Highlight of the week: I’m finally beginning to feel like I can focus on things again, which is very gratifying. Now I “just” need to work on my motivation to actually accomplish the goals I’m setting.
things I did
- Last weekend, I wrote my weeknotes on Saturday, so I’ll include an event of Sunday: I the entire afternoon in the kitchen, cooking Hummus first and later a special request from my dad for a chickpea dish using red curry paste. Here’s the recipe he sent me, though be warned that I found this recipe somewhat annoying to work from. Also, I literally quadrupled the recipe to get the number of servings it claims (with some other tweaks based on what ingredients we get here).
- Chinese New Year is coming up which is a big deal here.
- My parents and I all got health screenings this week, which was a harrowing experience (my first time) but I received very positive results and appear to be very healthy, which is good to know for sure.
- I’ve been making a ton of progress on the code for my upcoming publishing project. If I can keep this up I will be able to begin publishing in March. (Maybe in time for my birthday?)
- I got a new laptop stand at last, after my old one broke a few months ago! This one is much higher-quality than the previous.
things I read
This week I focused on catching up on my magazine subscriptions, incredibly completing issues 220, 221, and 222 of Clarkesworld Magazine (which finally means I’m less than a year behind). A few of my favorite stories from this mix:
- The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe by Tia Tashiro
- Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak
- Bodyhoppers by Rocío Vega, translated by Sue Burke
- Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents by Louis Inglis Hall
- The Sound of the Star by Ren Zeyu, translated by Jay Zhang
- Those Uncaring Waves by Yukimi Ogawa
(All of these have audio versions available.)
I think reading lengthy Neal Stephenson novels has helped me get over my usual hesitance to read the longer novellas and novelettes when I encounter them in magazines, which has helped a lot with getting through my backlog. I’m on a roll so I’ll probably continue this trend into next week.
things I listened to
I didn’t pay as close attention this time around to what I was listening to, but I know there was a lot of big band music (particularly Les Brown) and, of course, Chick Corea.
