Favorites, Humor

Five Things I Loved in February

It’s a week late, kittens, but February was a grand month for culture and I have a scrumptious bundle of #content to recommend you. I’m still trying to put my thoughts together on the subject, but while I’m still consuming news voraciously, I’m also trying deliberately to supplement if not overtake that consumption with other alternatives. Otherwise I’d probably be wandering around in a state of constant anger or despair and that simply would not do.

Sadie, by Courtney Summers

This book is visceral and devastating. It’s definitely not going to be for everyone, and contains very tough subject matter so know what you’re getting into before you start – but it’s brilliant. Hannah recommended it to me and I enthusiastically pass that rec on to you along with her advice: listen via audiobook if you can. The narrative framing device includes a podcast – very 2020 appropriate and a comment itself on our true crime loving culture – and the audio production brings this to life in a way that really adds to the experience. And makes you question how our society still treats the girls we lose to poverty, predation, and indifference.

Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho

We only happened to watch this at our local indie cinema ON Oscars night, and it was a delight to wake up the next morning to see that it had made history by winning best picture. This film is phenomenal. To talk too much about it is to betray the major plot points, but I cannot recommend it enough. It’s about money and class, people and sterotypes, avarice and disdain, desire and disgust – and just when you’re sure of the genre you’re watching, the film twists and surprises you.

Snoh Aalegra

I’ve started another music project of listening to an album a week for a year and already I’ve found an artist who I regret the years I’ve spent not knowing. Check out her recent Tiny Desk Concert here and then do yourself a favor and go through her back catalog on Spotify or your preferred platform. Her voice is beautiful.

Fall of Civilizations, podcast

Are you a student of history who thrills to soothing narration and longform investigation? Of course you are, you adorable member of Small Dog Nation! I have just the podcast for you. Each episode covers the collapse of a culture and explores the various circumstances, actions, and accidents of history that brought it about. The production value has always been high but the host is particularly good at commissionning or getting permission to use native language sources and performances to really contribute to the listening experience. It’s a great treat and lovely alternative to my usual rotation of (exhausting) current affairs.

 

Planning travel

Between jaunts with friends, summer travel to see family, and trying to link up with pals doing the Grand Tour here in Europe, we’re doing the thing we always talk about but don’t follow through on nearly enough: GOING. At time of writing our first jaunt to Paris is complete with another on the horizon and we arranged for our travel to see Jeff’s family in June. Moreover, for the first time in my UK working life, I booked all my legally mandated holiday in the current working year and have a bunch of dates off in March as a result. I mean, I’ll still be working because of the coronavirus but still. This is a monumental breakthrough for an imposter syndrome laden workaholic.

Humor, Links

Weekend Links

It’s been such a strange week. The impact of COVID virus is affecting work – canceling events and tracking news for decisions to be taken about working circumstances for employees. It’s sobering to see, in real time, the ripples begin to move outward from seemingly small decisions and what the effect at macro level is turning into. Aside from the very real and paramount human tragedy, this is going to be an event with long echoes across lives and industries.

On the other hand, we spent three lovely days in Paris with X and her man and the sheer pleasure of wandering perfume shops (her personal vice) and hunting for treasure (mine) together was total. The boys got drinks at the Ritz, and we lingered over dinner together eating buckets of onion soup and lovely wine. It was refreshing in every sense.

Ultimately I don’t think anything gets us through big challenges or great unknowns like small, vivid pleasures.

We live in the dumbest timeline…

Know your brain!

2020 ain’t slowing down.

Following on from last week’s Mormon news, what an utterly unkind, utterly avoidable PR nightmare…. (It’s heartbreakingly on brand.)

I have loved him since childhood and teared up unapologetically to see it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They look absolutely glowing in these photos and I hope the British press is gnashing its teeth at having driven away their literal bread and butter out of sheer nastiness, racism, and spite. Wallow in their happiness, bitches, I hope you choke on it.

Speaking of bitchiness, this is a snarky op ed but my malicious, witchy soul did get a good cackle out of it.

Something else Paris related for your viewing pleasure.

Signs point to yes. (I’m politically heartbroken a her dropping out…)

Excuse me?!

Reader, I laughed.

After leaving our original one in storage in the States nearly seven years ago, I got a new one for Christmas this past year. Oh my god. I have missed it.

