well enough that I was able to plan from memory, but I pulled two poems from Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood by Judith Ortiz Cofer to pair with it. I first read the better part of Silent Dancing in undergrad — I think for a world lit class — and really loved it; the title story is particularly resonant and haunting. I’d like to go back and read it in full when I’m less bogged down with work.

      +

      Watching

      +

      Joe and I are still watching old seasons of Survivor — we’re on Caramoan right now. There are no returning players for 50 on it, but we enjoyed South Pacific, and I see Caramoan as kind of part two of that season. We’re still following Austin Walker’s Let’s Play of Knights of the Old Republic II and then watching Friends at the Table Ali’s Mistria Mondays when we need turn off our brain content. I’ve pushed into season four of Downton Abbey, but it’s losing its luster. I would like to maybe finish it, though… again, maybe when I’m less busy with work.

      +

      Playing

      +

      I’m back on my Fields of Mistria bullshit now that we’re home. At this point, I’ve exhausted a lot of the content currently available, which isn’t a bad place to be — I’ve seen just about everything (except heart events, which I really don’t interact with in these types of games) and now can focus on 100%ing things and beautifying my farm. There’s still a few things that will unlock at higher town ranks, and I can keep looking forward to the regular updates.

      +

      Listening

      +

      I listened to Tapestry by Carole King. I’m not really sure why — I knew it wasn’t really going to be for me. It’s a legendary album and I’m sure deserves its place in music history, but as an individual listener in 2025, I found it a bit ho-hum.

      +

      I also listened to Outside the Lobby’s episode on The Order 1886 after one of the hosts shared it in a Discord group I’m in. It was a great, funny episode that I enjoyed despite being an Order sicko (they were quite negative about the game). I’m so fucking into music lately that I don’t make much time for podcast listening, but I would like to listen to more of their episodes.

      +

      I also listened to I Love My Computer by Ninajirachi, which fucking bangs. Recommended for fans of Charli XCX’s earlier, more PC music-adjacent era4, and general hyperpop/EDM folks. Listen to “Fuck My Computer,” “Delete,” and “All I Am” for a taste of what the whole album is like; I’m particularly enamored with “Sing Good,” but the whole album feels like an ode to teenage creativity and terminally online behavior, for which I am squarely in the audience.

      +
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      1. +

        I’ve been slowly cutting down on my Amazon purchasing — I’m hoping to be almost entirely off of it soon — but I don’t have any brick and mortar electronics stores around me aside from Walmart, which feels like a lateral move… and a bitch needs a discount every now and then. ↩︎

        +
        2. +
      2. +

        Ideally I would be doing no work outside of the school day, but that’s not the reality of teaching — and also I am a workaholic and perfectionist. Let me live. ↩︎

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        3. +
      3. +

        I hate this term but I can’t think of anything better to use right now. ↩︎

        +
        4. +
      4. +

        I love brat and believe it brought PC Music’s innovative sound to the mainstream, but that also works against it: it’s somewhat diluted compared to the bizarre, abstract, creative shit that PC Music and similar artists put out over the years. ↩︎

