A few pop culture PSAs for your January enjoyment.

Music, TV, books, and recipes that are helping me through the January gloom…yes, Norcal is gloomy, no, this is not me complaining and thus giving you an open invitation to tell me how much worse the weather is in the Midwest ;)

• The playlist “Nancy Meyers’ Kitchen” on Spotify is an absolute delight and has sparked so much joy for me over the last few days. Lots of oldie goodness from her movies, which I have always found to have utterly charming soundtracks. I’ve played it in my own kitchen, as well as my car and at my desk for close to a week, and it leaves me feeling happy and also like watching “Something’s Gotta Give” and “It’s Complicated” on repeat. (Anyone else kind of hate “Julie and Julia?”)

• DJ Earworm’s 2019 mashup is actually pretty good this year, but I really loved his Decade in Review. Also worth peeping: his “2009 v 2019” mashups - a fun eleven-minute ride through some true 2010s classics.

• In the last few weeks, I’ve binged on “Cheer,” “You,” and “Sex Education” on Netlix, “Fleabag” on Amazon (how on EARTH did it take me so long to do this?! It’s utterly luminous!), and…PREPARE TO JUDGE ME…”90 Day Fiancé” on Hulu. Kendra and I are embarrassingly addicted, and it’s got an uncanny way of making me feel so, so good about my personal romantic choices, none of which include falling in love in international chatrooms with language barriers and secret catfishings and hidden sugardaddies. Truly an escapist dream, friends. Coming up next: S3 of “Good Girls,” which premieres in February, along with finishing S3 of “The Crown” and hitting “Mrs. Maisel,” about which I have heard mixed reviews (and am, appropriately, thusly devastated!). Also, throwing it out there, I’m really not loving all the girl-on-girl stupid drama on “The Bachelor” this season, and my picks for top 3 are Madison, Hannah Ann, and Kelley. We’ll see if I’m proven right!

• Book-wise, I blew through Erin Morgenstern’s “The Starless Sea,” which is a beautiful, lyrical, poetry-adjacent second effort that still can’t rival “The Night Circus” in my pantheon. I also finally got around to devouring “Bad Blood,” John Carreyrou’s fantastic exposé of Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos fraud. Next up: some professional development reading, starting with “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande. And just for fun, probably something by Ruth Reichl…it feels like everyone is reading her these days, and you all know I have terrible literary FOMO.

• Cooking! I made a fantastic Chicken Florentine casserole for which you can find the recipe on page 27 of this bizarre digital magazine. Sadly, I burned the pine nuts while broiling the Parmesan crust, but I like to think it adds depth of flavor (proving I can do the mental gymnastics to justify absolutely everything). I’m also living on soup lately - enjoying this low-cal tomato basil bisque, and my perennial fallback, Italian chicken quinoa stew.

That’s all - enjoy this ridiculous brain dump :)

2020!

Uh holy what?! How is it 2020 and how have I not written for like six, seven months at this point? That feels a bit ridiculous…eek, who am I and why do I even still pay to host this domain, what am I thinking, AAHHH?!

That said, I am finding myself itching to write a little bit lately, and so, here we have it. A few quick mulls (since it seems that’s all I’m capable of these days) on the turning of a new year, new decade, new everything.

-Work has been positively frenetic for the last three days - an expected side effect of the annual holiday closure, but still a whiplash adjustment after two-plus weeks of total sloth at home and on vacation. I find myself continually thinking of new things I need to do, and starting to wind myself up by mistake when, in reality, stress is counterproductive (especially in this fairly laissez-faire university environment). I’ve got a monogrammed (duh) notebook next to my keyboard now, and I’ve been writing down more manageable lists of goals every day. Ranging from “oh my god you’ve been putting this project off for like a month and a half MAKE PROGRESS” to “drink water, climb stairs, move, loser,” it’s been satisfying and galvanizing to cross off the bulk of a list in a day, for once.

-I went to yoga again on Monday and yesterday, for the first time in a few months (I’ve been nursing a strained wrist and downward dog was NOT my friend)…and oh my lord, did it feel good. Nothing like the delicious, productive soreness of muscles waking up again to continually remind me that I have made great progress on health and fitness this year, but have a LONG way to go.

-Along those lines, I’m making some scattershot New Year’s Resolutions this year, and trying to focus on adding things rather than taking them away. I’ve distilled it down to this at its simplest: “more water, more movement, more cooking, more patience,” and I think that’s going to be short, sweet, memorable and achievable.

-I am, however, privately resolving to stop buying so many damn books…I had a great, prolific, expansive year of reading, but the unfortunate side effect of such a solid year is that I’ve acquired quite a backlog of books in my to-be-read pile. I counted this morning and have forty on my physical bookshelf alone - yes, I have an entire bookshelf dedicated solely to books I haven’t read yet, yes I am aware that is a bit of a problem. That’s not counting the digital backlog I’ve built up between Bookbub, my digital library loans, and my Kindle FirstReads. A few I’m so excited about: The Mars Room, Bad Blood (which I REALLY need to get to), Priestdaddy, and Andrew Yang’s new release, The War on Normal People.

-A few fun things coming down the pipeline: I’m a groomslady in my childhood best friend David’s wedding this June, and his fiancee Kelli and bridesmaid Val are coming out in a couple weeks to shop for bridesmaid dresses and wine-taste and generally misbehave all weekend. The weekend after that, my mama bear comes to town for “Freestyle Love Supreme,” “Cinderella” at the SF Ballet, and a Michelin-starred dinner at SPQR…I’ve already drooled over their menu multiple times, ugh.

And with that, work! Hi! Looking forward to hopefully doing more of this in 2020!