I do not need another reason to see yet another adaptation of Emma (the best Jane Austen novel, do not @ me), but hats would persuade me were I on the fence.

Oh thank god, someone is asking the question!

Okay, let’s talk about COVID-19  irreverently for a few links. First, a primer.

“Hamsterkäufe, meaning to shop like a nervous, bulging-cheeked hamster.”

WASH YOUR HANDS.

 

Humor, Links

Weekend Links

Still OOO, kittens, have some weekend reading! Short and sharp and mostly avoiding the various catastrophes conspiring to kill us all. That can wait until Monday.

This past week in Mormon news was a doozy! Truly wild!

Never have I related to a politician more.

Several months old but new to me and delightful.

Everything about this story is charming and the photos are stunning.

A bit of archaeology news for our collective enjoyment.

SEEMS NOT GREAT.

Irony is dead. We need immigration desperately in “the west” and the “global north” and there are no two ways about it.

Everyone else can go home, the perfect photoshoot has been achieved.

This is just a good idea all around. Icon’s gonna icon.

Goals, Humor

The Year of Back to Basics: February

Happy Leap Year Day, poppets! Hope you are doing something fun or indolent with your precious extra 24 hours. Us? Greetings from Paris where we’ve jaunted off for a long weekend. It’s been a busy month and we’re in need of a holiday. Here’show the second month of the year is going in terms of goals: it’s been a mixed bag but wrapping it up on the continent isn’t the worst ending in the world.

Money

This month we paid off three out of our five credit cards in full – which feels fantastic. Next month we’ll finish off the fourth and then begin to direct the same totals to the final card and our remaining debt.

The month was also tame on personal shopping until the end when a pair of jeans and pair of black ankle boots both gave up the ghost irrevocably. I replaced them both but because they are replacements, they are not counting towards my 20 items in a year goal – plus one was a deep sale the other was a vintage shop find. I bought a nice bottle of whiskey as a gift for someone else while in Scotland and a body treatment for some self care. Otherwise my continued capsule wardrobe and spending challenges helped keep me on the straight and narrow…

Until the final stretch. Towards the end of the month and starting to look ahead to spring, as well as a Paris jaunt, I reviewed my closet and made a list of items I wanted to get for transition weather and I picked up an APC dress for 70% off its original price and two jumpers and a pair of trousers on deep sale at J. Crew. Then, horror of horrors, I found a Prince of Wales check blazer (which has been on my wishlist for over a year) and a pair of Frye casual boots on deep sale and at a vintage shop respectively. Reader, I succumbed.

Never fear, all of this was dutifully added to the tracker and I’m very comfortable with these purchases. I’m still eyeing a new white shirt for spring and summer, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet as I want to wait and see if anything in France catches my eye and is worth a coveted slot on my shopping inventory. And of course, we did book a trip and because we left it a bit late, travel cost more than I would wish. However, we are going to be able to pay that off and more next month given our financial progress elsewhere.

 

Relationships

After the first bout of Busy Season, we’re using this trip to Paris to spend some quality time together as a pair, and to connect with X who is there for work. Family and friends, and heaping glasses of wine! There is no substitute for time and Jeff and I are planning our time off more proactively through the summer to ensure we’re going on break and getting away.

 

Basic Bitch

Focusing on health was a bit tricky at the start of the month due to a lot of work travel which prevented me from keeping to a usual schedule and compelled a lot of eating “on the go.” I’m continuing to work with my doctor on a number of issues, physical and mental, and while I wasn’t as strict with myself about food as I was in January, I’m continuing to try and eat mindfully. Home cooking is still my best tool for this and because I wasn’t around as much, I wasn’t as consistent with it in February as I was in January and what I did make was far less healthy. I also haven’t felt able to exercise as an old knee injury flared up rather badly (and is one of the things I’m getting treatment for), so that’s having a negative impact as well.

In March my work team is participating in a health challenge, and I’m going to prioritize cooking again which will hopefully help reestablish a sense of balance and control.

 

Other

Got a tattoo

Continued baking up a storm

Continued to read armfuls of books

Went on a weekend holiday with friends (*waves from Paris!)

Finished another shopping challenge

Tried new recipes

 

 

Humor, Links

Weekend Links

Happy weekend, beloveds! I’ve done three loads of laundry, got my teeth cleaned, and finished another armful of books so far, and this after a pleasantly productive workweek. We’re planning some upcoming travel with friends and family which is giving us something delightful to look forward to – Paris is, as they say, always a good idea.

