EntropicalVacation

“She had six strong legs and it frightened me. She had insect eyes but I could still see that the look she gave him you give to me.”

Why would he want to? The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I love Becky Chambers. Psalm for the Wild Built was one of my favorites from 2022.

Dutch House was one of my favorite reads from 2022.

I actually split between reading and listening to the audiobook. It was long either way! I didn’t care for it as much as I thought I would. The first part took me a while to get into, I loved the second part, but after

In very roughly descending order:

Auē by Becky Manawatu

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

Open Throat by Henry Hoke‬‬

Autumn by ‪Ali Smith‬

A Tale for the Time Being by ‪Ruth Ozeki‬

Home by ‪Toni Morrison‬

Gnomon by ‪Nick Harkaway

Space Opera by ‪Catherynne M. Valente‬

The Book of M by ‪Peng Shepherd‬

The Book of Strange New Things by ‪Michel Faber

The Overstory by ‪Richard Powers

The Door by ‪Magda Szabó‬

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by ‪Gabrielle Zevin‬

I had a cat that was maybe 6 or 7 years old when she suddenly started having seizures. After a seizure, she’d be wobbly for a few days, then eventually back to normal… until it happened again. Vet couldn’t figure out what was going on. We decided to try to track when she had the seizures—was it when she ate something out of the ordinary, got exposed to something unusual, on a recurring schedule? That sort of thing. We quickly found out that within a day or two of giving her a dose of Frontline flea treatment (the kind you drip on the back of their neck) she’d have a seizure. We stopped giving her Frontline and she never had another seizure.

We have one. The cat likes it, and we love it. Super-easy to empty.

—Oh, we use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and sealed in a succulent, Swiss, quintuple-smooth, treble-milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.

—That's as may be, but it's still a frog!

—What else?

—Well, don't you even take the bones out?

—If we took the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?

American here, but I agree with a traditionally Polish or German gift. I’ve always thought Polish pottery is lovely.

A kidney donated from a living donor often lasts longer and performs better than a kidney from a deceased donor. Donating a kidney to a stranger can begin a paired donation chain that can result in several people getting kidneys. If you are seriously thinking about donating, I strongly encourage you to do some research with reputable sources, talk to some people who’ve donated themselves, talk it over with your loved ones, and maybe talk to some transplant coordinators at the nearest transplant center. It’s not something to be undertaken lightly, but living donors are saints.

I almost always have at least one book checked out in Libby. A couple of weeks ago I made my first in-person trip to the library and checked out my first paper book since COVID.