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        5. +
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      + + +
      + +Recent content in Week-Notes on cassie.ink Hugo en-us - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + + I want to fuck my computer (week notes 027) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/027/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m still working on planning for the college class I&rsquo;m teaching in a few weeks. I <em>need</em> to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don&rsquo;t really plan that way, so I&rsquo;m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It&rsquo;s a lot of work, but I&rsquo;m <a href="https://cassie.ink/week-notes/026/">feeling a lot better than I was last week</a>. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor&rsquo;s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I&rsquo;m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it&rsquo;s just a matter of doing the work.</p> + + + I'm breaking your fall, you're breaking my ass (week notes 26) + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/week-notes/026/ + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>I&rsquo;m teaching (<em>adjunct lecturing</em>) a college class in the fall for the first time. I&rsquo;m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I&rsquo;m also trying to do my own thing. It&rsquo;s a lot of work and I&rsquo;m very stressed about it.</p> <p>I know it&rsquo;s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It&rsquo;s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)</p> + i'm falling down with shit caked on my shoes (week notes 25) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 + Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/025/ - <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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.</p> <h2 id="reading">Reading</h2> <p>I finished reading <em>Return of the King</em> this week, completing a long-standing personal mission to read <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. I <a href="https://git.32bit.cafe/cassie/cassiedotink.git">wrote up a big long post</a> with my history with the series and my thoughts.</p> + <h2 id="doing">Doing</h2> <p>Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer&rsquo;s tan became more and more pronounced. I also &ldquo;worked&rdquo; 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. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!</p> (week notes 25) @@ -23,7 +37,7 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <p><em>And Then? And Then? What Else?</em> has become a slog, but I press on nonetheless. There&rsquo;s little here to amuse or excite; even devout Lemony Snicket fans will be disappointed I think by the lack of new information or even commentary concerning the books. Handler confirms that the Baudelaires are named for the poet, that the melodrama of the books is inspired by Edvard Gorey, and that he openly disdains the film — hardly revelations by any means. Most egregiously, he seriously downplays the accusations of sexual inappropriateness against him and attempts to use his own childhood sexual assault as a shield against them.</p> - listen to my story (week notes 024) + listen to my story (week notes 24) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/024/ @@ -37,7 +51,7 @@ finishing Euphoria instead of reading classic literature - I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022) + I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 22) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/022/ @@ -51,14 +65,14 @@ <p>I recently discovered some weirdness with my hard drives in my PC. It&rsquo;s a long story that isn&rsquo;t worth telling, but the end of it is that I bought an NVMe drive and am starting fresh with a clean install of Windows. It&rsquo;s fairly painless now that I have a drive that&rsquo;s <em>just</em> my files with a separate OS drive. I do have to reinstall and set up some apps again, but it has been a good opportunity to reassess the cruft I&rsquo;ve let build up on there over the years.</p> - hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 020) + hold on tight to this time, this place (week notes 20) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/020/ <p>I had a friend over one evening for pizza and card games — mostly Fan Tan and Blackjack, which are almost the only card games I like. My volleyball rec league started up again this week; I haven&rsquo;t made time for physical exercise lately, and volleyball is a good commitment. I&rsquo;d like to start running again soon too, but I&rsquo;m nursing a minor foot injury that I&rsquo;d like to see cleared up before I put too much stress on it. Thursday was the school spelling bee, which is both fun and heart-wrenching to watch.</p> - stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 019) + stop thinking a phone call or text is too complicated (week notes 19) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/019/ @@ -72,119 +86,119 @@ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>Unfortunately I haven&rsquo;t been able to exercise much; partly, this is because I haven&rsquo;t been making the time for it, but I also tweaked my right shoulder somehow and it&rsquo;s been quite painful to use in every day tasks. <em>Ring Fit</em> is therefore off the table. The trouble is that I genuinely don&rsquo;t know what I did to it! This week is my last before our holiday break, and I&rsquo;m hoping to get back on the horse over the course of my 16 (!!) days off.</p> - sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 017) + sleepyhead 'cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night (week notes 17) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/017/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <p>I <strong>bought a new domain name</strong> — I&rsquo;m not going to post it just yet — but I&rsquo;m considering switching this site over to it. I love esotericbullshit, but I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s the energy I want to put out there. It makes the URL a little hard to share. But it also feels remarkably stupid when I <em>just</em> moved this over from another domain (which is incidentally quite similar to the new one&hellip;).<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> - to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 016) + to find part of you still works is like a tiny victory (week notes 16) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/016/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I went for a run with a good friend at an indoor track near me. The track itself is quite short, so the run is a little awkward, but it&rsquo;s a super soft flooring which made the run easy on my joints. It&rsquo;s nice to have a new run buddy, too!</li> <li>Saturday I felt angry and sick and exhausted all day; I&rsquo;d intended to go out and do holiday shopping but instead just rotted at home. I know I needed the rest, but seemingly everything put me in a bad mood. It&rsquo;s maybe just PMS — I haven&rsquo;t been good about tracking my cycle lately, though — or just the seasonal depression. It&rsquo;s shit no matter what it is.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><a href="https://lanadelrue.bearblog.dev/hometown-visit">Hometown Visit</a>. I love reading folks who blog about their loves. It&rsquo;s probably voyeuristic — I don&rsquo;t know that it reflects well on me — but it makes me wish I had the courage to do the same.</li> <li><strong>Sandra Cisneros, <em>Woman Hollering Creek</em>.</strong> I&rsquo;m waiting for <em>Villette</em> to come in, so I wanted something that would be easy to jump in and out of. This fits the bill; I love <em>Mango Street</em> dearly and this simply feels like more of it (albeit not following one character, but then, Cisneros&rsquo;s stories all seem to co-exist).</li> <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/owala-freesip-review/">25 Wirecutter Journalists Can’t Be Wrong: How Owala Became an Official Water Bottle Pick</a>. What a ridiculously self-important, self-absorbed article. I generally like and use Wirecutter; some of their recommendations are ridiculously decadent and detached from reality, but they are one of the few reliable online sources for product reviews and recommendations. I am all for an ode to something you love and that makes your life better, but this read not as &ldquo;we tested and compared a lot of products&rdquo; but more &ldquo;we all have good taste and have this water bottle so it must be good, right?&rdquo;</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9OhTB5eBqQ">Evermore: The Theme Park That Wasn&rsquo;t - YouTube</a> by Jenny Nicholson.</strong> I love Jenny&rsquo;s videos but hadn&rsquo;t watched this one yet; I dozed through portions but enjoyed it all the same.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pride &amp; Prejudice The Board Game</em></strong>. My brother gifted this to me years ago and I&rsquo;ve never found an opportunity to play it. A student of mine is listening to the audiobook of <em>P&amp;P</em> on my recommendation and I told her about the board game; I thought I should play it first myself, so I convinced Joe to play with me.</li> <li><strong><em>Fabledom</em></strong>. This has been in my Steam wishlist for ages, and I wanted a cozy game to try to quell my Saturday mood. It&rsquo;s OK. I enjoyed the time I put into it, but I don&rsquo;t think I will go back to it. City builders tend to entertain me for a few hours, but then I reach the later points of the game (or it becomes a chore to manage everything) and get bored.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <p>I&rsquo;ve had three songs in rotation this week: &ldquo;Clown Blood/Orpheus&rsquo; Bobbing Head&rdquo; by Los Campesinos!, &ldquo;up&rdquo; by Pigthe, and &ldquo;You Good? (In Medias Res)&rdquo; by Proper.</p> - my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 015) + my voice moved hades so he extinguished the fire (week notes 15) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/015/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I ran a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. My time was not good (40:38), but there was wet, heavy snow coming down, so I was mostly focused on not eating shit. I think mid-November might be my 5K cutoff. We otherwise stayed home for the holiday and spent some much needed time relaxing together.