Nebulous Week Reading

My favorite week of the year is here! And with it comes all the accounting...

The Coolest Science of 2013, in GIFs

The 13 most-read New Yorker Magazine stories of 2013

The 13 bests blogger cookbooks of 2013

The 24 Pieces That Should Be Required Reading For Women From 2013

Politicians' 11 Dumbest Tweets of 2013

Quick! 14 Books to Read Before They Hit the Big Screen

The 20 Most Popular TED Talks

I haven't seen any of these, but ok... The best TV shows we saw in 2013

Remembering those we lost

The 13 Craziest and Most Offensive Things Said By Politicians In 2013

... and more links on the way (I'll be updating this post all week/end!)

Boxing Day/Nebulous Week begins...

... and Emmie has had her first article in a national publication! What a day!!

Here's a link to the article: Unpopular Opinion: I think Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe Are Totally Overrated As Feminine Idols

And if you liked that, you might enjoy some of her other writing (also found in the menu bar, above).

It's been a great day, after a fantastic, whirlwind xmas, which included xmas eve dinner at Emmie's, a lovely evening spent with some fun neighbors, xmas morning breakfast at Emmie's, and an afternoon of hors d'oeuvres and xmas dinner here before board games in the evening.

We're feeling pretty lucky here at Chez 10K...

I ♡ Patrick Stewart!

This is so silly (the things that people are willing to spend their time on!) and I am properly amused (it's not really two minutes long -- the last half is a guy letting you know about a new game he's designing).

Solstice

Do you know that today is the shortest day/longest night of the year?

Thank goodness. Have a great night's sleep!!!

And for the pagans out there, Happy Yule!!!!

Things pile up in November

I don't get the timing. National Novel Writing Month. Movember/No-shave November. What else is piling on?

Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a pretty busy* intense month already, without adding the construction of a novel to the mix! Sheesh! And no-shave November?!? Really? You're going to show up at your Grandma's Thanksgiving dinner with a skanky, hairy face?** And expect her to kiss it?!?

But the good news is that tonight we get an extra hour. Yay!!! Are you going to spend it on sleep or something else?

:-D


*I'm no longer allowed to use the word "busy." I think it was becoming a crutch. I don't want to belong to the Cult of Busy-ness. We all have the same number of hours in our days. Those who feel "busy" just suck at prioritizing.

**Sorry, but if you're intentionally growing a beard or a mustache which you keep carefully groomed, that's one thing, but the mugs I've seen in November are unkept, chaotic things that don't belong in the same category.

Dyngus Day Approacheth

...and for the first time since I left my western New York home for love and adventure many years ago, I will be properly equipped with pussy willow branches when Dyngus Day rolls around -- which means that I will actually get to observe the holiday (incidentally, it falls on April Fool's Day this year). Since I'm nowhere near Buffalo, am not Catholic (anymore) or Polish, and am not a fan of polkas, gazing nostalgically at my pussy willow is pretty much all I've got.  ;-D

But boy, it's gorgeous, and it really does remind me of home (there used to be a big crop of pussy willow growing next to my Grandpa's barn).

Goodbye, 2012

It's been a rough year, and when I looked back over 2012's photos, I imagined I'd come up with something more representative of the year's highs and lows than this, but then the more I looked at it, the more I liked this one -- the waves, after all, ebb and flow; they carry us along and they trap us; they entice us to expose ourselves, and then they restore us in their warm, salt bath. We move, we wash, we dance, we heal. We rejoice.

Tomorrow, 2013. Peace. Be safe. Love and light.

Tap, tap, tap. Is this thing on?

Hey there, internet. I'm still here, though I've missed a few opportunities for posts lately:

This past Monday was Dyngus Day, which is awesome in its own right (especially if you are, like me, from western New York). And now, it's become famous for making Anderson Cooper giggle like a little girl, and then apologize for seeming to be kind of a dick about Dyngus Day.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13. The 6-day voyage, intended to land on the moon, went horribly wrong two days in and then turned into a rescue mission. It's hard to imagine what those four days of not knowing if the crew would survive could have been like (though the film account makes a good attempt at it).

And then there was the great mole story over on Gawker. Part one introduced the Fox Mole. The second installment commented on a Thin White Line and Billy O'Reilly. Fox launched a mole hunt. And then they nailed him (he was a producer). And I think now is maybe when the real story begins to unfold...