the immaculate mailing list - read it or weep
hiya gang!
welcome back to the immaculate mailing list
tl;dr - it’s cold, biking on new paths, baby registry, missing petunia, recently reading
once again, fall shows itself to be the best season- it smells good, looks beautiful, and feels perfect. it’s when bike commuting starts to be comfortable (summer is the worst), and when you can experience the full practicality of making a fire. as third floor dwellers, kat and i have a beautiful treehouse-esque view of the color change around us. there’s a purple maple right outside our bedroom window that is now an annual highlight. there’s a cozy pink chair that used to belong to our friend sam’s grandma set right next to the window- it’s very soothing to sit and watch the leaves blow.
new bike alert
a couple weeks ago, i picked up a bike off of craigslist. the frame is a little small for me, but i’ve been able to tweak the seat and handlebars to make it a comfortable ride. i added some fenders, and a front basket, with the aim for this to be the bike i ride whenever there is wet outside (but it’s also been very fun to take on dirt and gravel trails, many of which i’ve been staring at longingly from the seat of my skinny-tired road bike for years). i love to bike year round, but once there’s snow and slush and ice on the ground, my road bike just isn’t the best choice. i’m glad i finally grabbed something i could run thicker tires on, so i can depend less on driving, or the inconvenience of relying on the train (the blue line service has been pretty egregious recently!).
baby business
kat and i made a registry for baby needs recently, which you can find here. we appreciate any help, but don’t want anyone to feel pressured to send us anything! there are things at a variety of price points, as well as a way to donate to our doula and parental leave funds. so far, all of our check ups have been going swimmingly, and the sonographer who did our anatomy scan a couple weeks ago mentioned our baby has a “beautiful spine and brain”, which was very nice to hear. we’re a little more than halfway through with this pregnancy, and it’s starting to go very quickly!
twitter’s impending doom
evergreen reminder to not have all of your socializing happen on a single platform that you have very limited control over. find alternate ways to link with people you care about for situations when your main channel is unavailable! this goes for all communication/relationships, not just social media, but definitely seems to be a hot topic now.
missing petunia
we’re coming up on a year since we said goodbye to petunia. in that time, each new season has brought new sets of memories. now that it’s chillier outside, every time our heater kicks on, i think about how she used to love curling up in front of it and letting the warmth wash over her, and the big stretch that would always follow. i really miss that little creature.
recently reading
a couple books that i finished recently:
- the death and life of the great lakes - dan egan
books about our water systems both fascinate and scare me. they’re fascinating because they’re such complex systems, and they scare me because they’re such complex systems. this book is a history of the last couple hundred years of the great lakes, and goes in to a wide variety of ways that humans have drastically impacted the ecosystems through our machinations, typically in search for profit. from the reversing of the chicago river, to zebra and quaga mussels hitching their way in from the baltic seas via freighter ballast, to how invasive species in the great lakes inevitably make their way across the continent- i learned a lot. if this kind of book is up your alley, i also recommend where the water goes by david owen, which focuses on the colorado river system.
- hurricane lizards and plastic squid - thor hanson
this is a book about how some species are evolving very quickly due to new extreme weather patterns. some species are super flexible, but others are not, and this book explores some of the complex systems and how they’re affected when certain organisms are able to adapt quickly, but others are not. it was particularly interesting to read, as i’m interpreting a in a biology class this semester, and this book is heavily connected to what the kids are studying currently (the relationships between kelp, sea urchins, and sea otters in the pacific northwest).
honestly, i love books about ufo’s, but so often they are a drag. this one is no different. i finished it because i was interested in the content, but i did not enjoy how it was written. the author is the same dude who wrote the book that ended being made into the social network move, and the book that ended up being made in that card-counting blackjack movie, 21. this book is already tapped to become a movie, but, ooof. i have a hard time seeing it. anyways, it follows this dude named chuck zukowski, who is a volunteer sheriff’s deputy, but also spends all his free time and money investigating ufo sightings, and the phenomenon of unexplained cattle & horse mutilations, many of which occur along the 37th parallel. interesting topic, boring book.
thanks for reading,
i’ll leave y’all with my submission for this last week’s music league theme, spookiest song. i think my submission is more scary than spooky, but it did alright in the votes.