The news is still mostly grim, but I’m cackling watching people panic over Senator Sanders take the Nevada primaries. I’m all in for Warren, but it’s so satisfying to watch the commentators wring their hands over why people want more aggressive solutions to upend the status quo. As if the media hasn’t spent the last three years obsessively dissecting the same sentiments on the right. Minus the ugly nativism (and let’s be blunt, not always this), we know what the problems are: economic inequality, crippling debt, changing industries, unequal access to opportunity due to systemic imbalances in investment and infrastructure, and anger. The motivations are the same, the direction of travel in considering solutions is different. The political debate of the next few decades is which way are we going to go.

I’m always a sucker for a mudlarking story.

Good grief. I’m afraid I can’t help but wonder what the withdrawal of the LDS church (one of its biggest supporters) from the organization has to do with the bankruptcy. And frankly, what the reports of sexual exploitation have to do with the withdrawal of the church. My family has been involved with scouting for most of my life and my memories are very fond, but the more that comes out, the more radical reform or closure looks like the right thing to do.

Whatever could he be building up to…

Everyone involved is an unreliable witness, but still. Damn.

The guardrails are gone, it’s happening again, and this time it’s in plain sight.

Lesser men, indeed.

Irony is dead.

This is beautiful promotion!

I cringe for I am just as guilty as any.

Wash your hands.

Reader, I cackled. No one knows what’s going to happen but for some reason this is a metaphor for everything Brexit to me.

Let’s end on the sublime shall we? A deconstruction of one of the most iconic, beautiful pieces of music ever written.

Humor, Links

Weekend Links

Greetings from soggy London, my doves. Storm Dennis is swirling overhead and dumping all over the country, and we are hunkered down at home refusing to leave the apartment. Jeff is recovering from the first major project of accountancy “busy season” and I’m just being lazy after an unexpectedly hectic work week. Books and tea for me, NBA for him, planning an upcoming trip to Paris to meet up with X for both of us! 2020 is the year we finally get our holidays sorted.

Happy weekend, kittens. I hope my Brits are staying dry and safe.

Jordan Peterson is a deeply strange and problematic man, and has been for years, but I will no ill on him. That being said, every word of this story baffles me. I have a million follow up questions.

What a ridiculous story. All of it: the initial photo, the fact it was deleted, the black and white second attempt, and finally the post-truth silliness of the attempts to turn it into a scandal. All this could have been avoided if he learned to blend his products. I have a long list of beauty writers and vloggers I can recommend.

In Mormon news…I have a lot of thoughts about this continuing story and almost all of them are unflattering.

Be care not to conflate the fantasy with reality. Evergreen advice, really.

This is important political reporting, but three years in I think it should be obvious to most observers that his supporters don’t actually care about this issues – at least not as a macro collective. These topics have been ciphers for other priorities and concerns for years. Those who do want the traditional conservative talking point policies are not representative of the party they claim.

FFS…

It all adds up.

One of my favorite romance authors took on sex and romance during Valentines Day week. Rock on.

All I’m going to post about the shenanigans with the US Department of Justice.

He Did It, part 1,043 out of infinite.

Roxanne Gay’s piece on Kobe Bryant is really worth a read.

Lost history is always prime Small Dog Nation catnip!

Britain’s tabloid culture is killing women, or contributing to their misery, and has for years. Stop reading and buying the trash.

Humor, Links

Weekend Links

Well hi, kittens.

What a couple of weeks. I’m angry about Brexit, and angry at the naked transparency of my own elected officials in tying themselves to our home grown demagogue and throwing out every “principled” talking point they’ve shouted about my whole politically aware life. The overall general mood of the Demos seems to be a bitter determination to go down with their various ships and I simply do not understand this perspective. The cynicism and sense of isolation/persecution that seems to be required to wish the dissolution of alliance or to uphold the power such an unworthy person floors me. I’m not linking to any of that news, I’m too angry.

On the flip side, my family dog is NOT dead as believed but instead had been KIDNAPPED. So that emotional rollercoaster happened as well.

Enjoy your weekend, ducklings, I’m curling up with another murder mystery to make myself feel better. I’m not saying I’m emotionally healthy, I’m saying I’m self-aware.