</li> <li>With the holiday season upon us, this is usually around the time that I take a big trip out to a nearby mall to get gifts for everyone. I want to commit this year to shopping mostly (entirely?) from local small businesses or buying handmade and secondhand goods. I&rsquo;m happy to live in a town with a great Main Street, and I want to stop dumping my money into corporations. <ul> <li>I did order a bunch of rechargeable batteries from Amazon for Black Friday, but that was the extent of my shopping.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I miss podcasting again. I&rsquo;ve run a few podcasts over the years, which all petered out for various reasons, but I&rsquo;m feeling the itch again. I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;d podcast about, though, which runs contrary to popular logic: you should have something to say, not just the desire to say things. I love audio production and the sound of my own voice, though. <ul> <li>Maybe I record audio versions of my blog posts and turn that into a podcast? I want to write more, after all. I don&rsquo;t think my week notes would be conducive to an audio format, but maybe my longer form writing (what little of it exists).</li> </ul> </li> <li>I bought a camera (Panasonic Lumix G7) on a bit of a whim. I film a lot of videos for my school, so I guess there&rsquo;s professional utility in using something other than my phone, but I also want to get better about taking pictures to preserve memories.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li>On Saturday, I felt sick and rotted on the couch and watched YouTube junkfood: mostly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@outsidexbox">outsidexbox</a>&rsquo;s seven things videos and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@MachoNachoProductions">Macho Nacho</a> console mod videos. <ul> <li>I don&rsquo;t mod consoles. I like to tinker with electronics, but I&rsquo;ve never soldered anything. Somehow, however, I find myself watching a lot of these sorts of videos. I think I admire the production value and Tito&rsquo;s calm, measured approach.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I&rsquo;m about done with <strong><em>Daria</em></strong>, but I haven&rsquo;t watched the movies yet.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Into the Wild</em> by John Krakauer.</strong> As a kid, the film adaptation was on frequent rotation in my house; my mom often fixated on one movie and watched it over and over, and she was a big fan of the soundtrack as well. I&rsquo;ve always wanted to read the book since, and I&rsquo;m trying again to commit to reading more now that the start of school year frenzy has died down for me. I&rsquo;m enjoying following McCandless&rsquo;s story and don&rsquo;t think Krakauer too effusive (though his biases are clear), but some of the tangents feel extraneous. <ul> <li><strong>Finished on November 28.</strong> A humanizing and sympathetic account of a controversial figure. A few meandering chapters, but there are — in McCandless&rsquo;s case especially — wrong turns taken in pursuit of truth, meaning, and beauty.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I&rsquo;ve ordered Charlotte Brontë&rsquo;s <strong><em>Villette</em></strong> through my local bookstore as an upcoming read on the recommendation of a student&rsquo;s parent. I&rsquo;m also interested in getting my hands on <strong><em>The Dead Father</em></strong> by David Barthelme after reading an excerpt in <em>Into the Wild.</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Satisfactory.</em></strong> Just a few months before the pandemic, while I was in grad school, I fell deeply in love with <em>Satisfactory</em> and attempted in vain to explain to my literary and well-rounded colleagues that I was spending my free time balancing my iron production pipelines and converting from biomass energy to coal. I dipped my toe in a few more times after my mania but resolved to wait until 1.0 as many of my production lines would need to be seriously re-tooled. Joe suggested we start a co-op save this week and I am back and thriving. <ul> <li>We did get into a brief, heated conflict over manifold (my preference) versus balanced production, an argument all couples experience at some point in their relationship, I&rsquo;m sure.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I played a little but more of <strong><em>Pokémon Crystal</em></strong>, but I&rsquo;m at a point where I have to grind out levels to take on the next gym, which I&rsquo;m supremely uninterested in doing. Maybe I&rsquo;ll just hack my save.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>I downloaded the <em>Satisfactory</em> soundtrack and have had that on in the background — it&rsquo;s very good. Otherwise, I&rsquo;m mostly still listening to <strong>Rainbow Kitten Surprise</strong>.</li> </ul> - it's second nature to love you (week notes 014) + it's second nature to love you (week notes 14) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/014/ <p>first week notes in a while so some of this might not be strictly &ldquo;this week&rdquo;</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I turned 30. I had a big party with lots of friends — and I feel grateful to have so many folks who want to celebrate with me, including some who drove substantial distances. I still have a bunch of mixed up feelings about crossing this threshold, but I&rsquo;m trying to remember the advice of a friend: it&rsquo;s a gift to grow older.</li> <li>This maybe belongs under a playing heading, but maybe not: I picked up <strong><em>Ring Fit Adventure</em></strong> for the first time since the pandemic. It&rsquo;s getting to be too cold out to run, so I need an alternate fitness option. My most reliable gym buddy moved away, so I&rsquo;m seeing if I can get <em>Ring Fit</em> to stick again. I am definitely in way better shape than when I was playing years ago; I would feel faint after 20-30 minutes in the game, but my first session was over 30 minutes and I felt fine (albeit sweaty) after. Turning 30 feels like an inflection point where I need to get serious about losing weight.</li> <li>I also went to the gym for the first time in months to run on the treadmill. With snow season upon us, I need to transition to indoor running. I like it quite a bit less, but I don&rsquo;t want to lose progress.</li> <li>We had our first big snow of the season on Friday, which meant a (much-needed) lazy snow day at home.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Daria</em>, season four.</strong> I started rewatching Daria around Halloween because I dressed as her for the holiday. I still love it and I still hate Tom.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzdTG0JyblU&amp;list=PLIAGhNc7IWXxCHc55BwOsuTgMrDM8smSU&amp;index=18&amp;pp=iAQB">Friends at the Table&rsquo;s <em>Fields of Mistria</em> streams.</a></strong> I&rsquo;m not a FatT fan — actual play podcasts do not appeal to me at all — but Joe is, and I otherwise like a lot of the personalities on the show. Ali is probably my favorite and Joe and I love farming games like <em>Mistria</em> a whole lot.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon Crystal Legacy.</em></strong> I had a hankering of Gen 2 nostalgia hit me, so I&rsquo;ve been working my way through this ROM hack. I know a lot of my love for Gen 2 stems from it being my first Pokémon — and, indeed, one of the first <em>games</em> I really ever played — but I&rsquo;m happy to report that it&rsquo;s just as charming as I remember.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Rainbow Kitten Surprise, <em>RKS</em>.</strong> Listened on the recommendation of a friend; I was concerned initially because I really didn&rsquo;t like the first track (my words: &ldquo;Big garage vibes. Like shit you listen to while you work on your motorcycle&rdquo;), but after that hump, I really loved the album. My tops are &ldquo;Cold Love,&rdquo; &ldquo;Wasted,&rdquo; &ldquo;All&rsquo;s Well That Ends,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Lady Lie.&rdquo; &ldquo;Cold Love&rdquo; in particular has really hung around in my head.</li> </ul> - spend my days running in circles (week notes 013) + spend my days running in circles (week notes 13) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/013/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I presented to pre-service teachers at my alma mater with a colleague! Emotionally, I still feel like I was in their spot not that long ago — and then I remember I graduated over six years ago (and into a vastly different world and job market).</li> <li>I&rsquo;m finding myself using ellipses a lot and I do not like it. Is this growing old? Am I becoming a boomer?</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about maintaining some kind of daily log — just simple, passing notes on what I did, what I thought about. Obsidian has this feature built in and it might be a good way to start. I like the idea of it being searchable and (theoretically) infinite in size, but I also want an excuse for another notebook. <ul> <li>I used to do daily reflections at the end of my work day. Slowly, those became every few days, then every week, then rarely. It was a good practice that I wish I had maintained, but there&rsquo;s already so much I&rsquo;m packing into my work day — and my goal in daily notes is to be more mindful about what I&rsquo;m doing and thinking in my free time.</li> </ul> </li> <li>I attended my state-wide English teacher conference; this is something like my sixth or seventh time attending and I still find it valuable. I left with a lot of great ideas on how to diversify my practice and better empower my students.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Percy Jackson and the Olympians.</em></strong> Joe and I have watched a few episodes. I liked the book fine, but the TV show has yet to grab me. It lacks Percy&rsquo;s narrative voice (and personality), and while it&rsquo;s good that Percy is played by an actual child, his pre-pubescent voice freaks me out.</li> <li><strong><em>Broad City</em></strong>. Joe and I watched a lot of <em>Broad City</em> early in our relationship, but we never finished it. We are starting it over from the beginning. Still funny!