Finished reading: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan 📚 The conceit of this book is really my jam; however, the academic recursion was almost too much for even me, and there was a major plot point involving a grad student revolt against… a class they signed up for?! Confused about that one still. ★★★☆☆
These are the photos I liked from my first roll of Ultramax shot on my Canon Rebel 2000
We had a new HVAC installed are so we are living one glorious month where we set the temperature based on personal preferences only! To set a baseline from which we can start to make some cost saving decisions
Parents are commonly asked to provide shared school supplies for the classroom (e.g. paper, pencils) and hooboy do people have opinions about Not Their Kids using the supplies THEY bought. Of course it’s all downstream of people not wanting to fund their local schools through taxes, either!
More half-frame pictures I liked; pictures of me were taken by my daughter
My MIL found out about my new interest in film cameras so now I’ve got two. I actually maybe should’ve mentioned it to her before going to eBay but I had no idea she’d taken a photography class in 1981!
Scaling back on social media has made me feel worse about society, because I don’t know what anybody around me is talking about anymore and when I go look it up it’s awful. I plan to continue this since social media is clearly bad for me but don’t worry I’m not basking in the magic of IRL connection
I’m keeping this photo handy for every time I start feeling bad about what the skin of my stomach looks like now
Watched: Obsession 🎬 I liked this! I enjoy most stories with this kind of villain, really.
Today I’m attending SEIU’s Strike School, and getting one step closer to living my childhood dream of reenacting the movie Newsies
Finished reading: Kin by Tayari Jones 📚I was surprised to find myself pretty unhappy at the end. We don’t see the consequences of either storylines’ conclusions, and it didn’t feel “that’s life” it felt like a cop out and a little pretentious, especially since we spent so much time in the middle.
I love how these half-frame photos on the beach turned out
Watched (about eight times): Kindergarten Cop 🎬 My daughter loves this movie, which came out more than 30 years before she was born. The kindergartners are my age now.
♟️ My brother and I have been playing Chess960 lately, it makes me feel like I have a bit more of a chance against him (I’ve still only lost, though).
The Mudita Kompakt doesn’t have a great camera but I do like how they turn out in the right lighting
📷 I’m trying to get into film photography but it’s been so long since I took my photos and I still haven’t seen any of them. Four weeks! I was alive in the analog era but I’m still not used to this because we had one hour photo shops everywhere back then.
It’s pretty shocking how many children’s toys that are being sold in normal stores are just loot boxes now, basically. I don’t want my kids to start gambling before they start elementary school.
Finished reading: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 📚 I read all four books, 1500 pages of this at a breakneck pace. I think I’m going to actually need to reread it since it left me with a lot to think about, but the (spoiler, I guess?) really sad ending has slowed down this ambition some.
It sucks it’s so hard to convince people to switch to Signal because even ignoring the privacy angle (which I’ve mostly negated by installing it on all my devices) it’s the best messaging app by far IMO. I wish everybody would text me on there
Yesterday I got this little camera to take along to the family vacation. I actually forgot to take any pictures with my phone on day one!
Switching from Proton Mail to Fastmail mostly because of their right wing-associate scandal(s), but migrating emails out of their system is so obnoxious it definitely reinforced the grudge (imagine if I’d been using them for more than six months!)
Reading: Dungeon Crawler Carl A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure by Matt Dinniman 📚 My dislike of this genre was instant and visceral but I’m trying to push through it. Maybe I’ll come to like it. I’d probably enjoy the writing if it were really a game!
I can’t stop buying my daughter those super cute seasonal dresses they sell at Costco for like $12
The two kinds of non-endorsement
I think I won my war on Plex today. I’ve had to move my server twice and it was not a fun experience either time!