RIP to a complicated but important figure.

We’re governed by toddlers…

Yes, I will be mourning and celebrating The Good Place for a long while. The Atlantic actually did two pieces on it this week, one on aesthetics and the other on – you know – the existential questions of existence – and both are worth a read.

Sorry, yet another Atlantic piece, but fan as I am of Amanda Mull’s writing, I couldn’t not share this piece that resonates in my soul. My Christmas present was a KitchenAid – something I have not had since we moved to the UK and which I have missed dearly. Obviously, the KitchenAid is also a metaphor. “Young Americans are sometimes described as unwilling or unable to grow up; it might be more accurate to say they’re growing up differently. The traditional markers of adult achievement have yet to click into place for many people in their 20s and 30s, which has required them to reimagine what stability in America might now look like.”

GOD YES PLEASE.

Another power-behind-the-politician profile that I enjoyed this week. Let’s not talk about the Iowa Caucuses. I can’t.

Prime Small Dog National archaeology porn content.

Deeply necessary addition to our universal symbolic language, which shall be all that’s left to explain us when aliens finally find the rubble of our civilization. Good luck deciphering our weirdness!

Thank goodness. To deny oneself (to say nothing of us jackals who consume this content) of beauty and style because of some strict rules of how men should dress is silly. More velvet! S&M inspiration! Gowns, they’re great!

Damn, sorry. Another piece from The Atlantic this week, from perennial fave McKay Coppins: we’re not ready for this election…

See also.

…YESSSS…. (please don’t ruin it)

This man deserves recognition. Secrecy is impossible in our age and it will only delay our ability to respond to the when (not if) of pandemics. We’re astonishingly lucky that as a macro collective, it’s been a century since our last one, and it’s not reasonable to assume this luck will continue indefinitely.

We’re screwed, guys. I mean, we’ll survive for a few centuries, but everything is going to get harder and countless people are going to suffer.

Important wintertime tips.

Goals, Humor

Year of Back to Basics: January

The monthly updates return!

As this goes to press, I’m on a train to Scotland for a work event which I’m both nervous and excited about. Once again I’m going to be a bit of a fish out of water when it comes to demographics with the other attendees (my best work pal and closest peer is off on maternity leave) but I’m trying to buck up my confidence – armed with my Barbour, a backlog of podcasts and books, and a black dress.

In case you’re relatively new around here, internet veteran CGP Grey explains why themes are better than resolutions. and provides a much better perspective on why structuring your life this way is probably something you should try.

Happy new year, if we’re still allowed to say that.

Money

I want to say I bought NO personal items this month but I actually had to some thinking about this. Categories of items like health and beauty replacements or toiletries I don’t count if they are strictly replacements for items that I have used up, however I did pick up a cream blush from Glossier when I was replacing a moisturizer…and I managed to do it without even thinking! Bad start to the year, C.. However, I’ve added it to the shopping list tracker in the spirit of honesty and fairness. Historically I have treated personal care and beauty items as different from clothing, housewares, and other goods, but I think that differentiation was given me an “out” in my head and I’m not going to make a distinction this year. If I want to buy makeup of any kind, on this list it goes! I’ll continue to make an exception for skincare, however, so long as it follows the replacement rule.

Otherwise? This was a baller month for money! I prioritized home cooking significantly (which had the added bonus of helping me work towards completing some of my food related 101/1001 goals) and unsurprisingly, this had a noticeable effect on my walking-around money. We also continued to prioritize credit card debt and bent over backwards to avoid putting purchases on it. This allowed us to throw another sizable chunk of money at our total debt, which feels so bloody satisfying. Next month we’ll pay off another credit card in full and possibly two. Meaning that if we keep this pace up, we can easily eliminate all our credit card debt by the middle of the year, which means we can focus on loan debt and building savings. Each month I feel lighter and lighter about money, it’s a fantastic feeling.

 

Relationships

This month I focused on communication, which is something therapy is helping me with especially. It’s resulted in lovely chats, text chains, letters, and emails with all kinds of friends and loved ones, as well as clarity in conversations at work. Most importantly, I’m trying to listen more deeply and learn when others voices are more important. Have I recommended therapy lately?