</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Charli XCX, <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>.</strong> Every re-release and new drop for <em>brat</em> innovates, co-exists, and complements. The features on this remix album feel like an ode to the remarkable original release and a statement of how pivotal the album has been personally and for the industry writ large. This version of &ldquo;Everything is romantic&rdquo; is as much a remix as an iteration; the original captures a single moment in beautiful, mimetic detail, and this one is another artist following the theme and form with their own experiences. <em>brat</em> is undoubtedly a project we&rsquo;ll all be talking about when we discuss the music of the 2020s; I love witnessing its creation in real time. <ul> <li>For the haters, a friend of mine said the mixing was bad and that it &ldquo;just sounds like noise.&rdquo; I still like her (Charli and the friend, in that order<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>).</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>Foxholes, <em>Foxholes</em>.</strong> I found &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; while going through Daytrotter archives and loved it; the rest of the album is pleasant listening, but &ldquo;Alligator&rdquo; is the stand out.</li> <li><strong>Yung Lean, <em>Stardust</em>.</strong> I loved Yung Lean&rsquo;s feature on <em>Brat and it&rsquo;s completely different but also still brat</em>; imagine my surprise when I discovered that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stgrSjynPKs&amp;pp=ygUJeXVuZyBsZWFu">the esoteric bullshit (or so I thought) I was listening to ten+ years ago as a joke but not really</a> went on to be a critically recognized artist. I thought it was just a weird fucking song. <ul> <li><em>Stardust</em> is a much more polished and, dare I say, coherent and digestible<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> product than &ldquo;Hurt&rdquo;; I like it, but I&rsquo;m not sure any of the songs will earn the coveted ⭐ on Plex.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> It&rsquo;s music I&rsquo;d have to be in a mood for — although the mumble-y nature of it makes it good background music while working. Maybe it just needs to sit with me a little more.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>just kidding :-)&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 012) + what would it mean for us if i fell off this slide? (week notes 12) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/012/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing a condensed post this week because I have been so busy with work!</p> <ul> <li> <p>Joe and I finished our rewatch of <strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, and I&rsquo;m happy to say that I still love the show. It goes downhill in season six and is borderline unwatchable in season seven, but I have such affection for all before that — especially the warm blanket, cozy autumn early seasons.</p> </li> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m watching Joe play <strong><em>The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom</em></strong>.</p> - but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 011) + but let's talk about you for a minute (week notes 11) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/011/ <p>I&rsquo;m doing two weeks in one post. Last week I was dead sick and working too much so I didn&rsquo;t assemble a post throughout the week as I normally do.</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I drove back to ___ for a funeral&hellip; and then back, all in one day. Eight hours on the road, but it was nice to spend some time together, singing and talking about heavy things.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I ran four miles in one go! Not without stopping and walking, and I&rsquo;m far from my best times, but I&rsquo;m trying to rebuild my endurance and speed after taking a long time off.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying to get back into skin care. I&rsquo;ve never had a thorough routine, but I&rsquo;ve been slacking even on the meager bit I do. I looked in the mirror and saw an old person looking back at me, so I&rsquo;ve been cleansing and moisturizing on a near-daily basis now.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em> by Elizabeth Tova Bailey.</strong> I&rsquo;m reading this on recommendation of a friend and coworker. The writing has a beautiful directness, but I&rsquo;m not exactly fascinated by (or at all interested in) snails. It is eye-opening to read something so scientific in approach that is still a work of literature, however; it leaves me to consider how our different disciplines — me as an English teacher and my coworker a Science teacher — change the way we think and look at the world.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://platinumtulip.bearblog.dev/a-ranking-of-imac-g3-colors/">a ranking of iMac G3 colors</a> by tulip.</strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://thebirdhouse.bearblog.dev/field-notes-cured-my-twitter-addiction/">field notes cured my twitter addiction</a> on The Birdhouse.</strong> A lovely ode to a notebook.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season six.</strong> Joe and I have reached about the end of the season. I think six has some good moments and episodes but is, on the whole, drudgery. Luke&rsquo;s character takes a bizarre turn, and I somehow have even less patience for Rory and Logan&rsquo;s relationship this time around.</li> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle five.</strong> Passive rewatches while folding laundry; the actual modeling and photoshoots are a low for the UPN seasons, but the personalities make it an entertaining season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I have played more of <strong><em>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II</em></strong>, which is really him watching me play and selecting dialogue options with me. He really does not care for the combat; I don&rsquo;t love it either, but having played so much of this game and the first as a kid, I know my way around it much better. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to like any of the characters yet; on one hand, I get that, because I think the <em>KotOR II</em> characters are much more complex and harder to initially like than the first game&rsquo;s, but maybe the series just isn&rsquo;t for him&hellip; <ul> <li>We&rsquo;ve been playing as a female Exile, but Joe was interested in the Handmaiden, and I prefer her to the Disciple, so I decided to roll back a save and use the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/544-partyswap/">PartySwap mod</a>&hellip; until I realized that I have Steam Workshop mods mixed with the <a href="https://kotor.neocities.org/modding/mod_builds/k2/full">KotOR II Mod Build</a>.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Apparently, because I used the Workshop 13 years ago when I last played this game, Steam decided I definitely wanted those installed again. Ugh. The solution was to start from the beginning with cheats that will let me zip through and get back to where we were. It took the better part of five hours to re-install all the mods and play back through Peragus and Telos.</li> <li>That all said, I really love this game. I love the way the narrative places you in a backstory rather than the &ldquo;blank slate&rdquo; approach of the first game.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> The player then gets to decide the Exile&rsquo;s reasons for going to war, their outlook on the Jedi, and there&rsquo;s a lot of gray area to be found.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Mr. Anyway’s Holey Spirits Perform! One Foot in Bethlehem</em> and <em>Pure Particles</em> by The Bug Club.</strong> More recommendations from a former student of mine. I&rsquo;m really enjoying them! <em>One Foot in Bethlehem</em> very clearly has some religious satire, but I&rsquo;ve not had a chance to parse for sub-text&hellip; At this point, I&rsquo;m on a basal, what&rsquo;s catchy level (the answer is a lot).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>religion, marriage, the future&hellip; the usual, at this point. I hate getting old.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 010) + I know if I don't go now I won't make it out (week notes 10) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ Sun, 22 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/010/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My volleyball rec league started back up! I&rsquo;m awful and uncoordinated on the court, but it&rsquo;s fun to play with friends, and I have learned the hard way that I&rsquo;m a lot less depressed when I&rsquo;m active.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m enjoying reading ex-cohost folks on the bearblog discovery feed. The trending feed can get a little stale.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I hope they stick around.</li> <li>I took a walk (and a run) with a dear friend that I&rsquo;ve been trying to get together with for a while. She&rsquo;s decades older than me, but we are incredibly like-minded. Kindred spirits. I appreciate her wisdom and guidance and friendship immensely as she listens to all my neuroses.</li> <li>On Sunday night, Joe and I went to a wedding for two of our best friends. Maybe I&rsquo;ll make a longer post with all that stirs up for me — thoughts on marriage and commitment&hellip;</li> <li>Unfortunately, I left the wedding feeling sick. COVID test was negative so here&rsquo;s hoping it&rsquo;s just allergies from the changing season.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You,</em> Miranda July.</strong> I stand by what I said last week. I think I need a break from the sexual deviants I&rsquo;m apparently (and unconsciously) selecting lately. I&rsquo;m glad to be done with this; I appreciated July&rsquo;s occasional wit and found it Handler-esque, but those touches were few and far between, and the rest of it mostly just grossed me out.