a truly great novel i read in one sitting (sorry)

this profile of steven yeun by jay caspian kang

the tv show the head, about mysterious deaths at an antarctic research station, which we finished watching last night (okay i finished watching this morning because i fell asleep during the finale last night) and which in reflection at the end was pretty dumb in any number of ways (so if you are a person who can't handle that don't watch it!) but which during the serial period of watching was compelling and driven and focused in its dumbness such that i enjoyed it and kept coming back for more

anything lately (dumb tv show or otherwise) where i'm able, through some combination of energy and attention on my part and the particular characteristics of the object or activity and how they interlock during an ephemeral moment, to get outside of my own head, regardless of the "value" of that particular thing (as if experience is nutrition, as if "nutrition" is even nutrition!) even though sometimes when i exit the other side of that segment of time i feel like nothing has happened and i have lost something, i'm not sure what.

the alert just told me my screen time was down 20% last week, which seems fake but i'll take fake praise any day. i started to try to do yoga yesterday in the attic, but petered out at some basic stretching and headstands (still better than nothing). remembering how much i used to get out of a daily practice heavy on the sun salutations and knowing that it would make me feel better if i could make myself do it now but having real trouble summoning the energy for it.

i feel like i use up all my willpower for work and then i have so little left for life,. last week at work was really frustrating because i felt like i spent a lot of time on things that other people thought were important but i did not agree were important and which were keeping me from doing things that i thought were more important. there were nice moments, though, still (refactoring some code to make it simpler and more straightforward after a premature optimization; good conversations with coworkers (i love the intimacy of DMs)), and i hope to be less surly (and to have less reasons to get surly) next week.

having our favorite dim sum order (double order of shiu mai, har gow, scallop dumplings, pork bao, short ribs in black bean sauce, sticky rice in lotus leaf) for saturday lunch, after not having had dim sum since september, which is too long to not have had dim sum. d's description of sticky rice in lotus leaf as "the main course."

melissa broder's new book milk fed, a truly great novel i read in one sitting (sorry) because i couldn't stop. i feel such a deep kinship with the way she writes about food and about thought, the enumerations, the specificity, the way of saying things that you have thought a thousand times but never heard another person put like this (in some ways, the book feels like the literary manifestation of her podcast eating alone in my car, which i had lost track of and now see has a backlog of episodes i haven't heard, cherry on top, sorry). the particular tone she strikes, which is cynical and darkly funny on the surface but also so intimate and full of yearning for something more. the core of tenderness that's there in all of her books but is expressed so especially beautifully in this book.

the report of the week video "Are Red Baron's Pizza Melts a Frozen Pizza Game Changer?" this food product does not sound particularly good to me, even as someone who has recently found new space in my heart for frozen pizza, but i love the way he talks about it, his over-dramatic monologues about a potential "game changer"

any writing ever by moe tkacik, including this dishy piece about trump administration restaurant culture in DC.

even less need for any pretense that i care about football this year. memory of when i was a kid and our family was together at my grandmother's house and i kept asking obnoxious questions that i thought were cute until my uncles were annoyed and i was told to stop. memory of sitting in the university library and reading bound periodical editions of the paris review while my college friends were at football games.

d playing keyboard (a wurlitzer patch) while i play guitar, looping over and over through a set of basic changes

it's not going to rain today (i started to write "i seem to need to write this every day it is true during the winter in portland because it is so rarely true" and then i looked at the ten day forecast, which shows sun several days next week and all next weekend and even though it's going to be much colder, i'll still take it)

eventually it will be spring