 

Basic Bitch

Weight loss – made some progress simply through home cooking and ensuring that everything I made was really healthy. On the flip side, and somewhat at odds, I also started baking once a week. Jeff got the majority of the spoils. Definitely not continuing this approach indefinitely–I don’t believe in long term ridiculous self-denial–but I am going to continue cutting back significantly on carbs and sugar and ensure that what I do consume is home made and not bought. Nothing effects my weight more than food, and more than those categories in particular.

 

Other

This was a fantastic month for books, I read over a dozen (which puts me WELL on the way to reading 100 in a year), including several Agatha Christie novels (advancing my goal to read all her works), and three topical books on the human body and health as part of my armchair-expert-via-literary-osmosis goal.

My focus on cooking also progress my goals to try 25 new-to-me recipes.

Kicked off my cold weather capsule wardrobe project.

Started listening to a new album every week. Fiction and music help keep the badness of the news in check.

 

Humor

February Moodboard

Happy Leap Year, my doves! This month I’m building on last’s culinary and literary triumphs, and doing my best to keep things as uncomplicated as I can. I’m sticking with a capsule wardrobe, continuing to work with doctors on long-standing health problems, and avoiding drama and mess wherever possible. At work I’m focused on stabilizing projects that I’ve been able to set up and ensure they are successful instead of rushing into the next challenge, and trying to be a support to a bunch of new joiners whose voices and perspectives I think are important.

What are you focusing on this extra long month?

Favorites, Humor

Five Things I Loved In January

2020 is off to an exhausting start and now, looking down the barrel of Brexit and other world issues, just reading the news requires bracing oneself. As I type my country is dealing with a constitutional crisis, while my other country is about to pitch itself out of a 70 year alliance, and the whole world is eyeing a pandemic. It’s STILL only January. Buckle up, kids!

As always, please send me your recommendations in the comments, I rely on your estimable good taste, ducklings!

MAC Russian Red

If ever there was a month that required lipstick as armor, it’s been this January. I’ve been wearing MAC’s Russian Red almost every day for an extra boost of bravery and, as ever…it works. My only blu-ish red shade of warpaint, it makes me feel like a badass on days when I feel anything but. Much ink has been spilled on the power of a red lip, but as a totem, it’s pretty darn reliable.

 

Full Metal Alchemist

My introduction to anime continued this month and I’m enjoying it so much more than I thought I would. I credit this significantly to the Manga exhibition we saw at the British Museum over the summer, which helped me understand the art form as a total novice and gave me a lot of important context to appreciate anime more generally. Cultural heritage institutions are amazing, people, support them with your money!

 

Educated, by Tara Westover

I’m ridiculously late to this memoir that had everyone talking for years, but I’m so glad I finally got here. While my Mormonism is in no way similar to the doomsday extremist version that she was raised with, I recognize the rhythms of her language and phrases ones I share. Though on a small scale, it makes me understand what individuals and communities mean by representation – reading her work, even though our lives are disparate, I understand the emotions she describes and the experiences she references in a deep and visceral way. Her journey from a girl without a birthday or birth certificate to PhD is inspiring on its face, but the power of this book is in how well she describes her inward journey from ignorance to the beautiful and awful expanse of knowledge. It’s amazing. It’s also lonely and painful and comes at tremendous cost. Academic accolades aside, the narrative is not about what she achieves so much as how she learns to be a complex human being with agency. I think a male version of this story would be more heroic in its depiction, more triumphant in its closure. Grappling with herself as a woman, an individual, a person, allows her to tell a very different kind of hero’s journey than the rags to riches, ignorance to financial success tales that are more common.

 

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed For Men

From the sublime to the ridiculous…I can’t remember the last time a book made me so angry. It’s reported nonfiction and its subject is how the male body, male mind, male psyche and so on is still the template on how much of our world is designed. From scissors too large for most women’s hands, to seatbelts not designed for breasts or differently shaped pelvises in preventing injuries, it details how much of the world is Not For Us.

The Good Place

What a joy this show has been, and how sorry I am to see it go. Clever premise, joke-packed writing, deep concepts, perfect aesthetic, delightful cast. Would that all series had two of any of the above much less all of them. If you have not yet indulged, do yourself a favor this weekend: grab a pal, a bottle of booze, get cozy and enjoy a romp through the afterlife while discussing the nature of ethics. Seems dull? Hardly!