thank you notes 8/15
i'm thankful that after spending all of last week waiting for a weekend when i could escape from work, i spent most of sunday working on an elective work project. i'm thankful for the surprise of that—i'm thankful that i still have the capacity to surprise myself. i'm thankful that in retrospect, i probably shouldn't have devoted so much time and energy to the project on the weekend, when it's important to rest and take care of myself, but i'm thankful for how excited i felt in the moment while working on it, which helped me to ignore my self-care impulses. i'm thankful by yesterday evening to have pulled together a working version of the thing i made to show my coworkers. i'm thankful for the moment when i figured out something really difficult that had been kicking my ass. i'm thankful for loops and thankful for iterators.
i'm thankful that d has been doing the 'insanity' brand of workout videos and is happy with the experience and with her results. i'm thankful for something interesting and seemingly unique (in my experience) about the videos, which is that the background extras doing the workouts frequently look exhausted and miserable and/or have to stop in the middle to breathe. i'm thankful for the way that it models for the person on the other side of the screen that what they're doing is difficult and that it's okay to take a break, that it's important to push yourself but that it's also important to know when you've pushed yourself too hard. i'm thankful for the squares of foam mat d lays out to do her exercises on, which have puzzle pieces edges that interlock to connect them.
i'm thankful that i found the new pair of running shorts i thought i had lost were just in the dirty clothes hamper. i'm thankful that i did a load of laundry. i'm thankful that though the avocado i mashed to go in our burritos wasn't quite ripe enough but thankful that i still liked it anyway. i'm thankful that i didn't get the massive tortillas i saw at the grocery store, which were 100+ calories heavier than the ones i normally got, and thankful that my rolling technique has gotten better. i'm thankful to make popcorn in the microwave bowl a friend recommended. i'm thankful to have reached a milestone in my min-maxing of the amount of kernels i put in the bowl and the amount of time i set it to pop, that i think i am almost to the point of getting all the kernels in the bowl to pop without burning any of them.
i'm thankful for telefone by noname—i'm thankful for chance's "israel," which is the first song i remember hearing her on. i'm thankful for the mellow ambient post-native tongues jazz-hop production, which is more in my favorite lane than coloring book. i'm thankful for reachin' (a new refutation of time and space) which i think is my all-time favorite summer album (i'm thankful for my favorite track "where i'm from," which emits actual sunshine). i'm thankful to remember a beautiful atypically cool summer day years ago where i ran down to the bottom edge of south beach and back up to my parents' apartment while listening to that album on loop.
i'm thankful for the idea that the in le miserables, the digressions, "these hits of philosophy, of history, of social economy are like cold-water taps that douse the frozen and discouraged reader. [they are] hydrotherapy applied to literature." i'm thankful for the profile of what a crazy ridiculous offensive Art person vanessa beecroft is in the latest new york (i'm thankful, in a more joyful way, to have learned what a nerd margaret atwood is at comic-con). i'm thankful for this wonderful video of rihanna getting got. i'm thankful to know that even someone as supernaturally cool as rihanna still gets got sometimes, which gives me hope for myself and the rest of us.
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