• It feels like it hasn’t stopped raining in Vancouver for months. The occasional clear day isn’t quite enough to make up for it. Dreaming of somewhere sunny.
• Work is picking up after a long slow season, and it looks like I’m in for a busy year. Thanks, I hate it!

Reading

• Making slow and steady progress through Winter’s Heart. Apparently this is about halfway through ‘the slog’, which fans seem to agree is somewhere from books 7 - 11 (Winter’s Heart is book 9). I can’t say I felt that the previous novels were excruciatingly slow, but this one definitely feels like it’s off to a slow start. I have never cared that much for Perrin, and even less for Faile. Guess I’ll just have to keep on slogging.

Watching

• The Last of Us is off to a decent start. I never played the video game, but I’m far more interested after episode 1 than I ever was for, say, The Walking Dead.
• That 90’s Show is terrible. It’s practically a carbon copy of the original, which was barely better than mediocre to begin with. If it weren’t for the nostalgia, it would be 100% garbage. I’m so tired of shows and movies trying to cash in on nostalgia. Are we really all done with the original ideas?
• The Flight Attendant is at least interesting, though it’s very hard to feel for someone who is just… a bad person? Glorifying the absolutely insane level of alcoholism (since she was a child??!?!?) feels… not right. But this is definitely a better opportunity for Kaley Cuoco to show off her acting chops than as, say, Billy in Charmed.
• Finally got around to watching Glass Onion. It’s good! Solid whodunit, but I’m not sure it needs multiple rewatches as some friends have implied.

• It has been two whole weeks since I stopped smoking weed. Is that a milestone worth celebrating? All I know is that I don’t have any desire to start up again. New year, new me, or something.
• I have been feeling a bit uninspired lately, artistically. More of my time has been spent focusing on other things, and I haven’t so much as pulled out a sketchbook since December. This has caused a familiar bit of anxiety, and I know the answer is to sit down, shut up, and do the thing, but sometimes it’s hard to find the time and energy to paint between work and everything else.

Reading

• Finally diving back into The Wheel of Time with the ninth book (out of fourteen). Will I ever finish this series?

Watching

• Finished season 2 of The White Lotus. Definitely not as good as s1. I’m not upset about who is dead in the end, just how it all went down. Felt like the story could have tied things up in a much more interesting way.

• Updating to the latest version of Kirby caused one of the plugins I use to help create custom post types to fail — rendering me entirely unable to create a new post as long as the plugin was installed. That was a fun little head-scratcher, but things will just be a little more manual until an updated version is available.
• Back to work this week. It’s been a bit of an adjustment after nearly half a month off, but it’s also nice to get back into the regular routine.

Reading

• Not a damn thing. Oops!

TV/Movies

• Watched Everything Everywhere All At Once and it was easily the strangest movie I've ever sat all the way through. It's great, but it's also basically 2 hours and 20 minutes of wondering what the fuck is even going on.
• Season two of The White Lotus is good, though maybe not as good as S1.
• After a slightly gruelling rewatch of the first 15 (!) seasons, I’ve started Criminal Minds: Evolution, which is billed as S16. Only an episode or two in so far, and while I definitely miss Dr. Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), there’s enough of Kirsten Vangsness’ Penelope Garcia to keep me in it.

Weeknotes: why the hell not? I guess I won't promise that these will actually be weekly, but I'll try. Or whatever.

• After many years of trying to organize a Christmas vacation with my family, my flight from Vancouver to Vegas was cancelled due to weather — so I never made it. Spent Christmas at home instead with partner and puppy.
• Have spent most of this week trying to get in touch with Expedia or WestJet to refund my tickets, but so far I have only been passed back and forth between the two companies. Nevertheless, I will persist.
• Made some tweaks to this here website so it (maybe?) supports webmentions again. Not quite ready to do anything with those yet, but at least I can send/receive them.

📖 Reading

• Purchased and downloaded, but have not yet started, the ninth book in the Wheel of Time series, Winter’s Heart. I’ve taken a bit of a break from these books after starting the series in December 2020. It’s… a long fucking series. And reading is hard sometimes.

📺 TV & Movies

• Started (and finished) watching season one of The White Lotus. It’s great! Feeling like I could stand to keep up with current TV a little better. Have already started season two.
• Watched Prey, of the Predator series. I’m not super well-versed in the Predator movies, but this was pretty good. Thrilled that the dog didn’t die.
• Avatar: The Way of Water was fine but way too long. Really pretty. Fairly non-stop, as well, which is good given the runtime, but I was distracted by my own need to use the toilet for at least the last 30 minutes.