</li> <li>My next books will be <em>The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating</em>, recommended by a friend and coworker, and, I think, <em>Into the Wild</em>, which I&rsquo;ve always meant to read. It might not seem like much for an English teacher, but these past few months I&rsquo;ve been reading for pleasure more than I have in years and it has me feeling so full. It&rsquo;s great to rediscover that joy.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li><strong><a href="https://netigen.com/read/linkin-park-from-zero">&ldquo;Linkin Park, From Zero&rdquo;</a> by n3verm0re.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a Linkin Park fan by any means, but I have been interested in seeing how a group reawakens after such a tremendous loss. I really enjoyed this piece about it.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Green Dream in F#</em> and <em>Rare Birds</em>, The Bug Club.</strong> I asked a student of mine what kind of music she listened to; she said her music was too weird and I&rsquo;d probably never heard of it. I took that as a personal challenge. But it&rsquo;s not that weird — although, as an (ex?) Xiu Xiu listener, my barometer is off. I liked both albums! They&rsquo;re light, fun listening, and absolutely up my alley.</li> <li><strong><em>Romance is Boring</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> Listening to the music students of mine like has me thinking about the music I was in love with at their age. <em>RiB</em> came out at the exact right time for me and holds a special place in my heart. I listen to tracks from it often, but this was the first time I&rsquo;d revisited some deeper cuts, like &ldquo;Who Fell Asleep In,&rdquo; in years.</li> <li><strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> I&rsquo;m still forming my larger thoughts on <em>All Hell</em>, but it was interesting to compare side-by-side with <em>RiB</em>. It is far more even and consistent in quality — <em>RiB</em> has some all-timers but also some real duds (&ldquo;Plan A&rdquo;) — but there is a visceral, adolescent melodrama to <em>RiB</em> that <em>All Hell</em> lacks. <em>All Hell</em> is instead grown up and wistfully forlorn, especially compared to juggernauts like &ldquo;I Just Sighed.&rdquo; Both are good and appropriate for me at different times and headspaces, but <em>RiB</em> holds more of hook — although I have fifteen years of relationship and baggage with it compared to <em>All Hell</em>.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m thinking about a recurring theme in songs I am or have been fixated on — <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;Drops (reprise),&rdquo; The Peripheral Ones</strong> - &ldquo;I know if I don&rsquo;t go now I won&rsquo;t make it out&rdquo; <ul> <li><strong>&ldquo;The Whale Song,&rdquo; Modest Mouse</strong> - &ldquo;I guess I am a scout / so I should find a way out / so everyone can find a way out&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Ave Maria,&rdquo; Mac Miller</strong> - &ldquo;Have you found a way out?&rdquo; &amp; <strong>&ldquo;Come Back to Earth&rdquo;</strong> - &ldquo;I just need a way out of my head / I&rsquo;ll do anything for a way out of my head&rdquo;</li> </ul> </li> <li>— the idea of making it out is, of course, not a unique theme, but perhaps it&rsquo;s why <em>The House on Mango Street</em> resonated with me: <em>&ldquo;For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I think posts don&rsquo;t decay quickly enough from the feed, and the top page or two of trending posts are all by the same handful of people. There&rsquo;s a handful of very active posters, which is a great thing, but I like to see variety there.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - 666 with a princess streak (week notes 009) + 666 with a princess streak (week notes 09) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/009/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Working on getting off big corporate social media, still. I&rsquo;m almost entirely off Twitter; I keep the app just because I have a few notifications set for when specific people tweet (mostly bands who tweet out tour dates), but I&rsquo;m otherwise mostly on Mastodon (social.lol) and Discord. Cohost going down was sad to see even if I was never an active user and there were problems with it, but its downfall impressed on me even further the importance of owning your content — and it made me really happy to have this space for my thoughts and writing.</li> <li>I got my COVID booster and flu shot on Friday, which put me out of order for some time. Glad to have them done, however; one day of discomfort is worth it!</li> <li>The weight of being a teacher really set on me this week — not the teaching work, which I love, but the emotional weight of my students&rsquo; lives. It&rsquo;s especially hard to see kids that remind me of myself at their age and wish I could impart all that I&rsquo;ve learned — but knowing that there are no shortcuts and that the only way out for them is through. I can&rsquo;t pluck them out; they have to live it. I can only hope to be there for them as they do.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>No One Belongs Here More than You</em>, Miranda July.</strong> This has been in my Amazon wishlist for I don&rsquo;t know how long — long enough that I&rsquo;ve forgotten where I&rsquo;d found it or why I&rsquo;d wanted to read it. I liked the cover a lot, I guess. Anyway, I feel this is suffering from my reading it so soon after <em>Death Is Not an Option</em> as I have much of the same opinion: excellent prose but turned off by all the weird sex.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> I find July&rsquo;s narrators and conceits to be far more varied than Rivecca&rsquo;s, but Rivecca never made me read about an old man who fantasizes about teenage girls, so I automatically like her better.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/meet-lochlan-oneil-the-creator-of">Meet Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, the creator of DashCon</a> on Garbage Day.</strong> <em>&ldquo;I had to go to extensive therapy because I was like, “oh my god, I, Lochlan O&rsquo;Neil, single-handedly destroyed fandom culture?”</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon 4Ever.</em></strong> Joe and I got our shit rocked by the COVID and flu shots and decided to watch this. Middling, but a surprising environmentalist message. I&rsquo;m realizing how much of who Joe is goes back to Pokémon, of all things.</li> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season five.</strong> Joe and I went back in for a few episodes in our shot stupor. Still enjoyable, but we are quickly gaining on the last of the good episodes in my opinion.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>i,i</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> Not bad, but I like <em>For Emma</em> and <em>22, A Million</em> far more.</li> <li><strong><em>Chants</em>, The Peripheral Ones.</strong> I&rsquo;ve said before that this album is perhaps the most esoteric of my bullshit; it&rsquo;s a cover album of a little-known<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Myspace-era band, <a href="https://themiddleones.bandcamp.com/">The Middle Ones</a>, done by <a href="https://pigthe.bandcamp.com/music">pigthe</a> (the guitarist for <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/music">Trust Fund</a>). The album is obscure enough that it&rsquo;s not on MusicBrainz (I&rsquo;m aware that I could add it) and the band has 23 listeners on last.fm. I love it and go back to it often.</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>reading these books back to back has left me wondering if I&rsquo;m somehow unconsciously selecting books only written by deviants or if I&rsquo;m just so vanilla that my gauge for sexual content is skewed&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - the birds remember how to come home (week notes 008) + the birds remember how to come home (week notes 08) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/008/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>School is officially back in session, so my free time is much more limited now. I&rsquo;m optimistic for the year, though!</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> Finished at last. I have not much new to say compared to last week. I felt a notable sense of relief to be done with it and free to move on.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marisabel.nl/public/blog/Write_as_you_wish:_a_call_to_bring_back_the_prose">Write as you wish: a call to bring back the prose</a> by Marisabel.</strong> I&rsquo;m not a good enough writer for this to be applicable, so call this aspirational reading.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://itskristin.bearblog.dev/back-at-it-social-media-free/">back at it &amp; social media free</a> by kristin.</strong> I&rsquo;ve pretty much dropped Twitter in the last few weeks — I really want to separate myself from toxic online spaces.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://gkeenan.co/avgb/please-please-please-please-please-please-share-your-big-dumb-beautiful-self-with-the-world/">Please please please please please please share your big dumb beautiful self with the world</a> by Keenan.</strong> <em>&ldquo;What does it look like to put yourself on a page, or in a photo, or a brushstroke, or a string plucked and reverberating harmoniously out into the room? When does the screaming inside become loud enough, so all-encompassing that you open up the door to let it pour out of you?&rdquo;</em></li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle three.</strong> <em>Top Model</em> is my comfort show right now. I love the first seven cycles best, but cycle three has a special place in my heart. It&rsquo;s one of the first cycles I ever saw and has one of the most entertaining casts. The modelling itself is pretty poor, but that&rsquo;s not really what <em>Top Model</em> was about.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ei6dNr3RkY&amp;list=PLipgnTt01UGXDW2B_eJMKSSi12Y7koJ9O&amp;pp=iAQB">Run Button&rsquo;s <em>Star Wars Outlaws</em> streams.</a></strong> I&rsquo;m really interested in <em>Outlaws</em> based on what I&rsquo;ve seen; Keith has been complaining about the stealth a lot in the streams, but I think a good amount of that has been player error.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.