Two Weeks in the Life: January 23, 2022

Last week I decided not to write a post because I was worried I had covid. I won’t bury the lede: I don’t have covid. But it was all I could think about and I didn’t want to write about it without knowing one way or the other. Someone in my dance class turned out to have covid and I was worried that I’d been exposed. I spent the better part of a week being tired and feeling like I was getting sick but not actually getting sick. This is the magic of anxiety. Last week, I went to a county testing site to get a PCR test and had to wait in line for an hour. It took another five days to get the results, but I am, indeed, covid free, so I’m not complaining. The good thing is I took two days off work to rest and lounge and I definitely don’t regret that.

I mentioned in a previous post that work was going to suck again and it kind of is. My supervisor and my fellow editor have gone on to other jobs. I’ve been in this job for three months and the two managers above me have left since I started. I weathered everyone being on maternity leave only to be pretty much by myself again. I am not having a great time. The work itself is fine but I really can’t handle this level of chaos.

In better news you can now subscribe to my blog! Go to the subscribe tab at the top of the page and fill in your email address. You’ll get new posts emailed to you when I publish them.

Consuming

Here are some things I’ve recently read, watched, or bought.

Books and Other Words

I finished reading The Warrior Moon, which is the last book in the K. Arsenault Rivera trilogy that I’ve been reading. I really liked it overall. The world was interesting, the characters were rich and flawed and the story was compelling.

I also read Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen. The premise is that the pandemic is an opportunity for us to rethink how 40 percent of the country’s workers, workers in the “knowledge” economy, interface with work. Or, as the authors put it, “what if work wasn’t the axis of your life?” I like this book a lot because it really considers what it might be like to work “from home” in a community (when there’s not a pandemic). There’s no reason that working from home should replicate what we do in the office or that you should sit alone in your house all day. You could gather with your friends and work, for example. There was a part of the book discussing corporate culture and looking at the history of having a “career.” The authors state “Unlike a job or a gig, a career is above all else strategic and demands not just work but appropriate assimilation into workplace culture. A career entails showing up every day and putting concentrated hours and wholeheartedly leaning into a company’s ethos.” I read that and thought, damn, I finally know why I’m never able to articulate a career goal. I’ve started telling managers that my career goals are to get paid and not be miserable, which is … not what they want to hear. Reading this book gave me some context for why I never have a career goal, plus filled me with lots of other wisdom.

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I’m in a big reading mood at the moment. I am really hoping my eyes cooperate. One of the biggest limiting factors for me on reading lately has been eye strain (thanks, binocular vision dysfunction). It’s getting better thanks to vision therapy but, as I’m sure I’ve said before, vision therapy also wears me out. I’ve got a large stack of library books right now and I’d like to read them all before they’re due. We’ll see weather tiredness or the will to read triumphs.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

• The tighter a video is clipped, the less inclined you should be to share it via The Present Age. Excellent advice for today’s polarized internet. If a video is tightly edited, it’s probably missing a lot of context and has been edited specifically to rile you up.
• Eugenics with a smile via The Sword and the Sandwich. Difficult but essential reading about the ugly tendencies surfacing as everyone is developing pandemic fatigue.
• GIFs are for boomers now, sorry via Vice. So be it. I am old.
• Op-Ed: The Word on Wordle: It is bringing people together by letting us see into each other’s minds via the L.A. Times. If you follow me on twitter, you know I’ve gotten into Wordle. Part of its fun, this article argues, is in sharing your results because you can see other people’s thought process. I have to agree that I like seeing how others approach the game.

TV and Music

We watched The Matrix Resurrections last night and, in preparation, I spent the week watching the original Matrix trilogy. I’ve seen them all before (The Matrix was, in fact, the first rated-R movie I saw) but it’s been a while. Rewatching them was fun and it made the new movie more enjoyable. Resurrections was really good. It built on the originals without simply remaking them and it continued to develop the world, both inside and outside the matrix.

I also continued my Cher-athon and watched Moonstruck last weekend. It was a pretty good movie and I enjoyed it. I didn’t realize that the “snap out of it” line that RuPaul often quotes is from this movie. However! Ru super exaggerates the Cher-ness of it, but she just says it normally in the movie. I felt strangely betrayed.

By the way, if anyone is on letterboxd, come find me. I’ve been logging movies I watch there.

Rampant Consumerism

I bought some really amazing chocolates from Bon Bon Bon and I want more and recommend them to you all. The flavors are great and the presentation is festive. A++ would Bon again.

In less exciting but essential purchases, I started subscribing to the eco-friendly toilet paper brand Who Gives a Crap. I kind of love getting it delivered and never thinking about it again. If anyone wants to order and save $10, I’ve got a referral code for you: https://www.talkable.com/x/dCLOov

Making Things and Doing stuff

There are some things I’ve made and stuff I’ve done.

Knitting and Crafts

I’m happy to report that I’ve finally gotten some good knitting momentum. I’m currently working up this sweater, which I’m very excited about. It has a ton of cables and it looks like it will be large and cozy. It’s made with bulky yarn, so I’m already through a good chunk (in a relative sense. I’m still slow lol).

Kitchen Witchery

The bakery has been open in my house the last couple weeks. Is it stress or am I just hungry? You decide. I made a rye bread and a focaccia (both from The Bread Bible). I made the rye to accompany a sausage and lentil soup, which was delicious, from the cookbook Grist. We had the focaccia with our favorite broccoli cheddar soup. I had been wanting to try making a dutch baby for a while and finally did. I … didn’t like it. I didn’t consider that it is made largely of eggs and I am not a big egg fan so the texture was a little icky for me. However, the flavor was good. I also made another snacking cake, the walnut with maple glaze, which is not pictured because, frankly, it looks like every other snacking cake I’ve made. Though that doesn’t mean it was any less delicious.

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Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. I must apologize for the lack of Huey photos this week, but trust she is living her best life lounging on the couch all day.

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