</em></strong> I&rsquo;ve tried to get Joe to play <em>KotOR</em> for years, but he was turned off by the combat. We listened to A More Civilized Age&rsquo;s coverage together, though (he&rsquo;s a big Friends at the Table fan), and it got him interested in <em>KotOR II</em> (despite my insisting for years that it is the finest piece of <em>Star Wars</em> media). We&rsquo;re playing through together — me with the controller but collectively making decisions. We&rsquo;re still on Peragus (gross), but I&rsquo;m enjoying revisiting it. This will be my first time playing it in at least ten years and my first time with the restored content mod.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Life&rsquo;s a Riot With Spy vs Spy</em>, Billy Bragg.</strong> I like &ldquo;A New England&rdquo; a whole lot; the rest was good but didn&rsquo;t grab me. There&rsquo;s a sparseness and intimacy that struck me when I first heard &ldquo;A New England,&rdquo; but the novelty had worn off for the other tracks.</li> <li><strong><em>For Emma, Forever Ago</em>, Bon Iver.</strong> I listened to this all the way through one night and it unfortunately really spoke to me. I know I&rsquo;ve listened through it before, years ago, and I didn&rsquo;t care for anything except &ldquo;Skinny Love&rdquo;; this time around, every track hit.</li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Bishop, CA&rdquo;</strong> and <strong>&ldquo;Wig Master,&rdquo; Xiu Xiu.</strong> I swore off Xiu Xiu back in 2013 or so after listening to them heavily during a deep depression; I&rsquo;m not cold turkey on them anymore, but they&rsquo;re not in my regular rotation either. I&rsquo;ve been thinking of these two, some of my favorites then.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>in so far as any Xiu Xiu song is a &ldquo;favorite&rdquo; and not &ldquo;a desperate cry for help&rdquo;&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 007) + I guess I feel a bit lost without you (week notes 07) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/007/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li><strong>I re-did my website!</strong> I&rsquo;ve detailed it all <a href="http://localhost:1313/what%27s-this-%28and-how-it-works%29/">in a separate post</a>, but I&rsquo;m really excited about making weird stuff online here. I will miss being on the bearblog discovery feed, but this is also a push for me to get involved more on webrings &amp; other small web communities.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I&rsquo;m <strong>starting to get my classroom ready</strong> for the school year. I&rsquo;m really excited about some of the changes I&rsquo;m making — the physical layout of the room, curricular changes, routines, and philosophies. We go back to school on Tuesday, so this is really the end stretch of summer.</li> <li>I was pretty social this week! I had a friend and coworker over to help us identify some of the plants we have on our property; had a different friend over to play some games; went to see a Fleetwood Mac cover band with some of my partner&rsquo;s coworkers; and had my sister and her boyfriend over to go hiking and out to lunch.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://gkeenan.co/avgb/an-unrelenting-sense-of-longing/">An unrelenting sense of longing (or: “Maps”)</a> by Keenan.</strong> &ldquo;Maps&rdquo; rocks and I love reading fellow music sickos.</li> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> Plugging along, slowly. Rivecca&rsquo;s prose is excellent but none of the stories have really gripped me; all the protagonists are of a singular type that I don&rsquo;t really connect to.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYvqnTvUCg&amp;list=PLe_AuQUfBKl5R3Sc7Erpq3Y2me6q6uZ0R">Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke</a></strong> We finished it this week — a tragic end to a great series. RIP TONYSOPRAN.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Pokémon White Version</em>.</strong> Played here and there; I think I&rsquo;m losing my enthusiasm for it.</li> <li>We had a friend over and played a little <em><strong>Rock Band</strong></em> and <em><strong>Mario Party Superstars</strong>.</em></li> <li><em><strong>Final Fantasy XIV.</strong></em> Just a bit on Sunday night; focusing on leveling my Marauder (almost to 50!) and my Squadrons. I&rsquo;ve also started doing my Sylph Beast Tribe quests again because I want the Goobbue Mount.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Oblivion Will Own Me and Death Alone Will Love Me (Void Filler)</em>, <em>Every Moment of Every Day</em>, and <em>Fates Worse Than Death</em>, Short Fictions.</strong> I saw Short Fictions at Warsaw when they opened for Los Campesinos! I really enjoyed them live and sat down to listen to a few of their albums (they were kind enough to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/loscampesinos/comments/1dia0oy/comment/l92otja/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">post their setlist!</a>). Their music lacks some novelty compared to the live performance, but I still like a few songs — notably, &ldquo;Anymore,&rdquo; &ldquo;Nothingness Lies Coiled at the Heart of Being (It’s Such a Good Feeling),&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forever Endeavor.&rdquo;</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRRR3vRroA">&ldquo;Feather Test&rdquo;</a> by A Weather.</strong> This may be my song this year.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> I fell in love with it a few months ago and returned to it this week. I love, I love, I love (<em>I will, I will</em>). A beautiful, breathy mix of fleeting, intersecting harmonies with a rich and simplistic production. Every line strikes. (&ldquo;Brush your hand / Across where you felt me / Do I pass the feather test?&rdquo;)</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Also, importantly, I blog to write, not to be read. I guess.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 006) + I want to sleep and dream alone (week notes 06) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/006/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I was at school one day this week for an orientation for some student leaders.</li> <li>I went to Six Flags and realized I&rsquo;m old; my tolerance for roller coasters is, suddenly, shockingly low.</li> <li>Feeling extreme relief but also guilt for being such an introvert — lately I feel I&rsquo;m an anti-social loner, but friends have reassured me that these feelings are normal and everyone enjoys and protects their alone time (to an extent, depending on the person). All I really want to do is be alone in my house, left to do my silly little projects.</li> <li>I&rsquo;m trying still to move away from big, corporate social media — I have been spending more time on Mastodon and the bearblog discover feed. I&rsquo;ve scarcely opened Twitter, and I&rsquo;ve set 30m app timers for Facebook and Instagram. I rarely hit it for either, but something about knowing the timer is there makes me more conscious of the time I&rsquo;m wasting on them. I&rsquo;m not happy yet with my screen time as a whole, but at least I feel I&rsquo;m seeing more of real people (and people I choose to follow) than algorithms and dark patterns.</li> <li>On Friday, I went to IKEA with a friend and my sister to get some things for the house and a few items for my classroom.</li> <li>I intended to go into school on Saturday and begin some of the physical setup I need to do, but I felt sick and exhausted. I took a COVID test (negative) — I&rsquo;m hoping it&rsquo;s just holdover from a long day of driving on Friday.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://a-demain.bearblog.dev/studying-to-be-a-teacher-in-the-modern-day/">Studying to be a teacher in the modern day</a> by Sparrow.</strong> I feel the same about teaching as Sparrow: it&rsquo;s a hard career to choose in today&rsquo;s education system and economic climate, but teaching is so intrinsically part of me that I can&rsquo;t see myself doing anything else. Even with the stress, the low pay, the poor working conditions, I love it.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://marblethoughts.bearblog.dev/what-a-demure-mindful-and-brat-summer/">What a demure, mindful, and brat summer</a> by Kayla.</strong> Great introspective piece on trends and shifting mindsets. As I get older, I&rsquo;m less connected to fads (especially because I&rsquo;m not on TikTok and have curated my social media feeds), but I do try hard to understand them — I never want to be someone who brushes things off as &ldquo;kids these days&rdquo; absurdity and who blames the younger generation for every societal woe. Brat summer and demure sound silly, but there&rsquo;s importance in trying to understand what matters to young people<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> — and we can only reach state of cooperation and harmony through mutual understanding and respect.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://slate.com/advice/2024/08/dear-prudence-coworkers-too-personal.html">Help! I Invited My Coworkers Into a Very Personal Part of My Life. Now I Really Regret It.</a> by Hillary Frey.</strong> I read Dear, Prudence often to satisfy my busybody tendencies and, occasionally, to talk through social quandaries with my partner. The first letter here hit particularly hard; I am a teacher and regularly have coworkers ask super invasive questions about my family planning. I&rsquo;m friends with someone who went through IVF and she&rsquo;s opened my eyes to how these &ldquo;innocent questions&rdquo; (they&rsquo;re not) can hurt folks dealing with infertility. I&rsquo;m not, but even I find questions about whether I&rsquo;m trying for a baby super invasive!</li> <li><strong><a href="https://blog.avas.space/kindness-online/">finding kindness online</a> by ava.</strong> A great piece about connection in gaming. I have baggage with video game-centric spaces online, but this gives me some hope.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Too Model,</em> cycle 1.</strong> Mostly passive viewing while folding laundry, but cycle 1 has a special quality. It feels less like a reality show and more like a documentary about what it&rsquo;s like to be on a reality show. The budget is clearly low and the show hadn&rsquo;t established its structure just yet, so the contestants learn how the show works along with us. It feels grounded and authentic — for a season of <em>Top Model</em>, that is.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYvqnTvUCg&amp;list=PLe_AuQUfBKl5R3Sc7Erpq3Y2me6q6uZ0R">Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke</a></strong> Joe and I are continuing this and still really loving it!</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Final Fantasy XIV.</em></strong> I&rsquo;m slowly working through the post-<em>Stormblood</em> patch content. Joe is still playing through <em>A Realm Reborn</em>, so I&rsquo;m levelling Warrior to do dungeons alongside him as a new class. I&rsquo;m enduring the slow, painful grind of levelling my Squadrons, too. I like the concept of Squadrons — they remind me of my beloved <em>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance</em>,<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> but unfortunately there is very little variety and a lot of waiting involved here.</li> <li><strong><em>Pokémon White Version</em></strong>. I was inspired to jump into a Pokémon game by the Nuzlocke Joe and I are watching. I&rsquo;ve never really played <em>White</em>; maybe a year ago I did the first three gyms, but I remember none of it. I started it over on Saturday night.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <p>Nothing really specific — just some shuffles. I have, however, <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/user/babyspace/">started tracking my listening data to listenbrainz</a>!</p> - the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 005) + the secrecy won't keep you free (week notes 05) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/005/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>This week I learned that I&rsquo;m <strong>allergic to yellowjacket stings</strong> in the worst way possible (not that there&rsquo;s a good way). I was attacked by a nest of them while mowing the lawn and had to go to the ER.</li> <li>Contemplating my intense introversion.</li> <li>I was able to finally get together with a dear friend for a walk through the park — we have been trying to see each other for a while now but schedules and weather kept getting in the way. Talking to her, a kindred spirit, nourishes me.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>The Basic Eight</em> by Daniel Handler.</strong> Finished in the first hours of this week. I wrote up <a href="http://localhost:1313/the-basic-eight">a full post</a> with my thoughts.</li> <li><strong><em>Death Is Not an Option</em> by Suzanne Rivecca.</strong> I&rsquo;m about halfway through this. It&rsquo;s middling; there&rsquo;s a lot of weird sex that I simply do not connect to, and all of the narrators / protagonists feel the same even though this is a collection of unrelated short stories.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://apnews.com/article/harris-walz-apostrophe-possessive-grammar-967c0bbefc09be6c804588daabed7ec9">There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?</a> by Holly Tamer.</strong> This is the kind of presidential race news coverage I want to see in this world.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong>Into the Aether&rsquo;s Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke.</strong> I really like Into the Aether and the TWG network, and Joe is a big fan of watching Pokemon challenges on YouTube. We are not far in, but we are enjoying it so far.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Rock Band 4.</em></strong> I have a friend visiting this week — it&rsquo;s a great party game.</li> <li><strong><em>Carcassone.</em></strong> A board game staple in my house.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>Nothing particular beyond some shuffles, but my mom came over with her old Fleetwood Mac records and we realized that my record player has been spinning <em>slightly</em> too fast (~33.7rpm instead of 33.3). I noticed it months ago with Mac Miller&rsquo;s <em>GO:ODAM</em>, but I thought it might just be the press. We fixed it and now I feel I have to re-listen to all my records.</li> </ul> - I love when you invoke my death (week notes 004) + I love when you invoke my death (week notes 04) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/004/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>Joe and I <strong>went to the lake</strong> with two friends. We did some <strong>kayaking</strong><sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> and went <strong>swimming</strong>, then returned to our house to have a belated birthday celebration for Joe.</li> <li>I <strong>played around with Hugo</strong> and thought about moving this blog (back) there. I love the bearblog community and don&rsquo;t want to leave it, but I also want to build a personal site out more. I&rsquo;m conflicted, but for now, I&rsquo;m sticking on bearblog.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> I also bought a domain without a plan to use it — I love cassieland, but this one speaks to me, and it has an air of anonymity, which is appealing should I pursue my goal to blog more; anonymity feels safer.</li> <li>Joe and I went to visit family, so we&rsquo;re spending a weekend lake- and pool-side, and I&rsquo;m reminded for the ten thousandth time of how wonderful he is with children. The biological clock ticks.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://wavelengths.online/posts/how-did-this-new-harry-potter-ride-get-approved">How Did This New Harry Potter Ride Get Approved?</a> by Brendon Bigley.</strong> I used to be a tremendous <em>Harry Potter</em> fan but consciously decoupled from the series given J.K. Rowling&rsquo;s modern social campaign of hate. I&rsquo;ve gone to and enjoyed Universal&rsquo;s Wizarding World, but I agree with Brendon&rsquo;s stance: it is bizarre when Universal leans into the thinly veiled Nazism parallels for their theme park and ask attendees to rejoice in war crime trials.</li> <li><strong><em>The Basic Eight</em> by Daniel Handler.</strong> Handler&rsquo;s <em>Adverbs</em> is often what I cite when folks ask what my favorite book is, and I loved <em>Watch Your Mouth</em>, too. I need light reprieves from <em>The Odyssey</em>, too, so this seemed an excellent time to round out my reading of Handler&rsquo;s bibliography. I&rsquo;m about halfway through and enraptured by the narrative voice. It&rsquo;s pretentious, as a story narrated by a precocious high school senior should be, without being cloying, and with Handler&rsquo;s charming humor throughout. I love it so far and have faith that the feeling will continue. I normally hate books set in high school, but this one takes me back to my high school self — somehow, in a good way, which I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever felt before.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em>, season five.</strong> Continuing on; we are reaching the point where Joe stopped watching years ago — I had him watch the show with me when we first started dating — so I&rsquo;m excited to get into fresh content. Unfortunately, the show goes downhill, in my opinion, by season six, so we are in the last of the good.</li> <li><strong><em>America&rsquo;s Next Top Model</em>, cycle six.</strong> If I believed in guilty pleasures, <em>ANTM</em> would be mine. Fortunately I don&rsquo;t, so I can indulge all I&rsquo;d like in junk food TV. I think the first seven seasons are all gold, but I was in the mood for Jade&rsquo;s antics in six — truly one of the most unhinged individuals to ever appear on the show.</li> <li><strong><em>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.</em></strong> An incredible follow-up to a film I loved very much; I agree that the cliffhanger ending undercuts some of the story&rsquo;s structure, but if you frame it as Gwen&rsquo;s story — which I think it was in many ways — it&rsquo;s a lot more satisfying, like a sophomore sojourn into another major character. On a technical and artistic level, it&rsquo;s a remarkable achievement; the painterly visuals and use of color in Gwen&rsquo;s universe were particular standouts.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong> My record finally came in. It&rsquo;s going to take time for me to form an opinion and weight it against their discography — I&rsquo;ve got to let it sink — but as of right now, I really like it. &ldquo;Clown Blood&rdquo; is an early favorite.</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Our friends brought their kayaks and Joe rented one. We would like to invest in our own, but most of our money this summer has gone to home repairs. Maybe next summer.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - clean as paper before the poem (week notes 003) + clean as paper before the poem (week notes 03) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/003/ <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>I was <strong>in school for a few days this week</strong>: one for a school improvement team meeting, where we made plans for the upcoming school year that have me really excited; another DEI committee meeting; and an English curriculum planning day. I also started moving some of the furniture in my classroom into place — I&rsquo;m rearranging for next year.</li> <li>I <strong>received a postcard in the mail</strong> <a href="https://buymeacoffee.com/veronique/e/280562">from Veronique</a>! I love this idea to take the small web to snail mail (and am generally a big fan of her blog).</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://kelsey.bearblog.dev/what-its-like/">what it&rsquo;s like</a> by kelsey.</strong> Less reading and more admiring: is this what the notebooks and brains of the creative and artistic are like? Others admire mine for its neatness and consistency, small, even printing repeated across page and page, the same thoughts over and over again, like photocopies. I love the color, the doodles, the spontaneity kelsey has, and this is what I love about bearblog: the glimpses into the minds of others.</li> <li><strong><em>Cultural Competence Now</em> by Vernita Mayfield.</strong> Continued from <a href="http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001">a previous week</a>; this week, I read the third chapter for my district&rsquo;s DEI Committee.</li> <li><strong><em>The House on Mango Street</em> by Sandra Cisneros.</strong> I&rsquo;m integrating this book into my curriculum for the next school year. It&rsquo;s a beautiful, poetic, important text, and I&rsquo;m so excited to read it with my kids. It&rsquo;s heavy, and the unit I&rsquo;ve planned around it is challenging, but I want to be more rigorous in my curriculum, and I think the kids will really connect with Esperanza.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://blueberrylemonade.pika.page/posts/i-wanted-to-be-like-my-dad">&ldquo;I wanted to be like my dad.&rdquo;</a> by Kyle (on Blueberry Lemonade).</strong> A thoughtful piece on how adulthood shifts our relationships with our parents. It&rsquo;s interesting — I seem to have the inverse experience: moving out of my mom&rsquo;s house, I think, brought us closer in many ways. But I still connect with Kyle&rsquo;s thesis about how our views of parents evolve; perhaps the nature of parenthood is seeing your child grow beyond you.</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li>A lot of <strong>Friends at the Table</strong> content on Twitch. Joe is a fan of their podcasts and the folks involved; I&rsquo;m not into actual play podcasts or anime, so I don&rsquo;t join in, but I like watching some of their streams. I&rsquo;ve particularly enjoyed their <em>Stardew Valley</em> series.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood</em></strong>. I&rsquo;m back on my bullshit after watching <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2205413826">Austin Walker stream <em>Final Fantasy XI</em></a>. I&rsquo;ve played on and off since release, but this week I finished <em>Stormblood</em> (which I&rsquo;m tepid on) and am working my way toward <em>Shadowbringers</em> (which I&rsquo;ve heard nothing but praise for). I conned Joe into playing with me too, so it&rsquo;s been fun to see him go back through the early game quests. I have a lot of love in my heart for <em>A Realm Reborn</em>.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li>My <strong>Los Campesinos! <em>All Hell</em></strong> record has yet to arrive in the mail, so not that (but it did ship this week and is meant to be delivered tomorrow).</li> </ul> - ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002) + ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 02) http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/002/ <p>I&rsquo;m continuing to try out doing Week Notes instead of monthly wrap ups. So far, so good! As a callback to my livejournal days, I&rsquo;m trying out using a random quote from something I&rsquo;m enjoying this week as my title (most likely, and true to my livejournal heart, cryptic song lyrics).</p> <h1 id="doing">Doing</h1> <ul> <li>My district is finally paying me to organize <strong>Safe Space trainings</strong>. This week, I got together with two other teachers to collaborate on plans, then delivered the training to a group of folks who we also prepared to do the training themselves. An immensely rewarding experience that felt like the culmination of four years of anger and despair and turned those feelings into something positive and productive.</li> <li>Trying to <strong>get organized and get on a better schedule</strong>. I woke up on Friday at 2:14pm (!!!) and felt awful about it. I spent a lot of time that day organizing my calendar (digital on Todoist, and I keep a physical planner) and setting some goals for myself so I don&rsquo;t spend the whole summer sleeping like a teenager.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></li> <li>I also want to <strong>cut down on my screen time for big social media apps</strong> (like Instagram and Facebook) — the ones that have no value other than to waste my time. I put a big ol&rsquo; screen time widget on the homescreen of my phone as a way to try to curtail the scrolling; I&rsquo;m hoping that, when I unlock my phone, I&rsquo;ll see that I&rsquo;ve already spent a substantial amount of time on these apps and choose something else instead. I love to be online, but I&rsquo;d rather <strong>spend that time on indie web spaces</strong> like bearblog, Mastodon (I need to find folks to follow! Please send me recs and/or your account, fellow bearbloggers — my email is in the footer), and 32bitcafe.</li> <li>This is a very long-term goal, but I want to <strong>migrate my curriculum map from Notion to Obsidian</strong>. I&rsquo;m increasingly trying to move to open source programs (to, hopefully, stave off enshittification). The <a href="https://github.com/marcusolsson/obsidian-projects">Obsidian Projects plugin</a> is helping to make this a reality, but I&rsquo;m still looking for a good way to create a rollup of my tags that includes the full standard text and a heatmap of how frequently the tag is used. I played a bit with <a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo</a> and <a href="https://getgrav.org/">Grav</a> for this but found I was going <em>web first</em> in my approach when really I just wanted a content management system (which Obsidian is, in a way, albeit a private one).<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></li> <li>I <strong>moved my server into a rack setup</strong> and relocated it to my basement. I&rsquo;ll probably put together a full post cataloguing that.</li> </ul> <h1 id="reading">Reading</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>How to Talk So Teens Will Listen &amp; Listen So Teens Will Talk</em> by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish</strong>. I&rsquo;ve read many recommendations for this book and thought it might help me in the classroom. I started and finished the book in two days — it&rsquo;s a quick but valuable read. Right now, all the ideas are theoretical, as I won&rsquo;t get to try them out until September, but I love the approach. The authors put into explicit steps the feeling that I&rsquo;ve always had: interactions with anyone, but especially children, need to be based on mutual respect, and adults cannot expect children to control their emotions if they are not willing to do the same. I&rsquo;d love to make this a book study among co-workers.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://louplummer.lol/computer-people/">Computer People</a> by Lou Plummer</strong>. A thoughtful piece about the evolution and entry of tech into our lives, particularly in education. Unfortunately I don&rsquo;t share Lou&rsquo;s rosy outlook: I still have lots of coworkers who don&rsquo;t regard themselves as &ldquo;computer people&rdquo; and resist any new technology (and call me for help when something is unplugged).</li> </ul> <h1 id="watching">Watching</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Gilmore Girls</em></strong>, continued from last week (<strong>season four</strong>)</li> <li><strong><em>Easy A</em> (2010)</strong>. I never saw this when it came out but always read positive talk about it. It was awful; few laughs and all the character&rsquo;s motivations and actions were puzzling. It seemed to exist only to sell the viewer on Emma Stone and to have her parade around in lingerie.</li> </ul> <h1 id="playing">Playing</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Stardew Valley</em>, update 1.6</strong>. I&rsquo;m playing a co-op save with Joe and my friend Nick. I love <em>Stardew</em> and am enjoying discovering some of the new changes and additions, but I&rsquo;m struggling with the chaos of a shared farm — Joe in particular has some very different organizational priorities than me.</li> </ul> <h1 id="listening">Listening</h1> <ul> <li><strong><em>Youth Novels</em>, Lykke Li.</strong> I listened to this album for the first time in 2012 (&ldquo;Melodies &amp; Desires&rdquo; and &ldquo;Little Bit&rdquo; being the two I listened to with any regularity); it came up in a library shuffle and I realized I was listening to it in 160kbps. I replaced it with a higher quality rip and enjoyed hearing instruments and layers I didn&rsquo;t know existed before. I&rsquo;ve also a new appreciation for &ldquo;Breaking It Up,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hanging High,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Good, I&rsquo;m Gone.&rdquo;</li> <li>I&rsquo;d like to be listening to <strong><em>All Hell</em>, Los Campesinos!</strong>, the latest release by my favorite band, but I preordered it on vinyl and it still hasn&rsquo;t come in&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know how much longer I&rsquo;ll hold out.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup></li> <li><strong>&ldquo;Red Leather&rdquo; by Future &amp; Metro Boomin</strong>. I still don&rsquo;t listen to much rap outside of Mac (a bit of Vince Staples, some Stormzy, some Princess Nokia), but I&rsquo;d like to branch out. I heard this in the background of (probably) an Instagram Reel and dig it (I hate that this is how folks, myself included, are discovering music these days).</li> </ul> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>In my heart of hearts, I am a lazy fucker, and I don&rsquo;t intend to change that. However, there&rsquo;s a lot I want to do during my summer break, and I know I&rsquo;ll be disappointed in myself if I waste away the <em>whole</em> summer being a lazy fucker. I want to allow myself time to relax, but balance is important.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> - Week Notes 001 + Week Notes 01 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ Sun, 21 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/week-notes/001/ diff --git a/public/write-brief/index.html b/public/write-brief/index.html index 43eed2c..20d7cf3 100644 --- a/public/write-brief/index.html +++ b/public/write-brief/index.html @@ -47,8 +47,7 @@ I decided to test it out on my recent post about The Basic Eight. I chose this b
      - - +

      Automattic's Write Brief is, unsurprisingly, full of shit

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    + + + Read More + +
    {{ partial "terms.html" (dict "taxonomy" "tags" "page" .) }}
    {{ end }} diff --git a/themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/page.html b/themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/page.html index 54ca81d..7697cd0 100644 --- a/themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/page.html +++ b/themes/neverhungoveragain/layouts/page.html @@ -1,8 +1,7 @@ {{ define "main" }}
    {{ $dateMachine := .Date | time.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00" }} - {{ $dateHuman := .Date | time.Format ":date_long" }} - +

    {{ .Title }}